Years (46 page)

“In love?” Judith straightened, then crossed the room to perch beside Linnea. She took her daughter’s hand.

“With Adrian?” she asked hopefully.

Linnea only shook her bowed head disconsolately.

“With... with Kristian then?”

Again Linnea shook her head, then lifted it slowly to meet her mother’s questioning eyes.

“Oh, dear... ” Judith breathed, dropping Linnea’s fingers and resting four of her own against her lips. “Not... not the father.”

“Yes... and his name is Theodore.”

Alarmed, Judith leaned forward to grasp Linnea’s hand again. “But he’s got to be — what? — thirty-some years old.”

“Thirty-four.”

“And he’s been married.”

“A long time ago.”

“Oh, my child, don’t be foolish. This can’t be. How far has it gone?”

“It hasn’t
gone
anywhere.” Linnea jerked her hand away in irritation and rose to put the underwear in her suitcase. “He’s fought it every inch of the way because he thinks I’m just a child.”

Judith pressed her heart and exclaimed quietly, “Oh, thank goodness!”

Linnea swung around and flopped down dejectedly. “Mother, I’m so mixed up. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do? Well, for heaven’s sake, child, put him out of your head. He’s almost as old as your father! What you can
do
is continue to see Adrian Mitchell when you get back here next summer. He certainly seems interested enough.” She stopped, beetled her brow, and inquired, “He is, isn’t he?”

“I guess so.” Linnea shrugged. “If kissing me means he’s interested.”

“He kissed you.” Judith sounded pleased.

“Yes. And I think this was about as experienced as a kiss could get. I tried to put my heart into it — honest, Mother, I did — but nothing happened!”

Judith began to show renewed concern. “Nothing is
supposed
to happen till after you’re married.”

“Oh, yes it is. I mean, don’t you ever watch Daddy just... well, just walk into a room, and your stomach goes all woozy and you feel like you’re choking on your own spit?”

“Linnea!” Judith’s eyes widened in shock.

“Well, don’t you?”

Judith would have jumped from the bed, but Linnea detained
her with a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, Mother,” she went on urgently, “don’t tell me it’s not supposed to happen, because it does. Every time Teddy comes around a doorway. Every time I see him pulling the horses into the yard. It even happens when we’re fighting!”

Befuddled, Judith only stared at her daughter and asked, “You... you fight with him?”

“Oh, we fight all the time.” Linnea got up and resumed packing. “I think that for a long time he picked fights with me to keep himself from admitting how he felt about me. And because he knew I felt the same and it scared him to death. I told you, he thinks he’s too old for me, of all the preposterous things.”

Judith fought down the panic, got to her feet, and went to take her daughter by her shoulders. “He is, Linnea.”

“He’s not,” the girl declared stubbornly.

“He has a son nearly your age. I was upset at the thought that it was the boy you had feelings for, but to even consider yourself in love with his
father
! Linnea, it’s absurd.”

Their troubled gazes locked. Then Linnea said quietly, “I think you just want me to end up falling in love with Adrian and marrying him. I really wish I could — I mean it, Mother But I’d better warn you right now, I don’t think it’s going to happen, not judging by what happened when he kissed me last night. Or rather, what didn’t happen.”

“Puh!” Judith huffed, releasing her daughter’s shoulders with a slight shove. “You’ve always been single-minded, and I suppose nothing I say is going to change that now. But you listen to me... ” She shook a finger beneath Linnea’s nose. “That... that man, that... that... Theodore? At least he’s got some common sense. He knows better than you that there are too many years difference between you, and you’d best accept the fact before this thing goes any further!”

But Judith Brandonberg might as well have shouted down the rain barrel. Linnea only turned once more to do her packing with a stubborn set to her shoulders. “I didn’t choose to fall in love with him, Mother. It just happened. But now that it has, I’m going to do everything in my power to make him see that what we’ve been given is a gift we must not squander.” She straightened, and Judith saw the determined look in her eyes. Linnea’s voice softened to a wistful, womanly tone. “He
loves me, too, as much as I love him. He’s told me so. And it’s too precious to risk giving up, don’t you see? What if I never find it again with a man my own age?”

Judith’s troubled eyes lingered on Linnea with a sad, certain recognition. Yes, her little girl was growing up. And though her heart hammered in trepidation, Judith had no reasonable argument.

It was difficult to argue against love.

18

I
T WAS OVERCAST
the following day as Linnea rode the westward train. Beyond the window the sky was the color of ashes, but it couldn’t dull the excitement she felt: she was going home.

Home. She thought of what she had left behind. A cheery house, a mother, a father, two sisters, the city where she’d been born. All the familiar places and people she’d known her whole life... yet it wasn’t home anymore. Home was what tugged at the heartstrings, and the steel wheels were drawing her closer and closer to that.

When the train was still an hour out, she pictured Theodore and John already on the road to town, but when she stepped down from the car onto the familiar worn platform of the Alamo depot, only Theodore was waiting. Their eyes met immediately, but neither of them moved. She stood on the train step, clutching the cold handrail. He stood behind a cluster of people waiting to board: his hands were buried in the deep front pockets of a serviceable old jacket buttoned to the neck with the collar turned up. On his head was a fat blue stocking cap topped with a tassle; in his eyes, an undisguised look of eagerness.

