“You did the right thing, my dear,” Ruth soothed; tentatively, she reached out and placed her wrinkled hand into Olivia’s, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Marriage isn’t the sort of thing to enter into lightly. Sure, it’s normal to have doubts, butterflies in your stomach, that sort of thing. I know I did. But those are nerves of excitement, the thrill of facing the unknown with someone you love completely, with all of your heart. Billy’s a good man, but he’s not the one for you.”
“That’s not what my mother thinks,” Olivia said sourly. “The only thing she cares about is the money Billy stands to earn. The fact that his family is both wealthy and connected is more than enough reason for her.”
“She’s only trying to look out for your best interests.”
“She told me I’m making a mistake.”
“That’s because she doesn’t want you to struggle,” Ruth explained. “Elizabeth may not say it the right way, but deep down in her heart, she’s doing what any good mother would. She’s trying to protect you. She sees Billy as a way for you to make your way through life easier than she did. No parent wants to see their child suffer. Unfortunately, she’s forgotten to take your happiness into consideration.”
“Marrying Billy wouldn’t make me happy. I’m sure of it.”
“And you’re starting to think that being with the other man would?” the blind woman asked. “That maybe Peter is the one you’ve been waiting for?”
Olivia looked at Ruth, dumbstruck. The older woman stared forward, her expression expectant, as if she was waiting for an answer. “How…how do you know about him…?”
“I spoke with him a couple days ago,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“You did?”
Ruth nodded. “He came over and we shared a few words,” she said. “I didn’t get to talk to him for very long, but he seemed like a good young man. Strong, although it seemed like something was weighing on him. A burden, perhaps.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Call it a blind woman’s intuition. A hunch. I’ve spent so many years unable to see the look that crosses people’s faces that I have to interpret the sound of their voices. His sounded strained. He has a lot on his mind, that one.”
Olivia thought about the times she’d spent with Peter. On a number of occasions, when he was still lying in bed, recuperating from his injuries, she’d noticed him staring out the window, lost in thought. It made her wonder if Ruth wasn’t right, that maybe something was troubling him, some problem he was trying to figure out.
“Are you in love with him?” Ruth asked and then shook her head. “Goodness sakes, I shouldn’t be asking you that. It’s really none of my business.”
“It’s all right,” Olivia reassured her; after all, the blind woman’s question was one she’d been asking herself for a while. “The thing is, I’ve never been in love before so I’m not exactly sure what it is I’m supposed to feel. All I know is that Peter is unlike any man I’ve ever known. Just thinking about him causes something inside of me to change. So if I haven’t fallen in love with Peter already, I’d say that I’m well on my way.”
Ruth smiled warmly. “That sounds lovely.”
“I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do now.”
“Go to him and tell him the truth. That’s usually a good place to start.”
“You seem awfully sure of him.”
“I am,” Ruth admitted.
“Why? You said that you didn’t talk with him for very long.”
“It doesn’t have much to do with me,” the blind woman answered. “But I notice the way he makes you feel. I pay attention to people’s voices, remember? When I listen to you talk about Peter, it’s so clear to me that there’s something special between the two of you that I imagine I can see it as plain as day.”
Tears filled Olivia’s eyes. Squeezing Ruth’s hand, she said, “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, my dear.”
“I think there’s someone I have to have a long talk with.”
“There most certainly is.”
But then, just as Olivia was rising from her chair, she suddenly stopped. There, walking down the sidewalk toward her, was Peter. He hadn’t noticed her yet as his eyes roamed the streets, peering into the space between houses. He looked concerned, even a bit worried.
“It seems that your opportunity has arrived,” Ruth said.
Olivia stared at her. How could she possibly know? Then she smiled and headed down the porch steps.
For almost an hour, Peter had walked the darkened streets of Miller’s Creek. Earlier, just before sunset, he and John had loaded his meager belongings and taken them to the apartment; other than the clothes Olivia had procured from her father, there’d been almost nothing to pack. When they’d finished, John invited him to continue taking his dinner with the family, an offer Peter had accepted. But when they’d gotten back to the Marstens’ home, he’d been surprised to find that Olivia wasn’t there. He’d expected her to arrive at any moment, but by the time dinner was ready, she was still missing. When pressed, Elizabeth had been vague, saying that her daughter had gone out and would be back shortly. Still, Peter hadn’t felt right about it. All throughout dinner, he’d struggled to pay attention to the conversation, worrying that something had happened to the woman he loved. The thought of Otto watching Olivia made him so uncomfortable that he’d excused himself from the table and gone outside. Once there, he’d paced back and forth, too wound up to remain still. So instead, he had gone to look for her. Up one side of the street and then down the other, he stared into the dark shadows between houses, peered into vehicles as they drove past, and fought the urge to shout her name. He was trying to figure out what he would say to John, how he might convey his worries without giving himself away, when he saw her.
Watching Olivia come down her neighbor’s walk made Peter’s heart pound; plenty of it was on account of how beautiful he found her to be, but more of it was because he was relieved that she was safe. He struggled to resist the urge to take her in his arms.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“I went for a walk,” she answered. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to come back so late. I lost track of time, is all.”
