by Shirley Wine
“Lacey asked if she could visit the cemetery.”
Winsome’s heart jerked in her chest and then began to race like a run-away train. “I thought you suggested we put it behind us.”
“I did.” He stood up, walked around the table and put his hands on her shoulders. “But I didn’t say cut him out of our lives. I think it will be good for Lacey to visit her brother.”
It was such a sensible solution that she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it. Lacey was naturally curious about the brother she’d never known. Winsome felt the tug of guilt that she’d never thought of visiting the cemetery with Lacey.
It was selfish, but she wanted to hug this to herself. She looked at Jared, her eyes flooded with tears.
“Hey what’s all this,” he said wiping them away with a thumb. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“It’s nothing you did,” she admitted, with a rueful smile. “My emotions are all over the place the last couple of weeks.”
Winsome was filled with a strange ambivalence as her suspicions for the reason behind the unpredictability of her emotional responses grew stronger every day. The silliest little thing was enough to trigger a bout of tears or make her feel giddy with joy.
The shrewd glint in Jared’s eyes sent heat into her face. ‘Do you think a visit to Clinton is needed? It may be a while, but the symptoms are familiar.”
Winsome looked away unable to meet his shrewd eyes. He put a hand against her hot cheek so she had to meet his eyes.
“You’re not unhappy about it, are you?” The gentle question set her heart thundering.
“No.” she said firm vehemence. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s stupid.”
“If it’s worrying you, it’s not stupid.”
For long tense moments she struggled, trying to put her feelings into words. “I feel it’s wrong. And how silly is that.”
Jared sat in a chairs and pulled her onto his lap. “Do you feel that it’s wrong to have another baby? Or wrong to feel happy about it?”
“Both.” Her eyes flooded with tears. “I was Matthew’s mother, Jared. How could I have let something that bad happen?”
He folded her against him, rocking her as he would rock Lacey. “Did you know Gaelen was going to harm Matthew when you left him with her?”
Winsome stiffened and pushed away from him. “Of course I didn’t.”
“Then how can you be responsible? I was his father, Winsome and I never, once suspected he was in danger. How could you know that day would be any different?”
They couldn’t, she realised.
Winsome rested her head against his chest, His heart beat under her cheek as reassuring as his reasoned words.
“Do you think Matthew would want you to deny yourself all the happiness and joy of another baby just because he’s no longer alive?”
Put like that it did sound rather stupid.
“No I guess not.”
Jared lifted her chin and looked into her eyes, his expression made her heart race. Slowly giving her plenty of time to pull away if she chose, he lowered his head. His mouth found hers. Softly sweetly his lips teased hers coaxing a response.
Winsome’s breathing quickened, and she turned, her hands moving up his throat into his tawny hair. She cradled his head in her hands, a gesture sure and familiar. She pressed against him, her breasts flattening against the harder planes of his chest, her lips parting.
Jared accepted the silent invitation, his tongue slipping inside and seeking out the soft warm places where she’d been lonely too long. He slowly moved away from her mouth and nibbled his way down the side of her neck until he reached the hollow of her shoulder.
Winsome moaned, loving the contact.
“I want nothing more than to take you to bed and kiss every inch of your skin.” Desire gave his deep voice a gravelly edge. “But we have a little girl to collect from kindergarten.”
Winsome opened her eyes and gave him a sultry smile. “It’ll keep.”
“Yeah but I mightn’t.” He claimed her lips in another hard kiss before he slid her off his knee, glancing at his watch. “Let’s have lunch in town and then take Lacey to visit the cemetery?”
“Why do you want to go today?”
“Perhaps, like you, I too would like him to share our moment of joy.” Jared laid a gentle hand on her cheek. “I miss him too, sweetheart.”
“Jared?” Winsome frowned. “I don’t know for sure, it may be a false alarm.”
“Do you want me to lay a bet on it?” He chuckled, the sound thawing the frozen places in her heart. He touched a work-worn fingertip to her nose. “Although I must confess to being a little surprised.”
Winsome didn’t know how to answer.
She hadn’t taken any precautions against pregnancy, nor had she asked Jared to. She was at a loss to explain her actions or in this case lack of them.
Had she secretly yearned for another baby?
Of course, she conceded with wry self- knowledge, she’d wanted Jared’s baby. No other man could touch her soul.
As she looked into his face she knew that slowly but surely, they were rebuilding their relationship.
Hope sat softly in her breast.
Feeling more cheerful than she’d felt in weeks, Winsome hummed under her breath as she showered and dressed. She was applying lip-gloss when Jared came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Feeling okay?” he asked softly, his breath warm on her cheeks.
She met his eyes in the mirror, her heart thudding erratically. For some strange reason she felt inordinately shy.
“I want you to be careful. No heavy lifting or anything that could endanger you or our baby.”
Winsome lifted her hand and laid it over the work-roughened hand resting on her shoulder. “I’m always careful, Jared.”
His arms slid over her shoulders to cross over her chest. She met his serious gaze in the mirror.
“I know you are. It was unforgivable what I said that day. I’m so very sorry.”
