The Grass Widow (6 page)

Joss drove her fork into a piece of ham in the skillet. “He’d’ve liked it.” Her voice was hoarse; she didn’t look up. “Ethan. He’d’ve liked that watch. I’m glad you give it to Doc.”

Aidan slipped her fingers down Joss’s wrist and took the fork from her. “I’ll cook the ham. We need a few more eggs if Doc’s staying for breakfast.”

She found him sitting on the porch step with his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his wrists, the silver watch clenched in his fist; she laid a hand on his shoulder and felt the quiver of what he was keeping pent. “He’d like you havin’ it, Doc,” she said roughly. “Wish he’d got to carry it first.” He swiped a knuckle under his eyes. “The crazy son of a bitch—no disrespect to your mother, Joss, but Jesus, I miss him!”

Her fingers closed hard around a handful of the fabric of his coat. “Ain’t much you can tell me about missin’ Ethan. I got to go find some eggs.”

Glad to be out of sickrooms and into sweet air, Doc planted

the Bodett fields, good-natured in Joss’s jibes about his pegleg making seed holes too far apart; when she got too fresh he tossed clods of soft black dirt at her. She batted them away before they hit her, reflexive as a cat even in the lingering frailty of her recovery. When he rested, Aidan brought him tea chilled in the well. Ottis Clark, who had the next place toward town on the post road, came to call. He was a ropy-muscled, big-eared man with teeth stained by the wad of tobacco he kept in his cheek; he shot brown streams of juice to the ground with as little thought as Aidan gave to breathing, and his grin made her vaguely uncomfortable. Doc came from the field in time to hear his offer.

“That’s a right smart o’ neighborly, Ott,” Joss said, coaxing something out from under a fingernail with the point of her pocketknife, “but I ain’t considered sellin’.”

“Y’cain’t keep it up.” Ott’s voice was flat. “Ain’t a way in the world.”

“There’s a will,” Joss said curtly. “Means there’s a way. Give the missus my best.”

Ott looked at Doc; Doc shook his head in silent warning. Dismissed, Mr. Clark grumbled away, and Joss sat glowering at the scarred heel of the boot resting on her knee.

“It was a fair offer, Joss,” Doc said quietly. “Allowed for crops in.” She huffed a chilly laugh. “Ever’body but me knows what my claim’s worth? Maybe I need to go talk to Mister Carpenter over t’the bank. Get his idea on it.”

“You won’t hear much different than what Ott said.”

“You see everyone in town in a week.” She gave him the glare she had been aiming at her boot. “Tell the whole damned lot of

’em the Bodett place ain’t for sale!”

“Well,” Aidan mused, when Joss had let the kitchen door slam behind her, “if she does sell, she’ll have driven the price up.”

Doc snorted a humorless laugh. “She’ll die before she sells.”

He went back to his labor, and in a while Joss came grumpily back to her chair.

Aidan requested Doc teach her to plow. She didn’t have the

brute strength the job required, but she walked with him, and it was there behind the patient horse Charley that he asked his medical question of her. Joss studied them from her rocker at the edge of the field as Doc rested in the traces. Even from her distance she could see the shiver that took Aidan, and how her arms hugged herself against that internal chill as she stared at the ground and spoke words Joss couldn’t hear.

When Doc was fed and gone Joss helped Aidan with the dishes, and they sat at the table to read in the last of the daylight: Aidan a days-old newspaper Doc had brought, Joss
Don Quixote,
but the Spaniard couldn’t capture her and at last, quietly, she asked. “Is there something I should know, Aidan?”

Aidan looked up as if the words had reached across the table to slap her, and silence hung long between them before finally, softly, she said, “You’ve not wondered why I was sent here?”

Joss scratched her lower lip. “I wondered what sort o’ folk would send you off to a hard place an’ people you didn’t know, an’ feelin’ you had no home to go back to.”

“You’re not stuck with me forever. Just—” She drew a shaky breath. “Just until the baby’s old enough that I may return with a story of a dead husband. No one will believe it, but the glaze of propriety will be spread.”

Joss drew the place-ribbon across her page and closed her book; she stared at the cover. Tight-lipped, Aidan waited. It was long before Joss spoke. “Do you miss him?”

She looked away, unable to answer.

“Aidan...” Her voice was soft and cautious. “Do you—did you—love him?”

