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“I’ve thought it over. I’m going to write back and see if she wants to get married.”
Noah didn’t say a thing. He just studied his younger brother. Then-he wasn’t sure why he said it—“Who would she marry?”
“Me, you bastard. Me!” Jesse glared at him. “I know how to do right by a woman. You’re not the only Winslow knows about honor, damn it”
Ha. Honor. What the hell was Jesse talking about? Honor was one thing the Winslows weren’t big on, none of ’em. Practical, that was what the Winslows were. Some might say too practical. Noah walked to the fridge and grabbed two more beers. This called for a little celebration.
“What’s her name?”
“Abby. Abby Steen.”
“Married? Separated? Divorced?” Noah plunked the beer in front of his brother and stood there, popping the tab on his own.
Jesse glared again and Noah saw him bite back a curse. “Widow.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe.” Jesse sounded irritable. He grabbed the second beer. “Looks pretty young.”
“When’s the happy day?”
“The wedding, you mean?”
“Well, I don’t mean the kid. I can figure that out, seeing you were in Minnesota for a week in November. You never heard of rubbers?” he added angrily. “What in hell happened?”
Jesse tossed his hat onto the chair beside him and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair.
“Wedding?” Jesse said, answering his first question. “As soon as she can come up here, I guess. That’s if she’ll marry me—”
“Oh, she’ll marry you, all right—”
“What happened? Hell!” Jesse disregarded his interruption and ran his hand through his hair again, and when he spoke he addressed the floor in front of him. None too clean, Noah noted absently. Still, he’d seen it worse.
“I met her in a bar—now, don’t you say nothing! I wasn’t drinking, not that much anyway. Couple beers. I noticed her sitting by herself. She had a friend with her, turned out the friend had plans to go off with somebody else. So I drove her home.”
“So you drove her home, uh-huh,” Noah muttered.
“Yeah. When we got there, I asked her if she needed a hand, if she had some kind of trouble, since the friend had mentioned it. I figured it might be to do with her stock, and she just—hell, she just cracked up on me. Started bawling. Told me her husband had been killed not that long ago, and the baby she’d been expectin’ had been born dead—”
“And you bought all that.”
“Of course I bought it! It was the truth, damn it. Anybody could see that. I told her I’d make her some coffee and I did. We had a cup or two, then—well, then we ended up in bed. It was just, you know—one of those things.”
Noah nodded. For guys like Jesse, sure, it was one of those things. Noah couldn’t quite imagine himself in that kind of situation.
“We, uh, we spent the rest of the weekend together. The nights anyway. She was lonely. So was I, I guess. I sure in hell didn’t think this would happen. We used birth control—”
“Mostly.”
“Yeah, mostly,” Jesse shot back. “Accidents happen.”
“To guys like you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Huh? Guys like me? Not perfect guys like you, eh?” Jesse leaped to his feet and for a second or two, Noah thought he was going to take a poke at him. That’d be great, a couple of Winslows duking it out over a woman. Wouldn’t be the first time, either.
“Settle down, Jesse,” Noah said wearily. He frowned. He couldn’t waste much more time on this. He had to go down and give Carl a hand and phone in the order to the vet’s. What was done was done. “Okay, so she can come up here, you can get the papers in order, whatever. What about her being American?”
“I already checked in town. She can come up to marry me. Get her papers that way.”
“I suppose she could stay in Brandis’s trailer.”
“Why the trailer? She could stay with me.”
“Do I have to spell it out, Jesse? Neighbors are going to talk as it is, her showing up like this out of nowhere. Don’t give them any more ammo than they’re already going to have once that kid comes. People can count backward, y’know.”
Jesse reached for his hat and jammed it on. He looked like hell. This had been a shock to him, no question. There went his carefree bachelor days, following his happy hormones wherever they led. Noah could see he hadn’t had time to take it all in yet. Marriage, a wife, a kid on the way...
“Listen, buddy.” Noah clapped his brother on the shoulder as he accompanied him to the door. “Things could be worse. Huh?”
Jesse nodded sheepishly. “Guess so.”
“Time you settled down, anyway. One of us.” Noah smiled. “Keep the Winslows going, huh?”
Jesse grinned. “Yeah, sure.”
“Better you than me, right?”
Jesse shrugged. He didn’t say anything.
“She a cowgirl? Know one end of a horse from the other?”
“Farm family. Teacher by trade.”
