“That’s me,” David shot a nasty little grin at Eleanor. “A relative-stranger, wouldn’t you say, Mrs. Jefferson? Though, after what we weathered together, I think I could almost be considered next-of-kin. Her doctor had no trouble allowing me that status,” he informed Grant.
She glared at him, speechless, and Grant filled the gap in the conversation. “I’ll see to it that you’re well paid for your troubles, and if you’d make that coffee now, I’m sure Mrs. Jefferson would appreciate it. I always use that large blue mug in the cupboard above the stove. I like lots of coffee, and I like it strong. Two spoons of sugar.”
“The blue mug? Would that be the one Philip’s been using to measure the dog kibble, Mrs. Jefferson?” Eleanor was hard put to lie still and not run screaming from the room—screaming with laughter—at the expression on Grant’s face. Without waiting for a reply David almost bowed and tugged his forelock before he ducked out of the room.
When David had been and gone, serving the coffee with a deference at which Eleanor had great difficulty keeping a straight face, Grant leaned back in the chair. He had pulled it as far as possible from her bed before he’d sat. He asked complacently, as if expecting a positive answer, “How did you fare, seeing about regaining your freedom?”
“I’ve been sick, Grant,” she said to avoid a direct reply. “I’ve hardly been out of this bed for days. I wasn’t expecting you back yet anyway.”
“I managed to finish up sooner than expected,” he replied, and reached for his coffee. He set it down quickly again, without having sipped, and shuddered. So David’s little dart about the dog food, untrue as Eleanor knew it to be, had struck home.
“Did you sort out the problems with that property you wanted along the North Thompson?” she asked, lacing her fingers together over the knee she had pulled up under the covers.
He ignored the question. “I’m glad to see you aren’t wearing your wedding ring anymore, Eleanor. It makes me hope you really mean business this time and—”
“Grant,” she interrupted him, “there’s something I need to tell y—”
“Mrs. Jefferson, will Mr. Applebaum be staying for lunch?” David’s eyes danced with unholy glee as he bounded into the room, not pausing to knock on the door which he had left jar after serving the coffee. Damn him! He looked just like Philip when he was up to no good. Eleanor knew he’d been lurking out there in the hall, eavesdropping.
“No!” Grant said, his tone too sharp. “That is… I… The dishes… I can’t take that much…” He broke off lamely.
“Risk?” David supplied politely. “The dishes might have germs on them?” He glanced at Grant’s still full coffee mug. “Oh, Mr. Appleby, was the coffee not to your liking?”
“No,” Grant said. “And the name is Appleton.” He turned to Eleanor. “Ellie,” he pleaded with her for understanding, “this man’s not a properly trained nurse. He can’t know about sterilizing and… All that… That’s it, Ellie!” He brightened perceptibly. “I’ll send a nurse out this afternoon.”
“No thanks, Appleton.” David’s voice was hard, all traces of mockery gone from it. “I’ve gone on this far looking after Mrs. Jefferson and Philip, and I will continue to do so until she tells me my… services… are no longer required.” The deliberate hesitation over the word “services’, was accompanied by that nasty, dirty little smirk of David’s and Eleanor wanted to throw something at him. Something hard. Something heavy.
“Surely,” Grant said stiffly, “it’s up to me to decide what’s best for my fiancée, and to her, of course,” he added with a quick glance at Eleanor.
“Certainly,” agreed David pleasantly. “Mrs. Jefferson?”
There was no hesitation in her answer. “I’d rather not have a nurse, thank you, Grant. Philip is used to having things the way they are, and after all, he went out all alone at night, and rode a horse, frightened as he is—was—of horses, to get help for me. To change things now would only make him think I don’t appreciate what he did.”
“Always the kid,” Grant said. “What about showing me a little of that appreciation?” He shrugged petulantly and got to his feet. “Oh, well, at least you took off that damned wedding ring. I guess I can’t expect to wean you away from all parts of your past at once.”
