Eternity

  He and Tem went to the cornfield, and he did his best to try to make the corn grow, but he threw down his hoe. “The goddamn plants know I hate them,” he said. Tem solemnly nodded in agreement.

  Josh tried going fishing with his children, but there wasn’t much joy in the outing, no one to tease them and challenge them, no one to make a game of the day.

  On the previous evening everything had come to a head. He and the children were eating a meal of fried ham and canned beans when they heard a dog barking outside. They should have known that it wasn’t Carrie’s dog, for it was the deep voice of a large dog, but that fact didn’t seem to register with any of them. Without looking at each other, without a word spoken between them, the three of them leaped from the table and made for the door all at the same time. Since the door wasn’t big enough for the three of them, they began pushing each other. Dallas bit her brother’s shoulder, and Josh nearly knocked his son down in his hurry to get outside, but then Josh had enough presence of mind to realize what he was doing, so he picked up a child in each arm and went through the door.

  The dog ran away at the sight of the three fused people coming at him at once. It was a big, scrawny farm dog and not at all like Choo-choo.

  Putting his children down, Josh sat on the porch step and looked out at the moonlit yard. As always, the three of them kept to their policy of not saying a word about Carrie, but it was Dallas who began to softly sob.

  Without saying a word, Josh pulled her onto his lap and stroked her hair. Beside them Tem began to sob too, and Josh knew that Tem would rather die than allow anyone to see him in tears, so he knew how much pain his son was feeling. Josh put his arm around Tem.

  “Why did she leave?” Tem whispered.

  “Because I’m stupid and a fool and have no sense,” Josh said softly.

  Dallas nodded against his chest, and tears came to Josh’s eyes too. It always amazed him at how much his children loved him. He had sent away a woman they had grown to love very much, but not once had they even questioned him. They loved him enough to believe that what he did was right, and they were willing to accept his decision no matter what it did to them. They loved him with complete trust.

  Josh sniffed and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. Carrie had said that she loved him. Did she love him enough to come back to him?

  Josh hugged Tem. “Think she’d forgive me?”

  It took the children a moment to understand what their father had said, then they looked at each other, smiled, leaped off the porch and began to dance about the yard. Josh hadn’t seen them with this much energy in six weeks.

  “I take it you do think she’ll forgive me,” Josh said sarcastically.

  “She loves you,” Dallas said.

  Josh laughed, for his daughter made it sound as though she couldn’t understand why Carrie loved Josh. “Maybe if I wrote her a letter and explained—”

  At that the children stopped dancing and looked at their father. The next moment they were pushing him into the house, where Dallas fetched pen, ink, and paper, while Tem, his hands behind his back, looking very much like his father, began to tell his father what to write. “First of all, you have to tell her you love her, then you have to tell her you think she’s the best in the world. Tell her you like her…her name. Tell her you like her dresses and her hair. Tell her she can fish better than you. Tell her that you’re sure she is a better farmer than you.”

  Josh lifted one eyebrow. “Anything else?”

  The children didn’t seem to realize that their father was being sarcastic, or if they did, they ignored him. “Tell her about the food we have to eat,” Dallas said as though that one fact would make Carrie take pity on them and return.

  His hands still behind his back, still looking like a miniature version of his father, Tem looked down at the floor with a frown and began to pace. “Tell her she makes us laugh. Tell her that if she’ll come back, she can sleep in the morning if she wants to. Carrie likes to sleep late. Tell her I won’t do anything dumb like run away again.” He looked up at his father, and his face was as serious as any adult’s. “Tell her you’re sorry for all the mean things you said to her and that if she’ll come back you’ll treat her like a queen and you won’t argue with her and you’ll give her the big bed all by herself.”

  Josh smiled at that. “She, uh, likes sharing with me.”

  Dallas gave a snort. “You kick and you’re too big and you snore sometimes.”

  “Don’t tell her you snore,” Tem ordered.

