With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  "I've been half-work brickie all my life," he told Meggie. "I malingered as long as I dared. Truth to tell, I thought it might make your feller stay."

  "He couldn't stay," Meggie answered.

  It was the only conversation that the two of them had shared concerning J. Monroe Farley, but not a day went by when his name wasn't mentioned in the cabin.

  "Wait 'til Roe gets back. Wish Roe could see this possum I kilt," and "If Roe were here I could get this done in half the time" were among the near constant utterances from Jesse's mouth.

  Meggie knew that he missed his friend and was comforted by talk of him. But its frequency was a nagging heartbreak for her.

  If other people wondered about the growing length of Farley's absence, Jesse did not. Roe had said that he would return and for Jesse that was enough.

  For Meggie the delay had been a wrenching battle with procrastination. Going ahead with her plan always seemed like something that she should do tomorrow. The lies were to be monumental, the effects permanent, and the pain unbearable. Jesse had become a part of that reason. Meggie thought her plot had been designed so that everyone could get what they wanted. Roe could have his work in the Bay State and some woman more suited to the life he wanted. Her father would be spared the shame of his daughter's sinful communion. And the people of Marrying Stone could have a logical resolution to what had quickly become a very sticky problem.

  But Jesse would not be getting what he wanted. And of course, neither would she.

  "Something smells real good this morning, Meggie-gal," her father said. "What you got cookin' in that pot?"

  "Conohany," she answered, referring to the mixture of hominy, wild herbs, meat, and nuts that was said to be an old Cherokee recipe.

  "Mmmmmm. Jesse'll be glad to hear that."

  "Where is Jesse?" she asked.

  "I got him fixin' the dog-leg fence next to the pigsty. Why?"

  Meggie took a deep, soul-searching breath before turning to her father. "I have news from afar," she lied. "My husband was killed on his journey to the Bay State."

  Her father's brow furrowed and he cursed under his breath.

  "Today! Land sakes, Meggie, it's snowing out there. How could you get a missive today?"

  "Pa, I have to," she answered. "I just can't wait any longer. I... got it today."

  Onery sighed heavily and sat down in a chair. "I was hoping that you'd changed your mind."

  Meggie wiped her hands nervously upon her apron. "It has to be this way, Pa. We was never meant."

  He snorted in disapproval. "You was 'as meant' as any other young couple getting themselves married up."

  "We had different lives. We come from different places."

  "Surely ye do. And you got different bodies, too. That's what marriage is about, Meggie-gal, making differences intertwine into something whole and new."

  Meggie didn't want to argue. "He didn't love me, Pa," she said.

  "I'll believe that when I see coons a-taking up farming," the old man answered. He raked his hair with his hands helplessly. "What do ye think love is, Meggie. Do you think it's heart pounding and breath stealing and verse reciting?" he asked. "Yes, ma'am, there is some of that involved, but mostly love is quiet and caring and friendlylike. It's wanting to tell that person something afore you whisper it to another soul. It's not being alone."

  He pointed a finger at her accusingly. "Meggie-gal, you loved that feller the minute you laid eyes upon him. I know you thought he was one of those princes in your storybooks, and I worried that you'd be disappointed when you realized that he was real and no daydream. But you ain't stopped dreaming yet, have ye? You're still thinking your life is one of them fairy tales, only this is one of those that come to a bad end."

  His voice softened to pleading. "Meggie, I'm askin' you, beggin' with you, send word to Roe that you want him back. I think it's the only way I'll ever see ye happy and laughing again."

  "Oh, Pa." Tears welled in Meggie's eyes and she reached out to her father. He pulled her as if she were a little girl once more and held her tight in his embrace as she sobbed her pain and pleaded with him for understanding. He held her and rocked her and wiped her tears with his handkerchief.

  "It's done, Pa," she said. "I threw away the address he left. The harvest is in and I own the corn. It's too late for me to wish it weren't so."