“Teacher? That’s good. What kind of farming? Sugar beets?” Noah wasn’t serious. He was trying for a lighter note with his brother, although it was an effort.
“Dairy. Jerseys or Guernseys or some damn thing.”
“That’s good. Cows is cows, I guess, even if they ain’t whitefaces, right?”
The two brothers shared a laugh. It was an old family joke that had originated with Brandis. Jesse stepped out the door and the screen slapped shut behind him.
“Jess?” His brother turned to meet Noah’s gaze. “You can count on me. You know that.”
“I know that, man. I appreciate it.” Jesse’s voice was gruff, reflecting the emotion behind his words. Jesse had always leaned on his big brother. It was natural that he’d come to him today. For advice, for comfort.
“Okay.”
Noah watched Jesse walk back to his pickup and open the door. “Hey!” he called out.
His brother paused, one foot on the running board. “Yeah?”
“She win anything at the fair?”
“Hell if I know,” Jesse said with a wide grin. “I never asked.” He climbed in and slammed the door.
You wouldn’t, Noah thought, watching him back the truck up to the Y in the road. Still, Jesse was a decent man. Solid, good instincts. Hard worker. Fairly steady. Spent too much money, in Noah’s opinion, and there’d been a time he drank too much. That was past. Definitely a good idea for him to settle down. Maybe this widow, coming to Glory with a family already started, was the woman to do it.
No question, things could be worse.
ABBY HUNG HER HEAD over the toilet bowl and wearily mopped her face with a cool, wrung-out washcloth. The doctor had said he suspected twins. She prayed he was wrong, but they ran in the family. She hadn’t been sick at all with her first pregnancy and now this—nearly every morning for the past month she’d gotten up sick.
She’d have to tell her parents soon. She wasn’t afraid to; after all, she was a grown woman, a widow, who’d suffered more in her twenty-eight years than any woman should be asked to suffer. But they’d be upset. And terribly disappointed. And they’d want to know if she was going to get married again, to the father of the baby. And they’d worry about the neighbors talking. Which they’d definitely do in a small town like Wicoigon.
She was living with her parents and working part-time for her father and part-time as a substitute teacher since the new term had started after Christmas. She’d grown to dread the call in the morning telling her that her services were required in the classroom that day. She taught elementary, grade three mostly. She couldn’t forget that her own baby would have been a year old now. Being surrounded by children all day long was like walking on cut glass, Abby had discovered. The constant reminders of the child she’d lost, plus the extra stresses of her pregnancy, physical and emotional, were really getting her down.
It didn’t help that she’d begun to find the smell of cows and barns nauseating. Thank heavens she’d convinced her father to let her do his books in preparation for year-end, so she was in his office in the house most of the time. This nausea would pass, and when it did, she’d be finished the accounts and ready to go back and help him with the cattle.
She’d confided in only one person so far, her sister, Meg. Meg had been horrified. Still was. Meg was fourteen years older than Abby, and they’d been more like aunt and niece than sisters. Meg wanted to know right away who the father was, and when Abby told her she’d had a brief liaison with a stranger from Canada during the Carlisle fair, her sister’s lovely face had grown stiff with disapproval. Like their parents, Meg was a regular churchgoer. Not that there was anything wrong with that—Abby often wished her own faith would come easier to her—but she really didn’t think that her parents or Meg ever thought much beyond the surface.
Shouldn’t her sister be thrilled for her, knowing how little joy she had in her life? Knowing that her only child, Frank’s baby, had been snatched from her, born dead? Didn’t she realize that Abby welcomed this new life growing inside her womb—that this was heaven’s gift to her for all her suffering?
She’d never do anything to jeopardize that life. That was why she’d written to Jesse Winslow. She wanted nothing from him, but she believed he had a right to know. A child had a right to a father and a father had a right to his child. She was going to have this baby and raise it with all the love she had in her heart, and her child was not going to be fatherless. If Jesse was at all inclined, he could see their child whenever he wanted. If he wasn’t, well, so be it. She had given him the choice.
And then she’d received the letter from him, asking her to come to Glory and marry him. That was a shocker. They didn’t really know each other. He seemed to be a very nice man. Quiet, gentle. She’d found him attractive, yes, for a few days—but could she live with the man? Marry him?
Hardly.
She’d received the letter two weeks ago. Jesse had said he’d wait until he heard from her, as he didn’t know her circumstances and he hadn’t wanted to call her right out of the blue. But he’d give her some time to think it over. He hoped she’d agree. If so, he’d send her fare right away, and they could get married as soon as she wanted.
