Eternity

  Carrie blew her nose. “Oh, no, of course not. My parents and my brothers always give me what I want. Only ’Ring…” She started crying again.

  Josh took a few moments to digest this glimpse into her family. The spoiled baby, always given anything she wanted. If she wanted to travel alone across the country into the wilds of Colorado because she’d illegally obtained a signature on some papers so she could marry a man she’d never met, then that was all right with them. Whatever their darling wanted. And look at what had happened, Josh thought. Carrie had come out smelling like a rose. She had a man and two children who loved her as much as they loved sunshine and air.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I think perhaps your brother ’Ring has the right idea about you.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say! You sound like ’Ring. He’s always telling Father to send me to a nunnery, and we’re not even Catholic.”

  Josh coughed to cover a laugh, but Carrie wasn’t fooled. She started to get off the couch, vowing to never speak to him again.

  Pulling her onto his lap, he began to kiss her. She was rigid at first, but then relaxed against him. “All right, sweetheart, tell me what you’re afraid of.” When she didn’t answer right away, he paused in stroking her hair. “It’s me, isn’t it? You don’t want him to know your husband is a poor farmer who can’t even give you—”

  “Shut up!” she screamed in his face as she got off his lap. “I am sick unto death of hearing about money. This has nothing to do with money. I have lots of money.”

  “Your family’s money,” Josh said grimly.

  “For your information, I have money I have made.” She stopped shouting at his look of disbelief. “Did you by chance happen to notice any difference in this town since the last time you were here? And you don’t have to tell me you haven’t been here in weeks because I know. Everyone in town has told me how you and those poor, darling children—which I might add you don’t deserve—have become hermits. Tell me, did you?”

  “Which question am I to answer? About the town or the children?”

  She ground her teeth; he was teasing her. After turning her back to him, she looked back at him with a smug smile. “You’ve said that I’m useless. You said that because I can’t cook and have no ambition to learn to clean, but you know what I can do?”

  “Yes,” he said in a way that made Carrie blush and lose her train of thought.

  “I can…oh yes, I can make money.”

  “Out of tin? Or do you use a spell cast with frogs’ tongues and such?”

  “No, much simpler than that. I made it by working. If you laugh at me again, Joshua Greene, I swear on my family’s name that I’ll never go to bed with you again.”

  Josh didn’t laugh. In fact, with such a punishment facing him, he didn’t feel any inclination to laugh—none at all.

  Taking her seat again, Carrie told him about opening her store. She told of staying in Eternity’s nasty little hotel after he left her at the stage depot and how she’d spent two days doing nothing but writing letters. She wrote to the wife of every important man in Denver. The people of Eternity supplied her with the names and vague addresses of anyone they’d ever heard of in Denver who had any money.

  “What did you write to these women?” Josh asked, genuinely curious.

  Carrie told him that she’d written to the women that her brothers had recently returned from Paris and brought back far too many clothes for her to wear. And, furthermore, her brothers were such blockheads that they had brought her clothes that were in the very widest range of sizes imaginable, as well as in every color that could be found in Paris.

  “A cry of help if ever I heard one,” Josh said, but he was definitely not laughing at her.

  She told the rest of her story quickly, telling of her first customers, of hiring seamstresses, of not allowing the idiot women to wear what was unflattering to them. “You should have seen them. Two-hundred-pound women in white chiffon ruffles and thin, bosomless women in black. I began to supplement the fronts of the gowns with cotton. You know, ‘For what God has,’ etc., etc.”

  “No, I don’t think I do know.”

  “ ‘For what God has forgotten, He supplied cotton,’ ” Carrie quoted.

  Josh didn’t laugh, but he had to drink brandy to keep from doing so. “What is the name of this shop?”

  “Paris in the Desert.”

  Josh’s mouthful of brandy went spewing out across Carrie.

  After brushing the front of herself off, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No, my love, not at all. Paris in the Desert is an excellent choice of name. It goes with Choo-choo very well.”

  She was looking at him hard, but she couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. She finished her story by telling how the increasing business of her shop had helped the economy of the entire town.

  When she’d finished, she looked at Josh in triumph. She was expecting praise from him, but instead, he looked gloomy.

  “What is wrong now? Haven’t I proven to you that I’m not useless?”

  “You can even earn money,” he said miserably. “What’s your brother going to say to your being married to a man who can’t seem to earn a decent living? A man who can’t support his wife?”

  “My brother doesn’t expect me to marry for money. His wife had no great fortune when he met her so why does my husband have to be rich?” Carrie thought that sometimes talking to Josh was like talking to a block of wood.

  “You don’t understand. But I imagine your brother will. Isn’t that why you’re worried about his visit?”

  “No. ’Ring will have a great deal to say about my…well, he’ll see the way I got Father to sign the papers as dishonest. Then there’s the possibility that our marriage isn’t quite legal because Father didn’t know what he was signing and I’m not twenty-one yet. And ’Ring will be upset about you and me living together for a few days then my living in town all alone, unprotected, uncared for, while my husband stays at his farm. ’Ring is an old-fashioned man who believes that a man and wife should live together.”

