Because you were the first one I thought of when I felt lost.
“I wondered if you had seen the boys.”
He turned away and shrugged on his shirt. “They’re at the stream.”
Instead of going after the children, she lingered while he went about his business as if she were not there at all. Leaving her standing there in awkward silence, he ducked low and stepped into the lean-to. From where she stood Olivia could see his bedroll and, unfortunately, she found it easy to imagine lying there in the dark beside him. She wondered what it would be like to look up at the stars, listen to the call of the hoot owls in the trees with him. Did he think of her as often as she thought of him, she wondered, or had he really been able to dismiss her almost entirely?
Right now he did not particularly act as if he wanted her there at all. On the verge of complete humiliation, Olivia looked off in the direction of the stream.
“I just did something I shouldn’t have,” she admitted softly, feeling better already for having voiced her concern aloud. It didn’t really matter whether he listened or not, she decided; she just needed to talk.
“I was sharp with Susanna. I told her that she has mourned long enough and that she needs to take care of the living.” She shuddered. She had only meant to help, not hurt.
Noah had buttoned up his shirt by now, so she no longer had to avoid looking at his distracting muscles. He was on his haunches, stirring the embers of the fire, and gave no indication that he had even heard her until he straightened.
“I know nothing of families, Olivia.”
With heavy sadness in her heart, she took a few steps toward a nearby bush, plucked a stem covered with leaves and fanned it back and forth. She had asked for this. She had wanted him to give up caring about her, but she had not expected it to hurt when he did. With the stem in her hand, she turned and caught Noah watching her from across the campfire.
Quickly, he looked away. She crossed the clearing to stand over him.
“Are you having supper with us tonight?”
Mentally she tallied what supplies they had. Thanks to Noah, the new smokehouse was well stocked. He had taught her father how to smoke meats and instructed him to butcher a couple of wild hogs in the fall so they would have an abundant supply of ham.
Noah stood up and appeared to be concentrating on her mouth. Then he met her eyes. His expression was so set, so determined, that she thought he was about to decline.
“I’ll come, as long as I don’t have to sit beside Freddie.”
Her heart lightened, Olivia laughed.
“I really have to be getting back.”
There was corn bread to bake, beans to boil, breakfast to clear away, clothes to wash and hang. In between she would find a little time to hoe a row or two in the vegetable patch.
They stood nearly toe to toe now. She watched the rise and fall of his chest. Knowing what it felt like to be held against his heart did not make going back any easier.
“I really do have to leave,” she said lamely.
“So you said.”
She needed to linger in his presence, if only for a moment longer. A few scant inches separated them. She heard him let out a long, heavy sigh. Her feet were rooted to the ground. She lifted her eyes to his face.
“Olivia,” he whispered, bringing his lips closer to hers, “you really should go now.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
His hands never left his sides, but his mouth was so close that she could almost taste him. She closed her eyes, wishing she had the power to deny her need for this man. She did not want to hurt him for anything in the world. Half expecting him to walk away and leave her standing there like a fool, she was surprised and captivated when his mouth touched hers. He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue, tentatively, searching and exploring, tasting.
She moaned low in her throat and dropped the leafy stem as she reached for his arms. Beneath his shirt, his forearms were corded with muscle. He had not moved, nor did she, even when she touched him. She ran her hands down his arms, and found his hands knotted into fists. He was holding himself back. She knew what it must be costing him, for it cost her, too. The temptress that Darcy had awakened in her smiled even as her conscience prodded her to stop. Her grip tightened on Noah’s wrists, and then she let go. When the kiss ended, she did not step back.
He was breathing heavily and looked pained.
Unfortunately, she dropped her gaze and immediately saw that he was aroused. Quickly, she looked back up.
“Does it amuse you, Olivia, to play with me the way Freddie plays with fireflies in the evening?” His voice was rough, gravelly, as if the words had to fight their way out of him.
