To Love and to Cherish (32 page)

Catherine jumped at the sound of her name. “I have to make a kneeling confession in front of the entire community.” She stood. “I have to admit to the sin of lying to Melvin about loving him and ask to be forgiven. I don’t think I’ll ever be all right.”

Luke made a
humph
sound deep in his throat. “The idea of confession is to be forgiven and then move on. The sin is not only forgiven, but forgotten.”

“Melvin won’t forget. He’ll try very hard to forgive, but it’ll be impossible for him to forget.” Catherine smoothed her apron with hands. “Likewise with his sisters and brothers and parents. They’re right not to forget.”

Her face listless, she shuffled from the room. Emma started to go after her. Luke’s voice stopped her. “No, Emma. Drawing names for Christmas gifts is a family tradition. She’ll not ruin that with her self-pity and hysteria.”

Hysteria. Emma swallowed a retort. Catherine didn’t eat. She barely slept. Her behavior posed no threat of hysteria. It seemed that all the emotion and energy had drained from her, leaving a shell of a person with no life left. Emma held the bowl out to Luke. “Your turn, then.”

Luke’s expression said he knew what she was thinking and ignoring it. His fingers rummaged through the remaining slips. He took a quick look at the one he drew. His lips curved into a small smile. Whose name had he drawn? If not Leah, one of his boys. They were the only ones who made him smile anymore.

Emma waited until everyone else drew their names and then extracted the remaining scrap of paper. Leah. So Luke hadn’t drawn her name. Emma swallowed the desire to sigh. She must tame the discontent that bucked inside her like a horse that needed to be broken. The season of giving demanded a generous spirit. She should be happy to give to her sister-in-law. She would sew a stack of cloth diapers for her. There was plenty of birdseye diaper material left in Mudder’s chest. If there was time, she could make Leah a new cape. Something for her, something for the baby, it was really a double-draw.

“That’s it. Everyone has their name. Have fun with your gifts.” Luke slapped his hands on his knees and then stood. “Work to be done. Off to school, the rest of you.”

The children raced up the stairs for their coats. Annie swept from the room, murmuring something about mopping floors. Emma gathered up her satchel and her lunchbox. “Have you thought about what you’ll call the baby?”

Luke shrugged on his heavy coat. “We’ve talked a bit, but nothing for sure.”

“Do you want a girl?” She hadn’t ever thought to ask before. As the birth of the baby grew closer, she began to think less of the extra work of another child whom she would not call daughter and more of the joy of holding a newborn. “Since you have two boys already?”

“We’ll take whatever God gives us.” He stomped toward the backdoor. “But boys are more help in the fields.”

Emma sneaked a glance at Leah. What did her sister-in-law think of Luke’s attitude?

Leah tilted her head, her forehead wrinkled. “He’s right.” She winced and rubbed her belly. “I should start the bread dough. Annie and I have to do the mopping and the laundry Catherine didn’t get done last week.”

Maybe Luke was right, but women did all the cooking, cleaning, and sewing so that boys could help in the field. Somehow the thought gave Emma comfort. Each had their jobs, their roles, their places. There was security in that. “When I get home tonight, I’ll help with whatever doesn’t get done today.”

“Catherine should do it.” Leah’s words floated on the air as she lumbered toward the kitchen. “You’re not helping her by coddling her.”

“She works hard cleaning houses all week.” Leah couldn’t know that Catherine had been missing days of work. Not until Emma figured out what she was really doing. “She needs a little time to rest and catch up.”

She didn’t hear Leah’s response. Just as well. She didn’t want to argue. They wouldn’t agree on Catherine or anything else.

“Emma, Melvin Dodd is on the porch!” Annie’s excited screech could surely be heard on that very porch. She pulled down the green shade that covered the window. “What do you think he wants?”

More drama. Too much for so early in the day. “If you open the door, I’m sure he’ll tell us.”

Annie did as instructed. Melvin ducked past her without waiting for an invitation to enter. “I’m here to see Catherine.”

He looked as ill at ease as Emma felt. She clutched her satchel, unsure what to say. Would Catherine want to see him? Should she? “I’m not sure, I mean, I don’t think…” Her face burned with embarrassment. “Are you sure…”

He removed his hat and rolled the brim in his hands. “I have to talk to her before the Sunday service. Please.”

“Didn’t the bishop tell you that Catherine will make her apologies at the service next Sunday?”

“I don’t want her apologies.” His lips quivered. His jaw clenched
and he sucked in air through his nose. “I want to talk to her. I haven’t been allowed to tell her how I feel. If I could just talk to her for a few minutes, I know I could…change…her mind.”

Emma fought the desire to pat his shoulder. He looked so young and so hurt. He really cared for Catherine. Emma knew how it felt to be rejected so publicly. Carl hadn’t abandoned her on their wedding day, but his leaving set many tongues to wagging about what she might have done to cause him to flee.

She sank into the rocking chair, her satchel in her lap. “Catherine is very confused right now. She’s not in her right mind. The accident affected her.”

