Jake swayed in his seat, his heavy eyelids fluttering as he slowly stuffed more potatoes in his mouth. Mercy couldn’t help but smile at the little boy who was the spitting image of his father. Nicholas was a man she’d trusted the day she met him. Was her boss’s past really as bad as Lydia claimed?
“In case you’re wondering if your ability to judge Aaron is off, I thought I’d let you know Nicholas and I both think he’s a good man.” Lydia grabbed her hand and squeezed. “My husband trusts Aaron far more than . . . some others. But if you weren’t wondering . . .” She shrugged and smiled. “Well, I’m glad you’re helping Owen get to know him.”
Mercy squeezed Lydia’s hand back, then turned toward the dining room to fetch Owen before Lydia decided to ask her what she was thinking.
She looked out the window before disappearing down the hallway and saw Aaron sitting in a chair, his food in front of him untouched, his head bowed in prayer.
What if Aaron still liked her?
What if she liked him back?
Would that lead to more heartache than she’d suffered at his hand years ago?
19
Aaron stopped mowing the last section of the front lawn, grabbed the towel he’d stuffed in his back pocket, and wiped at his face and neck. The further they left spring behind, the more he believed he’d melt away with this job. Thankfully the sun was going down, and the moon shone brightly in the deepening blue sky. He’d sleep well tonight since the nights were still cool, but it wouldn’t be so easy in the muggy heat of August.
He walked to where he’d left his water in the shade, took a drink, and looked out over the small hill toward the pond where he’d staked four goats to munch down the meadow. He waved at one of the young men Nicholas had hired to help mow now that school was out. “James!”
The boy stopped pushing the reel mower to look at him.
“Can you put up the goats?” He pointed toward the pond, and James nodded, heading to the lean-to to put away his mower.
After draining his water, Aaron mowed his way to the pump to refill his glass, the rotary blades skimming right over the new dandelion heads.
When he turned the corner of the mansion, he slowed. Mercy stood on the porch scanning the grounds for something. When she caught sight of him, she headed down the steps in a rush.
She was coming to talk to him? He stopped to wipe off his neck again. She’d started talking to him cordially whenever they found themselves together, and he couldn’t have been happier. Well, he might’ve been happier if he knew she wouldn’t mind another kiss, but he couldn’t find that out without asking, and just the thought of doing so made his hands sweat.
As she got closer, he wiped his palms against his trousers though there was no reason to worry about kissing now. He probably smelled so awful, she’d slap him for stepping too close.
She stopped in front of him. “Do you know where Jimmy is?”
He kept his shoulders stiff though they wanted to droop, just like his heart had. Of course she hadn’t come looking for him, let alone had any thoughts of kissing in that pretty head of hers. “I saw him about thirty minutes ago on the back porch, but I didn’t pay much attention to where he went from there.”
“I told him not to go outside.” Her little foot stomp made him grin. “Which way did he go?”
“I’m not sure he went anywhere. Maybe he figured the porch wasn’t technically outside?” The boy had been working hard to obey Mercy since he’d returned from Ragsdale’s, but it was clearly difficult for him, especially when given too many demands. With Timothy cracking down on him lately, Jimmy exploded pretty much every other day.
Aaron looked at the sun’s low position and shook his head. “It’s getting late. I’ll look out here, if you look inside. It’s easy enough to miss someone in a house so large.”
She shook her head and sighed. “I’ve looked everywhere, and no one’s seen him. I’m going to check the carriage house and hope he’s not at the fort, since it’s getting dark. If you find him, send him inside immediately. He’s yet to clean his room.”
Aaron forced himself not to shake his head. How had she let Jimmy go an entire day without accomplishing his one chore? But he wouldn’t lecture Mercy about being firmer with Jimmy. He didn’t want their current, unspoken truce to disappear in a puff of smoke. If anything was going up in smoke right now, it would be in whatever pipe or cigar Jimmy had gone into hiding with. His attempts to obey the no-smoking rule likely fueled his irritability. “If I find him, I’ll escort him to either you or Cook so he can’t slink off again.”