Each evening the boys ran along the edge of the wood catching lightning bugs, trapping them in their sweaty hands, shoving them down inside empty bottles. The insects would beat themselves against the glass, their bright yellow-green glow sadly weakening, until by morning they lay burnt out on the bottom of the bottles.
She shook her head to deny it, but before she could utter a word, a high-pitched scream came from somewhere nearby. She immediately recognized Freddie’s voice.
“Noah? Noah!” The boy was coming down the trail toward the camp and although they could not see him through the trees yet, there was no denying the frantic sound in his voice.
“Over here, Freddie,” Olivia yelled back as she started to run toward the trail. Suddenly the little towhead shot into the clearing, panting like a scared rabbit, his eyes wide and frantic.
“You gotta come, Livvie. You too, Noah.”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” She knelt down and grabbed his bony shoulders.
Freddie gulped until he finally squawked, “Little Pay’th drowned himthelf! I think he’th dead.”
• • •
The words were as effective as ice water. Noah’s hot blood cooled instantly. Here was trouble of a kind he could handle, not like the confusing, mysterious torment Olivia stirred in him whenever she was near.
He sidestepped both of them and ran down the trail toward the creek. The water had been running high and swift this morning, eddying in a gentle whirling motion near the rocks in the center of the stream. To him, the current was next to nothing. To a child, it would be deadly.
The path ended at the water’s edge. He heard Olivia and Freddie on the trail behind him, shouting back and forth as they ran. He scanned the pool, saw no sign of the other boy.
“He wath there.” Breathless, Freddie ran up beside him, stood against Noah’s thigh and pointed to the middle of the stream. “He wath right there!” Then he began to wail.
Noah did not hesitate. He stepped into the stream and made a skimming dive across the surface of the water toward the center of the pool. Then he dove. His eye patch tore away as he shot through the water and swept it with his hands. Feeling around for Little Pay, he hoped to come in contact with the child’s body before it was too late. He surfaced and gulped air, dove again.
Suddenly, a strange, gentle peace began to flow through him, one so calming that it was astounding. Then something most odd began to happen. In a voice not unlike the bubbling gurgle of the stream, the water itself seemed to guide him. If he had not been feeling so tranquil, he would have thought that he was going mad, but as clearly as if it could communicate in words, the water guided him ahead, then to the right. He soon felt the brush of cloth beneath his palm. His fingers closed over the fabric. He tugged Little Pay into his arms and surfaced.
Only seconds had passed, and yet it might have been hours. Once he surfaced, Noah could still hear the odd whispers, not unlike voices in the water, but upon seeing Little Pay lying so lifeless, his skin pale, his lips blue, the strange connection with the water was broken. Noah waded to the bank of the stream where Olivia stood with her fist shoved against her mouth. Above her hand, her eyes were stark with shock. Freddie was trembling, his face white as dogwood blossoms.
Little Pay dangled limp as a wet rag in
Noah’s arms. He looked down at the boy and then into Olivia’s eyes.
“Take him home,” she whispered.
The cabin was no more than a few hundred yards away from Noah’s shelter in the wood and though he was certain the boy was dead, something compelled him to run the distance. Why, he could not say, except perhaps because Little Pay’s body was the heaviest burden he had ever carried in his life and he wanted to be rid of it.
He wanted to lay the boy out in his home, turn tail and run. To leave the Bonds and all their heartache behind. He did not want to see Payson Bond’s face when the man looked upon his lifeless son. He did not want to hear Susanna’s cries or watch her go entirely insane.
And Olivia? Maybe now she would leave and go with him. Maybe now she would leave these people and all their misery and go with him back to Heron Pond.
As his legs pumped and his feet crushed the sprouting corn, the boy’s lithe body bounced up and down in his arms. As he neared the cabin, his thoughts crystalized. He had been better off raised without the knowledge of family ties, or of what it meant to love more than one person at a time, to care for more than one, to lose and bury not just one, but many.
In the face of the this new, sudden tragedy of the Bonds, he was shaken by the knowledge that if the child in his arms were his own son, he did not think he could go on.
