“You look tired,” he says to me through a mouthful of pecan pie. “Thinner than when I left, too. Hasn’t Lottie been feeding you?”
I can’t seem to find my tongue. I’ve had a week to think of what to say. Now I choke on every bit of it. I want to tell him it’s because I had no appetite for eating alone, that I was miserable while he was gone, but I don’t. I don’t say anything. Instead, I plead a headache and go to my room. I can feel his eyes between my shoulders as I walk out of the kitchen. I know that I’ve hurt him, that I am being unfair. I have no right to feel the way I do, as if something between us has died. He is Susanne’s husband. It’s time I remember that—time I grow up.
But by the end of the week, I catch sight of Henry out in his fields, and my resolve falters. I shouldn’t go to him, but I will. I tell Lottie I’ll bring his lunch pail today. She cuts her eyes at me but starts packing up the sandwiches, grumbling and sucking her teeth all the while.
Henry straightens and shoves back his hat when he sees me coming. His clothes are gritty and dark with sweat, his face flushed with the midday heat. I swallow the lump in my throat and pat my apron pocket to make sure the book of poems I have bought him is still there. Even now, with the weight of it against my hip, I still can’t make up my mind to give it to him. Not because I’m prideful but because I have written his name in it. Why I would do such a foolish thing I cannot say, except that I missed him terribly.
He is smiling when I reach him, a timid smile that sits uneasily on his craggy face. It fades when I hold out the lunch pail but say nothing.
“Will you wait for me here?” His fingers brush mine, warm and coarse as a cob. “Please. I won’t be long.”
I wait while he stalks to the old truck and fumbles beneath the seat. He drops something into his shirt pocket, then lifts his eyes to Susanne’s window. She isn’t there. She has been in bed all day, still feeling last night’s bourbon and this morning’s dose of tincture.
When Henry returns, the face I’ve come to know so well is unreadable, his jaw firmly set, as if he’s trying to settle an argument with himself. He takes the lunch pail from my hands and we begin to walk, moving farther and farther off, until we can barely see the house. The silence between us is cumbersome, heavy with unspoken things.
I’m startled when he halts suddenly and turns to face me. We’ve come to the base of the ridge, to the mouth of a rough clay track that winds its way up into the trees. I know the path well enough, though I’ve never taken it. The ridge belongs to Henry, his refuge from the world when disappointment and duty sit too heavily on his shoulders.
I pull in my breath as his eyes lock with mine. There is a question in their depths, an appetite that has nothing to do with the lunch I’ve brought, and for the first time I’m afraid—of Henry, and of myself, and of the lies those men told outside the barbershop no longer being lies. And yet, Henry is all I can see. When he holds out his hand, I take it.
By the time we reach the crest, my lungs are on fire and my hair has come free from its pins. I don’t care. It’s quiet at the top, wide and dizzying and glorious, the breeze sharp with grass and fresh-churned earth. Above us, the clouds sail and shred, close enough to touch. Below, the rutted fields shimmer in the August heat, stripped as bare as the first time I saw them. It’s hard to remember now that I ever hated those fields.
We sit in the tall grass, sharing Henry’s cheese sandwich. The trees make a patchwork of the ground, sun and shade dotted with small yellow flowers. When lunch is gone, Henry stands and hurls our apple cores into the trees; then he stoops to gather a small spray of tiny blooms and presses them into my hand. He has always been a man of few words, and I see as he reaches into his shirt pocket that he is struggling for them now.
“For you,” is all he manages as he presses a small box into my hands.
Inside, in a nest of crushed black velvet, is a cameo set in delicate loops of silver, its stone the dusky blue of a storm sky. It blurs in my hand as my eyes fill with tears. I have never had anything so fine.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, thinking miserably of the small book of poems in my apron, a paltry gift compared with Henry’s. “I have something for you, too.” I slip the book from my pocket and put it in his hands. “It isn’t much, just some poems.”
When he turns it over to peer at the spine, his face softens. “It’s the one we talked about—Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
“I wrote your name in it,” I confess softly. “I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry. I missed you.”