“I—” She jerked loose the bow of her apron, and wadded the cloth and flung it to the table. “Why haven’t you even a floor in the kitchen? A real floor, with boards, not dirt?” The tears that had been dammed up since Doc’s gentle question tried to flood over; she jammed them back and fled for the privacy of her room, slamming the door so hard the iron latch bounced back open.

“A floor?” She gave the door a vicious kick, hurting her toe; the

latch caught and she threw herself onto the bed.
“
A
floor?
Have you lost your mind?” She drove her face into her pillow. “A floor!

She’ll think you’re insane!”

A hand touched her shoulder and she recoiled, barely choking back a scream.

“Aidan, I’ll make you a floor in the kitchen. I’ll make floors all through the house if you want them, but don’t turn from—”

“You know perfectly well a floor has nothing to do with it!”

“I know.” Again, her hand found Aidan’s shoulder; again, Aidan flinched. Joss stood and paced the room a helpless turn.

“Aidan, you don’t have to go back until—or unless—you want to. I thought we’d long since settled that.”

“I don’t need your pity! I’ll not—”

“The day I pity you I’ll
send
you back to Goddamned Maine!”

The roar of temper drove Aidan cringing into her pillow. “Send you back? To what fresh hell? People who discard you like a book whose endin’ they didn’t like? I’d treat a stray mutt with the mange better than they’ve done you!”

Shivering, her breath suspended in her, Aidan waited. She knew that sooner or later a hard hand would come; one always did when such anger powered words. It didn’t matter whether the crime and the punishment fit one another; the crime was awakening the rage, and punishment would be served. Such random service was a quirk of Blackstone character, and Joss was of Blackstone blood.

“I wager they call ’emselves good Christians, too,” Joss growled. “That sort always does, them an’ Effie Richland—always ready to take whatever they think they can steal, right down to your pride an’ your dreams. God damn ’em all to hell!”

Just be done with it and get out and let me—
“Oh, no—” It was a moan drawn by a hand at her back; she didn’t feel the gentleness of the touch. She didn’t expect gentleness after such a snarl of words. She only knew Joss Bodett was as strong and hard as tarred rope and could hurt her, and was a Blackstone so probably would. Joss said something, but the roar of blood in her ears blocked all but the buzz of her voice. She didn’t know if she would faint

before she vomited, or after. She felt the mattress shift under the weight of her cousin and she fought not to cry, or cry out.

“Listen to me?” It was a low almost-plea, and a hesitant touch at her back. “Do you fear I’d strike you? I’m not Blackstone enough. Aidan—” Joss’s hand slipped softly across her shoulders.

“Please, Aidan. I’d never—”

Curled around her pillow in instinctive protection of her face and her belly, she managed to breathe.

“Oh, Lord—” Joss’s forehead rested briefly on her shoulder.

“Damn my temper.” The warmth and weight of her went away, but not far; she was still there, touching-close. “I meant but to ease the weight of this, if I could. I didn’t mean to intrude, or frighten you. I’m so sorry if I’ve made it worse for you.” Her finger drew a few errant strands of hair away from Aidan’s mouth, tucking them behind her ear. “How can I leave you alone with such hurt? But it seems I add to it with every word. Should I just leave you be?”

She didn’t want Joss there to see her weakness; she didn’t want to be alone; wordless wants clashed in her, none of them winning her voice. She heard that soft sigh again, sounding much more like resignation as Joss’s hand lifted from her shoulder. “If I can get you anythin’—” That trailed off, as if Joss knew she wouldn’t ask. “I’ll knock in a little while. I’ll just be out at the table.”

Aidan heard the clink of the latch as Joss closed the door. She drove her face into her pillow, trying to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. The ache was huge and hollow, an ache of missing the warmth and nearness of the oddly gentle side of Joss, an ache of residual terror of the coarseness of her cousin’s anger—and an ache of fear that Joss would send her away now that she knew.

“No,” she whispered. “Oh, Joss, please, no. No. No—”

The last glow of sunset had almost faded from the window when she heard the soft knock at her door. Dazed by the sodden ache of tears that still refused to be cried, she couldn’t find words; still curled around her pillow, she could only wait until the door opened. “Aidan? Can I come in?”

