Preston's Honor(66)

No, Preston hadn’t asked me to move into his room, and when I found him looking at me with the same heat in his eyes he’d had for me the night I’d conceived Hudson, he’d look away as if troubled by his own feelings.

At first I’d thought it was the grief . . . and then I’d realized he needed every second of sleep he could get, considering the hours he was working and the physical hardship of trying to keep the farm afloat. Then I’d grown so large with pregnancy I could hardly sleep, and I was glad not to be keeping him awake . . . and then those first few lonely, terrifying months with the baby . . . I’d tried so hard to nurse him, but he had trouble latching on and some nights he’d cry and cry, and I didn’t feel as if I could soothe him. I’d wanted to cry right along with him. I had cried with him.

Preston had been so exhausted from doing the jobs of twenty men after having to lay off most of his workers, and the farm was dry and dead outside our window as if it was a reflection of the parched emptiness of the hearts inside the walls of the farmhouse.

How could I ask him to take over with our wailing infant when I didn’t have to get up and work in the morning like he did?

And then I’d begun having visions of something harming Hudson. I’d clutch him tightly to my chest as pictures of him dropping to the floor, or being burned by the oven flashed in my mind making me feel shaky and anxious. I wanted to ask Mrs. Sawyer about it, but I didn’t dare. She already looked at me with disdain and impatience as if I was a usurper in her home—which I supposed I was.

When I’d moved in, I’d vowed to do everything I could to make her like me. I’d cook, I’d clean, I’d do whatever was necessary to help her heal, and I’d win her over. Only . . . it hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. Just as it hadn’t with my own mother.

How would Mrs. Sawyer look at me if she knew I was having visions of her grandson being harmed? And what kind of mother did that make me? Some days I still wondered if I could be a good mother to Hudson. I loved him desperately, had yearned for him endlessly, but I still doubted myself.

I hadn’t had much of a role model—my own mother insisted I had the devil in me. Some nights I sat rocking Hudson, feeling so blue and so desolate I wondered if she was right—there was something wrong inside of me. I couldn’t even find joy in my own baby.

The rain continued to fall and my mind continued to wander, backwards to the night I’d left. It had rained that night, too, after months and months of nothing but burning sun and hot, dry wind. Finally, finally the rain had come.



Hudson’s head lay on my shoulder as I filled his bottle with water and shook it to mix in the formula that, even after four months, still felt like a symbol of my failure. I gave him the bottle with a small smile, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes, still damp from his bath. He took it in his chubby hands and began drinking. I leaned in and took a deep breath of the clean little boy smell, letting it fill my lungs and my heart.

I sat down in a chair and held him in the crook of my arm. He was only wearing a diaper and his warm skin stuck to mine as I rocked him slightly, his luminous eyes gazing up at me.

He’d never been this serene when I’d nursed him. We’d both struggled, both been distressed. And I’d finally given up. I couldn’t help feeling resentful of the way he grasped the bottle, looking sleepy and half-drunk. My own emotions made me feel guilty and low. I had failed, not the innocent boy in my arms.

My failure at nursing was the one thing Mrs. Sawyer had been understanding about, the one thing that hadn’t caused her face to screw up with displeasure when it came to how I did things. “I don’t know why you keep trying to force it when it’s obviously causing you both misery,” she’d said. “I didn’t even attempt to nurse my boys, and they were perfectly happy babies.” But then she’d teared up and left the kitchen, and I’d heard her crying in her room over the mention of Cole and I wished so hard I could do something to help her pain. I couldn’t do anything to help anyone. And I’d wanted to nurse Hudson. Preston was single-handedly keeping the farm afloat, and I couldn’t even nourish our son from my own body.

The house was quiet. Preston was working as usual even though it’d be dark soon and Mrs. Sawyer had gone to a book club at a friend’s house in town and wouldn’t be home for hours. I was glad she was finally getting out, and I was glad to be free of her for the night.

I ran a hand over Hudson’s head, his eyes half-closed with the drowsiness that came with the late hour and a milk-filled tummy. He blinked up at me, struggling to stay awake so he could fit in a few more minutes of flirting and I smiled down at him. His eyes drifted half-mast again and I had the sudden picture of dropping him and his head hitting the floor with a bone-cracking smack. Fear lashed through me and I clutched him tighter against my body, my heart racing. I wanted to cry, but I held back the tears. What was wrong with me?

It felt like I swayed between moments of alarm and long periods of a dull hopelessness that wouldn’t lift. Had the depression of this house settled into my bones so deeply that it was now part of who I was? Would I be this way forever? Carrying a sense of listless melancholy all the days of my life? A tremor of fear moved through me at the thought.

Sometimes I pictured myself picking up the baby and just walking away from this farm—out past the split-rail fence, through the scorched, abandoned farmland where I’d once lost myself in childish fantasy as I picked vibrantly colored wildflowers, wove them into crowns, and pretended I was a fairy.