Afterward, Sarah bundled up in her coat and scarf and took to the streets of Morrow Creek. She had a special gift in mind, one that would not be easy to procure. It meant a great deal to her that she find it, though, so she persisted until all the arrangements were set.
Pleased with her progress, she headed home just as the shops were beginning to close—and just as business at Jack Murphy’s saloon was picking up. Waving to him as she passed, Sarah gave a thought to what the saloonkeeper might like for Christmas. A new love, perhaps? Or was the man truly all jokes and nonsense, as Grace said?
The two of them might need a matchmaker, Sarah vowed—a matchmaker like the one who had brought Molly and Marcus together. She knew just the person for the task, too.
At her front porch, she stopped. A fine fir wreath decorated the door, nailed firmly in place and embellished with a clumsily tied muslin bow. It could only have gotten there through Daniel and Eli. Grinning with happiness, Sarah touched her gloved hand to the lowest twisted bough. The fragrance of freshly cut pine wafted outward, following her all the way inside the warmth of her home.
“Daniel? Eli? You two have been busy today, haven’t you?”
Sarah’s good cheer lent the words a knowing cadence. She could just picture her husband and Eli laboring over that wreath, bending the branches in place till it looked full and lovely. It had been very thoughtful of them. Shedding her coat to the peg beside the door, she removed her hat and gloves and dropped them to the table.
“Hello? Where is everyone?”
Silence. That was odd. Then Sarah realized what must be afoot. Wearing a renewed smile, she headed for the kitchen.
“There you are!” She rose on tiptoes to kiss Daniel hello, heedless of the snow melting from her boots. “I thought the whole house was deserted! Then I realized there must be some secrets happening here, what with it being nearly Christmas and all.” She rubbed her hands together to warm them, then pressed her palms to Daniel’s clean-shaven cheeks. The chill evaporated. “See? It’s getting cold out.”
He gave a wan smile. Likely, he was hungry. Well, that would be remedied soon enough, Sarah knew. She bustled to the stove, sidestepping Whiskers to light a fire beneath the kettle. She’d been away longer than she’d expected, so dinner would be late tonight.
With an apology on her lips, she turned, only to see her husband regarding her strangely.
“Daniel? What’s the matter?”
“It’s… Sarah…” He stopped. He cast her a confusing glance, then swept his hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to say it, except to just have out with it. Lillian is back in Morrow Creek. She arrived today.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dumbfounded, Sarah stared at him. “Lillian? Your sister?”
Daniel nodded.
“She is in Morrow Creek? Right now?”
He nodded again, seeming distracted.
Surprise filled her. For an instant, Sarah could only stand there, absorbing the news. Then a new and important thought struck her.
“Oh, Daniel! You know what this means, don’t you? It means you were wrong about her, all along. Lillian is a good mother. She does love Eli. Truly!” She felt so happy for Eli. So glad for Daniel—for them both. “Don’t you see what this means? You can—”
“It means she is here to fetch Eli.”
“But—” Lillian is a good mother, she heard herself say again, and felt wobbly at the implications. She had realized them herself, right away. But now Sarah wanted nothing more than to deny them. “Fetch Eli? What for?”
“To take him back East with her. And Lyman, her new husband.” Daniel sighed heavily. He scrubbed his hand over his features, suddenly seeming weary. “They want to be home before Christmas. They leave in three days’ time.”
“Three days!” Sarah grabbed his hand, trying to make him look at her. She frowned, puzzling over it all. “But that can’t be! Before Christmas? Before…oh, Daniel, I…I thought we were to have Eli forever.”
“So did I.” He shrugged, the movement stilted. “We were wrong. It’s not meant to be.”
“But you…surely you won’t let Lillian take him, just like that? Will you?” Sarah stood rooted to the spot, feeling her heart race. Her mind whirled with the shock of this news. If she could just see Eli for a minute…
She hurried to his room.
When she returned, Daniel slumped in his chair.
“He’s gone!” she blurted.
