Scattered Petals

by Amanda Cabot

  “Silly Jean-Michel. He was always saying things like that.” Isabelle’s words triggered a memory. “That sounds like a man who’s courting.” Though Isabelle had never mentioned Jean-Michel’s name in that context, Priscilla wondered if her friend might be the woman he had wanted to marry.

  “I didn’t encourage him, but I could tell he was interested.”

  Priscilla schooled her face to remain impassive. It was indeed Isabelle that Jean-Michel had wanted. Although, judging from the fact that he’d used the word want rather than love, Isabelle was fortunate his courting hadn’t progressed. “Gunther is the perfect man for you.”

  “I agree.” As she showed Priscilla the lace she was considering as trim for her wedding dress, Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “What do you think the town will do now? We need a mayor, a sheriff, and a schoolmarm. That’s more change than we’ve had in years.”

  “At least the citizens seem to have resolved their differences.”

  Isabelle gave Priscilla an appraising look. “It was quite a coincidence that both ministers chose the same Scripture reading that Sunday, wasn’t it?”

  “A happy coincidence.” Though Priscilla nodded, she had no intention of mentioning her role in the sermons. God had simply used her to help resolve a problem.

  Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. “Right.” She knew.

  Zach handed his package to Steven Dunn and waited for the postmaster to weigh it. It made no sense. He was mailing money to Charlotte Tallman, and yet he was thinking of Margaret. Ever since the day he’d shot Jean-Michel, Margaret had been in his thoughts far more often than normal, and that was unnerving. She was a part of the past that he wanted to forget.

  The postmaster accepted Zach’s coins and turned to the cubbyholes behind him. Pulling out an envelope, he said, “I’ve got a letter here for Mrs. Webster. I reckon I can trust you to take it to her.” Steven accompanied his words with a wry smile.

  Thankful for the reprieve from thoughts of his past, Zach grinned. “I won’t let it get too wet.” Everyone in Ladreville had chuckled when they heard how Thea, who had insisted on carrying a letter home for Sarah, had dropped it into the river, leaving Clay to wade through waist-deep water to retrieve it, only to discover that the ink had run, making the letter practically illegible. Fortunately they’d been able to make out the signature, but Thea’s career as a mail carrier had ended.

  Steven feigned solemnity. “Dry is better than wet.”

  “I brought you a letter,” Zach announced as he entered the kitchen. This was the earliest he’d come home in weeks, but he didn’t want his wife to have to wait for her mail. His wife. It was amazing how good it felt to pronounce those words or even to think them.

  Priscilla turned, her face flushed from the heat of the stove. Judging from the two loaves of bread that filled the room with their mouth-watering aroma, she had spent the day baking. “Thanks. It’s probably from my parents’ attorney.” Zach knew she’d been waiting for him to report the sale of the family home. Priscilla wiped her hands on her apron and accepted the envelope. Slitting it open, she pulled out the paper and began to read, and as she did, the blood drained from her face.

  “What is it?”

  She stared at the sheet of paper as if it were a venomous reptile. “It’s from Lawrence.” A flush stained her cheeks, returning some much-needed color. “The Ranger,” she said, correcting herself. “He caught Jake and Chet Dunkler. He said it didn’t take the judge long to decide that they should hang.”

  “That’s good news. Now you know they won’t hurt you or anyone else.” For a moment she did not reply, and Zach sensed that Priscilla’s thoughts were miles away. How could she possibly regret the bandits’ capture? There must be something else in the letter that caused her distraction. He waited for her to explain, but all Priscilla said was, “It is good news.” She refolded the letter and placed it in her pocket, then turned back to the stove.

  As he curried Charcoal, Zach considered his wife’s strange behavior. Normally she let him read her mail, saying she appreciated another person’s opinion, but she had been almost secretive about this one. And then there was the way she referred to the Ranger by his first name. Priscilla was a proper Bostonian, steeped in the rules of etiquette, but she’d called the Ranger Lawrence. When had that informality started?