“I was starting to worry,” he admitted.
Before Olivia responded, she looked back over her shoulder; Peter followed her gaze and saw Ruth staring at them. Without another word, Olivia took his arm and led him away, not stopping until they were standing by the walk that led to her family’s porch. Though Peter found it strange that she would be so concerned about a blind woman watching them, he didn’t argue, impatient as he was to know where she’d been.
“Didn’t my mother tell you what happened between us?” Olivia finally asked, her voice soft, as if she still worried about being overheard.
“No,” Peter replied. “All she said was that you’d be back soon.”
She frowned. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said.
“Did something happen between you?”
Olivia nodded. “I made a mistake…I told my mother the truth…”
“You told her about us?” Though he felt frustrated at having to pull each bit of information out of Olivia, as if he was sifting through a haystack in search of a needle, Peter tried to remain calm; he knew that if he were to seem too anxious, it would only make matters worse.
“Yes…no…” she struggled. “It…it all started because I told her that I broke off my engagement to Billy…”
Peter’s pulse quickened. “You…you ended it…?”
In answer, Olivia held up her hand. Her engagement ring was missing. Peter remembered the way it had pulled at his attention the first time he’d seen it, how Olivia had tried to hide it, the way that it seemed to weigh upon her as if it was an anchor. But now it was gone.
“I told him that I couldn’t marry him,” she said, her eyes searching his. As she lowered her hand,
Peter took it, lightly holding her fingers in his own.
“How did he react?” he asked.
“Badly,” Olivia answered. “I hurt him last night. Worse than I ever would’ve thought possible.”
“You didn’t have a choice.”
“I know. It’s just that, seeing him so angry…” she said, her voice trailing off into silence.
“My father used to tell me that sometimes, doing the right thing is the hardest of all.”
“I never should’ve accepted his proposal in the first place.”
“But you did,” Peter explained as gently as he could. “What did he do when you told him you wanted to break it off?”
“At first, he tried to talk me out of it, but then, when he realized that I wasn’t going to change my mind, he grew angry.” From her pained expression, Peter understood that she was reliving every horrible moment that had passed between them. “I ended up running away in tears. That was why I went straight to my room when I came home. I know you wanted to see me, but I just couldn’t. I needed to be alone for a while.”
“It’s all right,” he reassured her.
“I thought that we could talk this morning, but when I woke up, you were already gone.”
“With everything that’s happened to me, my accident, and even meeting you, I suppose that I wanted a chance to think things through,” Peter explained. “So I went for a walk.” He didn’t mention where he had gone or his reasons for going there. He hoped that she wouldn’t ask; he didn’t want to lie anymore, but now wasn’t the time to burden her with the truth.
“Did it help?” Olivia asked instead.
“A little,” he answered truthfully.
“I wish I could say the same,” she admitted. “Everything is such a mess. I don’t know where to start trying to put it all back together again.”
“Sometimes, time is the only medicine.”
“So until then, I guess I’ll have to keep listening to my mother’s criticisms,” she said, adding a short laugh. “She took great pains to tell me that I’m making a big mistake.”
“The only mistake you would’ve made was to marry someone you didn’t love.”
“For my mother, that’s not much of an obstacle.”
“Do you feel that way?”
Slowly, Olivia shook her head. “She’s as wrong as she can be. To me,” she explained, “it’s the only thing that matters.”
Gently, Peter squeezed her hand; in return, she clung to him tightly, as if the slightest of touches was to be treasured.
“Not marrying Billy wasn’t the only mistake my mother accused me of making,” Olivia said softly.
“What was the other one?”
“Getting involved with you.” Her eyes watched his closely; he imagined that she was looking for something, for some reaction, but he gave her none.
“Did she give you a reason?” he asked.
“She said that you could be a liar,” Olivia explained. “She told me that you might be none of what you claim, that you could be dangerous, the sort of man who’d tell me whatever I wanted to hear, so long as you got what you wanted in the end.” She paused before adding, “Me.”
Peter’s heart thundered louder than the storm that had led him to Olivia. Elizabeth could never have known it, but she was partly right; Peter wasn’t who he claimed to be. He had been lying to Olivia, but not for the reasons she claimed, an important difference.
“Olivia,” he answered, raising a hand to gently touch her cheek. “I know that my coming into your life hasn’t made things easy. For that, I’m truly sorry. But I swear to you that my intentions are honorable. If there’s anything I’m guilty of, it’s greed.” Olivia looked at him, confused, but he continued. “Ever since the moment we met, all I’ve wanted was to spend time with you, to share these feelings that threaten to overwhelm me with you. I wasn’t just struck by a runaway truck, I was also blindsided by you, and I hope that I never recover from those wounds.”
Slowly, Peter leaned forward, intent on kissing her. Olivia’s eyes closed in anticipation. But then, just before their lips touched, the Marstens’ side door opened on squeaky hinges.
It was Grace.
“There you are,” she said when she saw her sister. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes…” Olivia answered, a bit flustered.