“He’s with Lillian. At the Lorndorff Hotel. There wasn’t room for her and Lyman to stay here, otherwise I’d have—”
“She took him?” Distraught, Sarah stared at him. “Already?”
“Sarah. It’s not as though Eli has been kidnapped by strangers. Lillian is his mother.”
She crossed her arms, feeling not much comforted.
“I know this must come as a shock to you—” some fierce emotion contorted Daniel’s features before he regained control “—but what’s done is done. What else would you have me do?”
“Consult with me, for one!” Fraught with disbelief, Sarah faced him. She could not understand how this had happened in the space of a single afternoon. “I have a right to know.”
“It was not your decision to make.”
“But…Lillian abandoned Eli.” Her voice cracked at the remembrance of it. “She has no claim on him now, does she?”
An odd smile crossed Daniel’s face. “Well, now there is the funny part. It seems there was a misunderstanding. My sister and her husband were only having a wedding trip.”
“A…wedding trip?”
He nodded. “A trip they ended early, in fact, to come fetch Eli from here. Because they missed him so much. And because they want to spend the holidays as a family.”
Sarah’s breath felt cut short. She was losing Eli?
“But we are a family.” Her voice sounded small. “You and me and Eli. Aren’t we? I thought…”
Daniel captured her hand. “Sarah, we were meant to care for Eli for a few months,” he said gently. “Nothing more.”
Stupidly, she stood there, feeling gob smacked.
“The joke’s on us, isn’t it?” Daniel said, reminding her inappropriately of the tricks Jack Murphy had played on Grace. His voice boomed, suddenly stout with humor. “It looks as though we got married for nothing.”
Sarah didn’t find that funny in the least. “Perhaps you did. But I got married because I love you.”
“Love?” This time, Daniel’s puzzled gaze did meet hers. “But I did not think you meant that.” He gaped at her, astonishment writ on his features. “People say things while they’re—” He gestured meaningfully, nodding toward their chamber. “They’re not themselves! They get carried away….”
His voice trailed to nothing. He stared at her, looking beset with surprise. Looking, almost, like a charming stranger.
“They don’t know what they’re saying,” he finished.
Remarkably, he sounded as if he found that reasoning sensible.
“Oh. I see.” Bleakly, Sarah hugged herself. This was an even larger shock. She could not take it all in. “Then when you said how much I meant to you? When you said you couldn’t let me go?”
He gave her a frustrated look. “No woman holds a man to the things he says while in her arms.”
“No woman you’ve known, perhaps. Until me.”
“We were enjoying ourselves.” He seemed unable to comprehend why this troubled her. Offering a coaxing smile, he stepped nearer. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like it. I won’t believe it.”
“You should believe it.”
New insight came into his face. “Stop. I warned you often enough. Plainly enough! You knew ‘love’ was beyond me.”
“Maybe.” Sadness washed over her. Sarah wondered at her ability to continue speaking at all. “But I didn’t know love was lost on you, as well.”
A frown. “You’re not making sense.”
She stepped back so his nearness would not confuse her…
so his familiar appeal would not weaken her resolve.
She drew in a deep breath. “Do you love me, Daniel?”
Silence. Then, “I don’t want to talk about this now.”
“Do you? I have to know. Because if you can’t say the words now—if I’ve only been fooling myself, all this time—then our marriage is as false as our care for Eli was.”
He stared at her, his hand fisted. “Leave off, Sarah. Can’t you see how hard this day has been? This is no time for—”
“For what? For you to be stuck with an inconvenient ‘convenient’ wife? A wife you don’t need anymore, now that Eli is—” The realization struck her, heartbreaking and impossible to ignore. “You don’t need a wife anymore. You don’t need me.”
He turned away. “Stop. No more talking.”
No more loving, he meant, more likely. Feeling tears threaten, Sarah pursued him across the kitchen. She would not give up on this, she wouldn’t…yet Daniel already looked set against her, his shoulders broad and impossibly strong.
Beside him, she felt powerless. Unseen.
“Look at me,” she said.
