Judith Bowen

by The Man from Blue River

  Anne was curled up in the window seat, curtain halfdrawn for privacy, nose buried in one of her new books. Tom and Hugh traded lazy insults over a game of cribbage, and Martha could hear the faint sporadic “Fifteen two, fifteen four…” as though from a great distance.

  This was so pleasant. She could smell the roasting turkey and goose, and the pungent scent of the crackling wood fire. She closed her eyes and leaned against the brick of the fireplace, hands clasped around one knee. The velvet of her new skirt felt warm and soft. Thank goodness her Sears order had arrived just before Christmas, or she wouldn’t have had a thing to wear.

  She opened her eyes. There was Harry, frowning in the easy chair in the corner as he drew on an unlit pipe and perused the old copy of the Los Angeles Times he’d brought with him. Two of the smallest LeBlancs lay on their backs, whispering, heads under the Christmas tree, which, Martha noted approvingly, had turned out better than expected, considering their limited resources. Even the battered angel looked positively angelic beaming down at them all from the top of the tree.

  She gazed slowly around the rest of the room. Fraser was lying on his back near the tree, pretending to ignore the efforts of Daisy and Jenny to tie him up with discarded ribbon from the gifts they’d just opened. They were enraptured, giggling and panting as they tried to secure a floppy arm here, a large wool-stockinged foot there.

  By sheer chance, Martha happened to catch Fraser’s amused glance. Suddenly she felt as though she was seeing everything in the room from the wrong end of a telescope. She felt the blood drain from her face. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her cup so much they hurt.

  She loved Fraser. She was in love with him. This was all there was, really—family and love and laughter. This was what she’d dreamed of, and it had been in front of her nose all this time. A man worth loving, dear children who needed her, friends, good neighbors…A charming woman she was only beginning to get to know again, her own mother. After all this time.

  Dazed, she realized Fraser was watching her. He frowned, his dark eyes concerned. Her heart melted with the knowledge she’d just received. She loved her husband, Fraser McKenna. It wasn’t part of the bargain—in fact, it went specifically against the bargain—but it had happened. With a small gesture she let him know she was fine. Yes, she’d be all right. In a minute.

  But would she? Would she ever be all right again?

  That night Fraser made love to her with an intensity that nearly frightened her. Afterward, lying in his arms, she felt a desperate need to express what was in her heart.

  She knew he wasn’t asleep, but simply held her quietly. She knew he was thinking, as she was, too, of the baby they’d both held that day. She wished he’d say something so that she would have the opportunity to tell him she understood his pain.

  But did she? Could anyone really feel another’s pain? Wasn’t it one of the worst forms of arrogance to think so?

  Still, if she couldn’t tell him she loved him, she wanted to comfort him somehow, let him know that what he thought and felt mattered to her. She wanted to give him back something of what he’d given her since she’d been here, make him understand that she supported him, no matter what. But he wasn’t a man who would allow it. He wasn’t a man who would admit he needed that comfort. Not from her, not from anyone.

  She realized it was impossible now to tell him she loved him. They’d ensured that with their bargain, sealed in law; she’d ensured it by spelling out her terms, that he must give her a child of her own.

  But it was equally impossible not to tell him. She had to find the way.

  TWO WEEKS after Christmas, Martha flew to Wisconsin to tie up loose ends and bring back some of her clothes and the personal possessions she wanted to keep. The trip, she’d decided, marked her commitment to the future, the letting go of the bits and pieces that held her to the past.

  Besides, she needed time to think.

  Fraser and Anne drove her and Daisy to the small airport in Pine Ridge. They were changing in Cheyenne, and then going on to Madison, where Martha planned to stay with the friend who had her cat, Mr. Herbert. Daisy was excited, dressed all in green, a new coat and hat and leggings Martha had bought her for the trip. Anne was philosophical about being left behind since she had to go to school.