Before I can say another word, Henry pulls me to him, his hands caught tight in my hair. When his mouth finds mine it’s like coming home, inevitable somehow. I am lost. I forget the spray of flowers crushed between our bodies, forget Barrett Browning’s poems, forget everything but the raw joy of Henry’s mouth on mine.
There are no eyes on us here, no portrait over the fireplace, no wife upstairs. We are alone, utterly and perfectly alone beneath an aching blue sky. His eyes ask the question again, and again I say yes. It is a pledge—one neither of us is free to make. Still, we make it. We cannot go back now. Or will not.
He smells of earth and smoke as he spreads me back onto the grass, leaving a trail of fire on my skin as he works at my buttons and straps. I shiver as his hands explore, stripped bare now to the breeze and Henry’s gaze. His hands tease but take all I freely give. And then suddenly there’s nothing in the world but the two of us, flesh and breath and bone, mingling beneath that blinding blue sky, a tender undoing that binds us in a way no law or preacher ever could. From this day, for better or worse, I am Henry’s.
Later, I try to find some scrap of shame as I pull myself back into my dress. I cannot. There is only a raw, pulsing joy in me, a shiver at the memory of our bodies moistly fused. I think of Mama, of her heartbreak if she ever learns that I have echoed her mistake.
But then Henry’s eyes are on me, warm and shining. He opens the Barrett Browning and begins to read. I lay back again in the grass, eyes closed, reveling in the deep, rusty thrum of his voice as he recites each aching line. The final words are snatched away as he reads them, lost on the wind, but not lost in my heart.
I shall but love thee better after death.
He’s silent as he reaches for my small spray of flowers and closes them between the pages. For a while at least, the ridge will belong to us, and we must be content with that.
Chapter 19
Henry’s child will come in the spring.
The midwife from Level Grove is being lauded as a miracle worker, the bringer of life where no life seemed possible. At last, Susanne will have her precious heir, and I must learn to live with that, learn to pretend the very thought of it does not break me into a million pieces. It is November. Beyond the windows the trees stand stripped as skeletons, grim and bony, dripping with a steady autumn rain. Susanne’s room is cold, awash in watery gray light. The fire has dwindled, so I throw on some wood and take up the poker. Susanne’s eyes are on me. I have grown used to them, following with vague disdain as I go about my daily work, but today they are different, sharp and feverish, skittering after me so that I hold my breath against my spine and turn away.
My gaze slides to the window, and I silently curse the rain. There will be no lunch on the ridge today. I’m about to turn away when I catch sight of Henry leaving the barn. I cannot see his face; his head is down to ward off the rain. But I would know that lanky, loose-framed stride anywhere.
I am still clutching the poker when I hear Susanne behind me. Her eyes follow mine—to Henry. Before I realize what she’s about, she has snatched me by the wrist and is yanking me around to face her. I look down at her fingers, clawlike as they bite into my flesh, and see the cool metal wink of her wedding band. Her breath on my face is sickly-sweet, like the reek of spoiled peaches. I feel my breakfast scorch up into my throat. For a moment the room swims.
I am dimly aware of the poker clattering to the hearth as I fight to keep my legs beneath me. The crack
of her hand against my cheek is like breaking glass, tiny shards flashing and dancing behind my eyes like flakes in a snow globe. I taste blood, the tang of iron, the sting of shame. I have always known this moment would come, that one day she would peer through my backbone, straight to the truth. There are things a woman cannot hide, especially from another woman.
Her expression is one of not astonishment, but affirmation, and I see she has suspected for some time, that she has only been waiting to be sure. And now she is, though not a single word has passed between us. Even now I say nothing. It occurs to me that I should have prepared for this moment, but what is there to say? If there is something, I am too numb to think of it.
Something—I can only call it willfulness—steals over me, a little curl of anger that flares white-hot in my head, a voice that says Susanne Gavin is not worthy of my guilt, that a woman who cannot love a man like Henry deserves to lose him to someone who can. It is not true, of course, but it is what I must hold tight to at this terrible moment.