“Did you ever expect to wean me away from my son?” Eleanor asked, dangerously quiet and with raised brows.
“No, no. Of course not.” Grant hastened to assure her, “but I am glad to see that ring gone.”
“I took the ring off her when she was ill.” David spoke quietly from just inside the doorway. “It seemed to be an irritation to her.” Grant glanced over his shoulder at him, as if surprised to see the other man still there.
David approached the far side of bed, dropped to one knee in front of Eleanor and, holding her gaze with his own, he slowly unbuttoned his shirt pocket and extracted the ring. He held it out in front of her on the palm of his hand. It glittered in the sunlight. “Would you like it back, Mrs. Jefferson?” he asked quietly.
Eleanor wrenched her gaze from his and stared down at the bright circlet of gold on the broad, work-roughened hand. That band was so fragile, so delicate, like the bond between them, and she ached with all her heart and soul to be able to ask him to replace it on her finger. But…
“Not… just yet,” she whispered. “Thank you… Jeff.”
“All right,” he replied softly, looking deep into her pain-filled eyes with complete understanding and love. “All right.” Then, standing, he tucked the ring back into his pocket, buttoned flap and said briskly, “I think Mrs. Jefferson is tired now, so I’ll leave you to make your tender farewells.” He spun on his heel and marched out, banging the door solidly behind him.
Grant stood up looking bewildered and then with a hollow laugh, said “A very strange man, that friend of the kid’s. How come he put your ring back into his pocket? What’s wrong with your jewelry box?”
Eleanor desperately sought an adequate answer. She was tired. And she wished Grant would go. She knew an explanation would have to be made, but not now. The time for that had been when she had begun to make it, back when David had broken in on them. Deliberately? And if so, why? Still, she was too tired, feeling too sick to try to explain to Grant now. She would be unequal to the ensuing battle. All she could think to say about the ring was, “I gather he feels it safer there and will be easier for him to give it back to me when I ask for it, than if he had to dig through the mess in my jewelry box.”
“Are you going to ask for it back?” Grant asked in a hard voice.
“I don’t imagine I’ll let him keep it. After all, it is mine, Grant,” she said and he spun on his heel as David had done and walked rapidly out of the room.
I’m not being fair to him, she thought in anguish, but I really couldn’t have faced an argument today.
~ * ~
David avoided her room for the rest of the day except for bringing and collecting her lunch tray, then the next time Eleanor heard his voice was when Philip came home from school the screen door slammed—without having squeaked open first. Philip noticed the difference at once. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “The door doesn’t squeak.”
“No,” rumbled David’s voice. “I oiled it. Like a lot of things around here, my son, it’s been needing a man’s attention for a long, long time.”
Chapter Nine
Needing a man’s attention? Eleanor asked herself. Meaning exactly what? Or who? Me? Philip? And thereby saying by implication that Grant was not man enough for the job? It must be admitted, she thought, but Grant had given a very poor showing of himself today, and she had been ashamed of him, of his pathological fear of infection, of his patronization of David, whom he took to be nothing more than a flunky to be sent out to the kitchen to make coffee, then offered money for his services.
But David had shown himself more than capable of looking after himself. A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth as she remembered, and she wiped it away quickly, feeling gu
ilty that her anger with David had been liberally laced with amusement at what he’d done to poor unsuspecting Grant.
But, to imply that Grant was not manly was unfair. He, at least had been loyal, steadfast, and had stuck with Eleanor for four years, knowing it would be a long wait until she was free, and not knowing if the wait would be worth it in the long run.
But I never asked him to wait, she reminded herself. I always told him I was unsure, and that it might be better if he forgot me.
But Grant always came back, and in doing so, had proved that he must care for her very deeply. He had taken an interest in her work, believed in her enough to send it to his brother with his personal recommendation. Of course, her main source of income was the rent from the farm, and that wasn’t great, but the little ‘Eleanor Bear’ earned did provide the nest-egg she’d been salting away toward Philip’s education. So that much, she owed to Grant.