When Payson heard Olivia shouting, he walked to the corner of the cabin and looked across the field. He was weak from this latest bout of ague. Dizziness still came and went, so at first when he saw Noah racing toward the cabin, carrying what looked like a rag doll with its arms and legs flopping, with Olivia running behind him and Freddie trying to keep up, Payson thought he was hallucinating. But then he heard Olivia cry out for Noah to wait. Freddie had tripped in a dirt trough and lay there spent, facedown in the cornfield.
When his mind cleared, Payson realized that it was no doll in Noah’s arms and he ran to meet them, ignoring the pebbles that cut his bare feet. His legs felt as if they might give out at any second. When he ran up to Noah and saw Little Pay’s bleached skin, the water dribbling out of the corner of his mouth and down the side of his cheek, he staggered, but he did not fall.
He tried to stop the big man, but Noah kept running and passed him by, headed for the cabin. Noah dwarfed the child so that from behind, all Payson saw were Little Pay’s bare feet and knobby ankles dangling over his arm.
Payson remembered Susanna, worn out from crying, still seated in the rocker in her spot of warm sunshine. In a few strides Noah would be there, tearing down the partially mended fabric of her fragile will to go on. Payson became frantic to reach her first, but there was no way in hell he could overtake the taller, stronger man.
When he came around the corner of the cabin, it was too late to do anything but watch. Noah stood there holding Little Pay, looking as if he had just awakened from a bad dream and wasn’t quite sure of where he was. Payson saw Susanna slowly turn around. He expected her to scream when she saw Noah holding Little Pay.
Instead, she carefully pushed herself up out of the rocker and slowly walked over to Noah. Payson hurried to join them.
“Give him to me,” Payson said to Noah. “Give me my boy.”
Noah did not let go.
“What happened?” As calm as death, Susanna reached out. Her hand was steady as she brushed Little Pay’s hair back off his forehead.
“He walked into the pool in the stream.” Noah’s breath was still uneven.
Susanna raised her arms. He gently lowered the boy into them. She seemed to droop under the load, even though the boy weighed next to nothing soaking wet. She did not falter as she walked back to the rocking chair. Holding her son against her breast, she sat back down and cradled him as she had not done since Little Pay had grown tall and lanky and considered himself a boy, not a baby.
With his sorely tried strength ebbed to nothing, Payson watched his wife and somehow summoned the courage to stand beside her, close to the rocker, so that his thigh rubbed against her shoulder. Words lodged in his throat.
Susanna whispered to their son. “I see you now, Little Pay. I love you, baby.” She bent and pressed a tender kiss to her older son’s soft, suntanned cheek. Then she started rocking him gently, patting him on the back as if he were no older than an infant.
Olivia and Freddie had reached the cabin. Payson heard them behind him, heard his daughter whisper frantically to Noah, listened to Freddie as the boy hiccuped down sobs. Payson looked down upon Susanna and Little Pay with no notion of how he could go on. He was trapped between purgatory and hell. He could not return Susanna to her father and tell the man that because he, Payson, had been too stubborn to live off charity, it had cost the wealthy Virginian, Richard Morrison, two of his grandchildren and Susanna’s sanity.
He squeezed his eyes closed, ran a hand over his face, and finally forced himself to move. “Let me take him.” He bent toward Susanna, then paused. He felt his stomach drop to his toes. Was his mind playing tricks on him?
Had Little Pay’s lashes just fluttered?
“Noah,” Payson said, waving him closer, daring to hope. “Noah, come see if he’s breathing,” he whispered.
The other man’s clothing was soaked, water dripped onto the ground around his feet, but LeCroix was there in an instant, leaning over Susanna, softly begging her pardon, pressing two fingers against the thin blue vein in Little Pay’s neck. The color from the turkey-red shirt he was wearing spotted the shoulder of Susanna’s faded yellow gown. It wasn’t until Noah looked up at Payson that he realized LeCroix had lost his eye patch. The puckered depression on the scarred side of his face was not horrible at all. The relief in his good eye was unmistakable.