For long moments they looked into each other’s eyes.
“Gaelen set us both up and then lied, knowing you would draw the conclusions you did,” she said quietly. “She gambled on me being too shocked to protest. You’d been at Levelly all day. How could you know I’d been out? Why wouldn’t you believe her?”
“I should have known you would never let Matthew wander in the garden alone.”
She saw the stark horror of memory in his eyes and turned in his arms and faced him. She lifted her hands and held his face between her palms.
“You were in shock, Jared. Think about it,” she said in a fierce whisper. “We’d just pulled our darling baby from that pond.” She sucked in a quivering breath, her breast rising and falling with pent up emotion. “We saw Matthew dead, Jared. With water running from his mouth and nose, his eyes wide and staring, lily leaves clinging to his lifeless body. Neither of us was capable of rational thinking.”
Jared closed his eyes and a shudder shook his big frame. He opened them and she looked into his soul and saw his torment, his guilt and his anguish.
“I should never have accused you of reading while he drowned.” His whisper was stark and tormented. “I did know better. You were a devoted and conscientious mother.”
“You have to learn to forgive yourself,” she said in a soft, ravaged voice. “Just as I have had to learn to forgive myself. We both made mistakes.”
“We did indeed.” He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers.
“And about that scene in our bedroom, had the tables been turned I would probably have thought the same.”
Jared lifted his head and looked at her. She met his gaze willing him to understand. Time had given her a fresh perspective.
“Would you?” The hope and anguish in his eyes was painful to see.
“In moments of great stress, what we see can be deceptive,” she said laying a gentle hand on his bronz
ed cheek. “We were both set up by a clever manipulator. I’ve let it go, Jared. And you need to do the same. Let’s go get Lacey, and visit Matthew so he can share this moment, too. Your thoughts are good ones.”
Jared just looked at her for a moment, gathered her close in his arms and held her against his heart in a moment of complete accord, rare and precious.
.oOo.
Lacey was waiting for them full of exuberance and high spirits, eager to show off her painting and the farmyard she’d created.
“Look, Daddy,” she said showing him her model. “I made tiny chickens like the ones Mrs Hen has.” Jared hunkered down beside her as she pointed out the other animals. “There’s Daisy and Fly and her puppies. That one’s Bouncer and here’s Casper.”
“That’s marvellous, Lacey.”
Jared dropped Winsome a wink. He was having an uphill battle trying to get Lacey to accept that all Fly’s puppies were going to new homes. Lacey insisted the runt of the litter, a little black dog with one white ear, was Bouncer, and he was hers.
Winsome grinned, already certain of the outcome of this battle of wills.
Jared was having a difficult job denying Lacey anything and she had no intention of playing the heavy parent. He had too much good sense to over–indulge the child.
Lacey bounced around in the back seat until Jared firmly instructed her to sit in her booster seat and do up her seat belt. He refused to start the car until he heard the “click.”
“Would you like to have lunch in town, Lacey?” He looked at her in the rear vision mirror. “Winsome and I would like to have dinner in Stella’s Café. Would you like that?”
“Yay.” Lacey punched the air. “Can we go to the toy shop afterwards?”
“Maybe,” he said with a chuckle. “We want to have a look at some carpet while we’re in town.”
Winsome gave him a startled glance and he gave her a wide grin. “Things are going fine on the farm I thought it would be a good idea to start refurbishing the homestead. How does carpeting those noisy wood floors sound?”
“We could polish them,” Winsome suggested slyly. “And spread a few rugs.”
“You want to do that after a winter living on bare wood floors?” He gave her an incredulous look.
“Gotcha.” She laughed, amused.
Jared chuckled. “They may be fashionable but give me warmth and comfort any day.”
The idea of carpeting those noisy, draughty rooms and passages held infinite appeal. Of all the things Gaelen had stripped from the homestead, the carpet had been the one thing they’d missed the most.
After lunch, Jared and Winsome strolled hand in hand down the main street pausing from time to time as something of interest caught their eye in a shop window.
In the furniture shop they discussed the merits of one carpet versus another. Winsome preferred a dark green sisal-weave while Jared favoured a Berber loop-pile.
“Would you like me to bring out samples and measure and quote on a house lot in both carpets, Mr and Mrs Grainger?” asked the helpful sales assistant.
Jared looked at Winsome and she nodded. “That would be the best way to make a choice.”
The man went and got his appointment book and they settled on a time and date.
As they left the shop, Jared made a droll comment and Winsome laughed. Lacey skipping at Jared’s side clung to his hand.
To observers, they were the perfect couple, young, attractive and obviously affluent and very attentive to the little girl who skipped at their side.
Across the street, their progress was noted by unfriendly eyes.
An intense gaze followed them from shop to shop. She watched the young family as they went into the toyshop and come out a short while later, the little girl clutching a brightly coloured parcel.
When the young woman spoke, the man bent his head, listening attentively. He put an arm around her shoulders and she smiled at him, an intimate bedroom smile that promised sex as its reward.
Watching the young couple, the observer’s hatred welled up, overwhelming and uncontrollable.
