A Soldier to Love (5 page)

Janelle patted Henry Jack’s head as she turned to head out of his stall with Mara’s help she was able to get all the animals taken care of this morning and the eggs needed for breakfast. She would have asked Eric to help her but her nephew was enjoying being with his new wife and she was not going to intrude.

“Janelle?”

She stilled what the hell was Maggie doing here? Janelle closed and latched the stall behind her. The last time she had seen Maggie the woman had been accepting an envelope from Joanna. An envelope containing a payoff for Maggie to leave Eric. Janelle had been surprised the woman had taken the payoff since she had seemed like the type to tell Joanna where she could shove her money.

“Maggie?”

Maggie smiled at Janelle she knew it had been a while since she had seen the woman but she, Maggie, needed to talk to Eric to explain what had happened and she knew Janelle would know how to reach him. “I know I’m the last person you want to see but I need to talk to Eric and I know he keeps in touch with you.”

“He does,” Janelle said, as she placed the feed bucket on the hook; she looked over Maggie’s shoulder, Mara was standing there wondering who the woman was before her. “Mara can you please take the eggs in the house. I will be in, in a minute to start breakfast.”

“Ok Auntie Jan,” Mara said, as she looked one last time at the woman looking for Eric. Why was this woman looking for him? She wondered before she turned and headed towards the house.

“Auntie Jan?” Maggie questioned. The girl looked to be in her teens. Could she be Julia’s child? Maggie had only met the girl a few times and those times few times were enough. So Maggie had no clue if the woman had a child or not.

“Mara is not your concern.”

“She called you Auntie Jan. I was just wondering who she was.”

“Again none of your concern,” Janelle replied.

“Fine about Eric”

“Why would I help you get in touch with him? You crushed him when you took Joanna’s money and walked away.”

“I needed that money.”

“And Eric needed you,” she replied as she walked towards Maggie, “he was in a war zone on his second tour and when he comes home you’re not there because.”

“I didn’t want him to find out.”

Janelle shook her head as she rounded Maggie and headed out of the barn, “did you expect Joanna or Julia to keep the information of what you did to themselves?” Janelle stopped; she faced Maggie whom she knew was following her, “the first chance they got they told Eric what happened.”

“They said they wouldn’t tell.”

“And you believed them.”

“Janelle, this is a conversation I need to be having with Eric, not you. Can you please tell me how to get in touch with him?”

“Why? Are you hoping he will take you back?”

Hopefully. “We were good together, Eric and I. I know he loved me and I loved him. Once he learns the truth he and I can move past this.”

“You’ve been gone for almost a year Maggie. I’m not sure-”

“I need to try.”

Janelle shook her head, “I-”

“Auntie Eli-” Eric stilled what was Maggie doing here.

***

This was going to a first she had never made breakfast with fresh eggs or bacon. Elsie thought as she placed the last of the bacon on the pan turned and placed it in the oven. She felt good this morning. She had woken in the arms of the man she loved. She had dry humped him to a mind blowing orgasm and could not wait until she could ride him fully. She chuckled as she picked up the plates on the counter and headed to the kitchen table she would have had Mara set it but when her daughter had come into the kitchen she’d been covered in mud and grim. So Elsie had sent her daughter to shower and change clothes.

Elsie finished with the table just as Raelyn started her morning whimper. Her baby girl was hungry. Elsie walked over to the portable crib in the kitchen and scooped up her baby she nuzzled her neck, “morning baby doll,” she said as she kissed the baby’s cheek, “let’s get you fed”; she was heading to the fridge to grab Raelyn a bottle when Janelle, Eric and a woman Elsie didn’t recognized walked into the house. She smiled at everyone, “morning all.”

Everyone nodded.

Elsie stopped by the fridge what was with the sad expressions on everyone’s faces?

“Eli honey this is Maggie,” Eric said as he walked over to her. Elsie was not going to take this well. In all the talks they’d had he’d never told her about Maggie. He hadn’t known how. Elsie had been honest with him about everything in her life and here he was keeping Maggie and their life together a secret. He stopped before her she was going to hate him he just knew it. “My-”

“Fiancée”

Elsie licked her lips she held on tighter to her baby, “I’m sorry?” She blinked as she looked from Eric to the woman standing behind him. She turned back to Eric, “Fiancée?” She whispered.

Eric licked his lips, “I asked her before I was deployed the second time.”

“Last year,” she could feel the tears brimming this was not happening.

“Yes. But ….well”

“I left him,” Maggie said, “My brother had a drug problem and had gotten into some trouble. In order to get him out I needed money,” she said as she walked over to them, “Eric’s mother offered me a tidy sum to walk away from Eric. I took it and got my brother the help he needed.”

Elsie looked at Maggie, “how noble of you.”

Maggie smiled, “I would like to think so.”

“So why are you here?” She shook her head “I mean you could have-”

“I needed to contact Eric to explain. I came here looking for the man I love and should have never walked away from,” Maggie finished with a smile.

“Oh,” Elsie wanted to cry this woman was still in love with Eric and here he was married to her, Elsie.

Eric looked at Maggie her story was making Elsie nervous. He needed her not to be nervous. He, Eric, was in love with her, Elsie, not Maggie. “Maggie Elsie is-”

“Mom?”

Elsie looked at her daughter “breakfast will be ready in thirty minutes,” she turned from Eric and Maggie. The woman was gorgeous and a saint. How could she, Elsie, compete with that? She walked over to her daughter, “can you watch the baby while I go for a walk?”