They studied each other above the heads of those separating them. Steam billowed. The train breathed in gusts. The departing passengers hugged good-bye. Linnea and Theodore were
aware of none of it, only of each other and their buoyant hearts.

They began moving simultaneously, suppressing the urge to rush. He stepped around the group of passengers, she off the last step. Eyes locked, they neared... slowly, slowly, as if each passing second did not seem like a lifetime... and stopped with scarcely a foot dividing them.

“Hello,” he said first.

“Hello.”

He smiled and her heart went weightless.

She smiled and his did the same.

“Happy New Year.”

“The same to you.”

I missed you, he didn’t say.

It seemed like eternity, she swallowed back.

“Did you have a nice ride?”

“Long.”

Words failed them both while they stood rapt, until somebody bumped Theodore from behind and said, “Oh, excuse me!”

It brought them from their singular absorption with each other back to the mundane world.

“Where’s John?” Linnea glanced around.

“Home nursing a cold.”

“And Kristian?”

“Checking his trap line. And Ma said she wanted me out from underfoot anyway while she fixed you a come-home dinner.”

So, they were alone. They need not guard their gazes or measure their words or refrain from touching.

“Home,” she repeated wistfully. “Take me there.”

He took her suitcase in one hand, her elbow in the other, and they moved toward the bobsled. He had missed her with an intensity akin to sickness. The house had been terrible without her and Christmas only a day to be borne. He had been silent and withdrawn from the rest of the family, preferring to spend his time in the tack room alone, where his memories of her were most vibrant. He had even imagined that once she got a fresh dose of her old life in Fargo, she might not come back. He had worried about Lawrence and how he himself would compare to any man she’d known in the city, how Alamo and the farm would compare.

But she
was
back, and he was touching her again — though only through her thick coat sleeve and his leather glove.

She glanced up as they walked, her smile sending currents to his heart. “You have a new cap.”

He reached up and touched it self-consciously. “From Ma for Christmas.” He stowed her grip in the rear of the wagon and they stood beside the tailgate, trying to get their fill of each other, unable.

“I love my book, Theodore. Thank you so much.”

He wished he could kiss her right here and now, but there were townspeople about. “I love my new pen and ink stand and the slate, too. Thank you.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to write my name.”

“Kristian showed me.”

“I thought as much. Have you been working with the speller since I’ve been gone?”

“Every night. You know, that Kristian, he isn’t such a bad teacher.”

“Kristian isn’t a bad teacher,” she corrected. “Not Kristian
he
isn’t a bad teacher.”

He flashed her a lopsided grin. “First thing back and she’s pickin’ on me already.” He tightened his grip on her elbow and handed her up. A moment later they were heading home.

“Well, you might think you collected the wrong girl if I didn’t pick on you a little bit.”

His slow smile traveled over her, and he took his sweet time before replying, “Naw, not likely.”

Her heart danced with joy.

“So how was your family?” he inquired.

They talked unceasingly, it mattered little of what, riding along with their elbows lightly bumping. Though the sun remained a stranger, the temperature was mild. The snow had softened, gripping the runners like a never-ending palm. It was pleasant, gliding along to the unending squeak and the clop of hooves. All around, the clouds hung like old white hens after a dust bath. They sulked churlishly overhead. Where they met the horizon, little distinction was visible between earth and air, just a grayish-white blending with neither rise nor swale delineating the edge of the world.

Theodore and Linnea were a half mile east of the schoolhouse when he squared his shoulders, stared off to the north,
and drew back on the reins. Cub and Toots stopped in the middle of the road, pawed the snow, and whinnied.

Warily, Linnea glanced at the team, then at Theodore. “What’s wrong?”

“Look.” He pointed.

“What? I don’t see anything.”

“There, see those dark spots moving toward us?”

She squinted and peered. “Oh, now I see them. What is it?”

“The horses.” Then, excitedly, “Come, get down.” He twisted the reins around the brake handle and leaped from the wagon, distractedly reaching up to help her alight. Down the ditch they went, and up the other side, giant-stepping through knee-deep snow until they stood at a double strand of barbed-wire fence. Standing motionless they gazed at the herd that galloped toward them, unfettered, across the distant field. In minutes the horses drew near enough to be distinguished, one from another. But only their heads. Their bellies were obscured by loose snow moving like an earth-bound cloud around them. Their hooves churned it up until it blent with the white-clad world below and the milky clouds above. The sight was stunning: a swirling, whirling mass of motion.

As they neared, Linnea could feel a faint tremor beneath her soles, a singing in the thin wire between her mittens. There must have been forty of them, their leader a proud piebald prince with streaming gray mane and thick dappled shoulders of gray and white that seemed an extension of the dirty-linen clouds behind him.

Sensing their presence, he whinnied and lifted his head, nostrils dilated and eyes keen. With a snort and lunge, he veered, taking the herd off in a new direction. What a majestic show of power and beauty they made, their hooves charging through whorls of white, tails trailing free, coats long and shaggy now in high winter.

No sleek Virginia trotters, these, but thick-muscled giants of questionable breed whose chests were massive, shoulders strapping, legs thick, beasts who knew the plow and harrow and had earned their temporary freedom.

The pair who watched shivered in appreciation. Absorbed, Linnea clambered up to the lower fence skein to get a better look. Balancing there, watching the horses thunder off, she was scarcely aware of Theodore’s steadying arm around her
hips. The reverberations faded. The cloud of snow became dimmer.