Butterfly Garden (28 page)

His mother’s slap stung worse than Sara’s. Shock rendered him speechless. This woman had once seemed to fear her own shadow. “Why did you never turn on my father this way?  Why were you so weak then when you are so strong now?” He’d questioned her honestly, in a normal tone, with neither anger nor accusation. He simply bore a strong need to know the answer.

But in his mother’s eyes, he read aversion, contempt. “You use nothing more than harsh words and severe looks upon your wife and children, where your father used brute force on his, but yours is still abuse.”

Inside Adam, rage churned and boiled, but he resolutely held himself in check.

“I’d bet my life you didn’t raise a fist to Sara just now,” his mother said. “But I am certain you wounded her with words, in the same way you injure your girls with the lack of them.” She shook her head. “You are just like your father.”

The tempest within Adam gained a strength and momentum he fought hard to control. Releasing it would only wreak havoc and prove the horrible accusation correct.

Sara touched his arm, checking the storm with the simple act, calming its fury. “No, mother, you’re wrong,” she said, cleansing his soul as well. “Adam is not like his father, but he is so changed by your husband’s brutality that he beat another father who mistreated his child.”

Condemnation.

Acceptance of proof came hard to Adam. Like his father had done before him, he’d brutalized another. His vision turned again to a brilliant red. Hot. Burning. To spare his family the inferno, he quit the house at a determined pace, and before he knew what he was about, he crossed his northernmost field at an all-out run.

An hour, maybe two, later, when he’d covered so many miles he didn’t know in which county he stood, Adam stopped running. And there in the middle of a barren wood, Mad Adam Zuckerman allowed his demons to catch up with him.

* * * * *

Lena had forced Sara to drink a cup of rosemary tea, tucked her into bed and sat with her until she thought she slept. When her mother-in-law left, Sara rolled closer to Adam’s side, took his pillow into her arms, buried her face in it and wept.

Her marriage was over, if it had ever really begun.

She had thought she could climb the mountains that loving Adam set in her path, but the knowledge that he didn’t trust her rose up before her now, a peak too large to scale.

She believed she could have spent her life loving him, in spite of the fact that he could not love her in return. Now she wasn’t certain.

She spent a fitful night in and out of sleep, sometimes glad Adam was not beside her, at others weeping because he was not, mourning her marriage as lost. And despite everything, she yearned for his return.

Sometime during the night, however, she had lost the heart to continue the battle. Only he could make things right between them now.

Except nothing could ever be.

Sleep might shortly have claimed her—she was that tired when she heard their bedroom door open. “Go away,” she said. “Whoever you are.” Her words were instinctive, self-protective. But even as she lauded her strength in uttering them, she prayed, if the intruder were Adam, that he ignore them.

“Who else would it be, but me,” he said.

Glad she lay with her back to him, Sara didn’t move. She barely even breathed while she hoped fervently that the evidence of her tears had disappeared.

His weight dipping their mattress, as he slid into their bed behind her, soared her heart and gave her hope. His arm came around her, one big hand cupping the slight mound of their child. Sara closed her eyes at the gentle claim, or so she wished, but held herself in check, not moving a muscle.

“What, no more slaps?” he said against the ear he nuzzled. “Maybe I need a few more.”

“Too tired,” she said. “Go away. I need sleep to keep Jordan’s baby healthy.”

“Always a smart mouth. I used to think that’s why you weren’t married. But what do you know, you’re married anyway, smart mouth and all … to me.”

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

“Your cross is bigger than most, I think. About six and a half feet tall and wide as a barn door, with the word
dummkopf
written clear as day across his brow.” He nibbled her neck. “But Lord he loves that mouth, sass and all.”

Sara turned in his arms to push him away. She didn’t want him to be nice. It confused her. It made her forget how sad she was, how mad. It almost made her forget that he couldn’t love her.

She shoved him hard. He blinked in surprise.

She all out slugged him. He let her. He didn’t fight back.

She hit him harder, much harder. He laughed.

