Once in Every Life

  This time Caleb latched on as if he'd been doing it all his life. His tiny fingers unfurled and planted themselves on either side of her breast. In the blink of an eye he became more than just the baby she'd been holding; he became a part of her.

  Tess stared down at him and felt an emotion so big, so profound, she knew she'd never feel its like again. Awe, pride, humility, love, peace. The feeling filled her soul and lit it with brilliant, white-hot light. She got a hint?a fleeting glimpse?of what motherhood could be, and it made her ache with longing. She felt ... needed right now. Important. And not as a scientist with a brilliant mind, but as a human being. A person. It was a feeling she'd sought all her life, at first with desperation, and then with a nagging sense of despair.

  She looked up suddenly at Savannah, eager to share this moment with someone.

  The cold, guarded look in Savannah's eyes sliced through Tess's happiness. The words backed up in her throat, became a tangled mass. She closed her mouth.

  Her joy bled away, turned into another aching sadness. All her life she'd waited to find someone with whom to share her joys and sorrows. Someone to love. And now here she was in the midst of the one thing she'd always sought?a family of her own?and she was more isolated and alone than ever.

  She lowered her lashes to hide her disappointment. "Thanks."

  Savannah lurched to her feet. "I gotta go start dinner."

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  She was halfway to the door before the words were even out of her mouth.

  After she'd left, Tess stared at the closed door for a long time. It was older, with antique hinges and splintery wood, but it was still just another closed door between Tess and a family. She'd been looking at them all her life.

  Hours later, Savannah stood at the kitchener, stirring the rabbit stew she'd made for dinner. Steam slipped through the cracks of the iron oven door, carrying with it the mouth-watering aroma of baking cottage bread. On the back burner, a heavy cast-iron pot full of slow-boiling water rumbled.

  She wiped her sweaty forehead with the crook of her arm and plucked a healthy pinch of salt from the ornate wooden box beside the stove. The pine lid thumped back in place as she sprayed the coarse white granules into the stew.

  She ran her hands along her rumpled white apron and headed for the larder. When the pat of freshly churned butter and the crockery jar of last summer's strawberry jam were settled alongside the silverware and plates, she allowed herself to sit down.

  Dinner would be ready in about five minutes. Not that anyone would notice ... or care.

  She plopped an elbow on the table and cradled her small chin in her palm. Her breath expelled in a sigh too deep and lonely for a twelve-year-old girl, but Savannah didn't know that. She was unaware that loneliness wasn't the normal course of things, for it was all she'd ever known.

  Until recently. Her pale cheeks flamed at the memory. She quickly scanned the room to see if anyone was lurking around to see her blush.

  For once, she was happy to be alone.

  "Jeffie Peters." She whispered his name and closed her

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  eyes, lapsing into a gentle state of whimsy. Sounds filtered through her mind: books cracking shut, children laughing, booted feet shuffling hurriedly along a hardwood floor. The bell heralding the end of the school day pealed gaily.

  "Savannah?"

  She spun around. Jeffie Peters was standing beside her. She felt the whisper-soft brush of his elbow against her arm, and the contact made her pulse thump like a rabbit's.

  "Yeah?"

  "Can I walk you'n Katie home?"

  Savannah's eyes opened. Heat crept up her cheeks again, leaving a blazing trail of shame and embarrassment. She hadn't even had the presence of mind to answer him. She'd just stared at him, her mouth gaping and snapping shut like a freshly landed trout. Then she'd grabbed Katie's chubby hand and dragged her stumbling baby sister out of the one-room schoolhouse.

  It didn't make a lick of sense. Jeffie Peters had been her classmate for years. So why all of a sudden did she get all tongue-tied and stupid whenever he said her name? And why did he want to walk her home anyway? She'd been doing just fine on her own for years.

  A miserable little groan escaped her. If only she had someone to talk to about the strange things she was feeling lately. Not just about Jeffie, either. She had strange feelings about lots of things. Even her body was changing. Her breasts were getting sort of sore, and her stomach was upset an awful lot lately.

