Having misjudged his mother set Caleb to thinking about some of the things Abby said about God and letting Him become a part of life. His thoughts drifted back to his sixteenth summer when he’d gone to town for a night of revelry with his friends and found that Wolf Creek Church was holding a revival.
Caught up by the size of the crowd, he’d wandered over in time to hear the preacher talk about Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. Caleb realized his life wasn’t what it should be, and along with many others had been immersed in the nearby creek. He remembered how good he’d felt when he’d come up out of the water, how clean.
Then he’d gone home and told Lucas what he’d done. It hadn’t taken his father’s ridicule long to shatter Caleb’s newfound peace and joy. He’d tried to stay faithful for a while, but gradually, he’d slipped back into his old ways.
Now, thinking about the parable of the seeds and Abby’s explanation of them, he knew he’d received the message with gladness, but his new and fragile faith had no time to take root before Lucas’s taunts had ripped it away.
Caleb had thought a lot about his life and God as he’d driven through the night, and he’d decided that with Abby and God on his side, there was hope that he could become a better man.
Unable to wait until morning to catch the next train to Wolf Creek, he’d paid an exorbitant price to rent the buggy and had driven all night.
The nearer he got to the house the better he could see. No one was outside doing chores. The house was dark and uninviting. There was no smoke coming from the chimneys, and there would be no mouthwatering scent of bacon frying when he stepped through the back door. No Abby bustling around. No Ben waiting patiently to start eating. No Betsy sleeping in her cradle and no Laura waiting with a wide smile.
He was too late.
Pulling the wagon to a stop near the back porch, he jumped down, looped the reins over the hitching post and trudged up the back steps, his jaw set and his heart like a stone in his chest.
He’d see how things were with Frank and Leo, and then he’d go back into town, check on Betsy and then go and buy a ticket to Springfield. When he found Abby, he’d tell her that he was a fool, that he loved her, that he’d try harder to be what she and the children needed. He’d get down on his knees and beg her to come back, if that’s what it took. After all, he was the one who’d said he believed in the sanctity of marriage.
When he opened the door, the first thing he saw was Laura’s empty chair. He could picture her smile with her little nose wrinkled up as she held up her arms for him to hold her. Caleb blinked hard and let his gaze roam the cold, spotless room. He should have known Abby would leave things clean and tidy.
There was no fire in the fireplace, and with a sigh, he reached for the shovel and bucket to clean out the ashes. The first scoop revealed red-hot coals. They hadn’t been gone all that long then. Late yesterday, maybe. He was reaching for some slivers of pine knot when he heard a sound behind him and bolted to his feet.
Abby stood in the doorway wearing the ratty red plaid robe and a pair of his wool socks. Wavy blond hair had escaped her braid and straggled around her pale face. There were purple smudges beneath her eyes from lack of sleep.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“You’re still here.” An absurd thing to say, but a ridiculous joy was filling his heart.
“And where else would I be?” she asked, launching herself across the room. For an instant, Caleb thought she was running into his arms. Then he realized that it was not welcome he saw in her eyes. It was fury.
Before he could more than register that fact, she flung herself at him.
“Don’t you ever, ever send me away again!” she cried, anger bracing her voice while her small fists beat feebly at his chest, punctuating every word.
Of all the things he’d expected, this was not it. He circled her wrists with his fingers in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.
“Calm down, Abby,” he said, holding her at arm’s length and frowning down at her.
“I won’t calm down!” she choked out, tears streaming down her cheeks as she struggled to free herself. “I won’t leave, and I won’t let you leave, either. If you do, I’ll hunt you down.”
A curious peace began to steal through him as she spoke. All the pain from the previous days evaporated like a mist burned away by the sun.
“Why would you do that, Abby?” he asked softly, gentling his hold.
She glared at him and even stomped her foot. Laughter of pure joy welled up inside him and spilled into the room. She was really something when she was mad.
“Because I love you, you big thickheaded lout! And don’t you dare laugh at me! We promised before God that we would stay together until we die and I promised to love you but I didn’t and I felt guilty because I was lying to God but the children loved you and then suddenly I did, too, and you promised to love me, Caleb, you promised, and you will love me, I’ll make you love me if it’s the last thing I do!”
The words came out in a rush, one long meandering statement that could be summed up in six words. He was a very lucky man.
“You’d do that?” he asked, releasing his hold on her and reaching out to push a wayward lock of hair out of her eyes. She trembled at his touch. “You’d really hunt me down?”
Suddenly all the starch went out of her and she collapsed against him, burying her face against his chest. “If I had to I would.” She looked up at him with troubled eyes. “Will I have to?”
He smiled then, and knew his world was all right once again, maybe for the first time in his life. “No, Abby. You won’t have to hunt me down, and you can’t make me love you, because I already do.”
With a little cry, she wound her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.
Finally, he pulled away, a smile on his lips. “I forgot to tell you that I’ve finally found something fun. Something I like.”
Wearing a bemused expression, Abby ran a fingertip over one of his dark eyebrows. “You did? What?”