  On the way, Fraser filled Martha in briefly about the trip he’d made to government offices in Rock Springs three days before. Thanks to Anne’s boom box in the back seat, the children couldn’t hear what they had to discuss. Fraser and she had agreed it was better not to get the girls’ hopes up until the adoption looked pretty secure.

  Martha nodded but wondered if she’d remember what he was saying.

  “A meeting on the twenty-third? For us both?” she asked nervously.

  He gave her a long amused look. “The third, Martha,” he said. “Of February.”

  “Okay, okay.” Martha checked in her handbag for the tenth time to make sure her and Daisy’s tickets were there. They were, just as they’d been the other nine times. Why was she so rattled? She knew. She was going to miss Anne. She was even going to miss Spook.

  And she was going to miss Fraser. She didn’t know if she’d be able to get to sleep alone in a bed anymore. They’d made love nearly every night since they’d been married. She’d grown used to knowing she could reach out in the dark and find him there beside her always. It was nerve-racking how a person’s life could change so much in such a short time.

  At the airport, she tried to keep her mind on the details. Did she have a snack in her bag for Daisy? What about motion-sickness tablets?

  Then they were at airport security.

  Martha kissed Anne, who shrugged, slightly embarrassed. “Bye,” she said nonchalantly, then promptly reburied her nose in the new Archie comic she’d bought.

  “Hey, you!” Fraser scooped up Daisy, who flung her arms around his neck. “Take care of Martha, darlin’,” he said, grinning at Martha over Daisy’s shoulder and winking. “I think she could use some looking after. She’s getting pretty forgetful these days.”

  “I will, Fraser,” Daisy promised, blue eyes round and serious. “Don’t you worry one little bit.”

  “Well, bye for now,” Martha said hesitantly when Fraser put Daisy down. She felt absolutely foolish. Should she offer him her gloved hand? A formal goodbye to the man who knew her naked body more completely, more intimately, than any man ever had, ever would?

  “So long, Martha.” Fraser took a step forward and crushed her in his arms.

  “Oh!” she gasped. His mouth met hers, hard, demanding, and oh-so-utterly delicious. For a few wonderful seconds she allowed herself to forget all her worries, to allow her senses to swim in the familiarity, the wonder.

  Then he held her away from him, his dark gaze drifting admiringly over her face. Her very pinkcheeked face, she was certain. “For now,” he repeated. Quietly, gruffly.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “You’re coming back,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  She nodded again, biting her lip. “Of course I am,” she said, barely trusting her voice.

  Then they were gone, the tall man guiding the blackhaired girl who turned pages as she walked. And not long afterward, she and Daisy were buckled into seat belts and watching the snowy peaks and windswept fields recede beneath them.

  Daisy colored happily in a book the flight attendant had given her, humming to herself. Martha kept her gaze on the window, the darkening sky, the fluffy goldtinged clouds.

  How could she do this to the man she loved? How could she put him through the hell of remembering, every single day for nine long months, what had happened before, to Charlotte? She realized now that he’d never even said if the baby had been a boy or a girl. That chest in the attic—he’d tried in every way to forget.

  Did it matter so much anymore what she wanted? When she had Daisy to love, and Anne? When she knew beyond a scrap of doubt that she was in love with a man she’d married more or less by accident?
That he was the husband she’d dreamed of? Even if he didn’t love her now—and she knew he didn’t—it wasn’t impossible that he might learn to love her sometime in the future. It could happen; there was a chance.

  For if Martha had even a shred of doubt in her mind as to how deep and real Fraser’s pain was, it had vanished when she’d seen him hold little Betsy. She’d seen the horror he couldn’t hide, the long-buried grief…

  In the glass, Martha saw the slash of reflected tears on her cheeks. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stop them even if she tried.

  She had to release Fraser. She had to let go of her own dream. She had to let it go, so that a larger dream might have a chance to be born.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THIS WAS SOMETHING he had to do himself.