  Katie peeked her head around the corner. "Dinner ready?"

  The emotion slid off Savannah's face effortlessly; it was a trick she'd learned from her father. Better to hide one's feelings and smile than to cry. "Yeah. Get Daddy."

  "I'm right here."

  As usual, the sound of her father's deep, baritone voice

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  filled Savannah with a sort of formless longing. She ground her teeth together and gave him a shallow, awkward smile, but he wasn't looking at her. The smile died. She tried desperately to hide her disappointment.

  Rising stiffly, she rubbed her damp palms on her apron and strode purposefully to the kitchener.

  She had to stop this. It was a useless waste of energy, this trying to capture his attention.

  It was all because of The Times. That's how she thought of them in her head, capitalized, wreathed in silent awe. The times when all of a sudden she'd look up and find him staring at her. Those precious seconds when she was a somebody to him swelled in her lonely soul like grains of gold in a beggar's hand. One look, one touch from him, and it started all over again. She started wishing, hoping, praying-----

  But the moments were so rare, so transient, that she was often left wondering whether she'd imagined them. Usually she came to the conclusion that she had.

  She heard him coming toward her, and she stiffened instinctively. He stopped beside her, peered over her shoulder at the stew bubbling softly in the cast-iron pot. Then he reached toward her.

  For one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to touch her arm or pat her shoulder. She leaned infin-itesimally toward him, enough so she might brush his sleeve and feel the heat of his skin or smell the wood-smoke scent of his chambray work shirt.

  He reached past her and eased the kettle off the heat. "Smells good."

  Savannah squeezed back tears. What was wrong with her? Why was she so unlovable? Other children were hugged and kissed and loved by their parents. She'd seen that kind of affection at her friend Lila's house, and every time she saw Mr. Hannah pat Lila's shoulder or kiss the

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  top of his daughter's head, Savannah felt a dull, throbbing ache in her midsection.

  It had to be something wrong with her; she'd faced that truth a long time ago. Something dark and ugly that made her parents turn away.

  She bent tiredly and opened the oven door, carefully extracting the golden loaf of bread. Using her apron to shield her hands, she moved the loaf to a riddle board and started to slice it thickly.

  Katie went to the table and sat down. Her little elbows thumped on the scarred wooden surface. The steady thump-thump-thump of her toes hitting the chair's solid legs was a welcome end to the silence. "What's for dinner, Vannah?"

  Savannah slopped a ladleful of stew into a bowl, balanced a plateful of bread on top, and headed for the table. "Rabbit stew, cottage bread, and some of those pickled cucumbers Mrs. Hannah gave us."

  Katie wrinkled her nose. "Rabbit stew ... again?"

  Savannah set the food on the table, and gently cuffed her baby sister on the head. "Watch it, you," she said, smiling as she buttered her sister's bread. "Or you'll get it for breakfast, too."

  Daddy dished himself a heaping bowl of stew and laid two slices of bread on the bowl's rim. Balancing it carefully, he mumbled, "Thanks," to Savannah and headed to the back porch to eat in solitude.

  Savannah headed back to the stove and got herself a small bowl of stew. Then she went over to her usual dinner spot. Leaning against the dry sink, fe
eling the towel rack jabbing against her lower back, she ate her dinner.

  No one spoke, and the entire meal was over in less than ten minutes. After Katie left, Savannah carried both of their bowls to the dry sink and set them on the wooden

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  drainboard. Filling the metal washbasin with the hot water from the kettle, she set about washing the evening dishes.

  The kitchen door squeaked open, then banged shut. Footsteps thudded toward her. The floor boards shuddered with each step he took.

  "Savannah?"

  She stared intently at the murky gray water. Don't care. Don't care. "Yeah, Daddy?"

  He came up beside her and stopped. "I'll take a bowl to your mama."

  "Okay."