“He’s alive,” Noah whispered in awe. For a moment Payson thought LeCroix might actually be moved to tears.
“Let’s get him inside,” Payson said.
Susanna quickly handed the boy over to Payson, rose, and followed close behind her husband as he carried Little Pay in and laid him in the center of the bed.
“Livvie, help me get his clothes off.” Susanna spoke in a low but firm tone, the first time she had sounded like her old self in almost a year. As she started unbuttoning the boy’s shirt, Olivia hurried around to the opposite side of the bed and bent to the task of stripping off his too-short pants.
Payson stood at the foot of the bed, shoving his hands through his hair. While Susanna and Livvie worked together again with swift, silent efficiency, he watched them through a blur of tears. His world had just righted itself and settled back into place.
Standing apart from the Bonds in a pool of sunlight that streamed through the open door, Noah watched Susanna and Olivia undress Little Pay, prop his head on the pillows, and draw the covers over his bony chest. He was not aware of Freddie beside him until he felt a small, warm hand slip into his and hold on tight. He looked down. Freddie looked up.
“Whath happening?” Freddie whispered, all eyes and tousled white-blond hair. “I thought Little Pay wath dead.”
The boy’s hand was as fragile as a sparrow’s wing. Noah could feel the tiny bones beneath the skin, so fragile that if he barely squeezed at all, he would crush them. The thought was intimidating.
“He’s not dead,” Noah whispered back. “I think maybe when I ran across the field, I shook the water out of him.”
Freddie smiled up at him. “You did good, Noah. I would be tho lonethome if Little Pay wath really dead.”
Noah knelt down until he was at eye level with the boy. “What happened at the pool, Freddie?”
The child stared back intently. “Where did your eye go?”
Noah blinked his good eye and sighed. He had forgotten until now that his eye patch had come off in the pool.
“I was in an accident and it got poked out.”
“Doeth it hurt?”
Noah shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“Can I touch it?”
“What?”
“Can I touch the hole?”
<
br /> Noah looked over at Olivia, hoping for rescue, but she was sitting on the bed opposite Susanna. Both women were holding Little Pay’s hands, talking to the boy, who was conscious again.
Noah sighed. “All right.”
Freddie’s eyes were round with fear, but his hand came up. With one finger, he barely touched the empty eye socket before he jerked his hand away. Then his narrow little chest swelled.
“What happened at the pool, Freddie?”
“Little Pay waded in and I hollered to him not to go too far but he juth kept walkin’ until he wath up to his butt and then hith middle and then hith cheth and then he juth … dithappeared.”
Noah stood up again, drawing Olivia’s attention. When she gazed at him across the room as if he had hung the moon, his heart plummeted to his feet. Freddie let go of his hand and ran straight over to Olivia. She hugged the boy before he climbed up onto her lap, then she slipped her arm around his waist to anchor him there.
“Hey, Little Pay,” Freddie spoke to his brother as conversationally as if nothing untoward had happened. “I got to put my finger in Noah’th eye hole!”
Little Pay flashed a grand smile over at Noah, then turned back to his brother. “Well that’s nothing. I saw a heavenly band of angels in the pool.”
Noah watched Olivia reach out and tap the end of Little Pay’s nose. “Don’t go telling tales, Little Pay.”
“I’m not, Livvie,” the boy insisted. “I really did see a whole bunch of them. They had golden halos and the fluffiest, softest white wings you ever saw and they all talked to me.”
“What did they say, son?” Payson was seated beside Susanna. Noah never knew so many people could fit on a bed and oddly enough, none of them looked in the least uncomfortable.
“They told me that they had plenty of angels for now and that they wanted me to go on back home.” He looked up at his mother, whose hand rested on his chest, above his heart. “They told me I wouldn’t have any more accidents.”
Susanna leaned down and hugged him close. “That’s good, son. That’s real good news. Isn’t it, Livvie?”
Olivia squeezed Freddie so hard he yelped. “Ow, Livvie! You’re thquithin’ me!”
Blue Moon Page 15