That stopped her. The laugh was real. Deep and easy. Of all the times for him to laugh, finally. Damned if she wasn’t entertaining him. That made her madder, which made her fight the more.

With another laugh, Adam captured her hands and placed them around his neck, then he pulled her close and cupped her bottom, his mouth coming for hers with grave intent. “It’s mine,” he whispered against her lips.

His kiss made Sara dizzy, but she would not give in to the enticement of it. “Yes,” she whispered when she had breath enough to speak. “My mouth is yours.”

Adam growled and took that very mouth again. When he came up for air, he gave her a gentle look. “The babe is mine.” He kissed her with care then, as if to show he meant what he said. “I thought our coming together was a dream, a perfect dream of you, of us.” He spoke with such a timbre in his voice as to shiver her in his arms, then he clutched her tighter as a result of it. “It happened at the shack, didn’t it?” His breath tickled her neck.

Sara nodded; she couldn’t speak, because Adam’s lips were doing wonderful things to her ear, her throat, lower. His hands worked the same enchantment everywhere else.

“You are so beautiful in that dream,” he whispered. “I really, really like that dream. The only thing about it that confused me was that I could dream it wide awake, while I lay beside you at night, while I worked in the barn, during Sunday service, even.”

Sara giggled.

“I couldn’t let it go,” he said. “Through all those weeks away, I dreamed that dream over and over while I ached to come home to you. And when I arrived today and saw you with the children by the butterfly garden, I realized you are the best and smartest dream I ever had.” He put her away from him and rose to light the lantern.

Sara felt bereft.

He sat on the side of their bed facing her. “I have to keep from touching you while I try to explain what happened—” He slapped his chest with his fist. “In here, tonight, when I saw that you were….” He swallowed and made to reach for her, stopped and gave her a sheepish grin.

“I swear to God, I saw.…” He cleared his throat at the catch in his voice. “I saw you in your casket and felt the blow to my marrow, the pain worse than anything I have ever known.” He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “It hadn’t even happened … your death … and I could not bear knowing it would come. Worse, was the knowledge I was the cause. Then, I didn’t remember that I could be.”

Sara rose to kneel on her haunches to face him. She took his hands, glad he allowed it, and waited for him to continue.

“Blaming The
English
changed that dreadful torment to fury,” he said. “With furor I am familiar and more comfortable.” He shook his head, with dissatisfaction, almost as if he had not yet found the correct words. “I don’t want to think you’re going to die, Sara. I need to believe you can survive this birth. To face another day of living, I need to believe it. I will believe it. Many women do. Many of them have … because of you.”

He stopped her from reaching for him by grasping her shoulders and holding her an arm’s length away. “Do not think this is love. I cannot love you, or anyone, especially not the children.” He bent his elbows, bringing her a fraction closer. “I guess I can hold them sometimes, though, as I did today. Maybe I was wrong, always turning them away, and I will try to be more open to them. But I won’t let love happen and you must be glad for that. You must.”

Sara thought he might like to shake the sense of his words into her, except that they made no sense.

“Promise you will be satisfied and not expect anything more from me,” he asked.

It would be difficult to spend life without his love, but Sara believed it would be a worse burden, one she could not bear, to spend life without him.

There would be time enough later to make sense of his plea, or to change it, if that were even possible. “Do you know what I think,” she said, sliding his suspenders off his shoulders and down the arms he’d let fall to his sides.

He tried to pull them back up. “What do you think?  Stop that.”

Despite his lack of cooperation, she began to unbutton his shirt. “I think that if the horse has already escaped the barn, there is no longer any point to shutting the barn doors.”

“What?”

“You’re thinking about horses and barns, aren’t you Adam?”

“Well no, I was thinking about.…” He cupped her breasts to illustrate.

Sara sighed, pleasure blossoming inside her. “I was thinking about what it would feel like to have my husband deep inside of me.”

“Now, Sara, you know, we—”

“Cannot?  Why?  Afraid you’ll get me with child?”

Sara heard as much pain in his groan as desire and placed her palms against either side of his face. “I will be the healthiest new mother you ever saw. I will rise from childbed and bake Christmas cookies. I will shovel snow alongside you and I won’t lay down until I chop enough wood to—”

“Shut up and kiss me, you sassy thing.”