“Thank you.” She headed toward the carriage house, and he put away his mower and scanned the grounds. Where might Jimmy be this time? Several of the sheds and outbuildings would keep him hidden. If the boy was smoking in the woods, Aaron might as well wait for him to return rather than search blindly for him.
He washed at the pump and looked around, deciding to check the half-sunken cellar on the backyard slope, where Jimmy had disappeared the day of the marble game.
He turned off the spigot and headed down the hill. Earlier that week, he’d noticed several flattened grass pathways near the cellar that had kept his mower from cutting efficiently. Might be the result of water runoff or animals, but the cellar would make a good hiding place, since nothing valuable was stored there. He’d yet to clean it out—definitely a winter project.
Once he passed the oak tree, sounds of someone talking made him look around. Had Mercy found Jimmy? Seeing no one, he kept going. Probably just the young men Nicholas had hired putting their mowers in the shed.
He took his time walking down the gentle slope, stretching his arms. He no longer ached all day long, but he still collapsed into bed every night. Did this job ever get easier?
Of course, he might not find out. Though Lowe had complimented him on his hard work before leaving on a business trip this afternoon, his ability to do manual labor wouldn’t keep his boss from advertising in the fall for a bona fide gardener.
He’d heard the school board was supposed to finish hiring in a little over two weeks. Would Mercy change her mind about barring him from the teaching position before then? She’d forgiven him and seemed all right with him helping with the children now . . . but she’d yet to agree to let him adopt Owen.
As he got closer to the cellar, the muffled voices grew louder—though he still couldn’t place where they were coming from.
Wouldn’t Mercy have told him if another orphan had gone missing? Though if the rest had done their chores, maybe she hadn’t worried about them.
A scuffling, a muffled growl, and an “Oof” proved the voices he was overhearing were more than just a conversation.
Racing down the stairs to the cellar entrance, his heightened breathing kept him from hearing much of the muffled noises.
He ducked under the nearly collapsed doorway, his body blocking the waning sunlight. He couldn’t see a thing, though a cry made his heartbeat tick up a notch. He widened his eyes, hoping his vision would adjust to the dimness.
The movement of shadows was undeniably that of people wrestling about on the floor.
“Hey!” he barked. “Who’s in here?”
“Get off m—” A boy’s voice was cut off.
Aaron stumbled over a root that had grown up through the dirt floor. He raised his arms in case he needed to block a punch. “Who—?”
“He makes me do it. I swear!” Jimmy’s voice came out like a desperate whine. “I don’t want to. He makes me—”
“Shut up,” said the other voice, low and menacing, cutting Jimmy off.
Aaron’s stomach did an empty flip, and he tasted bile. His skin flashed hot.
No.
He’d wondered if someone had mistreated Jimmy in the same way he’d been mistreated, and yet he’d assumed the boy was safe at the orphanage.
How could he have been so dense?
Blackness crowded Aaron’s vision, nearly obscuring the cellar’s pervasive darkness.
A whimper was followed by some sort of sickening squelch, like a hand to a throat.
He knew far too well what would happen to Jimmy if he struggled too much. Or if he didn’t struggle at all.
How many people on this earth had to endure such cruelty before God stopped it?
Aaron’s whole body shook as he charged forward, but he stumbled over a junk pile he could barely see. The boy’s stifled cry sent his pulse up like a rocket.
The sounds of anguish were perfect echoes of the ones he’d tried to swallow so many years ago. Memories he’d forced into the abyss swelled up over him, making his heart race, his breath cinch, and time slow as if he were being swept away in a raging sea.
He had to stop the nightmare.
He charged toward the struggling shadows and latched on to the bigger shape on top, surprised by the weight of the body. He flung the man toward the wall and scrambled after him with a shout.
