“All right, Jon. What’s going on here?”
“Nothing, um, just talking about the game next week.” Jonathan stuffed a bill back in his pocket and grinned.
“You’re a horrible liar.” Ava crossed her arms and glared at him.
“I’m not sure I should stir the pot, love.” He stole a glance at Aryl, who shook his head in agreement.
“Is she an old flame?” Claire edged up to Aryl, hugging his arm while batting her eyes.
“Oh, no. You’re not getting anything out of me.”
She pouted and said, “This isn’t fair. You guys know what’s going on, and you’re deliberately keeping us in the dark.”
“Yes. Yes, we are.” Jonathan smiled. The women wore indignant expressions. He rolled his eyes and slipped an arm around Ava. “Look. If we tell you what’s going on, or what we think is going on, then you two are going to scurry into the kitchen and fall over each other telling Arianna, who will cause a gigantic scene, to be sure, and may very well possibly end up going into premature labor. We’re keeping the baby and Arianna’s best interests in mind here. It'll come out in good time.”
“Just tell us her name,” Claire begged.
“Rachael. That’s all you’re getting.” Aryl was insistent, and they didn’t pressure for more. They did, however, watch the two in the corner, analyzing every smile, glance and laugh carefully and whispered in conference with each other frequently.
Ethel announced that dinner was ready and slowly everyone migrated to the dining room where the food was set out buffet style to accommodate the crowd. Chairs were set against the walls, as well as extra seats brought in from the barn. Folks filled their plates and marveled at Ethel’s enormous spread of food. Jonathan was put to work with carving the ham. When Caleb held his plate out, Rachael standing close by, Jonathan leaned in close as he served a slice on his plate.
“The funny thing is, you don’t even look scared,” he whispered, his teasing grin fading as he met Caleb’s undaunted expression.
“Why should I be?” he asked and moved along, not waiting for an answer. A boy tugged on Jonathan’s sleeve while his eyes followed Caleb in disbelief.
“Oh. Here ya’ go, buddy.” After serving the boy, he looked back to Rachael standing next to Caleb, smiling up at him as he pointed to different dishes. Jonathan saw no sign of Arianna. No sign of Ava or Claire either, for that matter. They were standing inside the kitchen, peering into the dining room every few minutes.
“Well, I don’t understand why you don’t just walk right up to them and introduce yourself,” Claire said.
“I shouldn’t have to,” Arianna grumbled and busied herself with menial tasks in the kitchen.
The women entered the dining room when the crowd had thinned. Arianna saw Caleb sitting on a sofa, his plate on his knee and Rachael sat just a few seats away, talking, and smiling comfortably.
“There’s no way I can go in there now,” she seethed.
“Why not? Look, the seat next to him just opened up. Walk in and sit down beside him. He’ll be forced to introduce you.” Ava nudged her shoulder, encouraging her. Arianna walked to the wide, arched entrance to the parlor but halted when Rachael moved to the open seat next to Caleb. She spun around, visibly boiling.
“Ava!” she ordered. “Go in there right now and tell him I need to speak to him in the kitchen.” She banged her plate down, stomped away to the kitchen and plopped herself in a chair to wait.
Ava sighed resentfully, but made her way through the crowd toward Caleb. She stepped over someone’s legs and felt a stab of pain as she remembered the last gathering at Maura’s house. Her letters had become more infrequent now, and Ava worried she was beginning to forget her.
Finally close to Caleb, Ava leaned down and whispered in his ear. He waved dismissively at her, and she leaned to whisper again. He sighed loudly, turned to Rachael and excused himself.
Ava joined Claire in the dining room as Caleb walked quickly into the kitchen, closing the door behind him. They only heard muffled, upset voices initially, which grew louder in a heated exchange.
Aryl approached them as they huddled by the door, eavesdropping. “Honestly, ladies,” he said, causing them both to jump.
“Aryl, if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I’ll go crazy,” Claire said.
He shook his head slowly and said, “If we were having trouble of some kind, would you want everyone talking about it behind our backs?”