She managed a nod, not knowing if it could be seen in the fading light, and heard the scrape of Joss’s boots against the hard dirt floor before the bed creaked under her weight as she sat at the edge of the mattress. “I ain’t much good at comfortin’,” Joss said at last. “Brothers don’t want it, an’ the only sisters I had died when all the comfort they knowed about was dry clothes an’ a tit when they was hungry. What I asked you was none o’ my affair an’ I’m sorry for makin’ you feel so bad. I ain’t here to pester you if you want to be alone, but I know sometimes bein’ alone makes the hurtin’ worse.” She cleared her throat, a nervous, almost shy sound, before Aidan felt a hesitant touch at her shoulder. “Aidan, I know I got the talk an’ the ways of a man. I reckon that’s ’cause I got raised up with ’em an’ like ’em, an’ I expect I must be a oddity to you, but it means I learnt about raisin’ a hand to a woman, too. I’d ask God to strike me dead before ever I’d hurt you. If you’re holdin’ away from me for fearin’ that—”

“I don’t know how not to.” The words felt as dully familiar as a week-old toothache. “I don’t know how to believe you. I’m sorry.”

“How the hell have they treated you, then? Didn’t they ever even love you? You still got color from where he hit you last! I can’t take the place of your mother, but Lord, girl, I can at least hold you an’ let you—”

“Then do it!” She forced the words past a need to cry so immediate her throat ached with it. “Beat me or hold me or something—do something! Do something—”

And even when Joss took her into her arms, she still fought the tears; she had no memory of such gentleness of touch as the hands that held her close to a warm, dusty shoulder to be able to trust it now. “Aidan—oh, little cousin.” Joss’s voice was a low intensity under her ear. “It’s all right, Aidan. Let it go. Let it go. Damn them—damn their hard hearts an’ what they’ve done to you that you can’t trust love! I’ll love you if you let me, Aidan—or even if you don’t. I’ll just love you, so you’ll always know there’s someone who does.”

She was warm; she smelled of dust and sunshine, of fresh easy

sweat and the nearness of horses, and Aidan remembered the day she had first come here: Joss had jumped lightly from the wagon, and from under the porch had come the lean gray cat to wind around her ankles. Joss had scooped it into her arms to bump heads with it, her hands giving it quick, ear-scratching affection. It had wallowed in her arms, trusting her completely, and Aidan had known that no matter what their differences, this odd and unexpected woman would never hurt her. She had forgotten that, this hard night.

She shuddered a sigh into Joss’s shoulder. “Don’t send me away,” she whispered. “Please let me stay—”

“Let you stay? Good Lord, Aidan, why would you think I wouldn’t?”

“My own folk had no use for the shame of me—”

“The shame of
you?
Their own should take them straight to hell!” Again, that flare of temper, a rupture of tolerance that roughened the arms around her and tightened the fingers in her hair; she shrank from it, ducking into herself in self-defense.

“Oh, damn—” It was a shivering breath into her hair. “Aidan, I’m sorry, I’ve frightened you again—it’s just so hard for me to understand them! Who’s to love someone right or wrong, if not family? Family’s supposed to allow error an’ love in spite of it, an’

damn those Blackstones—”

“There’s a difference between error and sin.”

“An’ such difference is for the Lord to decide. No one else has right nor power to judge you. What was your sin? Love?”

Do you—did you—love him?

Her voice, when she found it, felt harsh and brittle. “There was no love.” And she waited for Joss to retreat, to have finally heard enough.

Joss drew a jittery breath, and seemed about to speak but didn’t; she seemed frozen, unable to move or speak or, for a moment, even to breathe again, and Aidan’s head went light in the thickness of her cousin’s silence, knowing it would only be a moment before Joss put her away from her, disgusted, repulsed—

0

“Aidan, was it—” Joss swallowed; Aidan felt that, and the hard breath she drew before she asked softly, “Aidan, was it against your will?”

Miserably, she nodded, not daring to think Joss would believe her. “Oh, no—” Joss’s arms tightened around her. “How could they do this to you?”

She held Aidan hard against her, and the ache finally broke; she sobbed like a child in arms giving her the only sympathy she had known for the horror of that January afternoon.

Jared Hayward had invited her skating. She went without a chaperone because he was the banker’s son, because she had known him all her life, because she trusted him. He pinned her against a wall in the boathouse, forcing his kiss to her. He choked her when she tried to scream, and wrestled her to the floor. He tore open his buttons, laughing at her terror when she saw what he had, and what he intended. He took no pause with her virginity the first time, and no care with her pain the next.