Eternity

by Jude Deveraux

  When Carrie awoke the next morning, the sun was already up, and she immediately felt a bit of panic. She should already be out of bed and dressed, but then, smiling, she lay back against the pillows and thought about last night. Josh’s hands had been all over her. He had hands like a musician’s that wanted to touch all of her, caress her. And he had kissed her and showed her how to kiss him.

  They had made love all night. They had made love with enthusiasm the first time on the river-bank, but in bed they’d taken their time and looked at each other and touched each other. Carrie had been fascinated by Josh’s body, at the strength of it, at the play of muscle under his dark skin. She asked him about scars here and there, and sometimes he’d answer her and sometimes he refused. After a while she realized that he’d tell her anything about himself up to the age of sixteen, but after that he kept his life a secret.

  Touching her and looking at her as he made love to her body, he didn’t ask her any questions, and Carrie tried not to think that it was because he thought he knew all there was to know about her. For one night she was content to live in the present, to not question what was going to happen in the future.

  At one point during the night she had said, “Josh, I love you.” But he hadn’t said anything, merely held her to him tightly, as though he were afraid to let her go.

  Now, Carrie was stretching luxuriously when the bedroom door burst open. Josh was standing there, dressed and as stern looking as she’d ever seen him. “What is it?” she asked. “Are the children all right?”

  “I have taken the children to my brother’s house. Your trunks are loaded and ready to go, and I’ve hired a driver who will take the wagon back to Maine for you. You have to get dressed so we can go.” With that he shut the door again.

  Was this the man she’d spent the night with? Was this the man she’d said she loved?

  Getting out of bed—her marriage bed—she began to dress, but her hands shook on the buttons. Last night had changed nothing, and he wasn’t going to allow her to say good-bye to the children. But then, what could she have said, that she wanted to go? And she couldn’t tell them that their father was forcing her to go, because she didn’t want the children angry at their father. Altogether, maybe her leaving this way was better. If she had to say good-bye, she would have only cried and she would never be able to explain something she didn’t understand herself.

  When she was dressed, her toiletries in her bag, she went outside, where Josh was on the wagon seat, and sitting in the back was a man who tipped his hat to her. Josh’s horse was tied to the back of the wagon—not his beautiful stallion, for that had gone back to his brother, but his old workhorse. When he saw her, Josh came around to help her onto the seat, but he didn’t speak to her.

  Once they were on their way, she spoke. “Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?”

  “Nothing,” he said flatly. “Nothing at all. You deserve more than I can give you. You deserve—”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I deserve and don’t deserve,” she said in fury. “I know what I want.”

  His face set rigidly, Josh stopped speaking.

  Carrie held onto the wagon bed and thought that if he could be silent, so could she. But it wasn’t easy to stop her thoughts, thoughts of last night and of the days she had spent with Josh and his children.

  “Tell Dallas I will write,” Carrie said softly. “Tell her I will send her more books and tell Tem I will send him things about the sea. He wants to see the sea. He says that he wants to be a sailor, and I’m sure Dallas will grow out of wanting to be an actress. All little girls want to be actresses until they grow up so I don’t think you have to worry about her. She’s a good child. She’s the best child. And so is Tem. He won’t have reason to get into trouble again now that I’m gone. Tell him that if he ever sees his Wild Girl again to thank her for me and tell her—”

  She stopped babbling, because tears were beginning to close her throat. When they reached the stage depot, Josh helped her down. She searched his face, but she could see no sign of grief or of reluctance on his part. He may as well have been delivering one of his wormy corn crops to the corn merchant as sending his wife off to never see her again.

  “You don’t care, do you?” she hissed at him. “You had your fun, and that’s all you wanted. You knew what you wanted from me the first moment you saw me and you got that, and now you can send me away without feeling anything.”

  “You’re right,” he said, giving her a lascivious smile. “From the first moment I saw you, I wanted my hands on your shapely little body. It took me a while to manage it, but I did, and now that you’re going I can go back to the happy existence I had before you came.”

  If she’d just heard his words, she’d not have believed them, but his face made her know that he wasn’t lying. No one on earth could look as uncaring as he did and be lying.

  She slapped him. Slapped him hard, and he made no attempt to stop her. In fact, she thought he might stand there and allow her to slap him repeatedly.

  She turned away while she still had some dignity left. “Go on, go back to your miserable little farm. I don’t need you here with me. I don’t want you here. I don’t want to ever see you again.”

  She didn’t hear him move, but she knew when he left, and it was as though a part of her was taken away when he moved. She had to grab the wheel of the wagon to keep herself from running to him and begging him to take her with him. She could imagine herself grabbing his stirrup and pleading with him to allow her to stay.

  Pride, she thought. She must have some pride. The Montgomerys had always been proud. But Carrie didn’t feel very proud right now. What she did feel was lost and alone and homeless.

  When she heard Josh’s horse, in spite of herself, she turned to look up at him, sitting tall and straight on his horse. For just a second, she thought she saw pain on his face. Pain and misery just as deep as she felt. She took a step toward him.

