“You know how worried I’ve been about you and Jeff?”
This time, Lindy was the one to sit mute.
“You remember the night after the dance, how Jubal…uh, Rubal got so mad, throwing Jeff out of the house and sending you to your room?”
“How can I ever forget?”
“At the time I thought he was just being perceptive, sensitive. Now, I know why he acted like he did. He…he didn’t want you and Jeff to make a mistake…the same mistake he and I made the first time he was here.”
Lindy’s eyes widened. Understanding dawned, then she threw her arms around Molly’s neck again. “It wasn’t a mistake, Molly. You love him.”
Molly stifled a sob. “No, I don’t.” Then corrected with, “I certainly didn’t then. And he didn’t love me, either.” Neither then nor now, her angry heart cried. “It was…like he told you and Jeff—we were feeling our oats. Our bodies, Lindy, not our hearts. Not our brains.” Resolutely, she pulled back and stared Lindy in the face, brushing her sister’s hair back, tucking it behind her ears, reflecting, remembering. “He left in the night. He didn’t even wait to say goodbye. When I came downstairs the next morning, all dewy-eyed, he was gone. And I never heard from him again until…until he appeared at our front door last spring.”
“You hated him a whole year, before he came back?”
“To be truthful, it was myself I hated. Oh, Lindy, please understand. When a man and a woman come together like that, it’s much more than physical, for the woman, anyway. When you’re young, you’re driven by physical yearnings that are almost unbearable. They’re so potent they sometimes take charge of your heart and your brain, but…When you go to a man, Lindy, you always come away a different person. That’s why we wanted you to know Jeff and to be sure of what you were doing. We didn’t want you to make the same mistake we did.”
The words came out without Molly’s considering them, and afterward they held so much truth that her eyes filled with tears again. She recalled telling Jubal—Rubal—that she hadn’t considered herself promiscuous until she was faced with making love to his brother. That was the same as telling him she wasn’t sorry.
But he’d been sorry. He hadn’t wanted Lindy to make the same mistake they made. He saw that night as a mistake. And yet he led her down that same thorn-strewn path again. The knowledge of that was devastating.
“I’ll never know whether it would have been a mistake with Jeff or not,” Lindy was saying.
Lost in her own sorrow, Molly didn’t take Lindy’s meaning for a moment. Then she frowned.
“He went with Jubal,” Lindy explained.
“Rubal,” Molly corrected. But Lindy’s revelation was what was on her mind. And that revelation turned her despondency to anger as nothing else could have. And her anger, in turn, aided her in facing the rest of the family.
Although she didn’t go down for supper, after the diners left, Lindy returned.
“Sugar says she can’t do a thing with the little boys.”
Molly wondered what she would be able to do, but she went. Sugar fixed her a big roast venison sandwich and practically force-fed her, while the boys clamored to know what had happened to Jubal.
“His name isn’t Jubal,” Molly explained. “It’s Rubal.”
“But where is mister?” Little Sam asked.
“He’s gone,” Molly told them. “He was a boarder, and boarders stay until their business is finished; then they…they leave.”
“Why didn’t he say goodbye?” Willie Joe asked.
Molly bit her tongue against a retort. Rubal Jarrett was good at leaving without saying goodbye. She knew that better than anyone. Her conscience prickled when she recalled his plea to talk to the children. Of course, she had refused. She couldn’t allow him to hurt these children further.
“You said you were going to marry him,” Willie Joe was saying. “How can you marry him if he’s gone?”
“I can’t.”
Travis changed the subject. “Is the timber really cut?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Did he do it?”
“No.” Again Molly considered the possibility, telling herself she would be a fool not to, given his penchant for lying. “No, Jub…uh, Rubal wouldn’t have done that.” But even as she spoke the words, Molly wondered why not. He had hurt this family about as badly as he could. Why not take the timber, too?
“How will I go to school?”
“I don’t know, Travis,” she responded with frankness. “I can’t think about that tonight. Bright and early tomorrow, I’ll start trying to come up with something.”
“If you hadn’t driven Jubal away, he would have thought of something,” Travis argued.
“His name is Rubal.”
“What difference does that make?” Willie Joe questioned. “You’re always calling Little Sam and me by the wrong names, and we don’t send you off.”
Sugar offered to get the children to bed, so Molly could retire early. But the long, lonely night did nothing to revive her spirits. Lying awake and alone in that big feather bed was pure torture. Every time she turned over, she recalled the jokes she and Rubal had shared about this bed. But they hadn’t been jokes; they were promises—broken promises, broken dreams, broken lives.
That was the legacy Rubal Jarrett left the Blake House.
The night did accomplish one thing, however. By morning she had cursed him so often, she no longer thought of him as Jubal. He was Rubal now, one man, one lying and leaving scoundrel.
The following day, Molly again left Sugar with the dinner guests, for fear she would fly off the handle at the first probing question about Rubal Jarrett. And there would be probing questions; she knew that for certain. Rubal had been right about one thing: The diners came as much to pry into her personal life, as they did to sample Sugar’s cooking.
