“I’m sorry, Jessalyn.” Elijah came up beside her, his cheeks ruddy and wind-chapped. “I was going to bring Thomas by your shop when we left, that way half the town wouldn’t… well…” He scratched the back of his neck and glanced around. “…Know he was back before you did.”
The entire town. She looked up to find every person in the room staring at them, save Claire and Megan, who were playing with a doll and swing in the corner. Even Lindy stood by the kitchen door with a steaming mug in her hand.
If only she could close her eyes and melt into the floor. There was a time when she would have thrown herself at him and wept at his return, no matter how callous he’d been when he’d left them. But those days had come and gone like a late spring snow.
“Mama, my ear.” The small voice behind her shattered the stillness of the room.
Dr. Harrington stepped around a cluster of sailors and crouched down by the sofa. “Is it bothering you again? Why don’t you come to the small sickroom with me, and I’ll take a look? Maybe we can let your parents go into the big sickroom to talk.”
“Parents?” Olivia asked. “I don’t have a pa anymore, just a ma.”
Thomas made a low, strangled sound in his throat.
Jessalyn wasn’t sure what to call the look he’d given her when he’d first seen her earlier. Surprise, perhaps, or hope. But there was no hope in his face now, only hurt.
“Unless…?” The weight of Olivia’s gaze bored into her before it shifted to Thomas. “Unless you’re my pa?”
“No,” Jessalyn whispered.
A storm gathered in his eyes, and the small muscle at the side of his jaw pulsed.
It only made her own jaw harden in response, her own muscles tense. “A real pa doesn’t walk away from you for five years, especially not without sending letters.”
Thomas crossed his arms over his impossibly broad chest. “I sent a letter every week.”
She shook her head. “I only got two letters from you, both while you were traveling to California. The last letter was around the time I learned I was expecting Megan.”
Thomas’s gaze traveled across the room to the youngest of their three daughters. “Her name’s Megan? And she’s… and she’s mine?”
“How dare you.” She took a step forward, bringing her toe-to-toe with her vagrant of a husband, and raised her hand.
Before she could let it fly toward his face, someone caught her arm.
Not Thomas. He was looking at her with a calm sort of resignation, something he’d certainly never had during theirarguments before he’d left. He’d been prepared for her to hit him and hadn’t intended to stop it. A sickening sensation twined through her stomach.
“Jess.” Isaac’s voice was low, his mouth near enough her ear he wouldn’t be overheard. “How about you move this conversation to the sickroom, like Dr. Harrington suggested?”
She drew in a shaky breath and looked at Isaac, his face sincere, his hazel gaze filled with concern. Tears burned her eyes. But when she looked back to Thomas, something else burned entirely.
“I don’t want to talk to him.” Her voice was sickeningly soft, perilously close to breaking. How was it that she could look at Thomas and banish all thought of tears, but the second she turned to Isaac, she wanted nothing more than to go home, crawl into her bed, curl up, and cry until morning?
Because Isaac chopped her firewood, escorted her through snow storms, and helped wrestle giant sewing machines through small shop doors. Because Isaac took her children to the beach in the summer so she could squeeze in a few hours of work, and invited her to Thanksgiving dinner with his family. Because though Isaac Cummings was only her neighbor, he gave her more support in half a day than Thomas had given her in the entire decade they’d been married.
“Well, I want to talk to you.” Thomas’s voice was calm and controlled, not shouting, not drenched with fury like hers would be if she spoke. “I thought you were in Chicago. I told you to go back there, remember? It was one of the last conversations we had.”
She pressed her eyes shut as the memories filled her mind. Not one of the last, the absolute last. Though calling it a conversation was rather charitable on Thomas’s part. They’d argued about money, of course, the same thing they always argued about. Thomas had lost most of their savings investing ina copper mine that played out early and didn’t yield dividends. He wanted to take the last little bit they’d saved and use it to go to California where there was gold. She’d said no, that they needed to save more first, that they couldn’t afford to take four people across the country, even if Thomas could find better work there.
She could still recall his hard jaw, the angry note in his voice as he told her he was taking the last of their savings and leaving in the morning, but if she didn’t want to go with him, he wouldn’t force her. She could go to Chicago and stay with her cousin while he got settled, and he’d send for her later.
She’d thought they’d been empty threats. The last thing she expected was to get up in the morning and find him already gone.
A lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t deal with this, not now, not with a room full of people. Not when she’d been completely unprepared to face the man who had been all but dead to her for five years. She met Thomas’s eyes and forced a calm to her voice despite the shaking that had taken over her hands. “I don’t know what brought you back to Eagle Harbor, but I hope you conclude your business here quickly and leave me out of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, my daughter needs to see the doctor.”
She turned her back to Thomas and found Dr. Harrington looking into Olivia’s ear with his otoscope. “Do you mind carrying her into the sickroom for me?”
“Certainly. Can you take this?” He handed her the cone-shaped instrument that allowed him to see deep inside her daughter’s ears, then stood and hefted Olivia into his arms before heading across the parlor. She rushed behind him, head down to avoid the questioning gazes of everyone else, but Thomas’s unmistakable footfalls resonated behind her.
When she reached the door, she paused and turned back. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. You’re not the one who’s cared for Olivia for the past five years, so you’re not welcome inside.”