He did not. He only stood there, his whole body tensed as he stared out the kitchen window. His impassiveness hurt her as much as his outright anger would have. Could Daniel not see how much she needed him now? How much she would need him always?
“You must wish I would vanish as easily as Eli has.” Her voice shook as she said it, some hurting part of her demanding a reaction—any reaction—from him. “You must hope I will simply leave off, as you said, and let you go back to your bachelor life.”
A pause. “I never said that.”
“It’s true, nonetheless! Isn’t it?” She grabbed his shoulder. Tried to make him face her. But Daniel remained unmoved, as resistant to her as he always had been before they’d—no—they’d never loved. Not the way she’d thought. “Just tell me. Tell me the truth.”
His sober glance—an answer in itself—broke her heart.
“Leave me be.” Daniel put out his palm as though to stop her from saying more. His hand trembled with the force of his emotions. “Just leave me be.”
She could not believe it. “But I—” I love you, her heart supplied. I love you.
She could not bring herself to say the words again. Not when Daniel so clearly did not want them.
“Well. I guess it’s time this ‘joke’ of ours came to an end, then. Isn’t it?”
Blinking back tears, Sarah strode to the chamber she shared with Daniel. Although she waited just inside the door, hoping to hear his heavy footfalls behind her, he did not follow.
Far sooner than she wished, she’d packed a bag of essentials. She carried it to the kitchen, feeling peculiarly unsurprised to find Daniel exactly where she’d left him. His pose looked the same, as though he’d turned to granite between the cookstove and the old scarred table, and might never move again.
She raised her chin. It was hard to force words past her aching throat, but somehow, Sarah managed.
“Do you mind if I visit Eli at the Lorndorff? I should like to say—” her voice quavered, forcing her to clear it “—say goodbye to him before he leaves.”
Silence fell between them. For an instant, she dared to believe Daniel might come to himself again—might turn to her with a smile and a tender touch and tell her it had all been a mistake. Tell her he did love her, as she’d believed.
He raised one shoulder. “That is not up to me.”
Fresh misery struck her. Daniel did not even care if she saw Eli again, if she even said goodbye. It was as though the past weeks they’d spent as a family had never happened at all.
When she didn’t acknowledge his answer, he turned. His gaze fell to her hastily stuffed bag, then to the bit of spare petticoat she’d accidentally gotten stuck in the clasp when she’d fastened it. His brow furrowed.
“What are you doing?”
He hadn’t even noticed her packing, she realized then. Hadn’t seen that she’d left him at all. With a deep and unwelcome familiarity, Sarah recognized the feeling that struck her next. Once again, she was invisible to him. Or, more likely, Daniel had never seen her at all. Not the way she’d wanted him to.
“I can see when I’m not wanted.” Tell me I’m wanted, a part of her begged silently, but he did not comply. She tightened her grasp on the handle of her bag, lest her stupid soft heart should get the better of her and convince her to stay anyway. To go on hoping. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving? Where are you going?”
How could he look so perplexed? “Probably to my parents’, I suppose. I’ll return for the rest of my things later.”
She couldn’t bear to sort them all now. To go through her belongings, to pack them beneath Daniel’s uncaring eyes, to pretend she didn’t want to stay…
She could not endure it.
A fresh onslaught of tears stung her eyes. Stifling a sob, Sarah hurried to the front door. Her only thought was to leave before she crumpled, before she lost her pride completely. She dropped her bag, wriggled her arms blindly into her coat sleeves, concentrated fiercely on wrapping her scarf with fumbling fingers.
“Stop,” Daniel demanded.
Helplessly, Sarah did. Her heart hitched in her chest as he came nearer, a scowling look of bafflement on his face.
“Just…wait,” he said, his tone gruff. It looked as though he’d raked his hair clean upright with frustration. “Wait. This is not right.”
Once more, she dared to hope. She gazed into his eyes—eyes that had looked at her with kindness and friendship for as long as she could remember—and knew it was only right to give them another chance to succeed at this.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
Daniel’s frown deepened. A long moment swept past, while she waited pointlessly for him to give her the one thing that should have come easily—that had always come easily, in her feelings for him.
