Victoria's Promise (Brides of Serenity Book 2) Page 9

  “But my heart --” his voice was muffled.

  “Was damaged, yes.” Victoria leaned back from him and smiled down at him, her own heart breaking just a tiny bit. “Your heart is weaker than it was, but you are not dying, Micah. You just won’t be able to run and play quite the same as other children.”

  “You mean I won’t be able to run faster’n Sophie?”

  “Nobody runs faster than Sophie,” she said. Looking down, she saw that he was smiling faintly. “Micah Visser, did you just make a joke?”

  He laughed a shaky little laugh, but his chin trembled again. Silently, she pulled him close and pretended not to notice the way his body shook with sobs. “I -- I want to go home,” he murmured over and over as he cried.

  “Then you’ll go as soon as possible,” she promised. Her mind was whirling. She’d already had two job offers for the fall; it was merely a matter of choosing which school she wanted to work for. The Vissers had offered to keep her on as a boarder after Micah returned to his family, so everything was falling into place for her own future. Micah’s future seemed taken care of as well, now that they were ready to accept the fact that he wasn’t going to get much better. All that was left to do was write to Hannah and arrange for George to take him back to Serenity.

  Victoria realized the child had become still in her arms. A quick glance told her he had cried himself to sleep. Planting a gentle kiss on his forehead, she settled him on the blanket and reached into her bag for her paper. Dear Hannah, she began. I believe the time has come for Micah to return home.

  Chapter 22

  As the weeks wore on without Victoria, Will devoted himself to the search for a new teacher.

  “Maybe we don’t need a schoolteacher at all,” Earl Conway suggested one day when parents gathered at the store to discuss the situation. “I hear tell of a new school being built in Bear Lake Mills. Our kids could walk there pretty easy.”

  “It’s true,” Adam agreed. “Abe Foote donated the land for the new schoolhouse on his place.”

  “Are you thinking of sending your girls there, Adam?” Will wanted to know.

  Adam shook his head. “Only if I have to. I’d rather keep them in school right here.”

  “There’s a woman in Kalamazoo who might be perfect for the job as our teacher,” Will told them. “Her son is bringing her out to meet with me later this week. If she seems right for the job, will all of you still send your children to school here in Serenity?”

  Most nodded, but he noticed that a few seemed less than enthusiastic.

  When the woman arrived from Kalamazoo, she was exactly what Will had expected Victoria to look like. Wilhelmina Claridge-Doxtator was a large and imposing woman, nearly as tall as a man, with square shoulders and broad hips and no waist to speak of. She had steel-gray hair twisted back tightly away from her square-jawed face, and tiny black eyes that glittered like polished stones.

  He reflected that she looked exactly like one very large rectangle. A large rectangle in the most severe black dress he thought he had ever seen.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Doxtator?” he said, taking her hand as she stepped down from her son’s carriage.

  “Claridge-Doxtator,” she corrected him.

  “Of course. My apologies, Mrs. Claridge-Doxtator. Would you care for a cup of tea and some refreshments after your journey?”

  She narrowed her little eyes at him as though trying to determine whether he was mocking her. After a moment, she nodded. “Tea would be just the thing,” she declared.

  He led her into his store and offered her a seat while he hurried into the back room to brew a pot of the same bitter black tea he had made for Nellie Conway all those weeks ago. “Milk or sugar?” he asked, pouring her a cup.

  “Only those with wasteful habits drink their tea with milk or sugar,” she told him. “Now, tell me about my school.”

  He wanted to correct her and remind her that she didn’t have the job just yet. But even as he opened his mouth to speak, the door opened to admit a large and rather rectangular-looking young man. “There you are, Mama,” he said, sounding relieved.

  “And where else would I be, Leonard? Mr. Baxter, this is my son who was kind enough to drive me here today. He doesn’t need tea. He would only pollute it with sugar. Leonard, you will wait outside as we discussed.”

  Will stifled a smile at the forlorn expression on the young man’s face.

  “Now, how many children will be in my classroom?”

  “It’s hard to say,” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Your last teacher must have been horribly incompetent if you can’t even say how many students she had.”

  “On the contrary, Mrs. Dawson was extremely competent,” he told her through clenched teeth. “Our community has suffered through a fire and an outbreak of scarlet fever. We’re all scattered and struggling right now.”

  “I see.” Her eyes narrowed again. She began to pepper him with questions about the town, the school, and the students. He felt off-balance, as though he had lost he upper hand in the conversation that he was supposed to be leading.

  “Very well,” she finally announced, nodding. “As long as you are able to supply a decent home for my son and me, I will gladly accept the position.”

  “Um, well, I haven’t actually offered it to you yet,” he stammered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  For one brief moment, Will worried that the woman might strike him.

  “I, um, that is . . . I’ve interviewed several candidates and I’m not prepared to make an offer to any one of you just yet,” he lied. He hadn’t actually spoken with anyone else about the job just yet. But I’d rather send David to school at Bear Lake Mills than force him to sit in a room with the likes of you every day.

  “I can assure you, none of your other candidates will measure up to me.”