“I’m not trying to gossip about it, Aryl. I want to help,” Claire clarified.
“The best way you can help is to stay out of it for now. She’ll let you know when you’re needed.”
A loud crash came from the kitchen. A second later, the back door slammed. Aryl poked his head into the kitchen and saw Arianna crying into her hands at the breakfast table. He looked at Claire.
“She might need you now.”
He silently walked through the kitchen and out the back door to find Caleb. Arianna alternated from sobbing to furious rage repeatedly, and her incoherent words made it impossible for Claire and Ava to figure out exactly what had been said to whom or by whom. Jonathan noticed his friends had disappeared, so he entered the kitchen, pausing to study each woman. Claire and Ava were on each side of Arianna, trying to calm her.
Claire glanced at the back door. “Aryl went to find him.”
∞∞∞
“What a mess,” Caleb grumbled quietly, sitting on a hay bale, head in his hands. Aryl leaned against a beam across from him, hands in his pockets as Jonathan joined them in the barn.
“Awkward and uncomfortable, yes, but I’m not sure why this qualifies as a mess.” Jonathan pulled a hay bale to sit closer to Caleb. “Is Arianna that unreasonable in her current state that she can’t handle seeing an ex-girlfriend?”
“It’s much more than that.” He ran his hands from his chin, over his face and through his hair. “A lot more.”
Aryl eyed him warily. “How much more can there be?”
Caleb looked ominously at him, then Jonathan and took a deep breath.
“It was the year before I sold my grandfather’s farm . . . .”
∞∞∞
“Oh!” Arianna’s crying stopped short with a gasp as her hands gripped her stomach. A moderately strong contraction built up quickly then slowly began to subside. She made a horrified face and whispered to Ava, “Get my mother-in-law.”
Ava turned on her heels and swiftly returned with Ethel, who instructed them to help her get Arianna up to her room. The short, tight pain had passed and she walked on her own, still sniffling with jagged, little breaths from the hard cry. Ethel helped her lie down and wiped her face with a cool cloth. Ava and Claire stood back, waiting for instructions and praying she wasn’t going into labor.
“Should we go get Caleb?” Claire asked.
“Oh, no. This is nothing. Practice pain, most likely from being so upset.” She returned her eyes to Arianna. “You really have to try to stay calm, dear.”
“How can I? If you heard the things he said to me, and then there’s that girl. I can’t stay up here while she’s down there, trying to–”
“She’s not trying to do anything.” Ethel’s voice was suddenly cold and defensive of Rachael. “It’s not my place, Arianna, to say any more than this. Rachael is not trying to do whatever it is you think. She needed to see Caleb for reasons that have nothing to do with you. They have something to put to rest, so to speak. That’s all.” She tucked a blanket around her middle and left the cloth on her forehead. “Come get me if it happens again.” She touched Ava’s shoulder on her way out.
∞∞∞
“Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Jonathan sat stunned, and Aryl hung his head, looking for the right words. Caleb shrugged.
“I didn’t really want to think about it. And I didn’t want it getting back to Arianna, although I guess I’ll have to explain everything now. Can you see why I didn’t want to come back here? So much has happened while Arianna ru
ns around oblivious.”
“Then tell her,” Aryl said. “Tell her everything and while you’re at it, tell her everything else that’s bothering you, too.”
“I don’t think I have much choice.”
“Go get it over with.” Jonathan stood and pulled Caleb up off the hay bale. “We’ll stay a while. Send up a flare if you need us,” he said and grinned. They left the barn, but Caleb stopped when he saw Rachael waiting by her car. “I’m going to say goodbye. You guys go on.”
∞∞∞
“I can’t just lie here.” Arianna threw back the quilt and paced the room slowly. “It’s not just about this woman showing up,” she explained to her silent audience by the bed. “He was angry with me before the party.” She leaned her head on the window frame and sighed, “Maybe he doesn’t love me any–” Her head snapped up as she squinted to focus on the dark driveway. She watched in silent shock as Rachael wrapped her arms around Caleb’s neck. “That’s it!” she yelled and tore across the room.
