by Jody Hedlund
If she was honest with herself, she’d waited for this moment all week. She’d longed to be connected with him again in this way, to feel his passion, to know that she stirred him the same way he did her.
His kiss deepened, and she arched upward. His hands at her waist splayed as though he wanted all of her. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, had only heard whispers from her friends, especially from Theresa, who had always been bolder than others.
Victoria’s body seemed to turn to fire wherever he touched. And as his kiss raged, she didn’t care if she was consumed. She wanted to go wherever the kiss meant to lead. And she could sense he wanted that too.
“I’m coming up!” James called from the stairwell.
Tom broke away and released her.
“Make sure you’re decent,” James called again, his voice echoing in the hollow passageway and clearly full of humor.
Tom ran one hand across his mouth and jaw and with the other tucked in his shirt, which had somehow come loose.
Had she pulled it out?
Her face burned at the thought, but she quickly wiped at her own face and hair and bodice, her fingers shaking too much to bring about any semblance of order.
“You ready?” James voice came from the landing just below the hatch.
Tom cleared his throat. “All set.”
The ping of boots against the ladder was followed by James’s head popping through the hatch. At the sight of them, he paused. His grin was wide and his eyes sparkled. “I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
Tom’s face was a shade darker than usual, and he combed his fingers through his hair. “We were just about done.”
“I don’t know about that, son.” James chuckled. “From what I could see, it looked like you were just getting started.”
Mortification washed over Victoria. Had James witnessed their moment of passion? She glanced back in the direction of the house and realized that if he’d been walking from the house to the tower, he would have had a clear view of the tower room. He would have seen them kissing like there was no tomorrow.
The muscles in Tom’s jaw worked up and down, as if he too realized all his dad had witnessed.
James climbed the rest of the way up. Even though his eyes were warm with affection in addition to his humor, Victoria avoided his gaze. “Your mom told me not to disturb you. I tried to hold off as long as I could, but the storm is gaining momentum.” He cocked his head to the window.
Sure enough, the dark clouds were drawing closer. They were heaped upon the horizon and stretching tall, exposing their angry underbellies. Lightning flashed deep within and seemed to incite the waves to join in the tumult.
“I wanted to let you finish,” James said. “Your mom and I have lots of happy memories of our times together in lighthouse towers—”
“Dad.” Tom cut James off with a pointed, slightly tortured look.
James laughed heartily before checking the wind direction and turning to adjust the vents. While his back was turned, Tom reached for her hand, his eyes radiating apology. Was he sorry for kissing her? Or sorry about his dad’s interruption?
She hoped it was the later and smiled at him in reassurance. She squeezed his hand, hoping to send him the message that she wasn’t in the least sorry for this, any more than she was for the last time they kissed.
“I need to get the lantern lit before it gets too dark,” James said as he worked. “It’s just a precaution.”
“I’ll help you,” Tom offered.
“I’ll be fine. You go finish your business with your wife somewhere else.”
Even though James’s bluntness was becoming more familiar, Victoria still heated at his insinuation. Tom shook his head, but a surge of wind rattled the tower windows with such force that the metal tube attached to the glass chimney of the lantern popped away from the wall and slammed against the window with such force that Victoria expected the glass to crack. Wind roared through the vent opening, and both Tom and James lunged to grab the dangling tube before it could do damage. For a moment they struggled to lift and position it back in place against the incoming gust.
As they worked and shouted instructions to each other, she realized her moment with Tom was over, especially when the wind broke the vent off again. This time it almost knocked into Tom.
“Go back to the house,” he called to her. “It isn’t safe up here now.”
She nodded as the wind roared into the small room, swirling her skirt and hair and making conversation virtually impossible. She descended, and on her walk back to the house, she fought the swelling gusts and blowing sand.
All the while, she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss. How far would the kiss have led this time if James hadn’t interrupted? Tom wanted to take things slowly. Wanted to focus on their friendship first. Wanted to take the rest of their month at Race Point to test their relationship. She wasn’t helping matters by throwing herself in his arms every time she saw him.
She had the feeling that once again, he would be frustrated at himself for failing to keep the boundaries he’d established. He would beat himself up and perhaps even pull away from her. Surely she could be more careful and help him preserve his sense of integrity.
“Zelma?” she called once she’d entered and shaken the sand from her skirt.
“I’m still in here, dear.” The sweet voice came from the art room.
“Can I get you anything?” Victoria asked as she made her way to the little room at the rear of the house.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Zelma said. “James lit a lantern before he left.”
Victoria stepped into the cozy room, the walls of which were covered in paintings from floor to ceiling. Zelma still sat in her chair in front of her easel with the lantern buzzing on the pedestal beside her. She had a blanket draped over her lap and a fresh cup of tea and biscuit.
“James is so sweet,” Victoria said, thinking of all the ways he doted on Zelma.
“He’s a very good man.” Zelma concentrated on the canvas in front of her. “And Tom takes after him.”
Yes, Tom was a good man. Victoria smiled thinking about his desire to show her the humpback whales and the fun that they’d had.