“Mom’s getting ready to put a pie on the table. You better get a move on if you want any.” With that, she was gone, the door slamming shut with a bang.
“She has a knack for interrupting us, doesn’t she?” Olivia said.
Peter smiled. “Seems that way.”
Still holding his hand, she tugged him toward the house. Their kiss would have to wait, but Peter didn’t mind. He had hopes for what could grow between them, dreams that became larger with every passing day. But something still lay between them and that future, blocking it from sight. The truth.
How am I ever going to tell her who I really am?
Chapter Nineteen
OTTO CROUCHED BETWEEN a pair of bushes and stared at the back of the house. His stomach growled with hunger, but he paid it no mind. Minutes earlier, the sun had set, the shadows stretching across the ground as darkness descended. Just like when he and Becker had watched the cabin, he had to tamp down the urge to act. It was a struggle to remain patient. He slowly ran his fingers along his knife’s handle. It was only a matter of waiting for the right time.
Tonight, an Amerikaner is going to die!
He had left his hiding spot in the hills intent on striking a blow for Germany. Keeping to the shadows and away from the most heavily traveled routes, he’d managed to make it into town undetected. He found a trickling tributary to the creek and followed it as it twisted and turned, rose and fell, snaking behind quiet homes. Once, he’d rounded a bend and startled a deer. Later, he’d aroused the interest of a mutt chained to its doghouse; at the sound of barking, he’d frozen in place, waiting until the mongrel lost interest. Finally, he scampered up a muddy incline and was where he wanted to be.
The house was large, in a style Otto had never seen back in Bavaria. Lights were on in the first floor but the upstairs was dark. From where he watched at the rear of the property, past a garden and beneath the limbs of an enormous evergreen tree, Otto hadn’t seen anyone other than his prey walk in front of the glass. The man’s police car sat quietly in the drive. Still, he imagined that the lawman had a wife and children, people he cared for. At one point, a door opened on the side of the house and he thought he’d heard voices, but from where he hid, he couldn’t see clearly. In the end, it hardly mattered.
Everyone in that home was going to die.
Huck Perkins whistled along to Tommy Dorsey as he cleaned his plate from supper and dropped it into a sink filled with warm water. He liked the way the music made him feel, how the notes picked up his spirits after a long, tiring day at work. But most of all, he supposed that he was thankful to the music for providing noise in a house that would have otherwise been silent.
Now inching toward sixty, with more and more gray hair staring back at him in the mirror, Huck doubted that he’d ever find someone to share his life. There weren’t too many available women in Miller’s Creek, only the occasional war widow, and he doubted whether a younger gal would find what he had to offer all that exciting. He was going to be an old maid, or whatever it was they called a man without prospects. Times like this, when he was feeling a touch maudlin, he thought about Angela Freeman, a woman he’d courted more than a decade before. She’d shown an interest in him, but in the end he’d been too much of a coward to ask the necessary questions. Eventually, she had grown weary of waiting and accepted the advances of another suitor. Nowadays, whenever he saw her around town with her family, he tipped his hat and quickly walked away as a sickening feeling filled his gut. Not for the first time, he wondered if he shouldn’t get a pet to cure his loneliness; at least then he wouldn’t have to come home to an empty house.
“Maybe a dog,”
he muttered to himself as Frank Sinatra began to croon from the living room.
At least he had his work. Being an officer of the law had always seemed to fit Huck just right. He was good at it, liked helping folks. People around Miller’s Creek treated him with respect; their admiration was something he strived to be worthy of. Most days it was easy, just to the north of boring. He wrote out a ticket or two, hauled drunks like Sylvester Eddings to his familiar cell, and kept gawkers back as the fire department put out a blaze. But every once in a while, things got a bit hairier, like when a blizzard blew in or he had to break up a drunken brawl at the tavern. Huck found those times plenty exciting.
It didn’t hurt that he had such a great boss. John Marsten was the best man Huck had ever known, even more so than his own father, a grouch of a farmer who never got over the disappointment of learning that his oldest son hadn’t the slightest interest in living off the land. The sheriff was the sort of man Huck would’ve followed to hell and back. He was strict but fair, a leader who looked after the welfare of others before his own. Why, just that afternoon, he’d ordered Huck to take the next couple of days off on account of how hard they’d worked through the fires. Huck had protested, said that he wasn’t tired, when in fact he felt weary all the way to his bones, but John had insisted. Finally, Huck had relented. In the morning, he planned on going fishing, just him, his rusty boat, a rod and reel, and maybe a couple of cold beers for companionship.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad life after all.
Just as Huck plunged his hands into the sink, he glanced up at the window and frowned. For a moment, he thought he’d seen something. It seemed large, bigger than a rabbit. He shook his head. It was probably a deer; they often came up from the brook at the rear of his property in search of food. For all he knew, it was his own reflection, or maybe the light behind him had shone off the glass. He was just exhausted and it was making him jumpy.
I wonder if this is what it’s like for old Sylvester, he thought. Having imaginary things jumping at him out of nowhere.
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