“While outside I noticed there were some storm clouds approaching,” Eric said. She wouldn’t even look at him. He needed her to look at him. This morning had been so perfect. He had awakened with his wife in his arms and his children in this house. A house he loved and when he retired wanted to move into. Now he could lose them because he hadn’t talked to her.

“I think …” she closed her eyes, “I’ll be ok,” she said as she opened her eyes.

Mara nodded as she took the baby from her mother. Something had gone wrong with her parents while she’d been in the shower.

Elsie rounded her daughter and headed out of the front door.

“Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?” Maggie questioned.

“No” Eric said, as he watched Elsie walk away from him.

***

Stupid. That’s all she could think of was that she was stupid. A man who looks like Eric Reynolds would never want a woman like her on his arm. She, Elsie, wasn’t gorgeous she was thirty pounds overweight, a former single mother of one and couldn’t complete with the sainthood Maggie was working towards by helping her brother. Elsie sighed she maybe Eric’s wife but if Maggie had just left him almost a year ago while he was in a war zone than he hadn’t had the time to deal with Maggie leaving him and she, Elsie, was the rebound. He had written to her to deal with Maggie leaving. What was the old saying
‘to deal with a break up get yourself under someone else’
. And that was exactly what Eric had done except he had married the rebound.

And now Maggie was back with the truth. A truth Eric could not fault her, Maggie, for. Elsie had been there. Wanting to help. Wanting to make things better for her family. Now that he knew why Maggie had truly left him he could take her back and he and Maggie could live happily ever after. While she, Elsie, would be back in Atlanta nursing a broken and battered heart. Elsie stopped walking she looked around her there was nothing but farmland for miles and miles. She turned around in a circle she had been walking so long she hadn’t seen where she was going now she was in the middle of nowhere with no sense of which way to go.

***

“Elsie!” Eric called out as he rode Henry Jack towards the west he had gotten outside just as she was heading over the rise he’d called out to her but she’d been too far away to hear him. Eric sighed the rain was coming in fast and he needed to get her back to the house before the rain started pelting down. “Elsie!” he called out again she should have stayed at the house and he should have been the one to leave. She had opened up to him. Cried to him, not in any of their video chats but on her letters he had seen the tear stains she had shed because of something he’d asked her. And now here he was making her cry all over again. She was probably thinking he didn’t want her. That because of what Maggie had said that he would take Maggie back and leave her and the girls. Something in which was not going to happen. She and his girls were his no one else’s.

Eric looked up when the rain started damn he’d hoped to have her in his arms before the rain started. He kneaded Henry Jack to move faster he needed to find his wife before the rain became to blinding neither could see which way to go.

***

Elsie wrapped her arms around herself as she the rain pelted down on her she was cold, lost and just wanted to go home. She sniffled she should have stayed at the farm with Eric and the girls but she had been so stunned that the last thing she’d thought about was staying at the house. She wiped at the rain on her face she hoped she was going in the right direction. Once she’d realized she was lost she’d turned back the way she came hoping it would lead her back to the house. So far all it’d done was lead her more into the unknown.

“Eli!”

She looked into the distance when she heard her name there was a figure on a horse. She stopped walking could that be Eric? She shook her head she was imagining him coming after her. He was back at the house talking to Maggie figuring out how he was going to let her, Elsie, down easy about their marriage. She rubbed her wet hands up her sides trying to generate some warm.

“Oh God, Elsie”

She looked up the figure was getting off a horse and running towards her, “Eric?”

He pulled her into his arms he had thought he would never find her. He leaned back, “come one let’s get you back to the house.”

“Why so you can tell me our marriage was a mistake,” she pulled away from him rounded him and headed towards the horse. If Eric had come from this direction then it meant the house was this way also.

“I have no intentions on letting you go,” he said as he raced after her. Eric grasped her hand he turned her to face him.

“Let me go.”

“No, I will be damned if I let you go,” he replied as he wrapped his arms around her.

“You love Maggie.”

“Are you serious?” he looked into her eyes she was, “you think because she’s back in my life I will leave you?”

Elsie licked her lips, “won’t you? You have what you wanted at one point in your life.”

“Elsie”

“How long?”

Eric sighed, “how long, what?”

“How long were you two together? Because, we have only known each other five months. So how long?”

“I-”

“Please Eric”

“Two years. We were together two years before I asked her to marry me.”

Elsie pulled away from him, “you were with her for two years before you asked her to marry you and you married me after only knowing me five months.” She shook her head, “and you didn’t really know me.”

“Didn’t I? I’ve talked to you. Written to you. Worried about you for the last five months.”

“You have but none of that compares to what you had with Maggie. She was the one you loved and wanted to marry. She just left what nine months ago?”

“Eli”

“No. You haven’t had time to heal.”

“I have healed. I did things after she left me that I will never talk about. But you saved me. Your letters. Your kindness saved me.”

“I’m sure.”

“Eli, she could have talked to me. Told me what was going on and we as a couple could have figured out something. But instead she chose to take my mother’s money and walk away from me.”

“Granted she took the wrong route but maybe she kept all of this from you for the same reason I kept things from you because, I wanted you to come back alive and not have to worry about what was going on at home.”

Eric released a breath, “maybe but you haven’t really kept things from me.” He said as he reached for her.

Elsie stepped back, “I have kept some things from you.” She closed her eyes “that” she opened them, “that time I didn’t hear from you. The first time when I thought you were dead. I ended up in the hospital they prescribed me bed rest then but I couldn’t do it. I had so much I needed to do in order to survive. So I kept it from you because I needed you to survive.”