Her face looms just inches from mine now, and I am once again startled to see the waste it has become. Her skin is like crepe, dry and slack against the bones, her cheeks as sharp as blades, splotched with flags of blood-hot color. Her mouth is pinched and pale, trembling with outrage, and for a moment I imagine Henry kissing those lips and wonder if he ever found any warmth there at all.
She draws back, strikes again. I feel the brand of her palm on my cheek. It is only for the child’s sake that I do not slap her back. Instead, I meet her gaze head-on, standing straight backed against the heat of those pinpoint pupils, and I see that her anger has nothing to do with losing Henry’s affection, only with knowing she has been bested. I hate her for that most of all.
“Deceitful bitch!” she shrieks. “You have taken what was mine!”
There isn’t enough guile in me to deny it. I am what she says. Though, God help me, even now I would not change it. I thought there would be more time, though time for what, I cannot say. Not even time can unravel the knot we tied that day on the ridge, and now I must live with the consequences.
She grips my wrist again, squeezing until my fingers begin to tingle, and then something comes over her, a glittering, ominous quiet that makes me suck in my breath. Even her breathing is changed, deeper, slower, and for a moment it is as if she is watching a story unfold somewhere far away. I see the light flatten in her eyes, like a fire drawing down before it flares. When they refocus on me I feel the hairs on my neck prickle, and suddenly I am afraid. Not for myself, but of what she will do.
Susanne goes on staring, fixing me with an expression I cannot, at first, put a name to, and then I realize it is the nearest thing to a smile I have ever seen from her. There is something terrible in it, a calculation that makes me shrink back. Finally, she thrusts me away from her. I am dismissed to my room, where I am to remain until it is decided what will be done with me.
I blink at her, stunned, unable to put a name to the emotions warring in me, and then I realize it is a mix of relief and bewilderment that I have not been immediately dismissed, though surely she cannot mean to let me stay. I can only suppose she wishes me to remain until Henry returns from town, so she may confront her husband with the flesh-and-blood proof of his transgressions.
It sickens me to think what Henry will suffer at that moment. He will not deny it—the truth is too plain—but neither will he be proud to admit it. If I must leave Peak, and surely I must, it will be easier for him if I pack my things and go before he returns. It is on the tip of my tongue to tell her I’m free to leave when I choose, that I will not wait, but my mouth will not form the words. How can I leave without good-bye, without one final crush in Henry’s arms? I go to my room to wait for Henry for the last time, but he does not come.
At dinnertime, Lottie brings me a tray. On it is a note from Susanne, curtly and unsteadily penned, a terse reminder that I am not to leave my room for any reason unless called for. When I hear Henry’s truck rattle up the gravel drive, my heart batters my ribs until I can’t breathe. For one outlandish moment I let myself imagine us slipping out of the house together, vanishing into the night. It is impossible, of course. I cannot ask it. And it would never occur to Henry. Peak is his duty, and so is Susanne. This can end only one way. I perch on the edge of my narrow bed and wait for his knock.
I fall asleep waiting.
The next day I hear his truck go back down the gravel. He stays gone all day. Meals arrive and are taken away untouched. There are no more notes, nothing to explain why I am still beneath Susanne Gavin’s roof.
On the third day I rise while it is still dark and pack some of my things into my old leather satchel, prepared to leave as soon as the sun is up. There is nothing to stay for. I am apparently not even to have a good-bye. I cannot go home to New Orleans, not the way things are. Nor will I bring shame on Mama by heading north to her folks in Chicago. I have put a little money by and still have the fifty-dollar bill Mama pinned to my slip the day she put me on the bus. I have no idea where I will go, only that I will go today.
When a knock sounds, I hide my satchel behind the door, prepared to refuse Lottie’s tray when I see a note beside the toast plate. I snatch the tray from her hands and close the door, tearing the small envelope with my teeth before I have even set the tray on the dresser. It is not Susanne’s hand, but Henry’s. I have been summoned to his study.
I have not left my room in three days. I take a few minutes to compose myself, to check my face in the mirror. I barely recognize myself. My eyes are puffy and red rimmed, my hair loose and wild about my face. It is not how I want him to remember me, but my brush and pins are already packed and I am too weary to dig for them.