  Charcoal whinnied, as if he sensed his master’s discomfort and wanted to help him. It was a nice try, but the only thing that would help was answers, and Zach wasn’t sure he wanted them. Unless he was greatly mistaken, there was more in that letter than a report of the Dunkler brothers’ capture. The flush on Priscilla’s cheeks made him think that the Ranger had included a personal note.

  Zach tightened his grip on the currycomb. He didn’t doubt that Lawrence Wood harbored tender feelings for Priscilla. He’d heard it in his voice and seen it on his face when he’d spoken of her. Zach couldn’t fault the Ranger for that. Any man with an ounce of sense would find Priscilla attractive. Not only was she a beautiful woman on the outside, but she had a beautiful inside too. It was no wonder the Ranger cared for her. The question was, did Priscilla care for him? Were her flushes and her almost furtive handling of the letter caused by embarrassment that Zach had been watching? There was only one way to know, and that was to ask her.

  Straightening, Zach stared into the distance, trying to calm his roiling thoughts. Though his heart ached at the prospect, he knew what he must do if Priscilla loved the Ranger. He must grant her the annulment. The night he had prayed for her life, Zach had promised God he would show Priscilla the face of love. No matter how empty his future might loom, he would do everything he could to ensure Priscilla’s happiness. He loved her. He could do no less.

  Priscilla fluffed the pillow. Perhaps that would help her sleep. Nothing else seemed to be working. Each time she closed her eyes, she pictured Lawrence’s letter. His handwriting was surprisingly well-formed, as if he’d spent many years practicing penmanship. But it wasn’t the appearance of the carefully formed loops that was engraved on Priscilla’s mind. It was the words themselves. Though he’d pronounced the same words on his last visit, it was different seeing them committed to paper. Spoken words could be colored by expressions. There were no such nuances with the written word. Lawrence’s letter left no room for misunderstanding.

  Priscilla turned again, trying to find a comfortable position, wishing he hadn’t written what he did. Sarah had spoken of the poetic epistles she’d received, letters she’d called her paper roses. According to Sarah, the letters had wooed her, and she’d fallen in love with their author before she met him. There was nothing poetic about Lawrence’s missive. His prose was as precise as his penmanship, direct and unembellished. Some words needed no embellishment. I’ll always love you. If only it had been Zach who’d written them.

  When she finally fell asleep, Priscilla’s dreams were troubled. In them she was running, not knowing where she was going, not knowing why she was fleeing, simply knowing she had to escape. She’d almost reached safety when the man began to scream. On and on and on it went, a sound so horrible it defied description. Stop! she pleaded. Stop! But the cries continued. Priscilla’s eyes flew open as she realized this was no dream. It was Zach who was yelling. Someone was hurting him.

  She raced into his room, her heartbeat slowing ever so slightly when she saw that he was alone. Whatever was wrong, it was only a nightmare.

  “Wake up, Zach.” Priscilla stood at the side of the bed, speaking as firmly as she could. Moonlight spilled onto the bed, showing the tangled sheets and the sheen of perspiration on his face. “It’s all right. You were dreaming.”

  Though his eyes were open, they refused to focus, and his body continued to tremble. Zach might be awake, but his mind was still caught in the snares of the dream. The only thing that had changed was that his screams had ceased.

  “It’s all right, Zach.” If he heard her, he gave no sign. His body shook uncontrollably, and, though the night was warm, his teeth chatter
ed as if from cold. Priscilla grabbed a quilt from the foot of the bed and laid it over him. An instant later, he had thrown it off. “You need that.” But when she replaced the quilt, just as quickly, he tossed it away.

  He needed warmth. Papa had told her how important it was to regulate a patient’s temperature. Papa had also warned her that diseases of the mind could be as dangerous as those that affected the body and that one way to alleviate them was to return the patient to a state of normalcy. For Zach, that meant warmth. He needed more than the room’s warmth if he was going to escape the nightmare.

  Priscilla bit her lip as she realized there was only one course of action. She had to share her body’s heat with Zach. Closing her eyes for a second, she forced away the memories of another man’s body close to hers. This wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same. This was Zach, not the bandit. This time she was doing the touching; she wasn’t being touched. She could do it. She had to. The man she loved needed her.