The stranger put his head down and charged forward, hitting Aaron like a battering ram, sending them both into the wall. Aaron slumped forward but quickly recovered to catch the man by the shirt. They wrestled for a grip on each other, but the man twisted out of his grasp and headed straight for Jimmy’s cowering figure.
This man would never touch Jimmy again, so help him God.
Aaron grabbed him from behind and flung him back, but the man recovered quickly, getting in a sucker punch to Aaron’s jaw, adding stars to the darkness.
Aaron struck back blindly, hitting something soft.
Before his vision cleared, the man snaked his arm around his throat, and a new-made darkness annihilated Aaron’s senses.
He was all too familiar with massive hands denying him breath, how his heart would nearly explode knowing what was coming, being powerless to stop it. Always the choice between submitting in agony or fighting, which would only enrage his uncle.
Aaron stilled and quit fighting for breath, calming the panic. He was bigger now. Stronger.
He dug his hands into the arm crushing his throat, pulling it inches away, and gained a breath. With a surge of energy backed by a primal growl, he escaped the headlock.
The second he caught his breath, he lost it when a fist crashed into his soft lower back.
The pain flashed with a light that didn’t help him see in the dark. He winced and stumbled forward.
He spun around, despite the dizziness, and lumbered after the man. He couldn’t let him get away—he had to answer for his wickedness. For all the hurt he’d caused.
Aaron caught his assailant just as he blocked the entrance, obliterating the faint light and darkening all the shadows.
He yanked the man back, flipping him onto the ground, and tried to pin his writhing form to the floor. “How does it feel to be the one struggling now?”
How often had he forced himself not to resist in order to shorten the humiliation he’d have to endure? Hoping submission would earn him a reprieve from his uncle’s attentions because he’d been “a good boy”?
His uncle’s fist hit him so hard he heard a ringing in his ears.
“Get off me!”
“You think I’m going to let you go, when I finally have you under my control?” He wrenched his uncle up a little, leaning away from a wild swing. “You think I’m ever going to be ‘good’ for you again?”
Being “good” only added to the shame, heightening the desire to die and be free from the recurring shredding of his dignity.
Aaron pressed a knee into his uncle’s gut and sent a right hook into his face, then another. And another.
“Stop!” A soft female voice behind him registered as he took another swing.
A tearful voice sounded from the corner. “Don’t hurt him anymore.”
And then an otherworldly dash of cold pulled back the blackness. The man pinned beneath him, looking up with total hatred marring his face, was not his uncle. Of course he wasn’t. He hadn’t ever been. How had he . . . ?
Aaron’s labored, rage-infused breathing made it impossible to hear anything but his lungs working overly hard, making his sense of sight exquisitely acute. The young man’s bruises were already coloring, his swollen face that of a man twenty years old instead of forty. A trickle of blood shone crimson amid his sparse whiskers, rage swirling in his eyes as he writhed under Aaron’s weight.
Aaron’s whole body shook, but he didn’t let him go. Though the young man might not be able to get away from him, that didn’t mean he couldn’t overpower Jimmy.
“Get off him,” Jimmy pleaded.
He wouldn’t. He turned to the boy. “If he’s making you do the unfathomable, why would you ask for his freedom?”
The young man under him stilled—probably expecting mercy he didn’t deserve.
Jimmy tentatively slid forward, looking at Aaron and then at the man whose shirt was firmly embedded in Aaron’s fist. Jimmy looked toward the exit as if about to flee, but he backed up and rubbed his neck, staring at the man on the ground. “He’s my . . . brother.”
Aaron’s shaking didn’t lessen. “So? Family can inflict upon you a shame so deep that blood means nothing.”
“No, I mean . . .” Jimmy shrugged. “I mean he wasn’t doing anything more than telling me what to do and . . . and . . . things like that. He’s like Miss McClain, just pushier.”
“What?” His body somehow shook even harder. “You mean he wasn’t . . . ?”