Well, she didn’t need the fare. Although it was kind of him to offer. She had a few savings. She’d need to work to support her baby and the likeliest prospect was to look for a job teaching full-time. But who was going to hire a pregnant teacher with no seniority? Or a teacher with a brand-new infant—or infants—which would be the case since her due date was August? Even if, according to the law, it wasn’t supposed to matter. And then there was the fascinating particular of the new teacher with a brand-new baby but no husband. How would that go over with the hiring committee?
And did she want someone else to raise her child? A caregiver? Put the baby straight into day care? What if the doctor’s suspicions were right and she was carrying twins?
Abby shuddered at the prospect of the difficulties ahead of her. If her baby had survived, she’d planned to live off Frank’s insurance settlement for the first year or two. Day care was inevitable eventually, no matter how much she’d have preferred to be home raising her own child, as she would have done if Frank had lived.
“Yoo-hoo!” It was her mother, downstairs.
“Yes?” Abby called through the closed door. That was another thing; there was so little privacy. It wasn’t her parents’ fault, but she couldn’t help thinking they’d resented losing their own space when their younger daughter had moved back in to save money.
“Breakfast’s on! Time’s a-wastin’ Abigail!”
Time’s a-wasting. Yes, wasn’t it? Abby thought wearily. She was more than four months gone already. The morning sickness should have passed. She’d be showing soon. She stood, wiped her forehead again, then took several deep breaths. She examined her face in the spotty bathroom mirror over the sink. Long blond hair, average features. Blue eyes. A pleasant smile, people said. Looked like a lot of the Swedish, Dutch, German, Norwegian folks in the district. She looked better when she was pregnant. no matter what she felt. People commented on that She remembered before, with the baby she always called Mary Frannie in her heart, that she’d felt so happy being pregnant with Frank’s child, happy despite the grief of losing Frank. As though having a baby was something she’d always wanted. Although she hadn’t really. She’d never thought much about it. It had just happened.
Now, this time, it had just happened again. She must be fecund as a darn bunny rabbit, she thought wryly.
Time’s a-wasting. Abby made her way slowly down the stairs.
“—and I told Belle she’d have to step in and do something. Send that girl packing. It’s not right to—oh, there you are!” Her mother smiled as she spotted Abby and waved her spatula in greeting. She was busy turning pancakes at the kitchen stove. Her father sat hunched in his chair, as always, listening to the early-morning stock prices on the country station the radio on top of the fridge was tuned to—had been tuned to for thirty years, as far as Abby knew.
“I was just telling your father about the Stovik girl, Abby. Sandra. She’s got herself in the family way and her mother’s just sick about it. I don’t suppose Belle’s aware how much people’ve already been talking. Everybody knows Sandra’s been the town bike for years. There’s probably not a fit man outside of my Arnie here hasn’t taken a ride—”
“Mother!
“It’s true. She’s a tramp, Abby. T-R-A-M-P. Tramp. And now she’s caught in her own sinning ways. Serves her right. She’s expecting, and it’s just going to kill Gladys Volstadt when she finds out her first great-grandchild will be a bastard. Well, how else can you put it? Gladys planned to give Sandra the family silver, I know that for a fact, but a common slut won’t be getting the Volstadt silver, that’s for sure. Gladys wouldn’t stand for it.” Abby’s mother turned the pancakes violently.
“She’ll just have to take her medicine, maybe even get rid of it, although that’s piling sin on sin. Didn’t I always tell Belle she had to watch that one, that Sandra, didn’t I—”
Abby stood, horrified, as she listened to her mother’s litany of condemnation. Suddenly she felt weak. Woozy. She grabbed the doorframe to support herself momentarily—
“Abigail, dear! Something wrong?” Her mother’s voice was sharp. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine, Mom. I’m just fine.” Abby walked carefully into the kitchen and sank down on a kitchen chair.
“I—uh, Mom? Dad?”
“Huh?” Her father looked up, annoyed, from the careful paring of his thumbnail with his jackknife as he listened to the stock prices on the radio. “What’s that, Ab?”
“What is it, Abigail, for heaven’s sake—”
“I have something I’d like to tell you both. I’ll be leaving. I’ve decided to get married again.”
CHAPTER THREE
IT WOULD HAVE MADE more sense to fly. A thousand miles on a Greyhound bus? Nearly five months pregnant...?
