The River Widow(82)
No doubt remained going forward: once in a blue moon, the cards foretold the future. Once in a blue moon, they held true.
Although she labored to keep her sorrow curled inside, there were too many moments when it pushed itself out beyond the boundaries she’d tried to build. When she looked at Daisy, she could keep it separate, outside. But when she gazed beyond the window and thought of him, it burned to life inside her.
At night a sea of stars swam overhead, and the air was warm enough to lower her window and breathe. They would take new names as mother and daughter and live with their secret. She would find a small safe place and hope for peace of mind. She would do honest work and get Daisy a pet—a cat or dog or bird. Perhaps a rabbit. They would find a cozy home with a garden, where they would grow vegetables and flowers. She would cook again. There would be their lives before and their lives after. They had crossed over and now could be any people they wanted to be. She indulged in her fantasies, convinced she would make them come true but also hoping to bury the flame of regret, the fear of having made the wrong choice.
Adah’s torment was a vision of Jack, and her mind replayed the scene over and over—his waiting on the courthouse steps and worrying, fretting, and hesitating, looking at his pocket watch, until it dawned on him that she wasn’t coming and she had changed her mind without explanation. Later, of course, he would learn that there had been a fire on the Branch farm and that Adah and Daisy had left town. Then he would figure out she had taken the opportunity to flee, disappearing like fog burns off the river in the morning, leaving him behind. He would figure out she had chosen Daisy over him.
She would stop somewhere along the way and send him a letter, explaining what had happened. Would he understand? Would she ever see him again? Would a path ever reveal itself?
She closed her eyes, opened them again, and raised her window. She could see Jack’s face in the reflected light on the glass, as if he were still looking for her even then. But she couldn’t think of that; instead she made herself imagine him with his horses, walking in his cornfields, and after a hard day’s work, sitting on the porch looking out on the land he so loved.
Jack had once said that forgetting was the only way to get past all the bad things in life, and Adah hoped that he would forget about the short chapter of his life that had featured her. If not, when he looked back on the season of romance, would he feel grateful or regretful? Would he view it as luminous and lovely or colored with confusing shadows and shades? There would be pain in his heart, as there was in hers, and she knew that hurt could cripple and bring one down to a place where up seemed impossibly high and out of reach. Would he ever seek love again, or would he keep the possibilities at a distance, beyond the reach of his arms? She had to hope that she and Jack were the kind of people who believed that each and every life, even their own, was worth fighting for and living for through thick and thin. They were survivors.
And yet she was not ready to lose the spell Jack had placed on her or bid farewell for good. She had the feeling that he would walk with her throughout the rest of her days on earth and find a soft place in her memories that she could sink into from time to time.
When morning broke, and with Daisy still soundly asleep with her head in Adah’s lap, Adah set her hand on the girl’s back, feeling her breathe. She gazed beyond the window, where bright-red and orange slabs of light were beginning to emerge from blue and lavender shadow as the sun wheeled up beyond the horizon. She breathed in and out and watched the day break as she imagined people before her had done for millennia.
H er heart beat at the same slow, steady pulse as the hearts of people before her had, all those other people who had raised children. She could’ve been here a thousand years earlier, and the feelings would have been the same. Adah lost herself for a moment in the newness of freedom, the joy of it, drawn to the wonder. It was worth everything. Two small shadows would emerge from the dark and into the light of liberty. A new life awaited them. As each new year was added, she imagined one from the past could fade away. She had to believe the past could be buried, especially when the future loomed free.
Would Daisy recover from all she’d seen and experienced? Perhaps enough care and love would accomplish that. Would Jack forgive Adah in his heart? Would he forget his sorrow, given time? Adah hoped to overcome the haunting of Lester’s death. Could sorrow and pain someday lose their power, falling into the fathoms and fathoms of former seasons and distant memories?
She let out a hard-held breath. Had she made the right decision? The last question lingered unanswered for only a moment, until Daisy heaved in a big sleeping breath, and a soft little smile appeared on her lips, as though she was entering the first scene of a bright and sweet dream.
Adah moved her hand to Daisy’s head and stroked her hair, then became utterly still.
Her hands were lined and scarred and looked older than her thirty-one years. They had read cards and cooked and scrubbed and carried wood. They had turned the pages of books, touched love, and been betrayed by it. They had touched death, too.
Now they held a human life.