  The door burst open and Jesse rushed in shaking the snow from his hat and grinning broadly. When he saw Meggie in his father's arms and the tears streaming down her cheeks he stopped short.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Roe is dead," she answered quickly before she could change her mind. "I've just got word. Roe died on his journey."

  Meggie tried not to listen to the sobs coming from the cabin loft. Jesse was up there, trying valiantly to bury his grief in a goose-down pillow, but he could still be heard.

  Onery had taken the mule out to notify the neighbors of his son-in-law's demise. By sunset Meggie knew there would be friends and family come to sit with the new widow. Meggie dreaded their arrival. However, it wouldn't be difficult for her to feign grief. Since she'd broken down that afternoon, it was like a floodgate of tears had been opened and she couldn't seem to stop its flow.

  Adeptly she assessed the caldron of water, walnut hulls, and red oak bark that boiled over the fire. Meggie was dying her funeral costume. When she had collected her clothes, she'd meant to stain only things that were old and worn. The stockings and bonnet she'd selected were much used and near threadbare, but when she reached for a near tattered work dress hanging on her peg, the bright blue homespun gown that she continued to wear to church on Sundays had caught her eye. She had tinted it on that long-ago night. The night she'd lain with Roe in the deep clover by the creek. On the way to Althea's wedding he had said it was a pretty dress. He had said that the color was a perfect match for her eyes. Somehow it was that dress that she had reached for. And it was that dress that now simmered in the hot mixture bubbling on the fire.

  Picking up the battling stick she used for laundry, she stirred the brew thoughtfully and raised some of the fabric out of the dye to test the color. It was black. Dull, lifeless black. It was the color of her life, the color of her heart.

  She hadn't meant to hurt her father. She hadn't meant to hurt Jesse. She knew that both were hurting now, but it was for the best.

  Maybe love was more like her father said than it was in fairy tales, but Roe Farley had claimed no love for her at all. And he shouldn't—it would have ruined his life. Perhaps her dramatic ending to their ill-fated marriage was a plot contrived from a fanciful imagination. But it was a plot he had gone along with. Roe had been, in his way, as romantic as she was. He also knew what kind of woman he wanted to marry and plain, mountain-reared Meggie Best could never be that woman.

  A teardrop dribbled off her cheek and splashed in the dye vat.

  "Meggie."

  She heard the plaintive voice from the loft entry and looked up. "I'm here, Jesse."

  "I'm so sad, Meggie," he said through hiccupped tears. "I can't seem to stop it."

  "I'm sad, too, Jesse."

  There was nothing else to say. The moments passed between them with only the crackling of the fire and the swash of the clothing in the caldron breaking the silence.

  "Meggie?"

  "Yes, Jesse."

  "Would you play the Listening Box?"

  "What?"

  "The Listening Box. Roe left it for me for when I needed to hear music, but didn't feel like making my own."

  She didn't want music, silence was preferable to the sounds he had captured on his spools of wax, but she had hurt Jesse and she couldn't deny him this request.

  With some reluctance she set the battling stick up against the wall and, wiping her hands, walked to the place of honor next to her father's bed where the Ediphone was kept. She picked it up carefully by its carrying handle and brought it to the table. She opened the lid and assembled the horn in the way Roe had shown her. She picked a
cylinder at random and slipped it onto the spindle. She turned the crank, adjusted the speed, and set the curved stylus against the grain of the wax.

  The sound of Ebner Pease singing a very nasal tenor filled the room. Pease sang, "Oh, the taters they grow small in Arkansas."

  The lively, bantering lyrics were meant for frolicking evenings and laughing among friends. In her mind's eye she could see Roe grinning as he scrambled to write the words on a piece of the fine bond paper he always carried.

  Inexplicably the pleasant thought brought tears to Meggie's eyes.

  "Oh, they eat them tops and all in Arkansas."

  It was Granny Piggott herself who arrived with Onery just a little before dark. The old woman was already dressed in black and her expression furrowed with concern.

  "I told the rest to stay away tonight," she said with businesslike efficiency. "I think that was the thing to do."