But she’d wanted to see the country. She’d wanted to see the geography change over the course of the two-day trip, from the farming country where she’d been born and raised, through the badlands, into North Dakota, more farming country, mixed forest, wide shallow rivers that fed into the Missouri and the Mississippi and the Great Lakes and then the long, lonely miles to Rugby, North Dakota, which they went through at night. Abby could barely make out the marker in the center of town, but she knew the words on the brass plate: Rugby, N.D., Geographical Center of North America.
From there it was north to the border crossing into Canada at Portal, Manitoba, through the Turtle Mountain country, past Melitta and Brandon and into the gray, windy city of Winnipeg, still leafless in mid-April, its broad streets dusty and littered with grime and debris left behind when the snow melted.
There, in the busy downtown station, she transferred to a Greyhound heading west after a delay of a few hours. She spent the time walking up and down the unfamiliar streets. She sent postcards home to her family, buying the stamps in a drugstore, and bought a paperback novel to read in case she got bored on the long trip west.
Regina. Calgary. Vancouver. The bus was bound for the Pacific Coast. They passed through town after town with unfamiliar names. But except for the occasional rest stop and lunch break, during which Abby got out to stretch her legs, coat drawn close against the chill of the wind, Abby kept her nose pressed to the glass. The paperback novel remained in her bag.
There were so many miles between her old home and her new home. When she allowed herself to think about the life she was entering, she felt her hands grow clammy and her heart pound. Marrying a man she barely knew! She had to be crazy. A man she’d only slept with, and just two nights at that. A man, truth to tell, she wasn’t sure she could even pick out of a crowd. At the same time, she was thrilled to her bones. She’d never done anything so impulsive. Not even marrying Frank six months after they’d met.
Jesse had been surprised when she’d called, the evening after she’d spoken to her parents. He’d looked forward to her call, he’d said, and his voice quickly became reassuring. She could tell he hadn’t really looked forward to it. But he’d seemed pleased, perhaps even relieved, when she told him she’d decided to take him up on his offer, after all, if he was still willing. She gave him no reasons; he didn’t ask for any.
Her mind was made up. After the conversation with her parents, there was no going back. She’d made it clear that she was pleased about her sudden pregnancy and that she was happy to be marrying the father of her baby. She made it sound almost as though that had been her plan all along. When they protested, saying Frank had only been dead two years, Abby had hesitated, struck deeply by the ongoing sadness she carried with her since her young husband’s death. It was true; she missed Frank horribly. She’d never slept with another man, just him and Jesse Winslow.
But she lied; she told her parents it was time for her to move on. That Frank was dead, and there was no bringing him back. That time healed all wounds of the heart—wasn’t that what they’d told her?—and hers had healed, too. That she wasn’t getting any younger and her hopes of marrying again and having children were slight at best if she stayed in Wicoigon. Now, with this chance pregnancy, her decision had more or less been made for her.
She’d handed in her notice to the school board, sold many of the possessions she’d stored at her sister’s place, including most of the baby clothes she’d bought for her first baby, which broke her heart. She kept a few tiny sleepers and one special blanket, wanting, somehow, to maintain a connection between her babies, no matter how tenuous. Thank heavens the doctor had thought there was only one baby on the way, after all, at her last visit. He’d told her to see a doctor, though, and have an ultrasound as soon as she got to Canada. Until she had the ultrasound, she wouldn’t know for sure.
Then she’d cleaned out her savings accounts and bought her bus ticket. One way.
She’d turned down Jesse’s offer to send plane fare. She was a full partner going into this marriage, not some little bit of a thing who needed rescuing from illegitimate pregnancy. She’d meant it when she’d said she was prepared to raise their child alone. That she’d only contacted him because she thought he had a right to know, as any man would.
She still had that option, she supposed, if it didn’t work out with Jesse. She had her teacher training. She had some savings. No matter how she tried to replay matters in her head now that she’d left her home behind, she knew she’d burned most of her bridges in Wicoigon when she’d blurted out to her parents that, like the Stovik girl, she, too, was single and expecting. Worse, in the eyes of the town—she was a pregnant widow. And she hadn’t hidden the fact that the man who’d fathered her child was a man she barely knew, a fellow exhibitor she’d met at the Carlisle Stock Show. Abby hadn’t regretted telling them; they’d know soon enough, anyway, and it wasn’t fair leaving her sister with the burden of the entire story.