  Though her limbs were trembling almost as violently as Zach’s, Priscilla climbed onto the bed and lay down next to him, slipping her arms around him, drawing the quilt over both of them. “It’s all right, Zach.” She pressed herself against his side. “Everything will be fine.”

  For what seemed like forever, she kept her body next to his, praying that her warmth and her words would soothe him. “Everything will be fine,” she repeated. At length the shudders subsided and Zach turned. The vacant look that had frightened her was gone, and his eyes focused on her.

  If Zach was surprised to find Priscilla in his bed, he said nothing. “It won’t be all right,” he muttered. “I can’t ever make it right.”

  Though his voice was filled with anguish, Priscilla took comfort from the fact that his body seemed to be warming. “You had no choice,” she said softly. “You shot Jean-Michel to save me.”

  Zach shook his head. “Not Jean-Michel.”

  If it hadn’t been Jean-Michel’s death that triggered it, the nightmare must have been caused by the time Zach had spent in prison and the atrocities he’d witnessed and endured there. That was probably why he was so cold. Since it had been winter when he’d been incarcerated in Perote, his mind must have imagined frigid weather.

  “The war’s over, Zach. You’re safe now.”

  Disentangling himself from her arms, he sat up and braced himself against the headboard. Though his eyes were alert, the pain that radiated from them made Priscilla cringe. “I’m sorry you had to see this. I thought the nightmares had ended, or I’d never have slept inside the house.”

  “It’s all right, Zach. I know about nightmares.” Fortunately, she had not had one in months. Priscilla had thought that meant she was cured, but Zach’s experience seemed to indicate that they could return at any time. “Perote was horrible,” she said softly. “It’s no wonder you still dream of it.”

  Zach shook his head. “It’s not the war I dream about. It’s worse. I used to think that hell was hot, but now I know it’s cold. Horribly cold.”

  As he shivered, Priscilla rose to retrieve another quilt and wrapped it around his shoulders. “What could be worse than the war?” she asked as she dragged a chair next to the bed and settled on it. What made him think he was in hell?

  Zach was silent for a moment, gazing at the window. The moon shone; the stars sparkled. It was a scene of ineffable beauty, and yet the shudders that wracked his body told Priscilla Zach was seeing none of God’s creation. Instead, he was locked in some unspeakable memory. At length he turned to look at her, his eyes still filled with pain. “What’s worse is what I did to Margaret. It was only cool that night, not cold, but somehow in my nightmares, it’s always terribly cold.”

  Involuntarily, Priscilla shivered, then chided herself for the picture her mind had invoked. Zach was not like the bandits. He would never, ever have forced himself on a woman. And yet she could not ignore the anguish in his voice. That told her that, whatever had happened between him and a woman named Margaret, it still haunted him. Priscilla reached for a candle, then stopped. Darkness might be better for what she was about to propose.

  “Sometimes it helps to talk.” Mama had claimed that talking was like lancing a boil, a painful but necessary step if healing was to begin.

  Zach shook his head. “It’s been fifteen years, and I haven’t told anyone what I did, not even John Tallman or Clay’s father.”

  Priscilla did a quick subtraction. “Fifteen years ago you were still a boy.” Surely whatever had happened wasn’t what she had imagined. Surely he had not raped Margaret.

  Zach shook his head again. “I was old enough to know better. I should never have drunk all that whiskey, and I should never have taken her down to the river that night.”

  Priscilla’s heart began to thud. Whiskey and a boy on the verge of manhood were a dangerous combination. “What happened?” The words came out as little more than a whisper.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  That was probably true, but her imagination would fill in missing pieces, creating a whole that might bear no resemblance to the truth. Surely it was better to know the truth. Without that, she had no chance of helping Zach. “I want to help you.”

  Zach tugged the quilt tighter. “Margaret was the prettiest girl in Haven, Texas.” When Priscilla said nothing, he added, “That’s where I grew up.” His voice was neutral, almost as if he were telling someone else’s story. “Every boy wanted to be Margaret’s beau, but I was the one she favored. I never could figure out why.”