  With Martha and Daisy arriving tomorrow—coming home, something inside him kept saying, coming home—with Anne still at school and Birdie finally gone after the thorough cleaning she’d insisted on doing before Martha’s return, there was no putting it off any longer.

  Fraser pushed back his chair with a scrape and deposited his mug in the kitchen sink. Then, jaw set, he moved toward the back staircase that led to the attic.

  Topaz. She’d always worn it, even here in the backwoods of Wyoming. Wisps of her perfume came to him the instant he opened the trunk he’d wrestled up here the day after he’d come home from the hospital alone. He’d never opened it before now, had only wanted it out of his sight. He’d been afraid of the secrets it might hide, of the life she’d had that she’d never shown him. Nor had he wanted to know then.

  Now he did. Now he wanted to make the fresh start that he knew Martha was making by going back to Madison. Put the past behind him, too. He owed it to Martha and to the girls. He owed it to the future they just might be able to patch together for themselves. It was ironic, really. The family he’d never wanted—an out-of-work Wisconsin tourist passing through and a couple of orphans. That family now seemed to mean more to him each day.

  Life was crazy. There was no figuring it out.

  You’re afraid you’ll find letters—to Weston, to some other lover. You’re afraid you’ll find out why she came up here on the run, pregnant and alone. Needing you.

  She needed me, yes, Fraser told himself grimly, staring at the contents of the trunk but not touching anything. But she loved me, too. And I loved her. And it wasn’t her lover’s child that killed her—it was mine.

  Why, there was nothing but clothes in here. Fraser gathered up a handful, wincing at the memories kindled by the perfume. The clothes themselves meant nothing to him. These were city clothes he’d seldom seen her wear. And hats! Heck, he’d never even seen her wear a hat. Not this kind, anyway. Idly he twirled one on his thumb. It was of finest palest Panama weave with a navy blue ribbon band. He let it fall back into the chest and sat down heavily on a dusty wooden chair with the back spindles missing.

  He looked around, at the long rusty nails poking through the lumber sheathing of the roof, at the cobwebby beams, at the batts of fiberglass insulation that had been added between the floor joists—he remembered the year his father had decided to insulate the place. He’d been about sixteen, and had helped wrestle the scratchy pink bales up into the attic.

  There was his grandmother’s dressmaker’s dummy. Someone had propped an old hat at a rakish angle on the headless neck. At first he almost smiled, then he shuddered and turned away.

  There were piles of his father’s leather-bound books, old ledgers that went back to before Will McKenna’s time, to the days of his grandfather, Fraser—for whom he’d been named—and his great-grandfather, John, who’d settled the land. He hadn’t remembered the ledgers were here. Sometime he ought to take a few down and have a look through them. Might be interesting to see what the price of oats was back then, or what a fellow could get for a hundredweight of grassfed beef.

  All around him were bits and pieces, scrapings of the lives that had gone on under this roof. His grandmother’s curtains in a dusty pile under the eaves. No doubt full of spiders’ nests and mouse tunnels by now. He remembered the roses on them. Cabbage roses, his mother had called them. She’d hated them and had taken them down as soon as there was spare money for new fabric and put up some of her own choosing. Some kind of scenic thing, as he recalled, that hadn’t seemed a great improvement at the time.

  Of course, he reflected, it wasn’t that one set of curtains was really any better than the other, just that they were his mother’s choice. She’d wanted to make her mark on the place. Did Martha feel the same way now that she was living here? Under this roof? Charlotte hadn’t seemed to care and hadn’t done much beyond a coat of paint here and a few new bits of furniture there, although he’d told her she could do what she wanted.

  Suddenly Fraser felt lighter, easier in his mind. He’d come up here with the idea that he’d drag Charlotte’s chest downstairs and load it onto his pickup and take it to the Goodwill store in Pine Ridge. Get rid of it once and for all.

  But now, looking around him, he realized that it might as well stay here. After all, it was only a pile of old clothes. Perhaps Daisy and Anne might like to play with the hats and shoes. They could have anything else they wanted up here, too. There wasn’t much. Mostly junk.