I am acutely aware, as I leave my room and descend the stairs, that I have hardly moved in these last three days, have scarcely eaten a bite. I am stiff and off balance as I stand at the head of the stairs, disoriented by the wide-open spaces after being shut up so long. When I enter the study, Henry is in his chair, the chair where he used to read to me every evening. My eyes blur. Tears are always nearby these days.
He does not rise from his chair, only gestures for me to sit. He looks worn down, smaller and thinner than I remember him just three days ago. He does not touch me, can barely manage to meet my eyes, and I know something new has gone wrong, something more terrible than discovery, more terrible even than the good-bye that stands before us.
He means to pay me off, I think miserably, to buy my silence, because his wife knows, and because there is a child coming. I have become inconvenient. I brace myself, vowing to go quietly, and without a penny of his in my pocket. What he offers is so much worse.
“You’re going to hate me for what I’m going to say, Adele.”
I cannot look at him. If I do I will break apart. Instead, I lock eyes with the portrait over the mantel, Susanne, watching us still. “Henry, whatever happens, I will never hate you. I made my choice the day we went up on that ridge, and probably well before that. I knew what could happen—what would happen.”
My voice is flat and strangely cool, masking the ache at the center of my chest. I blink back the sting of tears. How can I make him understand what I’m about to say, why I can’t let him say what he’s about to?
“Please don’t tell me to go. I will go, because someone always pays for this kind of sin, and that someone has to be me. But please, Henry, let it be me who leaves.” My voice breaks then, and I curse the tear that scorches its way toward my chin. I wanted to be strong. I want to be but cannot. “I don’t think I could bear to hear you send me away.”
He stands and takes a step toward me, then checks himself. “You don’t…have to leave, Adele.”
For an instant I wonder if I’ve taken leave of my senses. And then I look closely at his face, at the mix of emotions at play there, hope mixed with something like shame, and I know that there is more he’s about to say, and that whatever it is, I’m not going to like it.
An arrangement, he call
s it.
It is incomprehensible to me that my presence might be more desired than my absence, and by Susanne of all people. There is an heir on the way, reputations at stake. It wouldn’t do to have the lady’s maid deserting just now, not when Celia Cunningham was still running her mouth to anyone willing to listen. And so it seems I find myself at a strange and hideous advantage, but only if I agree to play along.
I am to be removed from Susanne’s sight but kept close by, at least until the gossip dies down. It will be noised around that I’ve taken ill, that as a precaution I have been moved out of the house, to safeguard Susanne’s delicate health. We will be able to carry on as before, Henry informs me. Carry on—he actually says those words.
For a moment I’m almost too stricken to speak. “How, Henry? How can you ask me to do this unnatural thing? To remain here while she—”
“I can’t lose you, Adele. I won’t.”
“And what happens when the baby comes?”
“Nothing happens. My wife has her heir, which is all she’s ever cared about. And we have each other. Susanne agreed to the bargain.”
I shake my head, spilling tears down my cheeks. “Your bargain, Henry, not mine. What you’re asking is a sin. Can you not see that?”
“It would be a bigger sin to throw away what we have, Adele.” His voice is thick, ragged. “If you go, I lose…everything.”
The plea in his voice, in his eyes, is more than I can bear. That afternoon, Henry moves my things out of the house and into the small cottage down by the lake while George and Lottie look on with knowing eyes. I have no pride left, nothing but the horrible reality I have created for myself. And so it is time I am practical. Susanne will have her heir, and the Gavin name will be saved from scandal. I will keep a roof over my head. And I will have Henry.
Chapter 20
Jay
Jay stood beside Young Buck, poring over the plans for what would eventually become the tasting barn. It was going to take a lot of work to convert the old barn into the showplace they envisioned, not to mention most of what was left in the coffers. But if they did it right, the payoff could be big. He had been counting the days until harvest. The minute the fruit was in, they could finally get busy on the barn.
The Secrets She Carried Page 15