  "Yes, it's fine, Granny. I don't really need anyone here."

  "Lord knows, a widow always needs someone on the first night," she replied. "But someone ain't everyone." She tutted meaningfully. "When I lost my man I needed a bit of time to accept it without half the mountain standing around watching me for signs of breaking down."

  "I'm not going to break down."

  "Suit yourself, child, I don't mind if you do. I think you got a right." She sighed and shook her head. "You looked for happiness for so long and when it finally shows up at your door, fate snatches it away before you've hardly got time to get used to it."

  It was Granny who fixed the supper that night, bustling around the kitchen and taking over as if the cabin were her very own. And it was Granny who washed up the dishes and swept the hearth. Being needed added new life to the old woman and she was a powerhouse of work and a tower of strength for the family to lean upon.

  "You'd best stop that sniveling now, Jesse Best," she said as she handed the young man her handkerchief. "I ain't a-telling you not to grieve, but it would pain your friend Roe to see you carrying on like this."

  "I'm sorry," Jesse whispered, trying to dry up his tears.

  "We're all sorry," Granny said, smoothing the young man's hair lovingly. "A good feller has gone to his grave and we'll miss him too much. But we just got to hold on to how glad we were to have had him with us. And how lucky we were to get to know him at all."

  "He was my frien'," Jesse said.

  "Yes, he was," she answered. "And he always will be."

  After supper was done, Jesse was sent up to bed as soon as was reasonable and the young man quietly cried himself to sleep in the relative privacy of the cabin loft.

  At Granny's insistence, Onery took the bed in the new room.

  "She won't be wanting to sleep in there tonight if she sleeps at all. You go ahead and rest yourself, Onery Best. She's gonna need you to lean on come the morrow."

  Reluctantly her father had retreated and within moments the rhythmic pattern of his deep snore was added to the nocturnal sounds of the night.

  Granny helped Meggie to wring out the newly dyed mourning dress and hang it by the fire.

  "It must be hard for you to believe that this is true," the old woman commented.

  "What do you mean?"

  "He was so young and healthy and full of life when he left," she said. "Without ever seeing him sick or hurt it's difficult to really accept the truth."

  Meggie said nothing, hating the lie that she passed for truth, but feeling grief in her heart near to the real thing.

  "I couldn't believe that my Piggott had died," Granny continued. "I kept thinking that any minute he'd be coming around the comer of the house with something to show me." Her voice quieted with emotion. "It was only the laying out of his body that made it real to me. Without his body, I think I would have been glad to fool myself into thinking that he wasn't really dead."

  "Oh, no. I don't have that problem," Meggie said. "I'm very sure that Roe Farley is dead. There is no question about it in my mind."

  Granny raised an eyebrow in surprise but took her words at face value and didn't bring the subject up again. Together they cleaned up the dying vat and swept the dirt floor. With a small stick of green wood Granny drew rug pattern designs into the packed dirt and readied the cabin for company.

  Meggie gathered the scraps of black crepe kept in the bottom of the sweetwood chest and pressed the wrinkles from them with a hot fireplace stone. Once the crepe was hung and the house decorated for mourning, the two women settled in chairs by the fire to await the dawn.

  Her thoughts in a whirl of guilt and confusion, Meggie was disinclined to conversation. And the old woman didn't force her into foolish chatting for the sake of making noise. The silence lingered, broken only by the scrape of the chairs upon the floor.

  Granny pulled the clay pipe out of her pocket and packed the bowl with sweet-smelling tobacco. The piece of green hickory she'd used for "rugging" the house now served as her pipe lighter. It took several vigorous puffs to get the tobacco to catch fire, but once it was burning to her liking the old woman took a long drag and let the smoke out slowly into the chill air of the room.

  "Do you want a draw?" she asked Meggie, holding out the pipe to her in offering.

  "Oh, no."

  Granny nodded, a hint of a smile curling at the comer of her lips. "Don't care for tobacco, do ye? I didn't when I was your age neither. But I like this pipe," she said. "It offers me comfort."