  Fraser bent to toss some of the clothes onto the floor. There were others, carefully folded, under the top layer. Then a shoe box, tied with a ribbon, which he lifted slowly. He felt his heart quicken, then stop. Letters.

  He opened the box. There were envelopes inside, carefully slit open, the whole lot tied up with other ribbons. He replaced the lid of the shoe box, his heart pounding. He retied the ribbon around the box, fumbling in his haste, and thrust it back down into the depths of the chest.

  That was Charlotte Mae. That was private. It wasn’t for him. His first impulse, to take the box down and burn it in the kitchen stove, passed. That kind of violent aggressive action didn’t mean a thing. Rubbing out any personal trace of the woman he’d married didn’t take away the fact that he’d lost her. That she’d died and left him behind with his grief. And his guilt. He couldn’t erase that. He could only accept it and hope that his new life with Martha and the girls would help push the memory from his mind.

  He rummaged in the bottom of the chest. There was another package there, a wide flat box, fairly heavy. Cautiously Fraser pulled out the box, then set it on his knee and opened the heavy pasteboard top.

  It was filled to the brim with carefully folded baby clothes. Little white cotton shirts, leggings, and tiny knitted sweaters. A satin-edged blanket. Fraser felt the sweat run down his sides, although, if anything, it was chilly in the attic. He fought the image that sprang to his mind, of a miniature dusky blue thing with legs, arms and tiny perfect ears. He fought the roaring in his head and won.

  She’d never told him she’d been collecting these things. You never asked, a voice inside him said. She’d been preparing for the birth of a child that never came. Perhaps, the thought struck him, she’d gathered these clothes for the first one, the one she’d lost, the one she’d wept for at night for so many months when she thought he was asleep.

  Perhaps.

  He’d never know. He replaced the lid and put her box gently back on the floor of the chest. He replaced the clothing, the shoes, the hats, the scarves that still whispered her scent. He refastened the metal catches on the trunk, took a deep breath and stood.

  He was going to leave everything just as he’d found it. These few scraps that marked Charlotte’s life were going to stay here, just as his grandmother’s curtains remained, just as his father’s ledgers and old-fashioned riding boots remained. Nothing was going to change. Maybe someday he’d come back and deal with those letters; maybe the contents weren’t something the girls should accidentally discover. Maybe. He’d decide another time.

  For now, all he wanted to think about was Martha. Martha Virginia. The woman he’d married just over a month ago. The honey brown of her hair, so shiny, the fresh scent of her
skin, the way she felt in his arms— willing, eager…alive.

  Martha and the girls.

  Martha coming home.

  “I’VE CHANGED MY MIND, Fraser.”

  Fraser stared at her. Her face was pale, but her voice was determined. He’d noticed since he’d picked them up from the airport this afternoon that Martha seemed quieter than usual, preoccupied. All he’d wanted to do when he’d seen her get off the plane was bring her home and make love to her. It frightened him—the intensity of what he’d felt, the desire. The sheer overwhelming lust he felt for her body. She’d bewitched him. It had taken her absence to make him realize just how completely.

  But when he’d reached for her hand at the ranch, she’d smiled and busied herself with the children—and that bad-tempered excuse for a cat she’d brought back—and said she had something she wanted to discuss with him after the children were in bed. Something important.

  That was all right with him. It was foolish even to think she might have missed him—physically—as much as he’d missed her.

  Still, her words, her serious expression…

  Something inside him chilled. “You haven’t changed your mind, Martha? About staying here with…us.” He’d nearly said, “with me.”

  “No!” She looked surprised. “Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of changing my mind about that. I love the girls. I want this adoption to work out as much as you do.”

  “Okay.” He even managed a slight grin. “So what have you changed your mind about?”

  “About our agreement.” Her eyes were very round. She was nervous; her fingers pleated and repleated the edge of her T-shirt. “About my part of it, that is.”

  He frowned. What was she getting at?