He ravaged her mouth—there was no other way to describe it. And she loved it. Loved him.

Sara learned that night what it was like to become a wife in truth. She learned that the real difference between hard and soft rested in the tip of her fingers. She gained a wife’s knowledge of her husband in countless ways. In taste and texture. In length and breadth. In the speed of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest. In the whisper of his ragged breath in her ear, the splendor of him collapsed atop her.

She discovered her power as a wife.

She found joy in the feel of his sweat-slick back beneath her palms, exhilaration in riding and controlling him. She experienced the surge to be had with speed and the heights to be gained with a slow ascent. She took to licking and nipping, to taking and giving. They suckled, they petted, they laved and loved.

Sara gave Adam her body and threw in her soul. He gave her his body and retained his soul, but she decided attaining that prize would be worth the seeking. If loving Adam was part of the work she was called upon to do, then call her a willing laborer.

They found new meaning in the word paradise, not once, but twice and when dawn bathed their entwined limbs with shafts of light, they were driven to reach the firmament again.

After a silent breakfast of speaking glances, Lena and Emma went off in the carriage with four little girls and a picnic basket. Sara waved them off wondering what had gotten into her mother-in-law. She hoped Lena hadn’t heard them last night or this morning. Then again, if her wonderful new mother had decided to give her and Adam time alone together, who was she to argue?  Getting Adam back into bed was all Sara could think about once Lena suggested it.

But dresses needed ironing and socks needed mending. And now that Adam knew about the baby, she supposed she should go through the baby clothes. After four children, she was certain a few new things were needed.

She’d just about decided to deny herself the sight and company of her husband, so they could both get some work done, when she saw him come from the barn to wash his hands at the pump.

As if he realized she was watching, he stood to gaze at her across the yard, his eyes piercing, and her breasts filled and budded as if he stroked them.

That gleaming regard drew her closer and closer, until she could see the twinkle in eyes, as gray, but no longer as distant as the horizon. She could even see the dimple formed by his newfound smile.

So easy, that grin, considering its novelty, like his laugh last night. She wanted to hear it again. “Don’t look at me as if you could devour me, Adam Zuckerman,” she said, clasping her hands behind her, playful of a sudden. “You know how shy I am.”

There. The laugh. Light, carefree. “I don’t look at you as if I could devour you, wife.” He advanced in such a deliberate way as to make her retreat. “I look at you in this way because I have already done so.”

Sara squealed and scooted into the barn, her husband at her heels. She laughed when he just missed her and landed in a pile of hay. His delicious threat, as he rose spitting straw, made her scramble up the loft ladder.

Once there, Sara turned in a circle. She had nowhere to go, except to jump out the hay doors, but even with the haystack below, she would not take a chance with the baby.

Adam topped the ladder and a shiver of anticipation ran through her. “I give up,” she shouted, making him laugh. “You win.”

He stepped into the loft and fell to his knees, drawing her down with him.

“I didn’t know you could laugh,” she said stroking the hair from his brow.

He shook his head. “Neither did I.”

“I want more.”

“So do I.”

“I mean laughter. From you.”

“This first,” he said pulling her across his lap. “I want you first. Laughter later.”

Their coming together was not hot and rushed like the first time last night. Nor was it slow and slick, skin to skin, like the second. Not even a lazy burn like at dawn. This was a heated mating, a marking of territory, as much for her as for him. In the barn, in the hay, skirts pushed up, Sara aching to pull her husband in. Adam, impressive and throbbing, jutting proudly from the broadfall flap of his trousers.

A mattress of hay beneath her, Adam above her, gilded and warmed by sunbeams with dancing motes of straw-dust, Sara watched Adam watch her. Her brawny husband, paradoxically tender with touch and words, the truth of which she could see in his expression and hear in his voice. Caring. Concern. Adam, her lover and mate, whose eyes darkened and glazed as he filled and left her, over and over, each thrust more pleasure-rising than the last.