Surely it all counted for something and his difficulty in understanding Philip and his needs was the result of his own background. He’d been raised by his mother in the rooming-house she managed. That might be where he’d developed his hotelier’s instincts, but it had done nothing toward teaching him the finer points of child-rearing. He can’t help being the way he is, and I’m sure, if I were going to marry him, he would never have insisted on my selling the farm so he could construct, of all things, a golf course! Golfers on the rolling green hills where dairy cows had grazed for five generations? To her, it seemed ludicrous. It was just a passing idea of his. He’s a businessman who doesn’t understand sentiment. If it hadn’t been for his ambition, he wouldn’t have gotten where he is. I must give him credit for his accomplishments.
“Is my mom better, Jeff?” Philip’s voice, sounding full of cookies, broke into her reverie.
“Almost,” David said. “Why don’t you go and see her… Ask her what she wants for dinner.”
Philip came into her bedroom exuding an energy that crackled and snapped in his eyes, filling the air with boy. He landed on the bed with a bounce and the springs sang out. It must be time for a new mattress. Wouldn’t do to have it—No! That was not happening again.
“Hi, Mom! What do you want to eat?”
Eleanor gave him a hug. He looked so happy, so full of life and good spirits and the delight of knowing the two people whom he loved best in all the world were together in the same house. She squeezed him tightly for an instant, feeling love wash over her like a wave almost painful. Philip struggled and she let him go. “Never mind me. What would you like for dinner?”
“Hamburgers and fries. Jeff can make ’em. He says he can make anything, ’cause he can read a recipe. Did you get some of that Jell-O he made? It was the nicest Jell-O, Mom. When he took it out of the fridge, I could drink it out of a cup. How come you never make Jell-O like that?”
Eleanor grinned in spite of herself. He can make anything, can he? He can read a recipe? But clearly, he can follow the directions on the side of a small box. “I didn’t know you’d appreciate drinkable Jell-O, Philip, and if you ask Jeff, he’ll probably make hamburgers and fries for you. But tell him that you have to eat some vegetables, too. I’m not hungry and certainly not for drinkable Jell-O.”
“Fink,” said David from the doorway and Philip jumped up, giving Eleanor’s message in his normally shrill, loud tones, then finished by saying, without pausing for breath, “What’s ‘fink’?”
“That’s someone who tells on someone else,” David replied. “And do you absolutely have to yell? I thought that Jell-O was a secret between you and me.” He gave Eleanor a sheepish grin over the boy’s head and her heart flipped painfully before she managed to steel it against his charm.
“Oh,” said Philip easily, “we don’t have to keep secrets from Mom. We can tell her all that stuff. She understands.”
David stared long and sadly and Eleanor. Oh no she doesn’t, his eyes seemed to be saying, and she met his gaze, held it, her eyes in turn assuring him that she did… She would understand, if he would only give her something to understand. Trust me, she pleaded silently, and his gaze dropped first.
“I’m sure she does, son,” David said to Philip, but his words were directed at Eleanor and she knew it. “I would never keep anything from your mother if I could help it. But…” And he raised his eyes to Eleanor once more, “There are some things which told, would do more damage than the silence of not telling them.”
Eleanor was only peripherally aware of Philip looking from one of them to the other, puzzled as they gazed with pain and longing into one another’s eyes, David begging for mercy, for understanding, she seeking knowledge, trust, truth.
“How can you be sure of that unless you try?” she finally asked.
Casey, at that moment, bounded into the room, his claws clicking on the hardwood surrounding the rug and he skidded against Philip’s legs. The child reached down and picked him up, giggling as the small pink tongue attacked his ear. “Take him out for a little run, please, Philip,” David said, and when the child had gone, he sat down and took Eleanor’s hands.
