Light to the Hills: A Novel (49)
She wasn’t going anywhere. A spasm rippled from Amanda’s lower back across the whole front of her belly, and she’d dropped to her knees. The floor was wet, from where Frank had burst in from the storm, she thought. Amanda lifted her hand from the puddle where she knelt, and what dripped from her fingers was tinged with blood. She’d moaned as a rush of fear swept through her like the lashing wind outside. That night her baby would come, and she would birth him alone.
Amanda swiped the back of her hand across her face, and it came away wet. She was always surprised that bitter, angry tears could still well up from the long-ago memories she’d tried to close away. Finn lightly snored in the sweet hay, and the easy sound of it soothed her somehow. She pondered this gentle man who grieved a fallen mine pony and taught his brother how to carve. She could no more imagine this man doing her harm than a sparrow.
Slowly, so as not to wake him, Amanda stretched out her hand and laid it across Finn’s chest, watching its steady rise and fall and measuring the reassuring beat of his heart. Amanda finally fell asleep to the image of Finn’s crooked smile playing in her head and the sound of Myrtle nosing and chewing mouthfuls of hay.
Chapter 15
The white sunlight reflecting off the ice-coated trees dazzled their eyes in the morning. Finn had crept out of the barn and hurried into the woods with a shotgun before first light, but although they’d heard several shots, he’d come back without a rabbit or squirrel. Harley, home from his mine shift, said he’d had to walk with a hand shading his sight or he’d have been blinded by a thousand diamonds. In a lifetime of winters, no one had ever seen an ice storm like that.
“It favors a tornado gone through,” Harley reported. “Limbs down everywhere. Took me twice as long getting home because I stopped to drag some off the trail.”
Amanda had already packed her saddlebags with her books and the sack of stuffed rabbits. “Reckon I’ll have to do the same,” she said. “Junebug can jump a tree, but I don’t much like doing it.” She finished up a last sip of chicory coffee and passed the cup to Rai. “Thank you again for putting me up for the night.”
“You earned your keep with Myrtle,” said Finn. “Don’t fall asleep in the saddle on the way back. You’ll fall off, and we’re liable to find you thawing by the path come spring.”
“I won’t. I’m anxious to get home to Miles. He and Mooney will be worried sick.” Amanda stuck her left toe in the stirrup and hoisted herself up in an easy motion. “I’ll be back around before long,” she called on her way down the path. “The rate Sass is going, she’ll have everything read before I get home.”
Finn hustled forward to catch her. He stood at Junebug’s shoulder and fiddled with his bridle a moment. “Went out this morning and found you something to carry home in your pocket.” He dipped a glove into his coat pocket and handed her a small cloth-wrapped bundle. “It can wait,” he said. “You don’t have to open it right now.”
“Thank you,” Amanda replied, her breath sending small white puffs into the air. “How thoughtful.” Despite the cold, a warmth rose in her chest.
The woods were brilliant and full of the patter of dripping water as the sun climbed and its yellow rays melted the night’s ice. The path was slick in spots, but Junebug minded his business and kept his feet. He wasn’t overly eager to splash through the icy creek water, but he did that, too, ready as she was to be in home territory. She clapped a gloved hand on his neck, encouraging him on and smiling as his long gray ears flopped with each step.
Amanda waited until she’d rounded the first bend in the trail and could no longer see the cabin before she pulled Finn’s wrapped bundle from her pocket and opened it. Despite the cold, a rosy warmth spread from inside her and blossomed color on her cheeks. In her hand lay a dainty sprig of mistletoe, a cluster of rounded green leaves and tiny white berries. He hadn’t been hunting squirrels at all; he’d been shooting down clumps of this from the tops of trees. Amanda smiled to herself, imagining what might have happened had Finn presented it to her differently. But of course, he never would have. He didn’t presume or grab. She’d courted only once before, and Finn was as opposite that as mistletoe from poison oak. Amanda folded the sprig back into its cloth and tucked it away, with a smile playing on her lips. When she got home, she’d press it between the pages of her Bible.
She wondered how Miles had fared the night without their customary bedtime ritual of stories, new words learned, and a kiss. Mooney was a good friend. She couldn’t have asked for a more dependable person to link arms with, sister soldiers, they called one another, facing what they’d been dealt and marching on into battle. Once, she’d thought Frank was that person, but Frank had changed. More likely, she’d opened her eyes and seen him for what he’d always been. If there’d been changing, it was all her.
Sweet Miles, with his big brown eyes and sandy hair, the freckles on his upturned nose, and the little scar by the corner of his mouth from the time he’d tried to kiss a broody hen. Frank hadn’t left her with many things, but Miles was her treasure. Junebug’s clip-clopping hooves picked their way through the mud, and Amanda played back last night’s scene in the barn—Myrtle’s sweet calf taking its first breaths.
Quick as a whip, the night she first met Miles and all that came after rose into her mind. Midwives and granny women like to say that soon as a child’s born, the pain and memory of its birthing disappear, washed away by the rush of love and relief a mama feels when she holds her young’un. Maybe that was true if you had a midwife handy to slide an axe under the bed to cut the pain and help ease the baby into the world with warm water and a cloth on your brow, but Amanda had none of that when Miles came. She had only a pistol in her trembling hand, a raging storm beating down her door, and a cowardly, no-count husband.