  Priscilla could.

  “We planned to get married when we were older, but then that night happened.” He swallowed deeply, and Priscilla saw his hands tighten on the quilt. “We both had too much to drink. When Margaret suggested a walk by the river, it seemed like a good idea. We knew we’d be alone there, and that was what we wanted.” The shaft of moonlight that spilled through the window revealed the anguish on Zach’s face. “It was going to be only one kiss, but one kiss led to another, and then we weren’t just kissing.”

  Priscilla shuddered as, unbidden, images flashed before her. She was lying on the ground, staring up at the stagecoach, the memory of gunshots reverberating through her mind. And then there was a man, a man with Zach’s face. Stop it! she cried. What happened that night in Haven wasn’t the same. Both Margaret and Zach had chosen to walk by the river, knowing how the evening might end. No one had been forced. Zach had not attacked Margaret.

  He looked directly at Priscilla as he said, “Six weeks later, Margaret told me I was going to be a father.”

  Zach had a child! Priscilla dropped her eyes in confusion. Why had she never heard about this? She knew he sent John Tallman’s widow money each month, but she was unaware of anything going to Margaret. “What did you do?”

  He waited until she met his gaze again before he said, “I ran away.” Regret shone from Zach’s blue eyes. “I was such a coward that I thought it would be better to fight the Mexicans than accept my responsibility, so I joined the army. When I drew that black bean at Perote, I figured it was God’s way of punishing me.” Zach looked out the window, then back at Priscilla. “You know what happened next. I didn’t die, and I tried to change my life. When I got back to Texas, I sent a letter to Margaret, offering to marry her. I figured she’d be happy that I was showing some signs of responsibility, but she wasn’t. She said I’d made my choices, and so had she. As far as Margaret was concerned, I was dead. She didn’t want to see me or ever hear from me again.” Zach stared into the distance again, his voice as bleak as his expression as he said, “I don’t even know whether I have a son or a daughter or nothing at all. You see, when I told her I was leaving, Margaret threatened to kill the baby.”

  “Oh, Zach.” Priscilla longed to put her arms around him and comfort him as she would have a child, but the look he gave her could have frozen boiling water.

  “I don’t want your pity, Priscilla. I was wrong, and I know it. I was a coward.”

  And he’d lived the rest of hi
s life regretting that. Perhaps he’d also spent the past fifteen years seeking a way to atone his sin. At the time she had thought it was Christian kindness that led Zach to offer her his name, but now that she knew about Margaret’s pregnancy, Priscilla knew that was the reason he’d married her. Regardless of his motivation, Zach had rescued her when she was desperate and, though it had meant breaking a vow, he had saved her life. There must be a way she could help him.

  “You may have been a coward.” Or simply a scared boy. “But so was Margaret.”

  Zach’s head swiveled, and his eyes widened in amazement. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s true you ran away, but so did she.” When he started to shake his head, Priscilla continued. “Oh, not literally, but in her heart, Margaret ran away from her responsibility too. Even if she no longer wanted to marry you, when she heard from you, she should have told you about your child. That was the right thing to do.”

  The cleft in Zach’s chin deepened. “Maybe, but it’s over now.”

  “No, it isn’t. The fact that you still have nightmares says it’s not over.”

  Zach swung his legs off the bed. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything—working until I’m beyond exhaustion, patent remedies, hours of prayer. Nothing worked.” He shook his head slowly. “This is the first one I’ve had since we were married. I thought they had ended, that I’d finally put the past to rest, but I was wrong. I don’t know how to make the nightmares stop.”

  His words confirmed Priscilla’s suspicions at the same time that they encouraged her. Though it was reassuring to know that Zach had gained something from their marriage, what mattered now was breaking the nightmares’ grip on him. Priscilla shook her head. “You do know how to stop them. The answer is forgiveness.”

  Zach rose, wrapping the quilt around himself, and walked to the window. “God has forgiven me. I know he has.”

  Though she wouldn’t touch Zach again, she didn’t want him to be alone. Priscilla moved to stand beside him. “Have you forgiven yourself?”