  She waited for him to move away. He didn't. He stood there for a moment longer, and Savannah had the ridiculous thought that he wanted to say something to her.

  She waited.

  "I'll get it, don't you bother."

  Savannah sighed. "Sure, Daddy."

  Chapter Five

  Jack raised a fist to the rough-planked door and knocked.

  "Come on in."

  Come on in? Tension crept through Jack's flesh and tightened his spine. Something wasn't right; Amarylis had never sounded so friendly or casual. Certainly not to someone wanting to enter her sanctuary. Certainly not to him.

  He balanced the tray of food in one hand and turned the knob. The brass felt cool in his fingers as he pushed the door open and entered his wife's bedroom.

  She sat propped up amidst a billowing mirage of grayed pillows. Her straight blond hair was pulled deftly to one side, where it cascaded over her shoulder like a length of moon-spun silk and puddled on the red and white quilt.

  She didn't look up immediately, which was normal enough. What wasn't normal was why she didn't look up. It wasn't the usual calculated snub.

  She appeared, quite simply, to be too captivated by the baby in her arms to wrench her gaze away.

  But that couldn't be. She'd never bothered to look twice at her other children. Why would she start now? He eyed her suspiciously, wondering what new game she was playing.

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  She looked up all of a sudden and smiled at him. Smiled.

  "God, he's so tiny, isn't he?"

  Jack stared at her in mounting confusion. What the hell was going on here?

  "Come see your son," she said in a quiet, almost hesitant voice.

  The butter-soft tone of her voice hit him hard in the midsection. It had been years since he'd heard her voice without the brittle edge of contempt. For a moment he was flung back in time to the early years, when they'd been so desperately in love. God, how he'd loved her....

  He forced the tired memory from his mind and shuffled across the room. Setting the tray down on the table beside the bed, he said, "I brought you something to eat."

  She patted the bed beside her. "Sit."

  He stared at the indentation left by her hand in the thick comforter. Before he could stop it, longing spiraled through his body. The desire to sit beside her was like a dull ache in his soul.

  But he knew better. The years had given him an emotional armor. She was toying with him again; using his weakness and his need for love against him. She was stronger, so much stronger than he. Of that, there had never been a doubt. And these games of power amused her. They were her way to get back at him, still and again, for betraying her dreams of wealth and turning her into a poor, cowardly sheep rancher's wife.

  He wouldn't let her humiliate him again. Never again. He'd resist her until they both dropped dead. "No." He cleared his throat. "No, thanks. I'll stand."

  Disappointment flitted through her eyes, and she looked away. Jack knew he should feel proud that he'd beaten her at her vicious little game, but he couldn't quite manage it.

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  "You'd better eat to keep up your strength," he said for lack of something better to say.

  She didn't answer. Instead, she peeled the blue homespun blanket away from Caleb. The baby's soft, sleepy breaths fluttered upward.

  As he stared down at the baby's wizened, old-man face, Jack felt a surge of emotion so strong and pure, he knew he had no right to feel it. At his sides, his hands fisted into useless blocks. There was a tightness in his chest that made his breathing speed up.

  He had no right to feel these things, no right to feel a father's love.

  He stepped backward, unsteady on his feet. "I'll go now."

  Amarylis looked up at him then, and there was a softness in her gaze that almost brought him to his knees. "Is it her?" she whispered. "Has she done something to make you this way?"

  It was a stupid, incomprehensible question, and Jack was relieved he didn't have to answer. With a curt nod, he turned his back on her and left the room.

  Tess eyed the bedpost, wondering if she should start notching it. The way the days were blurring together, pretty soon she'd wonder how long she'd been here in solitary confinement. So far, it had been five days; five of the longest, most boring days of her life. Correction, she thought, of her lives.

  She glanced down at the baby in her arms, and felt a now familiar rush of maternal love. The highlight of the last week had been the chance to bond with Caleb. She was actually beginning to feel like the baby's mother.

