Sweet Annie Part 30

"I got Wrangler almost inside, but lightning struck again and spooked the herd. I think one of them must have pushed him into me."

"I'm sorry, Annie," he said, his voice raw. "Sorry I wasn't there for you."

"What day is this?"

"The same day," he answered. "You've only slept a few hours."

She wanted to tell him she was sorry, but she was a bigger coward than he was. Admitting her failure was too difficult right now. "What was our baby, Luke?" she had to ask. "Did you see him?"

He nodded. Swallowed. "A boy."

"Where is he?"

"I buried him on our land while you were resting. I wrapped him in one of the blankets you made. I called him John when I said a prayer, is that okay?"

Tears rolled from her eyes and fell back into her hair. "Yes."

"I love you, Annie."

She closed her eyes and heard him breathe.

After what seemed like hours later, voices sounded outside the room. Luke raised his head from the bed and listened.

The door opened and Annie's mother and father entered the room. Her mother covered her mouth with a handkerchief and wept when she saw her. They rushed forward and Luke stood and backed away. Her father took her hand. "Annie," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "I'm so sorry."

"We're here, darling," her mother said, and stroked her forehead with a soft cool hand.

From the corner of her eye, Annie noticed when Luke left the room. Her gaze went to her mother, found her eyes. "You were right, Mother. I did disappoint him."

After their visit, Annie instructed the doctor that she didn't want to see her husband.

"But he wants to be with you," the man said.

"I don't want to see him."

"He needs you," he told her. "Shutting people out won't do you any good."

"I don't want to see him!" she said, more emphatically.

He studied her for a moment. "All right." He turned and left the room.

She rested listlessly for days, showing no interest in the books her mother brought, only eating because she didn't have the strength to resist. She had never been worthy of Luke's lofty expectations and his idea of her. Losing his baby had proven it.

It was easy to fall back into the familiar routine of being an invalid, of not having to make decisions and letting her mother direct her days. Mildred was kinder and more attentive than ever, seemingly glad to have Annie in her charge, but occasionally Annie caught her looking at her with a sad strange expression.

She didn't want to face Luke. Didn't want to see his disappointment in her or the regret she knew he must feel.

When she was able to be moved, she said to her mother, "I want to go home with you."

Her father came for them in one of Luke's buggies, and Burdell left work to a.s.sist him.

Burdell carried her into the Sweet.w.a.ter house, to her old bedroom and placed her in the bed her mother had prepared. "What are you doing, Annie?" he asked.

"I'm grieving."

"What about Luke?"

"What about him?"

"He needs you. You have us to comfort you, but he has no one."

"Fine thing for you to be thinking about Luke Carpenter's feelings all of a sudden," she stated flatly. "He'll do just fine without me. He's better off without me. I've been a burden to him since the day we met. Just look at him if you don't think so. He's thin and tired and worked half to death because I never carried my share. And now he's lost his son because of me."

"That's not true."

"It is true. I'm tired, please let me rest."

Burdell walked from the room slowly, exchanging a look with his mother at the doorway.

A heavy sense of loss and self-blame wrapped around her like a shroud. Annie glanced at the gaily dressed porcelain dolls lining the window seat, allowed her gaze to find her wheelchair, then closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She was back where she'd started-where she belonged.

Eldon returned the buggy, his face pulled and drawn. "She asked to be taken to our home. She's settled into her bed and quite comfortable."

Luke had spoken to the doctor that morning and had been delivered the crushing news. Annie didn't want to come home with him. He wanted to stomp into her room and confront her, but the doctor had warned him about upsetting her.

So he'd returned to the livery, taken out his fear and frustration over the searing forge, on the glowing iron, pounding...pounding.

Luke didn't know what to say to Annie's father. "Thank you," he returned, knowing it was a lame sentiment.

"I'm sure she just needs some time," Eldon said.

"Yes." But why didn't she need him? Did she blame him? Did everyone blame him? "I thought I could take care of her," he said.

"You did."

Luke shook his head. "No, I didn't. The wolves. She would have needed to know how to use a gun, and I never showed her." He stared at the mountains in the distance. "She thought the horses were more important than her own safety."

"Maybe she just needs some time," Eldon said again, as though trying to convince them both.

Luke wanted to believe it. In the days and nights that followed he tried to believe it, tried to understand why she needed time away from him, why her heart didn't ache for him like his did for her.

After several nights of sitting in front of the fire, looking at the pins and needles sticking out of the arm of her chair, touching her clothing and her hairbrush while his guts wrenched, staring at the empty cradle until the wee hours of the morning, he packed his clothing, strung the horses on a tether rope, and moved to the livery where there were fewer memories.

Even here the nights were endless, filled with regrets and worries and dry-eyed mourning.

On Thursday morning, he went to see her and found her on the porch in the sunlight, a shawl draping her shoulders. She sat in her wheelchair and the sight slammed him like a punch in the chest. Had something gone wrong that he hadn't been told about? Why hadn't someone let him know?

"Annie?" he said. "What is it? Was your leg hurt? Something broken that I didn't know about?"

Her head raised. She'd been studying a book in her lap. Her gray-green eyes flickered over him and shuttered quickly.

"You know what's wrong with me."

"No, no, I don't. Tell me."

"Besides losing your son, you mean?"

Her words disturbed him. "He was our son, Annie."

Pain flickered across her delicate features. She composed them. "Yes. You know the extent of my injuries. What are you asking?"

"I guess I'm asking why you're sitting in this d.a.m.ned chair!"