  Both children stopped and looked at Josh as though waiting for something, and it took him a moment to understand. Picking up the pen, he began to write. “Anything else I should tell her?”

  “Tell her she doesn’t have to see Uncle Hiram,” Dallas said. “I don’t like him anyway.”

  Tem took a deep breath. “Tell Carrie about Mother. Tell her about you.”

  Putting down the pen, he looked at his children for a moment then opened his arms to them, hugged them, and kissed their foreheads. “I will write everything you’ve said and more. I’ll tell her how we miss her and…love her and want her back with us. And I’ll tell her all about me.”

  Tem looked up with questioning eyes.

  “Everything,” Josh promised. “After she hears about me, she may not want me. She may want to stay back in Maine with her family.”

  Dallas looked as though she were going to cry again. “Tell her she can kiss you all she wants.”

  Josh laughed. “I’ll be very glad to tell her that. Now, I want the two of you to go to bed. And don’t look at me like that, I swear that I’ll write the letter.”

  “Can we read it?” Tem asked.

  “No you may not. This is my letter and it’s private.”

  “You won’t forget to tell her that—” Dallas began.

  “I don’t want one more order from either of you two runts. Now go to bed so I can work on this. And stop looking at me like that. I’m perfectly capable of writing a letter by myself.”

  The children didn’t say another word as they went up the ladder to the loft, but Josh thought he heard Tem whisper, “He hasn’t done anything else very well without us.”

  Josh resisted the urge to defend himself, but what stopped him was that what Tem had said was correct. Smiling, he looked back at the paper.

  Last night he had written the letter to Carrie and now he and the children were on their way into town to mail it. This morning Tem had found his father asleep, his head on the table, a many-paged letter beneath his arm, and when Tem had tried to sneak the letter out from under his father, Josh woke.

  “What time is it?” Josh asked, rubbing his stubble-covered face.

  “Late. Are you going to mail the letter today?”

  Josh smiled at the pleading look on his son’s face. “We will mail it today. All three of us will go into town. The corn can’t get worse than it is already. Go on, get dressed and help Dallas while I shave.”

  So now they were riding into town, but it was a town that they barely recognized. The last time Josh had been to Eternity—with Carrie—it had been nothing more than dirt streets, usually filled with people leaving town. Now there were rich carriages and men in suits such as he’d not seen since coming West.

  “Is this Heaven?” Dallas asked from her seat in front of her father.

  For a moment Josh thought he’d made a wrong turn and was in another town, Denver perhaps, but he recognized too many things for it to be anywhere else.

  When they reached the mercantile store, where the post office was, Josh stopped. Tem dismounted, then Josh got down and helped Dallas to the ground. All three of them were speechless as they looked about at the activity in the usually dead little town.

  “What is going on in this town? The last time I was here, this place was dead,” Josh said to the storekeeper as soon as they were inside.

  Before anyone could give Josh an answer—and they had plenty to say to the husband of the town heroine when he had
n’t so much as been to visit her—Dallas gave a squeal.

  Turning, Josh saw Carrie standing in the doorway. He couldn’t believe it, but she was prettier than he remembered, and he wanted to run to her, to take her in his arms. But after the first moment when she’d seemed to look at him with love, she gave him a look as though he were something that she’d found growing on her face cream.

  The next moment she had her arms open to the children, who ran to her as though it had been only yesterday that they’d seen her last. They didn’t seem to feel the least bit of shyness or doubt that Carrie still loved them. Josh watched his son unabashedly kissing Carrie’s firm, pink cheek and hugging her with no reserve. Dallas had, quite simply, wrapped her legs about Carrie’s waist and was seated on top of her wide skirt and didn’t look as though she ever meant to leave her perch.

  The children and Carrie started talking at once, Choo-choo running and barking around them like an annoying gnat, and Josh felt some hurt that the children were telling her things that they hadn’t told him. They told her what they had thought about and done while she was gone. Tem told Carrie that he had been searching for the Wild Girl—something that Josh hadn’t known.

