The River Widow(77)

A sigh came from the forest. But she didn’t turn toward it. Instead she breathed into the aching air. “Is the offer still open?”

He stood in silence, looking stunned, as if realization was dropping into him like a stone falls into a pool of water, rippling the usually quiet surface in ever widening circles. His face went from holding on to a shred of hope to being awash in it. But he didn’t rush forward as she had thought he would or hoped he might. In his eyes was love but also doubt. “Of course it’s still open. But . . .”

Adah held still.

“You’re hurt, you’re defeated, and you’re giving up. I know I asked you to do that in the past, but I wouldn’t want you to be unhappy.” He paused, his hands hanging at his sides, his body facing her squarely. “I wouldn’t want you to marry me if you’d be unhappy. I’m not sure I’d be happy.” A tiny wry smile. “I guess I’m vain enough to want a wife who loves me back, even a little bit. I’ll help you get on your feet no matter what, whether you’re with me or not. I’ll do everything I can to be your silver lining and make our lives good and sweet one way or the other, but I have to know if this is desperation or if it’s born from something more than that.”

Despite it all, she was still capable of love for a good man. Her notion of love had transformed before her eyes, had come alive by slow degrees, and now rose to the surface of her being.

Adah slowly took a couple steps forward, reached up, and gently placed the first three fingers of her right hand on his lips. “Now that that’s decided . . .”

Jack’s eyes swam with joy, and he took her fingers into his mouth, then closed his eyes.

The grief and anguish of the past months eased out of her body in his arms. The openness of his desire was something unknown to her—the way he held her head in the palm of his hand, how he whispered into her neck, his breath and lips on her face, the ridiculous joy of it all. Nothing stifled, everything exposed and frank and freely given. Her body and so many sides of her heart had been lost and now found.

And yet she couldn’t enter a union without honesty. She pulled back. “There’s one thing I haven’t told you.”

“You don’t have to say it.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t.”

Later Adah would remember the pulse she saw ticking in Jack’s neck, the warmth of his breath, the change in his expression. “I killed him. I killed Lester. It was an accident. He’d hit me and was kicking me and might have kept at it until he’d killed me. I picked up a shovel and hit him in the head, and then he was just . . . gone.”

His eyebrows gathered together into one line. “I already figured this out.”

“How?” Adah asked, aghast.

“Because you were just so scared—you’ve been so terrified from the very beginning. I knew there had to be something behind all that.”

“And you don’t care what I did?”

There wasn’t a touch of dishonesty in his eyes. And the look on his face was so sweet, spelling out clearly his devotion, admiration, everything good and real. “Yes, I care. I care what he did to you and what he did to his first wife. You acted in self-defense. The way I see it, Lester Branch got his just due.”

“You don’t know what it feels like to have killed.”

“No, I don’t. But I recognize regret and shame when I see it. I see that it killed a part of you, too, a part I’ll bring back to life, I promise you.”

“I’ll never forget what I did.”

“You will. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you do.”

“You’ll be marrying a murderer.”

“I’ll be marrying the woman I’ve waited for my entire life.”

He touched her arm, and his callused hand moved smoothly down to her hand, which he cradled and brought to his chest. Nothing else needed to be said with words. They stood like that amidst a bed of clover on a forest floor while the sounds of life around them returned, and creatures darted between the trees.

Jack’s face hovered before her—the only one she wanted to study now and forever—and they made plans. Adah asked for three days to gather her thoughts and say goodbye to Daisy; then on the following day they would meet on the courthouse steps at noon to become husband and wife.

The most beautiful sight was the elation that began to spread over Jack’s face.

Before she left his farm, she went inside the house to use the bathroom and took note of where soon she would be living. She paused before the open bedroom door. Jack owned a couple’s larger bed. Secretly he’d been looking for someone; he’d been waiting for her. The bed was neatly made, the pillows plumped. Already imagining what it would be like to truly touch Jack, to love him unbidden, and let him love her now that she had told him everything. There would be no holding back.

Back outside, as she took steps to leave, he reached for Adah’s hand, kissed it, and pressed it against his cheek. “On our wedding night, I’m going to sop you up like a biscuit . . .”

Back on the Branch farm, Adah had to work hard to keep her mask in place, even around Daisy, only letting it fall off at night. She had decided to tell Daisy of her plans on the morning of her leaving—no sense in doing it sooner—and then to assure her that she would always love her, would always be nearby, and would do anything she could to remain as close as possible.