Rachael’s car was just leaving the drive when Caleb turned straight into Arianna’s open palm airborne toward his face. He seized her wrist an inch from his face and held it solidly in the air.
“How could you!” she screamed, trying to pull her wrist from his grasp. “You no good, two-timing bastard! And I’m pregnant!”
He turned, expressionless and pulled her by the wrist to the barn.
Jonathan and Aryl watched from the shadows of the front porch.
“Well, they’ll either come out with rekindled love or set on divorce,” Jonathan said grimly.
“If they both come out,” Aryl half-joked.
Caleb whirled her around and pointed to a haystack. She sat, in shock at such rude treatment.
“How dare you put your hands on me, Caleb!”
“Shut up, Ahna.” He glared at her. Her mouth fell open and she struggled to get up. “Sit back down!” he bellowed. She froze on the hay, stunned. He had never, no one had ever, spoken to her this way. “Now, you are going to sit there with your mouth shut and listen to what I have to say.” She opened her mouth in protest, but he pointed a finger at her. “So help me God, Ahna. Not until I’m done,” he commanded.
She closed her mouth, clearly uncomfortable with subservience. He paced a bit while taking deep breaths, testing her ability to sit quietly. Finally, he stood in front of her, albeit out of swing’s reach; a precaution for the both of them, he figured. “That was Rachael. I know what you’re probably thinking, so I’m going to explain everything to you, although I’d prefer not to. This is personal and hard to talk about. But I don’t have much of a choice now. Rachael and I went together toward the end of school. By the time we graduated, we were informally engaged but none the less engaged.” Arianna’s blood was boiling, and it took everything she had to sit still, hear about his old love, and not claw his eyes out.
“I knew that my grandfather would leave his farm to me when he died, and so we planned that we would eventually get married and take over the farm. We had our lives laid out before us. We got comfortable. Too comfortable. And she got pregnant. We only told our mothers. We figured our fathers would have killed us. They hastily began to plan a wedding, and the engagement was made formal, announcement in the paper and everything.
“A week before the wedding, we were having dinner with both families, making final plans, and she suddenly screamed.” He paused and Arianna could see for the first time how hard the story was for him to recount. The pain was readable on his face, and it bothered Arianna that he didn’t attempt to hide it from her. But she felt a twinge of compassion. She knew firsthand how big his heart was.
“They wouldn’t let me see her at the hospital. Our fathers found out, and I thought for sure I was a dead man. At the time, that was fine with me. If she were going to die because of me, I felt I rightly should die, too.” Jealousy overrode compassion and her nostrils flared. “However, she didn’t die. But she did lose it. The baby. And the ability to ever . . . it left her unable to ever have children.” He paused again, no longer worried about interruptions as she was speechless.
“We didn’t end the engagement right away,” he continued. “She got better, and we tried to just go on, but it ate away at me. She thought it bothered me that she couldn’t have children any longer, knowing I wanted a big family. What was really bothering me was that I had caused this, and there was nothing I could do to fix it. I was about to approach her with the idea of adopting when she ended it with me. Just like that.
“My grandfather died, and the farm was left to me. In spite of her tainted reputation, she went on with her life and was courted by a much older man. I couldn’t stand to face myself each day, so I sold the farm and left.”
He paused and looked to Arianna as if to give permission to ask a question if she wanted to. For once in her life, she had nothing to say.
“I received word the next year that she got married. I wrote a letter to her, both congratulating and apologizing to her. She wrote back to thank me and forgive me. We wrote back and forth for a time. That’s the reason I ended up staying in Georgia so long. I wanted to stay at the same hotel, so I wouldn’t miss one of her letters.” He looked at her gaping mouth, her raised eyebrows and spoke before she could come to any conclusions.
“Not love letters, Ahna.” He blew out his breath impatiently. “I needed to know that she would be all right after what happened. After some letters, I knew she would be. The last letter I got included a picture of her with a beautiful baby they had adopted. She looked so happy. Come to find out, the man she married was unable to have children, too. So, they eagerly adopted. She told me tonight that the paperwork for their third child was in process and that she was so happy,” he said and smiled gratefully. “She realized that there are so many children who need love. She actually said it was a blessing, what happened, because now three children, who would have otherwise grown up in an orphanage, have a loving home. And they want more.