Giving the guests time to depart, Molly took the back stairs to the kitchen, where Sugar worked alone. When Molly picked up a cup towel to dry dishes, Sugar stopped her. “You sit yourself down and eat, missy.”
Opposing Sugar never crossed Molly’s mind, although she picked at the food so much she expected another reprimand.
“Where’re the boys?” she questioned, realizing suddenly that she hadn’t heard them for several hours, which was unusual on a Saturday.
“Travis took ’em fishing.”
“Travis?”
“Um-hum. Travis.” Sugar favored Molly with a frown. “That man had a good effect on ever’one aroun’ here, Miss Molly. An’ don’t you go sayin’ he didn’t. I kept my opinion to myself las’ night, but I’ll tell you right now, Willie Joe was right. It don’t matter what a man calls hisself. It’s what’s inside him that counts.”
“That’s just the point,” Molly stormed. “He’s deceitful, dishonest—”
“I don’t know the whole story, of course,” Sugar cut in, “but there’s not a man alive, or a woman neither, who’s all good or all bad. Maybe he did lie to you about his name, an’ maybe he had good reason. I seem to recall you pullin’ a shotgun on him right off that first day.”
“I wish I’d shot him.”
“Um-hum, I suppose you do. But if you had I don’t figure Travis’d be takin’ those younguns fishing today.”
Molly started to object, but Sugar continued.
“And I don’t rightly ’spect Lindy would have listened to you about that young feller she was sweet on.”
“Rubal’s the one who brought Jeff around, if you’ll recall. If he hadn’t been here—”
“If it hadn’t been Jeff, it’d have been some other heated-up youngun.”
“Okay,” Molly barked. “Rubal did do some good around here, but it was for his own gain.”
“His own gain? What do you ’spect that was?”
“I know well enough, and you do, too.”
“Las’ I heard the man proposed marriage. That seems right above board to my way of thinkin’.”
“He wouldn’t have carried it throug
h. He was leaving Monday anyway. He wouldn’t have come back.”
“You know that? For a fact?”
“I believe it.”
After a big hug that brought tears brimming in Molly’s eyes, Sugar returned to washing dishes. When Molly tried to help, the older woman shooed her out. “Go on with you. Get out of here. Fin’ you’self something to lift your spirits.”
Something to lift her spirits? Molly doubted there was such a thing left in the world. Jubal was Rubal and he was gone. And the timber was gone, too.
That was the real problem—the one that affected the entire family and their future—the problem she had promised Travis to find a solution for today. She was out the front door headed for the swing, before she realized the poignancy that place held for her now. Turning aside, she sat on the top step and buried her face in her arms.
But even here she was reminded of Rubal and of the step he had fixed. She didn’t turn around to see the repaired shutters or the painted walls. She didn’t have to, they were etched in her memory—the day he surprised her with the whitewashing, when she stood beside him in this very yard; and the way he’d put the little boys to work cleaning up for the dance. The way Jeff and Lindy weeded and trimmed the roses.
The yard gate opened. She heard it and froze. Lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place, folks said, but what if it did? Footsteps strode toward her.
Male footsteps. And all she could see was Rubal’s face, standing before her the day he arrived, hat in hand, contrite. Contrite? Not on her life.
“Molly.”
She looked up. “Cleatus.”
“I heard the news.”
She clamped her teeth together, willing herself not to break down. “I suppose it’s all over town.”
He motioned with his hat toward the step. “May I sit down?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry, Molly. Looks like neither one of us did right by you.”
As nice as Cleatus Farrington was, he had a way of always turning the attention back on himself. Here he was trying to comfort her by calling for her to reassure him.
“No, you didn’t,” she replied dutifully.
“Yes, we did, honey. I didn’t mean all those things I said. I’m sorry. I didn’t—well, it was jealousy. Jealousy ate me up, made me fighting mad. But I should have taken it out on him, not on you.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t. I said terrible things to you. I didn’t mean them, not really. It’s just that I couldn’t get you and him out of my mind. Him sleeping in the house with you. It was too much.”
He leaned around and peered into her face, but she refused to meet his eyes. “It was too much, Molly,” he repeated. “Him sleeping in the house with you, when that’s where I wanted to be.”
“Don’t, Cleatus, please.” Molly turned away and he sat back in his place. She thought fleetingly of how assertive Rubal had been, pushing her back against the wall, forcefully, hungrily. And she had responded in kind, with passion to meet his. And that’s all it had been for him. Passion.
“Now that things turned out—”
“I have got a lot on my mind, Cleatus. I really don’t want to talk about anything personal right now.”
He sighed beside her. “I heard about the timber.”
She didn’t answer, just sat staring out at the path with its trimmed hedges, and beyond it to the yard gate with hinges repaired. Somehow, she had to stop thinking about her own life and get on with helping the children. She had been duped into thinking she could do both, but now cold reality had returned to remind her that life was never simple.
“I wish you’d let me help, Molly.”
“I’ve about had all the help I can stand.”
“I know how you feel. I can understand you wanting the children to have nice homes and to go to school. I’m not the selfish sort you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re selfish, Cleatus.”