"This is where I belong," she said flatly. She indicated the chair, the porch, the house.

"Have you been walking?" he dared, starting with another approach.

"No."

"You probably need to exercise your legs."

"It doesn't matter."

He studied the delicate slope of her nose, her ivory cheeks, the ringlets at her temple, and craved touching her. He missed her so badly he could taste her and smell her just by thinking. "I've missed you."

She turned away from him and gazed at the horizon. She would be right to blame him. She was more unhappy now than she'd been before they'd started seeing each other. He loved her more than anything, but he'd loved her selfishly, trying to make her more like other people. If he'd left her alone, she wouldn't have to suffer like this now. He was the one who had convinced her to get out of that chair and take on the world.

And because she had-because she'd trusted him-he'd taken her from her safe environment and protective family and let this happen to her. They would all be justified in hating him. He hated himself.

"I'm sorry, Annie," he said softly. "I'll do whatever I can to make it up to you. I'll leave you alone if that's what makes you happy."

She nodded, and he took that as his signal to leave her alone. Maybe she was better off here. Maybe he'd been fooling them both into thinking he could be everything she needed. Obviously, he hadn't been.

Mildred opened the screen door and appeared with a tray holding a teapot and cups. Seeing Luke, she drew up short, then collected herself and moved past him. "Here's your tea, darling," she said to her daughter. "Are you comfortable here in the sun?"

Annie nodded, and Mildred set down the tray and poured a cup full, handing it to Annie.

Annie accepted it. Both of them behaved as though Luke wasn't there. With an ache in his heart and his throat, he backed away from the scene, leaving Mildred to tend to her daughter's comfort, leaving the Sweet.w.a.ters to care for his wife.

Mounting the horse he'd left at the gate, he rode away, once again the outsider.

No longer would he have a wife to come home to at night. There would be no son to teach to ride, no children to inherit all he was working for. But work he did, because it was all he had left.

"Do you want to hold her, Annie?" Diana asked. Her sister-in-law approached her with the pink flannel-wrapped bundle. Annie'd been told of Elizabeth's birth the month before, and had asked about Diana's health and recovery. Since Annie hadn't been out of the house for weeks, she hadn't been to Burdell's home or to church for the baby's christening. This was the first time she'd seen their new daughter.

Her niece had wispy dark hair and a delicately round face. She held her tiny hands right up by her face, and squinted her eyes open. Annie wondered what color her baby's hair had been, whether his eyes would have been blue or green. She could have asked Luke about his hair. "No, I don't want to hold her," she said, her heart pounding too fast at the thought.

Diana held Elizabeth right down beside Annie, where she could smell the infant's milky essence. She felt a painful twinge in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The child was a miracle, a miniature person, perfect in every way, fair lashes, translucent fingernails, wrinkly knuckles and sh.e.l.l-like ears.

Annie looked up and met Diana's compa.s.sionate gaze. Tears of sympathy swam in her sister-in-law's dark eyes. "I am so sorry," she whispered. "We took flowers to your little John's grave. It's in a beautiful spot. Someone had planted forget-me-nots."

Luke, Annie thought. She hadn't even been brave enough to go see the grave.

"You can have more babies," Diana said.

Annie shook her head and looked away, out the parlor window where Burdell played with Will on the lawn. "No."

Two months hadn't been enough time to allow herself to think of that. Two years or two decades wouldn't be enough time.

Charmaine, too, tried to talk to her, tried to pull her from her protective coc.o.o.n, but Annie remained withdrawn and silent. She watched through the windowpanes as the family gathered in the newly green side yard and set up the croquet set for the first time that year. Life just went on, she thought dismally. Without her.

After dinner, Burdell ignored her protests and pushed her out onto the porch. He sat on a wicker chair across from her.

"How long are you going to feel sorry for yourself?" he asked.

She ignored his taunt and stared at the hazy mountain peaks.

"The only happy person around here is Mother, because she has her invalid daughter back," he said. "What does that tell you?"

Annie glared at him. "I should have listened to her from the beginning and this wouldn't have happened."

"You think n.o.body ever lost a baby before?" he asked.

She shook her head against his words.

"You think only helpless crippled people have accidents?"

She shrugged, avoided his face.

"What happened to you could have happened to anybody."

"No. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't strong enough. I was slow and clumsy and I let him down. He deserves someone with two good legs." She glanced across the yard and caught sight of her cousin running after a wooden ball. "He deserves someone who can be a real help and not a burden-someone like Charmaine."

Burdy was silent for a moment. "He loves you."

"Well, I lost his baby, didn't I? How sad for him that he loves me! He deserves better. He gave me everything, love, kindness, hope...he's so good and so pure and wonderful that it hurts." She brought her fist to her heart in proof. "And the first thing he ever trusted me with I lost for him."

"Not the first thing," Burdell denied.

"What do you mean?"

"First, he trusted you with his heart."

Tears blurred her vision. Luke had given her his heart. Completely. Unreservedly. He'd loved her more than she had ever dreamed of being loved. "I just can't bear to face him," she whispered, tears thick in her throat. "I'm so ashamed that I let him down."

"We're to blame for this," her brother said angrily. "Me as much as anyone. I treated you like Mother did for so long that I convinced myself you were helpless. I know I have a hard head, but I saw how happy he made you, how happy and self-confident you were doing things for yourself. I've been wrong. Now I'm sure. This isn't you-not sitting here like an invalid. You are a capable, talented woman. What happened to you and your baby could have happened to anyone-could have happened to Diana in the same situation."

"But it didn't. She wasn't out trying to be a farrier's wife."