  But as exciting and fulfilling as the budding emotion was, it didn't make up for the nagging sense of isolation which now surrounded her. Sometimes, especially when

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  Caleb slept and she was left alone in her big bed and too-silent bedroom, she felt a lingering sadness.

  God, she was tired of being lonely.

  "So, kiddo," she said to Caleb, "what do you think about global thermonuclear war? Or the greenhouse effect?do you believe in that?"

  He burped a little and spat up.

  For a split second there, she'd thought he was going to answer.

  She was cracking up. Her scientist-sharp mind was turning slowly, irrevocably, to mush. She was inches? centimeters?away from going stark, raving mad.

  The last few weeks had been almost unbearable. She hadn't had an honest-to-God discussion with a human being since the night Jack had yelled at her for breaking some unknown rule. In retrospect, that little tete-a-tete looked pretty good.

  She couldn't live like this. She'd tried. She'd told herself to simply melt into the woodwork, do what was expected of her, and everything would be fine.

  The problem was, nothing was expected of her. Nothing. Everyone walked around Amarylis as if she were a lighted stick of dynamite?quietly and quickly, without looking back. She felt like a ghost, unwanted and invisible.

  Tess couldn't stand it. Here she was, a healthy, hearing woman who spoke with a lilting southern drawl, and she had no one to talk to. And nothing to hear. Just as before, she lived in a world of aching silence and isolation.

  They ignored her. Completely.

  Oh, Savannah came in twice a day, bearing a tray of food and a pile of folded towels for Tess's "you know, womanly needs." She nodded silently to her mother, occasionally mumbling, "Good morning"?that was a very good day in Tess's book?but more often saying nothing.

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  She set the tray down on the bedside table, plucked up Tess's small bucket of used towels, then spun away from the bed and disappeared.

  Tess wouldn't see another soul until dinner. Then Savannah went through the same ritual again. Jack and Katie hadn't even peeked their heads in to say hello.

  Seeing a single person, and no one else, for over a month, especially when that person looked at you as if you were Typhoid Mary, just didn't cut it.

  The first few weeks hadn't been so bad. In fact, it had been sort of nice, being catered to. She'd been in so much pain, and between feedings she'd desperately needed to sleep. But now Caleb was sleeping almost through the night and she felt pretty good. The pain and bleeding had passed, and she was breast-feeding like a champ. There was no re
ason for her to spend all day lounging in this room or this bed.

  This was her life now. It was a realization she'd come to accept in the last few days. There would be no further soul switching, no last-minute "It was just a joke" from Carol.

  It was done. This was Tess's life. She was Amarylis? she was going to have to do something about the name? Rafferty now, and she damn well had to make the best of it.

  If there was one thing Tess knew, it was how to fit in. As a kid, she'd changed foster homes like some kids changed underwear. Things were always the same. She came into the family alone, a skinny, silent deaf girl who didn't?couldn't-?belong. The first few days she spent closeted in her room, trying not to cry, wishing things were different. Then she realized that things weren 't different. She lifted her chin, rolled up her sleeves, and set about fitting in.

  It was time for that now. She'd waited and hoped for

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  someone to invite her into the family, then she'd moped because the invitation hadn't come.

  No more, she decided. It was time to make her own invitation.

  Tess bided her time patiently all day, waiting for just the right moment to make her move into the family. With this group, she figured it was like merging into a Los Angeles freeway; one had to move cautiously and signal first.

  After feeding Caleb, she crawled back into bed,

  awaiting Savannah. As night pressed against the bedroom

  window, she began to hear the telltale sound of cooking.

  Tess smiled for the first time in days. Soon she would

  make her move.

  Savannah was right on time with supper. She knocked lightly on Tess's door, then glided silently across the room, a tray of food balanced perfectly in front of her. She set it down on the bedside table with practiced ease and mumbled, "Evenin', Mama," then turned to leave.

  Tess grabbed her sleeve. "Savannah? May I talk to you?"

  Savannah turned back around, eyeing her mother warily. " 'Bout what?"