Sorrowfully, Sarah put her hand to his face. She released a pent-up breath, searching his gaze with her own. This was the last time she would have the right to touch him this way…to pretend, with his unwitting help, that they might truly be one.
“Never mind. You were right. It’s not right between us,” she agreed quietly. She could not blame him. Not justly. The risk in this had been hers. “The trouble is, for a little while there…I truly believed it was.”
She lowered her hand, ignoring a foolish yearning to hold on to the warmth of him for just a little longer. Then she picked up her bag and left him behind, closing the door on all the hopes she’d ever had—and all the future she’d ever dreamed of.
The door snicked shut with a sense of finality that Daniel could not deny, as hard as he tried.
Deeply confused, he stared at the barrier of wood and wrought iron separating him from Sarah. She was the only woman he would have listened to for this long—the only woman who would have dared to speak to him the way she had. But still, despite all her words, he had no idea what had just happened.
Damnation. Swearing ferociously, he slammed his palm against the door. Pain vibrated up his arm. Making a wry face, Daniel cradled his hand to his chest. This pain proved he wasn’t dreaming, at least. He really was having the most godforsaken day of any he’d ever spent.
First Eli. Now Sarah. Both gone.
Alone, he stared at the door. Even as he puzzled out this day, the hand-wrought wood creaked open, admitting a sliver of wintery air.
She was back. Hopefulness thumped in his chest. He should have known Sarah could not stay angry with him for long, Daniel told himself. What woman ever did? His knack for pleasing females was, after all, nigh unshakable.
Feeling a fool—but a desperate one—he wrenched the door wide. All that greeted him was the dusk-darkened snowy landscape…and the sight of Sarah striding purposefully away.
She looked small and distant—disconcertingly so. Her scarf trailed, bedraggled, down her back. In her hand she gripped her overstuffed bag, nearly dragging its content
s through the snow. Her footprints marched from his front porch to the street, headed in the one direction he’d never thought she would take.
Away from him.
Clutching the door frame, Daniel frowned. What was wrong with her? He could not reason out why Sarah had left, nor where her haste for doing so came from. He’d needed her today. He’d needed her to understand how wrenching it had been to let Eli go…how hard it had been to give Lillian his blessing, when doing so meant losing the boy who had become like a son to him.
Instead of helping him, instead of understanding, Sarah had given him those tearfully accusing looks. She’d insisted on having words from him—coherent words when he could least muster them. She’d demanded and pushed, just as any other woman would have, and then she’d gazed at him with those eyes, brimful of damnable tears.
Worst of all, she’d left.
Daniel didn’t know how long he stood there. Long enough, he realized belatedly, to freeze his nose and cheeks. His breath gasped in frigid puffs. His fingers felt numb with cold. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn his heart had iced over, as well.
He refused to consider so daft a notion.
Feeling woefully bereft all the same, he closed the door. By rote, he strode to the woodstove and added a log. The fire crackled, illuminating his empty hands. The silence pressed down on him, forcing his awareness of his empty household. No little-boy laughter greeted him; no soft welcoming murmurs came from Sarah as she cooked an evening meal.
This was how it would be from now on.
Shaking off the thought, Daniel went to the kitchen. More silence waited there. In Eli’s room, everything had been packed and hauled away, down to the last puzzle piece. He searched in vain for some sign of the boy he’d cared so much for, but it looked as though he’d never been there at all.
I’ve got you! You’ll never escape now, echoed Eli’s voice, and Daniel felt a fresh pang of regret. He wished there had been another way…wished, almost, that he’d never had the boy with him. ’Twas funny—all this time, he had imagined Eli to be the abandoned one, when now it was Daniel who felt forsaken.
A few steps carried him across the hall. He found himself staring at the bed he and Sarah had shared, its quilt rumpled with the imprint of the bag she’d packed. Signs of her were everywhere. A lone glove flopped forgotten on the floor, and a silver-backed mirror lay on the bureau.
Lisa Plumley - [Crabtree 02] Page 20