  As Meggie watched, the old woman held the pipe out at a distance before her where she could more clearly see it and examined the long curving piece of blue fired clay as if she hadn't seen it for a while.

  "It was my man's pipe, ye know."

  Meggie's eyes widened in surprise. "No, I didn't know."

  Granny nodded. "I'd never smoked a day in my life, never cared for the scent of tobacco and fussed about it smelling up my house." She took a long draw on the pipe. "That was the way I was 'til the day I buried that man." She leaned far back in her chair and stared into the fire as if she could see her past written there. "It was such a commotion and people crying and moaning and hugging me." She chuckled without humor. "And me, I was as numb as if I'd been standing bare naked in a snowstorm for half a day."

  She shook her head and smiled sadly.

  "That night after the funeral was done and I'd put him to the ground I come back to the place. It was so empty and I felt so alone. And, of course, I weren't alone at all. I had two of my younguns still at home. And they was weeping and mourning their lost daddy. I had to be strong and solid for them. And I did it, because I had to."

  She stopped her story to tap the pipe and put the fire to the tobacco once more.

  "That night, after I'd got them all tucked into their shakedowns, I went to sit by the fire. I knew I wouldn't be a-sleeping. But I didn't want to start crying again neither."

  The old woman glanced over at Meggie. "I seen his pipe there, this pipe, and his little poke of tobacco. Suddenly it was like there was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to smell that man's pipe tobacco once more."

  The old woman gazed into the fire and shook her head. "So I did the only thing I could. I lit up his pipe. I've been smoking it ever since, more than twenty years."

  Granny sighed heavily. "I've been a widow longer than I was a girl. But I still miss my man and smoking this pipe makes me feel close to him."

  Meggie's eyes welled with tears. She reached across to grasp the old woman's thin bony hand in her own. "Granny, I want you to know that you can smoke that pipe in my house anytime that you want."

  The old woman raised an eyebrow and chuckled lightly.

  "I always have," she said honestly. "I never let other folks' disapproval stop me from anything that I wanted to do."

  It was the truth and they both knew it. Meggie found herself smiling, too.

  "You and your mama were always kindy that way," Granny continued. "Just a-doing whatever you've a mind to and the devil take the hind part." She gave Meggie a conspiratory grin. "I always figu
red you two took it from me."

  Meggie laughed lightly through her tears.

  "Now I'd be willing to bet," Granny continued. "That there is something around here that you could find that'd make you feel close to that man of yours when you're a-needing some comfort."

  Meggie's smile immediately disappeared. "Oh, no."

  "Yes, yes, there is bound to be something."

  Nervously, Meggie started twisting the fabric of her apron. "Roe never smoked a pipe. He didn't smoke at all."

  "He probably knew you didn't like tobacco in the house," Granny replied. "Now there's got to be something around here that brings you close to him again."

  "There's the room he added to the cabin."

  The old woman glanced back to the doorway where Onery's snores could still be heard. "Yes," she said. "Your bed will always bring you close to him, Meggie. But truth to tell, it won't always offer you comfort."

  Meggie said nothing, knowing that it never had and never would.

  "He built the privy, too," she said.

  Granny grinned mischievously. "Well, I guess you could go sit a spell when you are missing him. But folks would start thinking that you got the gilflits."

  To her surprise, Meggie actually laughed at that.

  Granny let the sound grow to its crescendo and then recede into the quiet of the firelight before she spoke again.

  "I think that thing may be it," she said.

  "What thing?"

  Granny Piggott pointed to the Ediphone still sitting on the table where Meggie had left it. "That Listening Box. It was his. His machine. His work. I bet if you played one of those recordin's he was so fond of you'd feel close to him again."

  Meggie looked at the Ediphone for a long moment. The last thing she wanted was to feel close to Roe. She thought the pain of it would surely kill her.

  "I played one of the cylinders earlier this evening," she said. "Jesse asked me to."

  "How did it make you feel?"