  But then Josh’s face changed back to that insolent look of unconcern, and he tugged at his hat brim. “Good day, Miss Montgomery,” he said. “I enjoyed your visit immensely.” He then winked at her.

  It was the wink that made Carrie turn away and made her shoulders straighten, and when he rode away, she didn’t look back at him.

  “Canceled?” Carrie asked. “The stage is canceled for today?”

  “Broke a wheel,” the depot manager said. “A rider just came in and told us. Anyway, the driver’s dead drunk. Not that that would keep him from drivin’, but, even drunk, he can’t drive a coach that’s got only three wheels.”

  “No, I don’t imagine he can. How long do you think it will be before the next stage arrives?”

  “A week or so,” the man said without concern.

  Carrie turned away from the man at the window of the stage depot. A week? Or so?

  Sitting down on the dusty bench in the depot, she wondered what she was going to do now. She could check into that dreadful little place Eternity called a hotel.

  And do what? she wondered.

  She hadn’t said anything to Josh, but she was very, very low on money. She had brought quite a bit with her to Eternity, but with one thing and another, she had spent nearly all of it. Of course, she didn’t regret any of the money she’d spent, for she was glad that the children now had a nice place to live, but she couldn’t spend day after day in a hotel, no matter how cheap it was.

  Opening her change purse, she counted coins and bills. Ten dollars and twenty cents. That’s all she had after she’d paid for her stage ticket home.

  Money, she thought. That’s what Josh was always talking about, as though money were the most important thing in the world. Over and over she’d told him that there were more important things in life than money, but he’d never believed her.

  Leaning back against the bench, she closed her eyes. How was she going to live in this town for a whole week with no money to speak of? How could she buy food and lodging? She needed to
wire her father to send her money. Right away she saw difficulties with that. First of all, there was no telegraph this far west and a letter would take weeks, if not months. Maybe she could go to the bank and borrow money. With what as collateral? Twenty-two trunks full of used clothing and other assorted goods?

  She grimaced. Wouldn’t Josh smirk at that? The next time he came into town he’d hear how Miss Carrie Montgomery had had no money so she’d used her father’s name and conjured money out of the air. He’d smirk and say that he’d been right, that she was useless: Take away her father and she was nothing.

  “I can make it on my own,” she said aloud.

  “You say somethin’, Mrs. Greene?”

  Carrie smiled. “Not a word.” She stood up. “Do you know anywhere around here where I can get a job?”

  The man seemed to think that was a great joke. “A job? In this town? The most money that’s ever been spent in this town was spent by you last week. There’s nothin’ here for anybody. That’s why people are leavin’ ever’ day.”

  Encouraging news, Carrie thought. Smiling at the man, she thanked him, then left the depot. Once she was outside, she looked up at the sun and pulled on her kid gloves. What could she do to make money? How could she earn a living until the stage did bother to run? Looking at the stack of trunks in the wagon and at the driver asleep in the shade under it, she knew that she wasn’t yet ready to go home and admit to her family that she’d been a failure, that she’d made a horse’s ass of herself over some man and he’d rejected her. She didn’t yet want to go home and cry herself into a stupor. She could hear her brothers telling her that she always had been spoiled—by her other brothers, not by the one lecturing her, of course—and she could see the tears on her mother’s face and the sadness on her father’s. Then, of course, she’d have to give an accounting of the money she’d spent to her oldest brother. He wouldn’t chastise her as the others did. No, she’d just be a disappointment to her eldest brother—and that would be by far worse than all the others.

  She pulled on her glove harder. No, she wasn’t yet ready to go home with her tail between her legs.

  Chapter Twelve

  Six Weeks Later

  There were six carriages in front of the new ladies’ dress shop rather fancifully called Paris in the Desert, and the combined cost of the carriages surpassed the gross national product of all of Eternity. But no one in town was complaining that the carriages were blocking the street, for the customers at the dress shop often stopped in the mercantile store and made a few purchases or even went to the hardware store to buy something. And of course the horses had to be fed and watered so the stableman wasn’t complaining. And the saloon entertained the husbands of the women who were in the dress shop. Six female residents of Eternity had opened two restaurants that were doing a brisk business at lunch, and the hotel had already started adding on a wing to accommodate the new business. Two other women from Eternity had gone in together and opened a hat shop they called The Left Bank across the street from the dress shop. Boardwalks were being laid down to keep the owners of the carriages’ feet out of the mud.

  Inside Paris in the Desert, Mrs. Joshua Greene oversaw all six of her customers without showing the least bit of tension. All of the women were very wealthy and used to getting individual attention when they entered a shop, and at first they had made it known that they didn’t appreciate having to share Carrie with other women.

  But Carrie knew how to handle women who were feeling neglected. She fed some of them, sat others down with the best gossip Eternity had to offer, and to others she handed books. Carrie was adept at guessing who needed what.

  “Horrid color on you,” Carrie said to the customer modeling an expensive silk gown in front of her. “And that neckline makes you look ten years older. No, no, that dress won’t do for you at all.”

  “But I like it,” the woman wailed, then straightened and put her shoulders back. “I like this dress and my husband likes it and I shall buy it.”