“Seeing you mad. It’s fantastic.”
“Seeing me...” she began heatedly, and then stopped when she realized he was teasing her. “And why do you like making me mad?”
“Because your eyes light up with fire, and...I don’t know, you’re just amazing when you’re angry.”
“You are a strange man, Caleb Gentry,” she said with a shake of her head.
“But you love me.”
“I do.”
He kissed her again, kissed her the way he’d wanted to for weeks, the way he would kiss her for the rest of their lives.
Chapter Thirteen
One year later
“Whas that, Mama?” almost two-year-old Laura asked, pointing out the window.
Abby rose from the rocking chair near the fire, where she’d been sewing a patch on Ben’s denim overalls, and went to look out the window.
“That’s snow. Isn’t it pretty?” she said, her heart filling with wonder at how the pristine blanket of white covered the dreary winter landscape, capping the barn roof and fence tops with white and leaving a glittering layer on the pine boughs and bare branches of the trees. It looked as if they’d been dressed up especially for Christmas, which was just two days away. The timing couldn’t be better.
“See the snow, Betsy?” Abby said, pulling the little girl close and pointing to the flurry of flakes falling outside the window.
“See,” one-year-old Betsy chimed in, copying her mother.
“It’s pretty,” Laura repeated with a smile.
“If there’s enough on the ground, by morning, you and Ben can go outside and make a snowman,” Abby told her.
“Snowman?”
Abby laughed and drew her other daughter close. “I’ll just have to show you. And if it’s
deep enough to be clean, I’ll make snow ice cream.”
Laura’s eyes, the same brilliant blue as her mother’s, lit with delight. She knew all about ice cream. “Mmm. Like ice cream.”
“Speaking of mmm, would you like me to make you some hot chocolate while we’re waiting for your dad and brother to get back?”
“Hot choc’late!” Laura cried, turning to skip toward the kitchen. Betsy, who had been walking for only a month, fell in her haste to follow her sister. With a laugh, Abby picked her up, though with the size of her tummy, it was getting harder and harder to carry her for very long.
As she went about settling the little ones in their high chairs, adding a couple of logs to the fire blazing in the fireplace and making the hot cocoa, Abby couldn’t help comparing this Christmas with the previous one. A year ago, she’d been in a hopeless situation, newly married to a man she didn’t even know, just to provide a home for her two children and a wet nurse for his child.
This year everything had changed. She was Betsy’s only mother, just as Caleb was Laura’s only father. Though Ben and Caleb would always butt heads from time to time, probably because Ben was as argumentative as his outspoken mother, they had grown as close as any father and son. Ben was teaching Caleb how to enjoy boyish pursuits, and Caleb was leading Ben toward manhood one step at a time.
Abby grew to love Caleb more every day. She could not bear to think what her life might have been like if she hadn’t listened to Ben’s insistence that they stay despite what Caleb had ordered her to do. She was expecting his son or daughter any time now.
The day she’d told him she was having his baby he’d turned as pale as a ghost, turned away without a word and disappeared for hours. Worried that he was unhappy about adding another child to the three they already shared, Abby found him down by the creek Ben had almost fallen into the day he went missing. Caleb was sitting on a big rock near the edge of the creek, staring at the rain-swollen water, as if he might find answers there.
She’d approached him with more trepidation than she’d felt with him for months. When he heard her footsteps, he’d looked up for just a second and then turned away. In that moment, no more than a heartbeat, she’d seen the torment in his eyes. Of all the things she’d imagined him feeling, she had not expected his reaction to be anguish.
Sudden understanding snatched away her breath.
Kneeling behind him, she slid her arms around his waist, resting her cheek against the work-hardened muscles of his back. He stiffened at her touch, and then she felt the tension holding him ease a bit. She let their breathing and their heartbeats meld into one while she struggled to find the words to ease his torment.
“It will be all right, Caleb,” she said at last. “Nothing will happen to me.”
“Can you promise me that, Abby?” He jerked free and stood so suddenly that she had to catch herself with her palms. Contrition replaced the despair in his eyes. He bent and helped her to her feet, but released her as soon as she was steady.
“I thought you might want us to have a child together.”
His answer was to throw back his head and laugh, a bitter, hopeless sort of laugh. When he lowered his gaze to hers, his silver eyes were glazed with tears. Finally, he reached for her, pulling her so close she thought he would crush her. Instead of pulling away, she pressed even closer, willing her strength and certainty to permeate every atom of his being so that he could face his wrenching fear.
“Heaven only knows there’s nothing I’d like more, but not at the risk of losing you.” He whispered the words into her hair.
“You won’t lose me,” she said again.
“How can you be so sure?” he asked, gripping her shoulders and holding her at arm’s length. “Why should God give me anything when I’ve done so little for Him? I try to pray, and I go to church with you, and I try to be a decent person, but I wake up every day wondering if this is the day He’ll decide I’ve had enough happiness and take it all away.”