What had he done? Had he just beaten up a man because Jimmy was a defiant, disobedient child, like always?
Aaron let go of the young man’s shirt and lurched back, hitting the earthen wall behind him with a thud.
He couldn’t stop shaking. He held up his swollen hands and watched as his victim ran out of the cellar and into the night. How had he lost control so badly? How had his brain shut down enough he’d . . . he’d . . .
His breathing grew shallow, and he fought to gulp in air.
God was supposed to help him repress his anger and shame. But in the blink of an eye, he’d become a bully again. An honest-to-goodness bully—or maybe worse.
He’d just hurt someone because he could, because it made him feel better.
A featherlight hand settled upon his right shoulder, and he turned to find Mercy’s face inches from his.
The shaking stopped, and his body lost all its heat.
Mercy—the female voice that had broken through his haze of fury.
Now she’d never see him as anything other than what he once was—still was. She’d watched him tear into someone who’d done nothing more than tussle with his younger brother. How she must despise him.
“Aaron?” Her voice was soft, as if it were a million miles away.
He couldn’t breathe. He was going to be fired. She’d turn him in to the police. She’d keep Owen from him. He’d never kiss her again, let alone breathe the same air.
Just one moment in time and his old ways had resurfaced, ruining his life, his entire reason for coming to Teaville, all chances of being forgiven gone.
“I . . .” He swallowed again, searching for something to say, though no words were good enough.
Her hand seared the cold flesh beneath his sleeve.
He scrambled to stand, then backed toward the exit, holding his throbbing hands up in front of him, noting a sharp pang where he’d split the skin across his knuckles.
“Aaron . . .”
The moment the cool evening air hit his neck, he turned and rushed up the stairs and toward the woods, barely running well enough to stay upright.
The Holy Spirit was supposed to check his old ways—but he’d completely lost all sanity.
He stumbled into the undergrowth, crashing through limbs and tripping over roots. The greenbriers ensnared his pants, ripping fabric and flesh. When he ran up against a thick wall of cedars, he dropped heavily to his knees.
An unmanly wail tore out of his throat, though the sound barely registered.
Rough, heaving sobs possessed him, and pain twisted his stomach. What he’d j
ust done and what he’d once endured burned a hole in his middle. Despite the dirt and pine needles embedded in his palms, he ground his hands into his eye sockets. But no matter how hard he pressed against his eyes, he couldn’t stop the memories flashing before him, the pain ripping him in two, the hopelessness that pulled him to the ground.
Tears poured out like a flood—useless tears. They couldn’t cleanse him from anything.
He had worked so hard to suppress the memories so he’d never lash out again. He’d summoned up the courage to live as the man he’d always wanted to be but never felt he could be.
But his depraved self had resurfaced in all its glory.
The time he’d lived in the light made it that much harder to plunge back into the darkness.
20
Mercy moved the flickering lamp closer as she stitched her second quilt block of the day. The moral society had decided to quickly piece together another quilt top for next week’s auction to benefit Max and Robert, and everyone had taken blocks home.
But instead of starting her next seam, Mercy leaned toward the darkened window, straining to hear whatever sound was coming from outside. Was it the steady whirring of a mower despite the sun having set more than an hour ago?
In the week since the fight in the cellar, if she went anywhere near Aaron, he’d find work to do elsewhere. Now that summer had arrived, she spent a lot of time with the children in the backyard, and the grass had grown higher than it should have. Surely he wasn’t mowing in the dark to evade her.
The wind stirred the curtains, but no shadowy movement confirmed Aaron’s presence. Then a gust of wind rattled the pampas grass. That must have been it. And yet she was a little disappointed not to see him roaming about in the dark. She’d seen so little of him in the past six days.
Though he avoided her, the hopelessness in his posture and expression couldn’t be masked, even from afar.
Aaron had run from the cellar as if chased by wolves, and she’d assumed the other man had run off to report the assault. She’d braced herself for the impending chaos, but the police never came.
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