“I take it you had a lovely time?” Zelma dragged her attention away from the canvas to glance at Victoria with the kind of look that made Victoria pluck at the edge of her sleeve with renewed embarrassment. Zelma knew exactly what they’d been doing in the tower.
“Tom wanted to show me a couple of whales he’d spotted off the coast.”
Zelma dipped her brush into first one color and then another, mixing them. “He’s always loved sea life.”
Victoria stepped behind Tom’s mother and took in the nearly finished landscape, a beach at sunset with a young couple wading hand in hand in the low tide. It was beautiful. And strangely familiar.
“Yes, it’s you and Tom,” Zelma said with a smile. “Your young love is inspiring. I had to capture it.”
Their love? She’d known she was falling in love. But she hadn’t been sure about Tom. She thought she’d caught a glimpse of it in his eyes up in the tower. But what if she’d only imagined it?
“You’re a talented artist,” Victoria said, glancing at all of the other pictures around the room. “You must have a hundred pictures scattered throughout the house.”
Zelma swirled a pinkish orange color in the sky. “I wish I could take credit for all of them. But many of them are Tom’s.”
“My Tom?”
Zelma laughed. “Yes. Your Tom. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Actually, it’s impossible to believe.” Victoria couldn’t imagine Tom painting anything. He’d never even shown the remotest interest in art work, hadn’t even glanced at the paintings on the walls of the keeper’s house.
“He loved to paint as a child and a young man, before he left home.” The paintbrush in Zelma’s hand stilled, and sadness transformed her features. The wrinkles around her eyes seemed deeper and the groove
s around her mouth more pronounced.
“He’s never once mentioned it.” Victoria studied the pictures, as if seeing them for the first time.
“The one of the Cape Henry on Chesapeake Bay there in the middle is his.” Zelma pointed to a painting of an octagonal-shaped brick tower. “You can tell which are his by the tiny initials he put in the left corners.”
Victoria crossed the room to inspect the painting more carefully. The detail was perfect, even down to the seagull circling in a blue sky dotted with realistic-looking clouds. Sure enough, a TC was painted in the corner.
“I’m shocked.” Victoria traced the crude wooden frame that surrounded the painting. “I wonder why he’s never told me?”
Zelma laid down her paintbrush and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t suppose he told you how I lost my feet either?”
A gust rattled the window, followed by a burst of heavy rain splattering against the glass. Outside the day had turned almost as dark as night, causing shadows to spread over the room.
Victoria tried to squelch a rising sense of unease at the realization that perhaps she didn’t know Tom as well as she’d believed. “Tom hasn’t spoken much of his past,” she admitted.
Zelma sighed. “I figured as much.”
“I didn’t want to ask you about your feet,” Victoria added quickly, “because I know how it makes my mother feel when people focus on her blindness.”
“I didn’t know your mother was blind,” Zelma said gently.
Victoria nodded and turned back to Tom’s painting. “She wasn’t born blind. But once she became an adult, her eyesight gradually failed.” Victoria didn’t like to think about her mother’s disease. In fact, she tried very hard not to dwell on it. If she ignored it, she could also ignore the haunting fact that her mother had inherited the disease from her mother. Victoria had never met her grandmother, but she’d learned from her father that her blind grandmother had fallen to her death from a lighthouse tower. Her mother never spoke of it. And no one in her family ever talked about the fact that the disease was passed from mother to daughter. It was almost as if in not speaking about it they could pretend the possibility didn’t exist for Victoria.
“Mother doesn’t want people to treat her like she’s blind,” Victoria said. “So we don’t talk about it, and we act as though she isn’t.”
“I see.” Zelma’s comment was soft. She was quiet for a moment, and the steady pelting of rain on the window filled the room. “Come sit down, dear.” Zelma reached for a wooden chair near hers. It scraped across the floor as she drew it nearer.
Victoria hesitated. She didn’t want to talk about her mother’s blindness perhaps any more than Tom wanted to talk about Zelma’s feet. She supposed they were both alike in their avoidance. But Zelma patted the cushion on the chair, and the kindness in her face was too difficult to refuse.
Reluctantly, Victoria sat down, and she didn’t resist when Zelma reached for her hands and clasped them in hers. “Don’t worry, dear. I won’t pressure you to talk about your mother’s blindness until you’re ready.”
Victoria would never be ready, but she kept that to herself.
“However, I want you to know that I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about my condition. I think it’s better for us to be open and honest about everything rather than pretend nothing is wrong with me. Because the truth is, I don’t have feet. I can’t walk. And it doesn’t help us to ignore my condition.”
Victoria should have guessed that Zelma would be as frank about her lack of feet as she was about everything else. Even so, Victoria was surprised by the ease and openness with which Zelma discussed the matter.
“I lost my feet from severe frostbite,” she continued, her gaze unflinching. “At the time, James was an assistant keeper at Cape Henry Lighthouse in Virginia. It was the winter of 1864. Tom and our older son, Ike, had both joined up with the Jessie Scouts.”
“Arch, one of my bodyguards, was a Jessie Scout,” Victoria started. But then she caught herself, unsure how much information Tom would want her to share.
