Page 14 of Into the Starlight (Secrets of Sweetwater Crossing #3)

Chapter Fourteen

October first. The beginning of a new month. If all went as he hoped and Fielding agreed to hire him, it could be a month filled with exciting new possibilities. In the meantime ... Burke slid his arms into his jacket and tried not to frown at the memory of things that hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped.

It had been five days since Joanna had confirmed his suspicions that she was pregnant. He must have said appropriate things, because she’d continued by telling him how happy she was that a part of her husband would live on after him, but all the while she’d been speaking, Burke had felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus.

It was ridiculous to be jealous of a dead man, and yet Burke could not deny that for one fleeting moment he’d wished the baby was his. And if that wasn’t ridiculous, Burke didn’t know what was. He had no intention of remaining here, so why had he pictured himself standing beside Joanna, holding a child—their child—in his arms?

Fortunately, Joanna had not mentioned her pregnancy again, and the following few days had been uneventful. Burke had written to Felix, telling him their return would be delayed, per haps indefinitely. He and Joanna had spoken with Mrs. Tabor, the proprietor of the town’s restaurant, and Sheriff Granger. Though both had been friendlier than the mayor, they’d had nothing new to tell them, nor had the half dozen women Joanna had visited on her own. The quest to discover what had happened to Uncle Clive was at a standstill.

Forcing his lips into a smile, Burke opened his door and entered the hallway. Judging from the delicious aromas wafting upstairs, breakfast was almost ready.

“It’s all right, Burke.” Della, who’d emerged from her room at the same time, gave him a smile that might have been reassuring if he knew what she meant by her unusual greeting.

“What’s all right?”

She smiled again and patted her hair as if to assure herself that every strand was in place. “I know you and Joanna have been talking to everyone who might know something about Clive. You obviously didn’t learn anything important or you would have told me. That’s all right.” Della took a step forward, clearly more comfortable with the situation than either Burke or Joanna. They’d both admitted their discouragement when the conversations had proven fruitless.

“I’ve reconciled myself to not knowing how Clive died or where he’s buried,” Della continued. “Even if I did know that, it wouldn’t bring him back.”

“That’s true, but I hate unsolved mysteries.” Burke’s mother had told him that life was filled with ambiguities, that it wasn’t always possible to answer every question, but he’d never been comfortable with uncertainty.

Della’s expression radiated sympathy. “I know you do. It’s your nature to want to solve problems, but this appears to be one without a solution.” Though Della laid her hand on the banister, she did not begin to descend the stairs. “I’ve accepted that, and you should too. Meanwhile, if I’m not mistaken, Emily has a sausage casserole waiting for us.”

Breakfast did indeed feature a mouth-watering sausage dish. For some reason Beulah did not like it, so Emily reserved it for days when the girl was not here.

When Craig had blessed the food, Josh took a healthy serving of the casserole, smiling at Emily when he’d swallowed the first bite. “Excellent as usual. Do you think you could teach Louisa to make it? Your cooking is one of the things I’ll miss once we move into our new home. My wife is a good cook, but she’d be the first to admit that she can’t match your culinary skills.”

“And I would never try to match her healing.” Emily smiled. “Since Louisa won’t charge me for her services as a midwife, I offered to deliver meals to your new home at least once a week.”

“When is it scheduled to be completed?” When Joanna had pointed out the stakes outlining what would become the foundation for Josh and Louisa’s house, Burke had realized that the newlyweds wouldn’t be far away from Emily and Joanna. Now that all three sisters were back in town, it seemed they wanted to remain close to each other.

Louisa looked up from the piece of toast she’d been busy buttering. “Raymond says it’ll take three or four months. We’d hoped to be able to move in before Christmas, but that probably won’t happen.”

She turned to her husband. “Don’t worry, Josh. You won’t starve there. Even though I refused my sister’s generous offer, Emily and I agreed that you’ll eat here whenever I’m away from home with a patient.”

“That’s a good plan.” Mrs. Carmichael added her approval. “Josh may own a tearoom, but I suspect he’d be hard-pressed to do more than boil water for tea and open a can of escargots. Most men can’t cook.”

“You’re right about me, Mrs. Carmichael,” Josh agreed, “but Craig’s an exception.”

Emily’s husband shrugged. “I had no choice. Noah and I had to eat.” And before he’d come to Sweetwater Crossing, Craig had been a widower.

Apparently mollified by the culinary arrangements, Josh turned to Joanna. “I know you said you don’t want to teach anyone other than Beulah, but I have another suggestion. If I buy a piano, would you play in the tearoom? It wouldn’t have to be all day or even every day, but I know the customers would enjoy it.”

Burke had to admire Josh’s strategy. He’d obviously been trained as a salesman, because his suggestion was carefully phrased, making it difficult for Joanna to refuse.

But she did. “Thank you for offering, Josh, but your tearoom is complete as it is. You don’t need music there. The food and decor are enough.” She turned to Louisa. “Don’t you agree?”

Louisa held up both hands in the universal signal of surrender. “Don’t ask me. No matter what I say, one of you will be annoyed. How am I supposed to choose between my sister and my husband?” She turned to Burke. “You’re impartial. What do you think?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask, because I’ve never eaten there, but since you asked me, I think you should accept Joanna’s decision.”

She favored him with a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

“He’s a good man.”

Joanna closed the piece of sheet music and looked across the room at her sister as the final note faded. Today, though she normally had other chores to perform, Emily had asked Joanna to play for her for a few minutes after they’d finished the breakfast dishes. The gleam in her eye when she’d made the request had told Joanna that Emily had motives other than listening to music. Her sister’s comment confirmed it.