“Oh, Caleb,” she said, lifting a hand to cradle it against his stubble on his cheek. “What a terrible way to live! We’re supposed to wake up each day and rejoice in it. Good or bad may come, but even if it does, He’ll help us through it the same way He did when He brought us together last fall.”
“God working in His mysterious ways?” he said with a dubious lift of his dark eyebrows.
She nodded and watched his eyes, imagining she saw a lessening of the desolation reflected there. Hoping to lighten his mood even more, she gave a slight lift of her shoulders. “We can’t undo it, you know. And even if we could, I don’t want to.”
“You’re happy, then?”
She spoke with no hesitation. “Happier than I can say.”
“But you’ll have three babies to care for.”
She gave him a stern look and raised her eyebrows. “I intend for you to help, Mr. Gentry.”
He shook his head. “A year ago, I had one child I didn’t know what to do with. Soon I’ll have four.”
“But you do know what to do with them,” she’d told him.
“I do?”
She’d nodded. “Give them a firm, steady hand and do it with love.”
“That simple, huh?” he’d said, finally smiling a bit.
“Well, no. But it’s a good starting place.” She’d grasped his hands with hers and tugged gently. “Come home, Caleb,” she’d urged. “It’s almost dinnertime, and I left Frank and Leo watching the children.”
He did smile then, and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Now that’s a scary thought.”
The sound of feet stomping off snow sounded on the back porch and brought Abby’s thoughts back to the present. Caleb and Ben burst through the door, accompanied by a blast of frigid air.
“I smell hot chocolate!” Ben cried.
“Me, too,” Caleb said. “I hope you made enough for us men.” Abby didn’t fail to notice the way Ben’s chest swelled with importance at being called a man.
“As a matter of fact, I did. I thought we could warm it up later.”
“We didn’t tarry in town. Just got our supplies and—” he winked at Ben, and swung Laura up in one arm, Betsy in the other “—did our Christmas shopping and got on our way. It’s really getting cold out there. I’d guess the snow’s already four or five inches deep. By the way, Mary and Bart sent their gifts, just in case they can’t make it on Christmas.”
Quite a speech for a man who had trouble expressing his feelings just over a year ago, Abby thought. “Surely it won’t get that bad,” she said, “but if it does, I suppose it’s a good thing we’re ready.”
“Dad says you can never tell about this Arkansas weather,” Ben said, taking the cup she offered him. With a soft smile, Abby handed a second cup to her husband. This time it was Caleb’s turn to puff out his chest a bit.
Seeing the growing closeness between the two men in her life was as perfect an ending as Abby could want for a cold snowy day.
* * *
The mantel clock chimed 3:00 a.m. Abby had risen an hour earlier to pace the parlor floor. The evening had gone downhill ever since dinner, when her lower back had begun to ache. The baby, who’d been doing somersaults the past day or so, lay heavy inside her. Symptoms she knew well. She hoped she could hold off sending Caleb for Rachel until daylight. From what she could tell, the snow was still falling.
Without warning, a pain struck, robbing her of breath and sending her to her knees. When it passed, she clung to the wing chair and heaved herself to her feet. Like her others, this baby looked to be anxious to be born.
“Abby?”
The sound of Caleb’s voice sent her gaze flying to the bedroom doorway.
“What are you doing up?” she asked as he crossed the space separating them and took her in his arms.
“I heard you cry out,” h
e said. “The baby?”
She nodded against his chest. “I wanted to wait until morning to send you for Rachel, but my babies come fast, and something tells me this one is impatient to get here.”
“Go back to bed. I’ll get ready and—” His horrified voice came to a sudden halt as Abby doubled over in his arms.
When the pain passed, she grabbed double handfuls of his shirt and gave him an angry shake. “Listen to me, Caleb! You won’t have time to go for Rachel!” she almost snarled. “I’ve had two very strong pains in a matter of minutes.”
He paled before her eyes. “Surely you aren’t implying that you want me to help with the delivery.”
Realizing that she was not behaving in a rational manner, she released her hold on his shirt and smoothed it with gentle, deliberate hands. It was hard to act reasonable when you felt as if you were being torn apart, but there was no time to plead her case. Things had to be done, and soon.
Trying to maintain her composure, she looked up at him and said in a serene tone, “I’m trying to be sensible, Caleb, but if you do not want me to have a conniption fit, you will stop wallowing in self-pity and do what needs to be done.”
Even though her demeanor was tranquil, the fury in her eyes would have left a lesser man quaking. His eyes narrowed in response. “Now is not the time for one of your tantrums, woman.”
Abby remembered her mother telling her that when men encountered a situation that scared the living daylights out of them, they resorted to temper. She smiled, her own anger gone as quickly as it had come.
“I’m glad you finally realize that,” she said in a voice dripping sarcasm just before she doubled over with another pain.
Caleb held her until it passed and spoke against her hair. “I adore the ground you walk on, Abby, but I don’t think I can do this.”
He sounded broken. Panting, she straightened and looked at him. Panic had gathered like storm clouds in his gray eyes. At least he’d gone from not being able to do it to not thinking he could. Everything with Caleb was baby steps, but this time there was no time to take things slow.
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