  “And Papa has missed you every day. He wrote you a letter,” Dallas said.

  “Oh? Did he?” Carrie said, looking over Tem’s head to Josh. “I have received nothing from him.”

  “We came here today to mail it,” Tem said.

  Carrie looked down and smiled at him. She didn’t know it was possible to miss people as much as she had missed these children. Every hour of every day she had wondered what they were doing, and every time she missed them, she thought about shooting Joshua Greene. Or maybe stabbing him. Or keelhauling him. Or spending three weeks in bed with him.

  When she looked back at Josh, her mouth was set in a firm line.

  He walked toward her. “I’d like to talk to you,” Josh said softly.

  “Really? Do you want to talk to me as much as you did the day you left me at the depot?”

  “Carrie, please,” he said.

  But Carrie wasn’t going to give in to him. With Dallas still on her hip, she swept past him and went to the store clerk. “Anything for me?”

  The clerk was looking from Josh to Carrie and back again as he handed Carrie a letter and one to Josh. Taking her letter, she started to move away.

  Josh took Dallas and set her to the floor. “Out,” was all he said to the children, and they left the store.

  Carrie started to follow them, but Josh blocked her way.

  “I said I want to talk to you.”

  “We don’t always get what we want in this life, do you? I wanted to live with you and your children. Heaven only knows why I should choose a mule-head like you when you won’t listen to a word I say, but I did and I lived to regret it. Now, would you please move out of my way?”

  “No. Carrie, I have something to say and you’re going to listen to me.”

  When he wouldn’t move, she decided to pretend he wasn’t there, so she opened her letter and began to read it. “There’s nothing you can say,” she said. “You discarded me once, and I won’t be—” She broke off as she realized what her letter said. She looked up at Josh in horror, then the next moment, everything became black. As she fainted, Josh caught her in his arms.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Carrie awoke, she was stretched out on a sofa in a pretty little parlor that she had never seen before. She started to sit up.

  “Ssh, be still and drink this,” Josh said, his hand behind her head, a glass of brandy to her lips. He was sitting on a chair facing her.

  Carrie took a drink, then at Josh’s urging, lay back down. “What happened?” she whispered. “And where am I?” Looking at him, she narrowed her eyes. “And what are you doing here?”

  Josh smiled at her. “I’m very glad to see that you’re feeling better.”

  “I was until I saw you,” she said, but there wasn’t much conviction in her voice. More than anything in the world she wanted to feel his arms around her. She had started her dress shop and she’d done well at it, but the truth was she hated it. What she really wanted was to be home with Josh and the kids.

  Josh saw that gleam in her eyes. “You’d never make an actress, you know,” he said in the softest, silkiest voice she’d ever heard. “Your face is too readable.”

  “Don’t you come near me!” she said, as he bent forward and kissed the corner of her mouth.

  “I plan to come a great deal closer to you than this. Carrie, my love, I came to tell you that I love you, love you with all my heart, and I’d ask you to marry me if I hadn’t already had that privilege.”

  She wanted to punish him, wanted to play hard-to-get, wanted to make him feel as miserable as he’d made her feel. Instead, she put her hands over her face and began to cry.

  Josh looked at her in consternation as he handed her a handkerchief. “I thought you’d like the idea.” When she kept crying, he took her damp hands in his. “Carrie, there isn’t someone else, is there? I thought, no, I hoped that when I saw that you were still here that maybe you had stayed because…well, because you…”

  Sniffing, she looked at him. “I stayed because I didn’t have enough money to get home.”

  At that Josh began to laugh, and Carrie joined him. As he was laughing, he took her head in his hands and began kissing her face. “Tell me there’s no one else. Tell me. Oh, God, Carrie, I’ve missed you. I think you took my soul away when you left. How could anyone come to love somebody so much in so few days?”