“Who?” Joanna feigned innocence.

“Burke, of course. I like the way he defended you, and unless I’m mistaken, he’s attracted to you.”

That was classic Emily, wanting everyone to be as happy as she was. In this case, she was mistaken.

“We’re friends; that’s all.”

Her sister’s lips twitched with amusement. “Maybe. Maybe not.” She leaned forward to lessen the distance between them. “Mama would say I shouldn’t pry, but I have to ask: have you thought about marrying again, especially now that you’re expecting?”

When Joanna did not respond immediately, Emily continued. “Kurt wouldn’t have wanted you to live the rest of your life alone, would he?”

“That’s something we never discussed. He was the healthy one.” Joanna was silent for a second, trying to recall the day they’d spoken of the future. Why wouldn’t Kurt’s face come into focus? She could picture blond hair and blue eyes, but the features were blurred.

“What’s wrong?” Emily rose from the settee and wrapped her arms around Joanna’s shoulders. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Joanna shook her head. “Only if ghosts have blank faces.” She shook her head again, trying to make sense of what had happened. “What’s wrong with me, Emily? It’s only been a few months, but I can’t remember what Kurt looked like. I wish I had a daguerreotype of him. What will I tell my child when he asks about his father?” Though Louisa had reminded Joanna that babies came in two varieties, she was certain this child would be a boy.

Emily tightened her grip on Joanna’s shoulders, trying to comfort her the way she had when they’d been children. “Perhaps Kurt’s sister has one she can send you.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll ask Marta, but it still doesn’t ex plain why I’ve forgotten so much. You remember what George looked like, don’t you?”

To Joanna’s surprise, Emily shuddered. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“What do you mean, unfortunately?” Joanna shifted so that she was face-to-face with her sister. “George was the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. I think I fell in love with him—at least a little bit—the day I first saw him. All I could think about was how wonderful he was and how I hoped he’d ask me to marry him.”

Oh, dear. Why had she said that? She’d never intended to let Emily know how foolish she’d been, how she’d been so infatuated that she’d done everything she could to gain George’s attention, to prove that she was the Vaughn sister best suited to be his bride.

Emily’s lips flattened in a gesture Joanna remembered from their childhood, one that meant she was trying to control her anger. Was she about to remind Joanna that the commandments said “thou shalt not covet”?

“I know it was wrong,” Joanna said, trying to make amends, “but I was terribly jealous of you. You were leaving home to live a fairy tale, but my dream of happily-ever-after was shattered.”

When Emily met Joanna’s gaze, her eyes bore more pain than Joanna had ever seen. She took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself, then said, her voice low and filled with anguish, “You may not believe it, but you were the fortunate one. There was no happily-ever-after.”

“I never understood what George was doing in the saloon that night.” Emily had revealed that he’d died in a saloon fight when they’d been married a little over a year. “I didn’t know he was a drinker or a fighter.”

“George’s death was a blessing.”

Speechless, Joanna simply blinked in astonishment. When she recovered the ability to speak, her voice sounded like a croak. “What do you mean?”

Emily sighed. “My life with George was far from happy. If it was a fairy tale, it was one of the gruesome ones.”

Whatever Joanna had expected her sister to say, it wasn’t that. She couldn’t question the truth behind Emily’s words because she hadn’t been there, but Joanna didn’t understand how everything could have changed so drastically. “You both looked so happy at your wedding.”

“We were happy then,” Emily admitted. “It took several months before I realized that George didn’t love me. He loved the idea of blond, blue-eyed children. That’s why he chose me, because I had blond hair. If you’d been the blond, you’d have been his bride.”

The story was so preposterous that Joanna shook her head. “That can’t be true.”

“It was. All George wanted was a blond boy to carry on the family name.”

“But you had no children.”

Once again, Emily shuddered. “According to George, that was my fault. He claimed I was a bad wife and had to be punished.” She wrapped her arms around her ribs and winced, as if remembering pain.

“Did he ...” Joanna could not complete the sentence. The thought was too horrible to put into words.

Her sister had no such compunctions. “Hit me? Yes. Each month was worse than the one before.” Emily’s lips curled in a mirthless smile. “When the sheriff told me George had been killed, all I could think was that now the pain would stop.”

“Oh, Emily.” Joanna hugged her sister, wishing there were something she could do to erase the past. “I had no idea what you went through.” She’d been heartbroken when Kurt died, grieving for the future they would never share, and had believed that Emily had felt the same bone-deep sorrow she had.

Her sister laid her head on Joanna’s shoulder as she’d done when they were young women and Joanna’s height had sur passed Emily’s. “I didn’t want anyone to know. Craig knows, of course, and I told Louisa.” The pain that had shone from Emily’s eyes had lessened. “You had your own loss to deal with, so I didn’t want to burden you with my story, but I couldn’t let you continue to think that George was a good husband. He wasn’t.”

Joanna tightened her hold on Emily. “I’m so sorry.” Though the words felt inadequate, they were all Joanna could offer.

“It’s over. Believe me, Joanna, every day I thank God that that part of my life has ended and that he brought Craig into my life. I tell him he’s God’s gift after the shadows, the man who showed me the meaning of true love.”

“And soon you’ll have a baby.” For the first time since their conversation had begun, Joanna smiled. “George was wrong.”

Emily’s smile matched hers. “Yes, he was.”