  Everyone in the shop looked up, waiting to see what would happen. Carrie had to give in, for the woman was the customer and wasn’t the customer always right?

  Carrie smiled sweetly at the woman. “You’ll not buy it from me, then, for I’ll not have you telling people that I allowed one of my customers to go out into the world looking like an old woman. My customers leave here looking their very best. Now, would you please remove that dress and return it to me?”

  The woman had terrorized shopkeepers in four states, and she wasn’t going to admit defeat easily. She smiled in a superior way at Carrie. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” Putting her nose in the air, she started toward the door. “I shall, of course, pay you, Mrs. Greene.” She had her hand on the door before she felt the back of her dress give way, and, with eyes wide in astonishment, she whirled around.

  Carrie was smiling at her, a large pair of shears in her hand. “So sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid the dress is ruined.” Carrie held up a large piece of expensive silk that she had cut from the back of the dress.

  The customer was torn between rage and tears as she stood at the door, not knowing what to do.

  “Why don’t you come back here and look at some lovely peach-colored silk that I have in stock? The peach will go so well with your clear, pale complexion, and I can see you with white egret feathers in your hair. You will stop crowds.” When the woman didn’t move, Carrie took her firmly by the arm and led her to what she and her three saleswomen privately called the Recovery Room.

  “See to her,” Carrie said to her assistant as she gave a sigh as she looked down at the fabric she held. Another dress ruined and she’d have to bear the expense of it. Stupid woman, she thought. No taste at all, none whatsoever. Carrie saw it as her duty to save the women from themselves, and, also, she had to maintain her own reputation. She’d never get any more business if “her” ladies were seen looking less than their best.

  Carrie looked back at the five women sitting in the front room, each patiently waiting her turn to be told what to wear, and she sighed again. Sometimes the responsibility of it all was nearly too much for her.

  “I’m going to get the mail,” she said. “You babysit for a while, but if Mrs. Miller gives you any trouble about that white dress, tell her to wait for me.” Carrie smiled. “But after having seen what happens to women who cross me, I think she’ll be docile enough. I’ll be back in—” Pausing, she looked outside at the late autumn sunshine. “I’ll be back when I get back.”

  Joshua Greene and his children rode into town, all three of them mounted on his old workhorse. It had been weeks since any of them had left the grounds of the farm, weeks since they had had any contact with people other than themselves. Josh’s brother Hiram hadn’t come to visit since his new sister-in-law had poured food over him. Three times people from Eternity had come to the farm, but each time Josh had run them off, because he hadn’t felt like talking to anyone. The day after Carrie had gone, he’d left a note for Mrs. Emmerling saying that her services would no longer be needed. She’d cooked a great deal of food that day and left it for him and the children, and she’d also refunded the money Carrie had paid her for the rest of the month.

  When the food that Mrs. Emmerling had cooked ran out, Josh again tried to cook the meals for himself and his children. The first time the children ate his burned meal, he prepared himself for their comments, but they didn’t say anything. They ate what he put in front of them and said nothing at all.

  In fact, they’d said nothing six weeks ago when he’d told them that Carrie was gone. He’d had that long, long ride back from the stage depot to think of reasons to give his children about why Carrie had gone, and he’d prepared himself for a scene of the most awful proportions. He had been prepared for hysterics and tears, but he wasn’t ready for the quiet resignation of his children. After informing them that Carrie had returned to Maine, he had braced himself for the ensuing storm.

  But the children had just nodd
ed at him as though it was something they had expected. They were like two wise old people who had seen everything and knew that nothing good was going to come to them in this life. He wanted to explain to them that he’d sent Carrie away for their sakes, that he knew she’d grow tired of playing housewife and then she and that absurd little dog of hers would leave them. He wanted to tell the children that it was better that they had given Carrie only a week’s worth of love rather than months’ worth. And he’d wanted to tell them that Carrie was a fairy princess who had come into their lives for just a short time and that she wasn’t real. He wanted to tell the children that they’d forget her in no time.

  But in the weeks that followed, neither he nor the children could forget her. Not that they talked about her. Not even Dallas asked questions about why Carrie had gone, and Josh tried to tell himself that it would soon be as though Carrie had never entered their lives. When they were alone again, the family settled back into the routine they had established before Miss Carrie Montgomery had seen the photograph of them.

  But no matter how much Josh told himself that they’d forget her and that soon everything would be as it was, he knew that he was lying to himself. Nothing was the same. Nothing at all. Not he nor the children nor the farm was as it once was.

  It wasn’t just that they missed her. It wasn’t just that the very sight of the house with its roses outside and in made them think of Carrie. It was that she had changed the way they looked at their lives. For a while she had made them happy. She had made them laugh and smile and sing and tell stories and laugh some more.

  At first Josh tried to recreate Carrie within his own house, forcing himself to pretend that he wasn’t aching for her and trying to make pleasant, entertaining conversation at the dinner table. The children also made valiant efforts to be cheerful, but it didn’t work. One night Josh tried asking the children to pretend to be animals, but he found himself criticizing their performances rather than enjoying them, so soon the children sat down, their eyes downcast, and said they were tired and didn’t want to pretend anymore.