  He was leaning over her, almost on top of her, and kissing all of her skin that he could reach. “I fell in love with you from a photograph,” she said softly as he kissed her lips.

  Behind them, the parlor door opened. “I just wanted to see how—Oh, excuse me,” said the storekeeper as he closed the door again.

  Josh looked at Carrie and smiled. “We’d better get you home. I’ll finish this tonight.”

  Carrie, dazed with happiness, began to sit up, but then put her hand to her forehead. Instantly, Josh pushed her back down and held the glass to her lips again.

  “You’re not well,” Josh said.

  Carrie smiled at him, for he made it sound as though she were about to die at any second. “I’m—” Carrie cut herself off as she saw her letter lying on a table, and she remembered what had so upset her to make her faint. Her eyes widened; she was speechless.

  Frowning, Josh picked up the letter. After Carrie had fainted and he’d carried her to the storekeeper’s house, while the man’s wife was passing smelling salts under Carrie’s nose, Josh had read the letter. For the life of him he couldn’t see what was in the letter to upset her enough to make her faint. One of her precious, perfect, unreproachable, rich brothers was coming to visit her.

  Carrie drained the brandy, then the water and lay back against the pillows. “When does he say he’s coming?” she asked softly.

  Josh scanned the letter. “October the twelfth.” He looked up at her. “That’s tomorrow.”

  Carrie looked as though she were going to faint again so Josh poured more brandy and handed it to her.

  “Look on the bright side,” Josh said, smiling. “The stage hasn’t run on time in all the years it’s been coming to Eternity so there’s no reason to believe your brother will be here for weeks yet.”

  Carrie’s voice was glum. “If my brother ’Ring says that he’s going to be here on the twelfth of October, then that’s when he’ll be here. If he has to carry the stage, he’ll be here when he says he will.”

  “Would you mind telling me why the impending visit of one of your perfect brothers makes you turn the color of rice powder?”

  “And what do you know about rice powder? And, besides that, how do you know so much about corsets and other parts of women’s garments? And, furthermore, I hate you for leaving me alone for six weeks and two days while you made up your mind whether you loved me or not. If I’d taken the stage back to Main
e, I could have been killed by Indians by now for all you knew. I could—”

  He kissed her to make her be quiet. “You are not going to get around me by starting an argument. What has upset you about your brother?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you anything. You’ve never yet told me anything about yourself.” Crossing her arms over her chest, she set her mouth in a thin line.

  “But then you’re not a secretive person, are you?”

  She glared at him. “Is that the same as not being mysterious?”

  “Carrie, you are stalling.”

  Carrie dropped her arms. “All right,” she said. “It’s not just any of my brothers who’s coming, it’s ’Ring. It’s my eldest brother. It’s my perfect brother.”

  Josh looked at her as though she’d explained nothing. “As far as I can tell, you consider each of your brothers to be the very essence of all the manly skills.”

  Carrie took a deep breath. How to describe ’Ring to someone who’d never met him? “ ’Ring is actually perfect. My other brothers, well, they have flaws.” At the way Josh lifted his eyebrows in mock disbelief, Carrie made a face at him. After he’d kissed her three times, he sat back on his chair and waited for her to continue.

  “ ’Ring never lies, cheats, or as far as anyone can tell, has any human weaknesses. He can do anything better than anyone else. The only bad thing that can be said about him is that he’s my ugliest brother.” This made Carrie smile. “ ’Ring isn’t human.”

  Josh rolled his eyes. “Why should the appearance of this angel-on-earth make you unhappy?”

  Carrie put her hands over her face. “I don’t know. He won’t like what I’ve done. I’m sure he’s very upset if Mother has told him about the papers I had Father sign.” Sniffling into Josh’s handkerchief, she told him the entire story of how she’d sneaked the proxy documents into a pile of business papers her father was signing.

  Josh was aghast. “And when you told your parents what you had done, they didn’t just destroy the papers and lock you in your room?”