“I want what’s best for you, that’s all.” He snaked an arm out, encircled her shoulders, and she couldn’t keep from flinching. He didn’t remove his arm, but rested it lightly across her back. His fingers played with the fabric of her sleeve. She suppressed a shudder.
“I think I’ve found a way to help.”
She didn’t respond.
“Remember that buyer I mentioned?”
Molly’s heart jumped to her throat.
“They’re serious.”
“That’s…that’s preposterous. The Blake House is all I have left.” She reconsidered. “Except some clear-cut timberland and a ramshackle log cabin.”
“You have me, Molly.” She felt him heave a sigh beside her. “Even if you don’t want me, you have me.”
His pitiful voice begged for sentiments Molly didn’t begin to feel. But she was sorry for him. She patted his knee. “You’ve always stuck by me.”
“I always will.”
“We don’t agree on anything.”
“You’re not being fair, Molly. I know…I understand. You’ve just had a man run out on you—”
“He didn’t run out on me.”
“…and that’s not good for anyone’s self-confidence.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I know. You ran out on me once.”
“Cleatus, please, I have work to do.”
“You aren’t even a little bit interested in who I found to buy the Blake House?”
“The Blake House isn’t for sale.”
“Now that you’ve spruced things up, expanded the clientele, gotten the word out…”
“I didn’t have much to do with any of that.”
“Be that as it may, the property has gained in value. And with the railroad coming through…”
“We don’t know when the railroad’s coming—or even if it will come through Apple Springs.”
“Molly, listen. You’ve heard of the Harvey Houses?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve been in touch with their management up in Kansas City.”
“You what?”
He warded off her protests with his hands. “Hear me out. Just hear me out. They’d probably pay enough to send Travis to school.”
Her eyes widened. “You thought of that?”
“I told you I’m not as selfish as you think.”
She looked down the path. “I vowed never to sell this place.”
“I know.”
“But if it would…No, that’s ridiculous. What would happen to the rest of us?”
As though he were a spider, he had led her to his web, she later thought. “You’ll marry me, Molly.”
She swallowed.
“I know. We’ve had our differences. All couples do. We’ll work things out. I can help you, just like this. Finding a way to send Travis to school.”
“Would it be enough for all of them? To send the rest of the children to school?”
“Well…”
“I wouldn’t sell our home unless—”
“Listen to me, Molly. Give me a chance. You aren’t being realistic. You’re young, and the way you love children, you’re about to deny yourself the chance of ever having your own.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. Listen to reason. Travis deserves the right to go to school.”
“The others don’t?”
“Maybe the others can, too. If you make the right decisions.”
“What are the right decisions, Cleatus? Tell me where to put the key to open the magic door.”
“There is no magic door, and we both know it. You’re having a hard time of things, Molly. You deserve better.”
She gritted her teeth against an outburst. Obviously this was what he considered being selfless. Maybe he was right.
“Since you have it all figured out,” she said, “what about the other children?”
“Your Uncle Darrell has agreed to take Willie Joe. Your Aunt Charlotte will take Little Sam.”
Except for fleeting bouts of ang
er at Rubal for taking Jeff away with him, since discovering Rubal’s duplicity, Molly had felt nothing but pain and sadness. But the anger that possessed her now reached like a fog spreading through the forest into the far reaches of her soul. With great difficulty she kept from jumping up and slapping Cleatus.
But his intentions were good. Certainly, they weren’t any worse than Rubal’s had been. Both men had their own agenda for accomplishing their goals. At least Cleatus’s involved marriage. Although Rubal proposed, she had trouble believing it was for any purpose other than getting her into bed.
“Mrs. Farrington’s doing?” She bit off the words in clipped tones.
“Someone has to help you, Molly.”
With difficulty, she kept her voice low, even. “I promised Mama to keep the family together.”
“Death-bed promises should never be made.”
“Regardless, I promised.” And I love the children, she cried inside. They’re all I have left.
Cleatus’s observation that she would one day be beyond the child-bearing years cut deep. Was he right? Was she giving up a chance to bear her own children, in order to care for her siblings?
“Your mother would want what’s best for the children,” Cleatus was saying. “Your Uncle Darrell can provide well for one extra child. Your aunt can provide for the other. Neither of them could do as much for two.”
Although she knew he was right, she felt as though he had suggested cutting off her own hand, both of her hands. “What about Lindy?”
“Lindy? Lindy’s sixteen, for crying out loud. She’s grown. And she’s sweet on that logger.”
“Jeff?”
“Whatever his name is. Before you know it—before Travis gets off to school, I’ll wager—Lindy’s going to be wanting to marry that logger.”
“Jeff’s gone.” Molly stood. “And I have work to do.”
Cleatus jumped to his feet. He took her shoulders in hand, coming around to face her. When she refused to look at him, he kissed the top of her head, then lifted her chin with his fingertips and kissed her lips.
Softly, tenderly. He brushed his lips over hers, then opened his mouth and let his tongue trace them, but before he could bridge the barrier, she pulled away. Every nerve inside her jangled at the intimacy.
Secret Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Four Page 27