  That’s for certain, he wanted to say, eyeing her bulk. “I’ll be happy to walk you through the school and show you around, and there’s a nice little restaurant that just opened down the street near the hotel. Please, stay for lunch before returning to Kalamazoo, and I’ll let you know as soon as we make a decision.”

  “Well!” Mrs. Claridge-Doxtator stood and gestured to her son. “I’ve never been so insulted. Good day, Mr. Baxter.”

  Later, he tried to write a letter to Victoria about the woman, but he ended up throwing the letter away. It was a habit he had gotten into since she left. He would write letters to her nearly every day detailing every trivial event in town, only to tear the letters apart and throw them away without sending them.

  It looks like we may be getting a new reverend, he wrote one day. His name is Thompson. He seems to fit in very well here, and he’ll be staying in the Browns’ home. Rich and Grace Anderson stayed there after the fire, but it’s stood empty ever since they rebuilt their own place and it will be nice to have someone living here again.

  Speaking of the Andersons, their new daughter is doing well. She is nearly two years old, older than they had hoped for, but they are spoiling her terribly. Grace gives her everything she could ask for. Poor little think is so wrapped in ribbons and lace that she can barely walk. Grace seems happy though.

  Caroline has probably already written to tell you their good news by now. If she hasn’t, let me be the first to tell you that she and Adam are expecting a little one of their own around Christmas time --

  He tore that one up because he thought he sounded like a gossipy old woman.

  Hannah tells me that Micah is doing better but still not back to himself. I am sorry that the specialists haven’t been able to help him but please don’t give up hope. David misses him --

  No. That one sounded too much like he was trying to say I miss you.

  And he truly did miss her. He hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed their conversations, whether they were discussing the schoolchildren or something so trivial as the flowers that grew along the path in the woods. He missed the warmth of her voice, especially when sh
e laughed.

  He missed the way he felt when he was close to her or when her hand touched his arm. He even missed the crazy way his insides seemed to warm up and freeze at the same time whenever he was around her.

  Hannah tells us that you said Micah is recovering slowing but steadily. I am sorry to hear that he will never be as strong and healthy as he once was, but I am glad to know that he will be coming home after all. David misses him something terrible. He and Sophie and the others are all almost back to normal, running around town and causing trouble as usual.

  Seth Conway is a changed man. He’s given up on school and gone to work at the mill working for Pieter VanDam. He says he really wants to get a job at the new creamery in Bloomingdale, which is getting bigger every year. He asks about you quite often, by the way. I’m not sure what you did to change him so, but --

  Irritated, he threw that one away as well. He didn’t want to talk to Victoria about Seth Conway’s desire to make butter and cheese in nearby Bloomingdale. He wanted to talk to her about what a fool he had been.

  I learned today that Simon DeVries asked Hannah Visser to marry him. She says she won’t give him an answer until Micah is home safely. I just hope she says yes because Simon is a good man who needs a wife. We all thought he was going to marry Jennie Brown but then she ran off with Owen Brisbois --

  He groaned and tossed that letter into the fire in the little stove in the back of his store. That one definitely made him sound like a gossipy old grandmother.

  He was staring glumly into the fire when he heard the door open up front in the store. “Will!” Adam cried out. “Will, are you here? What am I going to do? Oh, God, what am I going to do?”

  Chapter 23

  “Adam? What is it? Is Caroline --” Will emerged from the back of the store.

  His friend stood at the counter, pale and shaking. He held a letter in his hand.

  “Caroline is well,” he stammered. “It’s the girls. Their father -- my brother Sam -- he wrote -- Will, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Sit down,” Will said gently, prying the wrinkled bit of paper from the other man’s hand. “May I read it?”

  Adam nodded wordlessly.

  It was short, hastily scrawled in smudged ink and consisting of only two paragraphs.

  I am ready to come home and be a father if my girls will have me. Haven’t had a drink in two years now. I will understand if you slam the door in my face. I don’t blame you if you told my girls I’m dead. But I am not dead and I want to see them again.

  Please forgive me, little brother. I want to make up for all the wrong I have done.

  He looked up at Adam, confused. “He doesn’t say when he’ll be here.”

  “Or where he’s been.” Adam dropped his face into his hands. “What if he wants to take them away from us?” he asked. “He is their father, after all. But how can I just hand them over to him now, after all these years?”

  “Maybe -- maybe he won’t try to take them.”

  Adam shook his head. “No, read it again. ‘I am ready to come home and be a father’. He wants his daughters back, and I have no right to keep them from him.”

  “Well, maybe he’s changed. Look, he says he’s stopped drinking.”

  Adam snorted. “That’s no surprise,” he said. “My brother stops drinking all the time. Problem is, he always starts back up again. I’ve raised Emily and Natalie. They’re like daughters to me.”

  “And you’ve been like a father to them.” Will patted his friend’s shoulder awkwardly. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “Why couldn’t he just stay away?” Adam asked bitterly.

  “Adam . . .” Will cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Adam, your brother is asking you to forgive him. You can’t do that?”

  Adam was quiet for so long that Will began to wonder if his friend had heard him at all.

  “There’s no telling how a man will react to losing his wife,” the shopkeeper said in a subdued voice. “I’m not saying what your brother did was right, but don’t forget he only started drinking when he lost his wife. I know I -- I am not the same as I was before my Melanie died.”

