A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(60)

RJ nodded, moved with pity toward the woman he’d barely met. “Makes sense.”

“It does. But in over a year, Adam still hadn’t won her confidence, not even after he saved her grandson from a rattlesnake bite and even aided Mrs. Jorgensen herself when she was injured in our tornado last fall. He’d about given up hope of ever getting through to her.” She turned toward him. “So today, when she was willing to let us try the mud, and then even came herself to tell us that it had helped—it was like a bright ray of healing and hope for us. And it made us so hopeful for you too.”

RJ rubbed his hands on his knees. He felt even more a cad. “I’m . . . afraid.” The words came out in a whisper, yet still shocked him. What made him confess such to this young woman? He couldn’t imagine doing so to anyone else. Certainly not to Del.

Now, where had that thought come from?

But Forsythia just sat there, accepting. No wonder she made the perfect doctor’s wife. “Afraid of what?”

“I don’t know.” Words even more ludicrous. He really felt the fool.

“How did it happen, your injury? Anders said something about a Confederate renegade.”

RJ nodded. “He jumped me one night when I was traveling home after the war. He must have been trailing returning Union soldiers, I don’t know. Or he just happened upon me, saw my uniform, and thought I was as good a candidate as any to take his revenge. He sliced at me with his knife. I wrenched it away and . . . killed him.” He swallowed back the bile of the memory. “And I’d thought I made it through the war without taking a life.”

“I killed a man on our journey west.” Forsythia’s voice was soft.

RJ reared back.

“I know. You’d never think that I’m a dead shot at throwing a knife.” She smiled wryly. “He was a ruffian who surprised us in the night and was attacking Del. Trying to drag her away into the bushes, a knife to her throat.”

A sudden rush of rage turned RJ’s palms damp.

“So I threw my knife and struck home. It was over before I knew what had happened. It took a long time before I really came to terms with it, though, and felt forgiven.”

RJ sat silent. He didn’t know if he’d ever come to terms with any of this, really.

“I’ve been afraid plenty. More than the rest of my sisters, I sometimes think, even if they don’t know it. But often it seems that when I’m afraid, it’s partly because deep down I know what I should do, I just don’t want to do it. And that’s when I need to reach for strength greater than my own.” She rose, the bed creaking softly from the ropes stretched beneath. “Just think about it, RJ. What do you have to lose?”

With a soft step and whisper of skirts, Forsythia was gone, doubtless to put the children to bed.

RJ pushed to his feet and undressed, washing at the basin and pitcher always kept clean and filled. At some point, if he was to stay in this territory, he really should find a more permanent place to live. Forsythia had mentioned Adam renting rooms from the Jorgensens at first—could those be available? Not likely, with all the newcomers to town, but it was a thought. He’d try to remember to stop in the store and ask tomorrow when he passed through town.

Clad in his nightshirt, RJ stretched back across the bed, letting the breeze from the window caress his skin. He stripped off the patch and let the gentle air cool his face. The pain had mercifully lessened for the moment. Maybe he could actually sleep without the opium tonight. He hadn’t eaten but craved sleep more than food just now. He’d think more about the mud treatment in the morning.

———

Some hours later, he jerked awake from a nightmare, gasping for breath, the quilt beneath him damp with sweat. RJ sat up in bed and pressed his fists to his temples, willing away the pounding pain, the burning in his eye. He could still feel the bushwhacker’s grip on his throat, the hissed epithets spat in his face, the foul breath. Then the blinding slash across his eye, the burst of red pain and rage that surged through his limbs and gave him the strength to throw the man off him, wrench away the weapon, and send it home. The cold numbness as he stared at the renegade’s still body in the falling rain, a sudden awareness of the blood sluicing down his own face.

The pain that had never truly left him since, in body and soul.

“Oh, God.” RJ ground out the words. “How long?”

Do you want to be made well?

The words came so suddenly, so quiet yet clear on his heart, that RJ lifted his head. He blinked, his breathing heavy in the darkness.

Stories, snippets of Scripture he hadn’t remembered in years, suddenly filtered through his mind. Jesus’ question in those very words to the man at the Pool of Bethesda. Another man, this one blind, whose eyes Christ anointed with mud, of all things. And a still older story, of Naaman the Syrian, who had scoffed at the command of Elisha the prophet to go and wash in the River Jordan to be healed of his infirmity, simply because it seemed a thing too small.

RJ would never presume to put himself into those biblical accounts. And yet . . . was he showing that same stubborn heart of Naaman of old?

If it was possible, did he want to be made well?

RJ glanced in the direction of the darkened bureau, where the small bottle of opium sat. After all, as Forsythia had said, what did he have left to lose?

“All right.” He lay back and let out a sigh that seemed months in coming. “Have it your way.”