“When I was away, I thought of you every day,” he said. “I never stopped missing you, never stopped loving you. I used to take out my little snapshot of you and look at it every day, and every night before I slept, until one night when I was in prison for a crime I did not commit, the rats ate it. Even after that I carried a picture of you in my heart. You are my life, my love, and always have been. But I can’t tell you what kept me away. You hurt yourself Eleanor, and me, and Philip, too, by refusing to trust me. If I thought it would help you to know, believe me, I would tell you. But I know it would be the worst possible thing to do.” He leaned forward and placed his head against her breast, and of their own volition her fingers glided through his hair. “Trust me,” he whispered.
“Do you trust me?” she asked, hardly daring to breathe.
“I trust you with my life.”
“Then tell me.”
David stood up. “Impasse,” he said sadly. “What would you like for dinner?”
“Nothing.”
“I’ll bring you something. You’ll eat it.”
“I’ll get up and eat in the kitchen with you and Philip. He’ll like that, since it will be your last night here.”
“Will it?”
“Yes, David.”
That night, after the dinner for three in the kitchen… A bittersweet affair for the two adults, and a fun time for Philip, the dishes were done, put away, the kitchen tidied and Philip tucked into bed before David left. Eleanor sat alone in the silent living room, looking out the night approaching fast and wondered how many more nights of aloneness she would endure. How quiet the house was, how empty. David’s presence had been what the small cottage had needed, and now it was gone, gone by her doing. She had sent him away.
While Eleanor sat in her lonely, too-empty little house, with her lonely empty thoughts, her husband sat on a canvas chair beside his camper on the forestry road.
I’ll give her two weeks, he told himself. If she hasn’t come to me by then, I will tell her what she wants to know though God alone knows what it will do to her. She’s still too sick, too weak, to cope with that knowledge yet, and I cannot do it to her.
Friday evening, Grant showed up at her house.
Eleanor opened the door. “Oh… It’s you.” His irritation at her less than enthusiastic greeting showed in the way he pushed through the doorway as if denying her the opportunity to keep him out.
“I take it you’re alone?” he asked.
“Yes, alone, except of course, for Philip and Casey.”
“That man?”
“He left on Tuesday night. He went back to his camper.” Eleanor heard herself say it with total calm, and wondered how she could do it. It was like being calm trying to say the world broke in half on Tuesday. The other side is going to out to orbit another sun.
“That’s good.” Grant settled himself in an easy chair, put his feet on a hassock and leaned back. �
�Listen, Ellie, I’m glad he’s gone because quite frankly, if he’d still been here I have been forced to tell him to leave. I did some checking in town this week, and I don’t like what I’ve found out.”
“Oh? What kind of checking?” I must tell him who David really is!
“Did you know he’s been around here since before Easter? He arrived one morning and right away began asking questions. He was driving a brand-new car—and not a cheap model, either. He wore what looked like very, very expensive clothing. The first thing he did was go to the post office. His excuse was to buy to airmail stamps for a couple of letters he was sending to Brazil, one to Argentina and another to Ecuador, Charlie said. He couldn’t help looking at the addresses when he sorted the outgoing mail. But what he really wanted to do, according to Charlie, and what he did do, was pump him for information. I talked to Charlie. He said that right from the first he had doubts about the guy. I mean, sending letters to South America?”
“Just what else did Charlie have to say?” she asked him, knowing she was going to tell Grant the truth tonight, but for some reason, she wanted to know what David had done when he first arrived. Of course he would remember, if he remembered anything at all, that Charlie Simmons, the gossipy postmaster would be the best source of information in town. Charlie knew everything about everyone for miles around, and never hesitated to share his knowledge and his suspicions.
“Well, it seems there was no one, no other customer, that is, in the post office. The Davidson guy—if that is his name. He apparently didn’t introduce himself to Charlie, and didn’t put any return address on the letters, though Charlie didn’t realize that till later—the man just leaned on the counter and started chatting. He began asking questions about old-timers. He claimed to have lived here for a few months, years back, although Charlie doesn’t remember him. They got to talking about who was still alive, who’d passed on, and when your old man was mentioned, he wanted to know right away who had the place. Charlie told him it was Bill Robbins.
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