“After her last letter, I forgave myself in Georgia and decided to move on. When I looked up from my self-loathing, I saw you and nothing else mattered.”
Arianna stared at the floor now, trying to process everything.
“She wanted to see me tonight to make sure I had forgiven myself and to show me how happy she was. I told her about you and the baby. She was happy for me. She wanted to meet you. I was the one who made excuses, grateful you stayed away.”
“Since you’re ashamed of me,” she squeaked on the verge of tears.
“No. It had nothing to do with you. I know that’s hard for you to comprehend, Ahna, but the world does not revolve around you. I thought it would be very cruel to introduce my very pregnant wife to her after what had happened. I can’t imagine how that might sting, no matter how happy she is with her life now.” He looked at her with the slightest bit of hope. “Can you even begin to see how that might be uncomfortable for me? And her?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “But earlier you–”
“Earlier had everything to do with you,” he said bluntly, leaning against the support pole near her. “Between Rachael and my father, I didn't want to come back here. I did it for you. I knew you’d be better off here and so would the baby. But I’ve been miserable, Ahna. Even though I left here like I did, I still wanted a farm. If you remember correctly, I was searching for farmland when I met you. It was obvious that you weren’t going to settle for being a farmer’s wife, so we ended up in New York. And then the world went to hell, and now I’m back home. Fishing. I don’t like it, Ahna. It’s not what I want to be doing. I walk five miles in the cold every morning to work my ass off all day, getting pinched by lobsters and fighting seasickness and then come home to work alongside my silent, resentful father for a few hours. And when I come in, I have nothing but a pile of complaints from you.”
He was growing angrier as he finally vented his frustrations. “And I hear it from my mother, too. She works herself into the ground, Ahna, and to add to that, you prance a
round here like a queen summoning her servants.” Arianna sent him a hurtful look, but she could hardly deny it. “My mother loves you, Ahna, and she loves this baby. But there’s more that you could do for yourself. You’re pregnant, not crippled. And you’re tiring everyone around you.” She looked down shamefully and twisted the hem of her skirt into knots. “Things are going to change around here, Ahna. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to talk to you about this at all because you had started coming around in the tenement when you found out you were pregnant. You were more docile, domesticated . . . and I loved it. You acted like you cared about what I was going through. But, in becoming so comfortable here, you have reverted back to full-on laziness while those around you are working themselves to death.” Her head remained lowered, and he stared at it.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Ahna?” he asked softly. A few tears slipped off her nose onto her lap, and she nodded. He looked up to the rafters of the barn and sighed. He hated to see her cry, especially when he made her do so. He resisted the urge to embrace her, kiss away her tears, and whisper things she loved to hear because he knew that no real change would happen if he showed weakness now. He did, however, squat in front of her and take her hands.
“Listen to me. These hands. They can do a lot more around here. No one expects you to plow fields or scrub floors. But you can help more. And you will.” She nodded numbly with tear-filled eyes. “And see these?” He pinched a wad of fabric from his thigh. “These are pants. And I wear them. You’re going to start acting like a wife. My wife. It wouldn’t hurt if every now and then, you acted like you gave a shit about me.”
“Oh, but I do, Caleb!” she insisted.
“Well, you have a hell of a way of showing it.” He motioned for her to scoot over, and he joined her, still holding her hand. “I know why you act like you do. I know you spend most of your time behind a hard and selfish exterior scared to death and still resentful of your father for not acting like a real man and for pissing away your family’s life. But I also know that you weren’t always like this. I talked to your family plenty while I was trying to win you over. They told me what you used to be like.” He was quiet for a moment as he chose his words carefully and spoke, “I’ve seen glimpses of that, and I always hoped that, if you felt safe enough, loved enough, you’d revert back to that.” The next words were barely audible. “To be the kind of wife I’ve always wanted.” His words stung and brought on more tears.
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