Zelma’s eyes widened, and she studied Victoria’s face for so long that Victoria wondered if perhaps she’d said something entirely wrong. “Arch is a good friend of Tom’s,” Zelma finally said. “I’ve only met him once, when he came to visit Tom after the escape. But I liked him, even if he’s part of the reason Tom chose to be a bodyguard.”
Victoria inwardly cringed and prayed that Zelma wouldn’t make any connections and figure out that Tom was actually her bodyguard. She attempted to steer the conversation to a different topic. “What do you mean ‘after the escape’?”
“You do know that the Jessie Scouts were spies and involved in dangerous missions behind Confederate lines?”
Victoria shook her head. Arch had told her only the basics, probably a watered-down version fitting for a young lady. But Tom had never once spoken of his days as a Jessie Scout. She was embarrassed to admit that she’d never known he was one.
“I wasn’t too keen on my boys being involved in such duplicitous operations. But once Ike became a scout, we couldn’t sway Tom. He always wanted to do everything his big brother did. He rode off one night to join up with Ike, and there was nothing we could do to stop him.”
Zelma released a long heavy sigh. “Only the Lord knows what kind of trouble those two faced every day. I still can’t bear to think on it. I prayed harder and more often in those two years than I ever have before or since.” She paused and glanced down to her folded hands, as though she’d traveled back in time. She was quiet again, and the raging of the wind and rain echoed in the room.
“God answered my prayers,” she finally said in a voice so low Victoria almost couldn’t hear her. “His answer wasn’t what I expected. It usually never is.” She set her shoulders and continued in a stronger voice. “One of the other assistant keeper’s sons was fighting for the Confederates and sent word that Ike and Tom had been captured and were sentenced to hang as spies.”
Victoria’s muscles tightened at the thought of Zelma’s anguish at getting the news.
“James rode off immediately for Petersburg, where he thought they were being held. But not long after he left, the assistant keeper’s son showed up in the middle of the night and told me Ike and Tom were being held less than two miles away. He put his own life at risk to tell me. I was grateful, but I had no idea what to do, especially without James.”
Victoria squeezed Zelma’s hand. “You don’t need to tell me any more, if it’s too painful.”
“It’s all right, dear.” Zelma patted her hand. “I moved as fast I could in the dark of night. But the ground was marshy and wet. And it was January. By the time I reached the Confederate encampment, I’d lost feeling in my feet. I had to wait in the shadows for another hour before I discovered where the boys were being held. By that point, I could hardly walk. But God continued to provide the strength I needed. I was able to cut Tom’s bindings loose. Unfortunately, the boys were both too weak to stand and make a run for it. So of course, Ike insisted that I take Tom. But Tom wouldn’t have anything to do with the plan, wouldn’t hear of leaving Ike behind…”
Victoria waited for Zelma to continue. But she didn’t say anything more.
“What happened next?” Victoria finally asked, her pulse pumping hard at the image of the dark, cold night and both Zelma and her sons’ lives in danger.
Zelma sighed. “I’ll leave the rest of the escape details for Tom to share with you. I think those are his to tell when he’s ready.”
“Obviously you and Tom made it.” Victoria wanted to know how, but she didn’t push.
“At first we didn’t think Tom would live,” Zelma supplied. “But he eventually recovered physically, even if he never did make peace with what happened.”
Perhaps that’s why he hadn’t told her about being a Jessie Scout. Maybe it brought up too many painful memories.
“As hard as the doctor tried to save me from losing my feet, they were to
o frost-bitten after being wet and cold for so many hours. He had to amputate them to save my life.” Zelma smiled, and there wasn’t a hint of anger or regret in her eyes. “God used my feet to save my son’s life. It was worth the sacrifice. I would have given up my entire life for him if it had come down to it.”
Heat pushed at the backs of Victoria’s eyes, and emotion clogged her throat. “You’re a remarkable woman, Zelma.”
She shook her head. “I don’t claim that it was easy learning to live without walking. It’s forced me more than ever to rely upon the strength and joy of the Lord.”
Victoria wished she could say that she’d be able to face future trials with as much courage as Zelma. But if she couldn’t muster enough courage to face just the thought of a trial, how would she do when a real trial came?
“The Lord has brought me to a place of peace and acceptance over all that happened,” Zelma continued. “But Tom isn’t there yet.”
“How do you know?”
“During the past ten years, his longest visit was only two days.” Zelma’s voice wobbled.
Victoria squeezed Zelma’s hand, hoping to lend her a measure of comfort, although she wasn’t sure there was any for a parent who’d experienced such heartache. “We’ve been here two weeks. So see, that must mean he’s on the mend.”
Zelma’s eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “You’re right. God’s doing something in his life. And I believe He’s using you to do it.”
“Me?”
Zelma nodded. “With you at his side, Tom can no longer run away from his fears. He has to stay and face them.”
Run away? From fears? Tom had once accused her of doing that very thing. Was he guilty of the same?
She stood, anxious to talk to him, to allow him to bare his soul to her. She’d wrap her arms around him and ensure him that she understood. Their time on the sofa that night couldn’t come soon enough.