“They have everything and I have nothing,” she muttered under her breath. “How dare that little slut usurp my title and position?”
The gleam in her eyes turned crafty.
When the man turned and looked over his shoulder, frowning as he scanned the pedestrians either side of the street, she swiftly slipped into the nearest shop out of sight.
When she re-emerged the little family was gone.
.oOo.
At the cemetery, Jared parked in the parking lot.
They alighted from the car, each carrying a little posy of flowers.
“Where’s Maffew’s grave, Mummy?” Lacey asked skipping beside the car.
“It’s over here.” Jared steered her in the direction of the children’s cemetery.
Winsome watched, her vision misting as they walked together side-by-side, the little girl and the tall broad-shouldered man. He turned back and held out his hand and she put hers in his and together they walked across the close mown velvet turf, a family unit.
Lacey, wide-eyed, looked around her taking everything in with a child’s natural curiosity.
“Wow, this one got lots of toys, Mummy,” she said as they passed a child’s grave decorated with a multitude of toy trucks and a plastic windmill on a stick arranged around the headstone. “Does he come out and play with them?”
“No,” Winsome murmured. “His little friends and family must bring things here on his birthday or other special times.”
Jared walked alongside and they all stopped beside Matthew’s grave. When he stooped down and rubbed a trembling hand over the chill of the granite stone, Winsome knew that he too still grieved.
“Is this Maffew?” Lacey asked, clinging to her mother’s side.
“Yes,” Winsome said in a husky voice as she traced a finger over the carved letters. “Can you read, sweetie. This says Matthew James Grainger, aged one year and three months.”
“He was only a baby,” Lacey said looking from one parent to the other. “Lots littler than me.”
“He was only a little boy,” Jared explained in a gentle voice.
Lacey rubbed her hand over the carved letters feeling them with her fingertips.
“How come Maffew’s got no toys?” she asked worried. “Like the other kids.”
Winsome lifted her hands and let them flutter downwards. How could she explain to the little girl that there seemed no point bringing a dead child toys he could never play with?
“We bring him flowers.” Jared’s deep voice was rough and uneven as he laid his posy of flowers at the base of the headstone beside the flowers Lacey and Winsome had put there.
“Well I’m going to give him some of my toys.” Lacey tilted her head at a determined angle.
Before either of them could stop her she was running back across the car park and tugging at the car door. Winsome went to stand up and go after her but Jared put a hand on her shoulder.
“Leave her. If she wants to share a toy with him and it makes her happy what harm is there in that?”
“None, I suppose,” she said in a shaken whisper.
“That’s what all these other toys are about, Winsome.” He massaged her shoulders with gentle fingers. “They make the visitors feel better. You and I both know it makes no difference to the children buried here, but it helps the relatives.”
Lacey came running back with the package of barnyard toys she’d asked Jared to buy her at the toy shop. She opened the packet and sat down on the turf trying to decide which ones she was going to leave with her brother.
“This is Fly, Maffew, she’s Daddy’s dog,” she chattered, not in the least overawed as she placed a tiny black and white dog on the headstone. “And this even littler one is Bouncer. He’s going to be my berry own dog when he grows up.”
Winsome chuckled through her tears and looked at Jared. The expression on his face as he watched Lacey talk to her brother about eve
ry animal was priceless.
“And this is Daisy, she gives us our milk.” She placed a cow beside the headstone and then delved into the packet to bring out a hen. “And this is Mrs Hen, she sat and sat and sat on some eggs and they hatched into chickens. Did you feed the hens when you lived with Mummy and Daddy at Totra Park?”
“No he was too little to do any chores,” Jared said in a husky voice as he crouched down beside Lacey.
“That’s sad.” The girl shook her head and industriously arranged the toy animals around the base of the headstone then gave Jared a beaming smile. “Maffew won’t be lonely when he’s got these to play with, will he?”
“You want to leave them all, Lacey?” he asked to be sure she knew what she was doing.
She nodded, giving him an open, uncomplicated smile, then she stood up and looked at the headstone her expression satisfied.
“He can’t see Bouncer an’ Fly an’ Mrs Hen or Daisy at home,” she said with the childish logic. “But he’s got them here. Now he’s like all the others.”
Lacey gathered the box with the rest of her animals and wandered along the row of headstones looking at all the toys and things other visitors had left.
Jared put his arm around Winsome and pulled her head onto his shoulder.
“You’re okay?” he asked, keeping an eye on Lacey. “She’s a great little kid.”
“I never expected her to do this.” She stretched out a hand and touched one of the miniature animals.
“Never try and curb that spontaneity, it’s so special.”
Winsome sighed soundlessly. Lacey’s bright cheerful spirit had helped her through too many bleak days for her to ever think of curbing it, she had been her reason for living.
“Do you think this new baby will be like her? Or like Matthew?”
She, like Jared never questioned that her pregnancy was a fact and, like hurt children, they hugged this precious secret close to their hearts, their reward for heartbreak and betrayal.
“Probably neither,” Jared’s soft whisper was for her ears alone. “He or she will be like him or herself, and that’s exactly as it should be.”