  Josh smiled. He couldn’t make her understand what it meant to a man to not be able to support his wife, but at the same time he knew he was testing her. In three years he could leave the farm, and when he could get away from the farm, he could again earn his own living.

  He pulled Carrie back onto his lap. “If your brother is worried about our not being married properly, then we’ll just have to get married again. I’m sorry I missed the first one, but this time we can have a wedding night.” Holding her face in his hand, he kissed her. “I am beginning to think that you really do love me. If you can love me as I am now, perhaps you can love me later.”

  “What does that mean?” After one look at his face, she turned away in disgust. “Oh, yes, secrets again. When are you going to love me enough to tell me all about yourself?”

  “As a matter of fact, I already have,” Josh said as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the letter he had spent the night writing. As he withdrew it, the letter that had come in the mail to him fell to the floor, and Carrie picked it up. “I spent all night last night writing this to you,” he said. “I was going to send it to Maine.”

  Carrie reached out to take it, but he pulled it back.

  “I can tell you everything in there now.”

  “I’d like to read it. Do you make undying declarations of love to me in the letter?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes soft. “What is that?”

  Looking down at the letter she held, she saw that it had no return address. “It’s addressed to you.”

  Teasingly, Josh put the letter he’d written to her on a table out of her reach. “Perhaps I’d better read my own mail first. Maybe it’s from a female admirer.” Still smiling, he ran the letter under his nose.

  Josh had meant to tease Carrie, but as he smelled the letter, he turned pale.

  “J
osh, are you all right?”

  More color left his face. Getting off his lap, Carrie went to refill his brandy glass. At this rate, both of them were going to be drunk.

  After Josh put the brandy back in one gulp, he held out the glass for her to refill, and after she’d done so, he downed that too before he opened the letter with trembling hands.

  He took only seconds to read it. Carrie had never seen a man faint before, but she thought she was seeing one now. Picking up his arm, she put it around her shoulders and helped him to the couch.

  “Josh!” she cried, beginning to shake him. Smelling salts were on the table, and she held them under his nose.

  He turned his head away so he was facing the couch back.

  “Josh, what’s wrong?” He didn’t answer her, but just kept staring at the back of the couch, looking as though his life were over.

  Picking up the letter from where it had fallen to the floor, Carrie read it.

  My Darling Joshua,

  Just one more paper to sign, then you are free. I shall bring it to you on the thirteenth of October. How are our dear, dear children?

  With all my love,

  Nora

  P.S. Won’t you reconsider, or is the life of a farmer agreeing with you?

  When Carrie finished reading the letter—three times—she too was trembling. “Who—” She cleared her throat. “Who is Nora?”

  Very slowly, Josh turned toward her, then sat up. “It seems that she is still my wife,” he said softly.

  Gaping at him, Carrie stood stock still. Her family and others had told her that life was difficult, but she’d never believed them. Whenever anyone told her that life was hard, she’d told them that life was what you made of it. She said that people either chose to be happy or sad, and she always had examples of poor people who had one misfortune after another in their families yet they were happy, and others who were rich and had everything to be glad about yet were miserable. One day, when Carrie was about sixteen and was spouting this great wisdom, her mother had told her that happy people had never really truly been in love. She said that love was about two thirds joy and one third the most awful pain on earth. The pain of love beat death all to bits. At the time, Carrie thought her mother was not very bright, but now she understood exactly what her mother meant.

  Carrie straightened her shoulders. “How opportune for me. My brother is coming tomorrow, and he can take me back to Warbrooke with him.”

  Josh was off the couch in seconds, his hands on her shoulders. “I thought the divorce was final. I thought it was final a year ago. God knows I paid enough to get rid of her!”

  Carrie gave him a cold look. “And I thought you were a widower. Of course you never thought enough of me to tell me any different. Would you get out of my way? I need to get back to my shop.” She looked him up and down. “Not all of us are business failures, you know.”

  At that Josh dropped his hands from her shoulders, because at the moment he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Stepping back, he allowed her to leave the room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Looking in the mirror, Carrie pinched her cheeks, wishing she could put some of the redness from her nose on her cheeks. She dabbed more powder on her nose. ’Ring wasn’t going to like her wearing powder, and he wasn’t going to like her red eyes, either. But most of all, he wasn’t going to like what she had to tell him. He was going to be angry at her.

  Carrie could see tears forming in her eyes again. How much water could a body excrete? She’d cried all night and all morning.

  After she’d left Josh yesterday, she’d gone back to her shop, planning to lose herself in her work. That’s what her brothers always did when they were upset about something, but it hadn’t worked for Carrie. Maybe it was that running a shipping company was more important than choosing dresses for women, but Carrie hadn’t been able to think of anything except that her husband was married to someone else. She hadn’t even known that his wife was still alive. He may love her, but he didn’t trust her enough to tell her anything about himself.

  Two hours after she’d left Josh yesterday, Tem and Dallas had come to her shop and wanted to see her. Carrie had tried to dry her eyes so the children wouldn’t see that she’d been crying, but they had noticed immediately.