“I know. We talked about it a lot. The buggy rides helped her. I drove and she talked and I listened. She was getting better.” Melvin seemed to be trying to convince himself as well as Emma. “This is a little setback, but it’s not over. She doesn’t need to confess. We can still get married.”

The anguish in his voice made pain vibrate inside Emma like a lightning rod that quivered and hummed, setting waves rippling through her body in a sickening onslaught. It sounded so familiar. Felt so familiar. “I’m sorry, Melvin, but Catherine’s sick. She can’t marry you.”

“Why can’t I talk to her?”

“You can.”

Startled, Emma looked up. Catherine slipped down the stairs, the tread of her feet—bare in the middle of winter—so light, she didn’t make a sound. “Catherine, I don’t think you—”

“He deserves an explanation, face-to-face.”

Melvin rose, his hat in his hands. “Catherine, you look…they said you were ill, but I didn’t realize…have you seen a doctor?”

“I’m better.” Her face had an odd, almost serene, look on it. “It’s a relief to be able to look you in the eye and say this.”

She paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I’m sorry, Melvin, so sorry.” Her face crumpled for a second, then smoothed. “You deserve a wife who loves you.”

Emma whipped from the chair and backed toward the kitchen. “I should go.” Should she leave them alone? The bishop hadn’t specifically said they couldn’t speak before the confession. “Catherine, will you be all right?”

“I’m fine.” She tottered toward the center of the room. “Sit down, Melvin.”

Emma slipped away. She couldn’t be late for school and she didn’t want to be there when Melvin lost his last bit of hope.

E
mma rolled over for the fourth time. She’d never had trouble sleeping before. Loneliness lay on her like a heavy, suffocating blanket. She sat up. The regular pattern of her sisters’ breathing assured her both were asleep. Annie had nodded off the second her head hit the pillow. Catherine had tossed and turned a good deal longer. Now and then, she whimpered and sighed, but her eyes remained closed.

Despite all her resolve to leave the past in the past and be happy with her lot, Emma had to know. Catherine’s public rejection of Melvin had brought everything back to the surface. How could people say they loved you one minute, and run away the next? Why was it so important to Carl that she read his letters? What difference would they make?

She had to know or she would never be able to move beyond it. Emma tugged her stash of letters from under her pillow and took the lantern into the hallway where she paused to light it. The shadows of the flames made strange, jittery shapes on the wall. Jumpy like her. Shivering, she sat down on the top step and undid the ribbon with clumsy fingers. She’d waited long enough, ignored it long enough. She had to know.

She studied the dates on the envelopes again. Three years. For three and a half years, Carl hadn’t written a word. Or if he had, he’d chosen not
to give her those letters. What made him finally decide to write again? Only months before he returned to Bliss Creek, he’d written to her. Then he’d decided to come home. She slipped the last letter from its envelope and smoothed open the page. Carl’s familiar spidery cursive filled it.

Nausea in the pit of her stomach forced Emma to stop reading. She dropped the pages in her lap. Her palms were damp, and her face felt hot. She sucked in air and tried to breathe. She shouldn’t be reading someone’s private thoughts like this. A man’s private thoughts at that.

Carl should never have given her these letters. He’d met someone out there in the world. Someone he liked enough to stay out there. But he had come back after four years. Something happened. Something big enough to make him want to come home. Despite the ache in her throat and the roiling of her stomach, Emma picked up the letter. She had to know what happened to make him come home.

Emma struggled to swallow the burgeoning lump in her throat. She doubled over and rocked against the pain. In her mind’s eye, she could see it. Carl in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, driving a fancy automobile with a woman named Karen in the passenger seat. Emma couldn’t know what she looked like, but she would wear jeans, too, and sneakers, and have hair with curls that bounced on her shoulders. Maybe she liked to wear rings on her fingers and hoops on her ears. And lipstick. Surely, she made her lips red.

Emma crumpled up the letter and tried to stuff it in the envelope. It wouldn’t go. The edge of the paper sliced her finger in a tiny paper cut. She sniffed hard and wiped at the unwelcome tears. There was no reason for this to hurt her now. She’d gotten over this abandonment long ago. What good reason could Carl have for giving her these letters? What point could he be making? He and this Karen had dated for a year. That accounted for only a third of the time in which he had ceased to write letters.

Emma watched the shadows of her lantern’s flame dance on the wall. She tugged her robe tighter around her shoulders. Determined, she smoothed the paper.

Emma gasped. For a second, it seemed too dark to see the words. They blurred on the page. Yet pain seared each word on her heart and mind. Her fingers tightened on the paper. Her gaze raced ahead, wanting to read, wanting to know, yet not believing.

Tears hot on her cheeks, Emma crumpled the letter and let it drop into her lap. He had a child. She fought to still her hands enough to smooth the paper, fold it, and stuff it back in its envelope. She couldn’t seem to swallow the knot in her throat. She blotted at the tears with her sleeve.

Carl had a baby, one he’d never seen. While he was here, chopping wood, harvesting wheat, hunting, and trying to court Emma, his wife was having a baby. The baby Emma so badly wanted. What kind of man did that? Wooed one woman while leaving another alone to have his baby?

A man who ran away from his responsibilities.