  His friend said nothing.

  “When I wake up in the morning and there’s just that one second when I don’t remember that she’s gone,” Will said, lost in his thoughts. “Everything is good, and then I turn over and see that empty spot where she’s supposed to be sleeping. I swear, Adam, there’s mornings when I can still almost see her hair on the pillow. I think if I move fast enough, maybe I can touch her one more time, see her smile just once. Then I wake up the rest of the way and it all comes crashing back in that she’s gone and I’ll never see her or touch her again. It hurts new every morning, maybe a little less every year, but always there. A hole deep inside, and empty spot that’ll never be filled in because my Melanie is gone.

  “A man’ll do anything to take away that pain. Drink, anger, fighting, maybe even gambling or loose women. Anything to make it stop, Adam. Anything. Your brother turned to alcohol, and it sounds like he’s trying to fight it.”

  “Don’t make excuses for him, Will,” Adam said. “You didn’t turn to drinking or fighting or any of those things.”

  Will blew out a ragged breath. “I did something worse,” he said, his voice shaking as realization dawned on him. “I stopped living.”

  Adam forgot his own misery for a moment and stared at his friend. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

  “I . . . Victoria’s husband made her promise that she would remarry someday. He loved her enough to want her to have a happy life without him. My Melanie loved me that much, didn’t she? If it’d been me that died, I wouldn’t want her to spend the rest of her life alone. She was sweet and loving and kind and . . . and she had a real temper, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “She’d be awfully mad at me right now, I think.”

  It was Adam’s turn to pat his friend’s shoulder. “Will, are you in love with Victoria?”

  The pain was like a knife slicing through Will’s heart. “Oh, God. I love her. I do love her. And I sent her away.”

  “Only Ann Arbor. Go after her!”

  But Will could only hang his head in despair. “She doesn’t love me,” he muttered. “And I love her enough to want what’s best for her. I have to let her go.”

  Slowly, he stood and handed the letter back to his friend. “I’ve missed my chance to make amends for my mistakes, but it’s not too late for you and your brother, Adam. Write back to him. Tell him you’ll welcome him home with open arms. Give him a chance.”

  Adam nodded. “I will. And what about you, old friend? When will you give yourself a chance?”

  Will just shook his head. He had no answer.

  # # #

  Long after Adam had returned home to fret about his brother’s imminent return to Serenity, Will stared glumly out the window of his store. I’m sorry, Melanie, he murmured, after a while. I dishonored you by not letting you go sooner. I hope you can forgive me for being so seslfish.

  In the distance, he heard the train whistle. He wondered crazily what would happen if he were to run to the station and jump on board the next eastbound train. If he suddenly showed up in Ann Arbor and professed his love to Victoria, what would she say?

  She’s probably slap him, he realized. Slap him and tell him it was too late. And she would be right.

  He sighed.

  Outside, Robert Visser drove by in the small buggy that the family rarely used. Hannah sat on the front seat beside him, clutching at his arm.

  “Hannah? Is everything all right?” Will called out, leaning out into the street.

  “Oh, yes!” Hannah turned to him, her face wreathed in smiles. “Uncle George is bringing Micah home today! They’re on the train.”

  “’Uncle George’?” he echoed.

  Robert stopped the horses as Hannah twisted around her seat to see Will better. “Yes, my uncle is bringing him home. Micah’s better, but
certainly not well enough yet to travel alone.”

  “What about -- what about Victoria?”

  “She’s staying in Ann Arbor, Will. I thought you knew that. Uncle George will take her trunk with him when he returns home.”

  “Of course. Yes, I did know that. Tell Micah I said welcome home.” Will waved and stepped awkwardly back inside, his face flaming with embarrassment. Of course he’d known Victoria wasn’t coming back, but that hadn’t stopped him from making a fool of himself to Hannah and Robert.

  He thought about shouting out the door for David to hurry home and hear the good news about his friend. But David was probably too far away to hear him. He was down at the river catching dinner with the Gerrit and Joris, although they were most likely doing more swimming than fishing.

  Will shook his head and propped the door open to let in a breeze. It was a ridiculously hot summer so far, but he reminded himself that it was nowhere near as bad as the previous summer had been. That year, there had been very little rain to cool things off, but this year had seen rain at least once or twice every week.

  He had to admit that the rain didn’t seem to do much to lower the temperature. If anything, the air seemed hotter and more full of moisture after each rainstorm. Everyone was sweaty and miserable.

  He went back behind the counter and busied himself with store accounts. Sales always dipped this time of year when his neighbors were too busy to venture into town as often as in the spring and fall, but he was still doing all right. He always enjoyed the sense of satisfaction he got from lining up the numbers in their right spots and then checking -- and double-checking -- his math. Numbers always behaved exactly as expected, he told himself. There were dependable and honest, and he appreciated that.

  He glanced up when he heard the clip-clop of the Visser horses pulling the little buggy back down the road. Micah sat up in front with his older brother. He still looked terribly thin and had a ghastly pale cast to his skin, but he was grinning hugely around at the town.