  Tem asked her if she’d read their father’s letter. Thinking only of the letter from Nora, Carrie said that she had indeed read it, and because of the letter, she was going to have to leave Colorado forever.

  When the children left her store, they had seemed like old people, tired, weary old people who had seen too much misery in their lives.

  After the children had gone, Carrie went to the tiny house she rented at the back of her store and cried herself into a fitful sleep. As for the women in her store, those who worked for her and her customers, she couldn’t have cared less.

  Now, this morning, she had to meet her brother’s stage, and the last person on earth she wanted to see was her brother ’Ring. Maybe he wouldn’t say, I told you so, but she’d see it in his eyes. He’d always thought she was flighty and too indulged by her family, and she was proving him right.

  When Carrie put her bonnet on, she didn’t even bother to tie the ribbon in a jaunty little bow as she usually did, for she didn’t really care what she looked like.

  When she walked to the depot, she didn’t look at the people who called hello to her or answer them. All she wanted to do was get this over with, to see her brother and have him arrange for her to go back to Maine. Where I’ll once again be the baby of the family, she thought. The little girl they all think of as their toy, a place where I’ll no longer have my own little family or a man who loves just me. Of course she hadn’t had that when she thought she did.

  She arrived at the depot thirty minutes before the time the stage was due, and the depot manager laughed when he saw her. “That stage ain’t been on time in years and it ain’t gonna be today. I’ve heard they had Indian trouble. Probably be days before it’s here.”

  Carrie didn’t even look at him. “My brother will see that it’s here on time,” she said tiredly as she sat down on the bench.

  This proclamation set the man into howls of laughter, and he left the building, no doubt to tell his story to the rest of the townspeople.

  He wasn’t out of the door two minutes before Josh entered the building.

  “My goodness,” Carrie said, “if it isn’t Nora’s husband.” She turned away to look at the wall.

  Sitting down by her, Josh took her hand in his, but Carrie snatched it away.

  He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Carrie, I’ve learned something from you: You never admit defeat. Never.”

  “Sometimes you have to.” She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “I didn’t tell you about Nora because I thought she was out of my life. It’s that simple. You read the letter. I thought the divorce was final, because I thought all the papers were signed. I thought that I had given her enough that even she was satisfied.”

  “What else did you give her? All of your love?”

  “Nora didn’t want love. She wanted money, so I gave her every penny I had. And when I’d sold everything, including my clothes, in order to get rid of her and get my children, she still wanted more.”

  “She wanted you,” Carrie said.

  Josh smiled at her. “You are the only woman who wants me. You want me in spite of my bad temper, in spite of my hopelessness at farming. You want me and my children and whatever else I have, not what I can give you—except maybe enough love to fill the earth.”

  “Shut up,” she said softly, because she’d started crying again.

  “Carrie, I’m sorry about everything that’s happened. I’m sorry for misjudging you and thinking you were an idiot.” He smiled at her look of protest. “Can you blame me? You’re much too pretty for any man to think you have a brain. And it’s been my experience that pretty girls think only of themselves.”
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  “Is your wife pretty?”

  “My ex-wife. No, Nora’s not exactly pretty.” He untied the ribbon of her bonnet under her chin and retied it so the bow was nice. “I don’t love Nora. I’m not sure I ever did.”

  “But she’s the mother of your children.”

  “I didn’t hate her.”

  At that Carrie started to get up, but he pulled her back to the seat. “What matters is now. I love you and I want you to marry me and I want you to stay with me and the kids. Forever. That’s what you’ve wanted since you first saw us, isn’t it?”

  Carrie’s eyes were betraying her again. “I don’t think I like you. You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t lie. I thought the divorce was final. The letter yesterday was as much a shock to me as it was to you.”

  When she didn’t say anything, he pulled her into his arms, but it took her a moment to relax against him. “My brother…”

  He stroked her hair. “Leave your brother to me.”

  “You don’t know him. He’ll be very upset when he hears that I’m married to a married man.”

  “Not to mention that you’re going to have his baby,” Josh said softly.

  Carrie didn’t breathe for a moment. She didn’t need to ask how he’d found out, since she’d fainted three times in the last week and she had an idea that half of the town was talking about why she’d fainted. “Do you want me for the baby?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. The baby is the only reason I want you. Didn’t you realize that I’m collecting kids? I do so well with them. In my company, all children laugh their lives away. It couldn’t possibly be that I want you because the mere thought of going on living without you makes me miserable. Carrie,” he whispered, “please don’t leave me.”

  She hugged him back then, and he kissed her, kissed her softly and with yearning.

  “When your brother gets here, whenever the stage arrives, today or tomorrow or whenever—” He put his fingertip over her lips to keep her from speaking. “You leave everything to me. I’ll make him think we’re the happiest couple in the world and that nothing has ever been wrong between us. Who knows, maybe the stage won’t arrive for three days yet. By that time Nora will have come and gone, we’ll have been married, and everything will be fine—except for my corn crop.”