They sounded so very much like the words he’d spoken five years ago.If you don’t want to come west, then fine. I’ll go ahead without you.
But things were different this time… weren’t they? He knew where Jessalyn lived, and she knew where he was headed. There was no reason they’d be separated for another five years.
So why did his leaving feel the same?
He closed the carpetbag and stood, clenching the handle so hard his nails bit into the flesh of his palm. “Tell Olivia I didn’t want to wake her to say goodbye.”
“Thomas…” Jessalyn threw herself into his arms and clung to him so fiercely he dropped the carpetbag to the floor. “I don’t like this, not any of it.”
“You know I’ll come back, right?” He smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead, then drew in her scent. Surely Godwouldn’t give him his family back only to tear them apart permanently.
“I know you’ll try.” She looked up into his face, her eyes glassy with tears. “But neither of us can know for sure. And, well, this is just… it’s going to be hard for me.”
He crushed her to his chest and wrapped both arms around her. “It’s going to be hard for me too.”
Because as much as he wanted to tell himself he’d return, that he’d look into his wife’s angel blue eyes and take her into his arms again, he couldn’t quite quench the flames of fear burning in his belly.
“I came as soon as Mac would let me out of the lighthouse this morning.”
Jessalyn looked up from her oatmeal to find Tressa standing in the doorway of the apartment, her hair pulled up into a sloppy bun with straying wisps pointing out every which way.
Jessalyn heaped oatmeal onto her spoon only to tip it over and watch the tan-colored blob plop back into her bowl—just like the twenty blobs before it. “You look as though you just rolled out of bed and spent all of two minutes putting yourself together.”
“Not true. I fed the children before I left too.” Tressa unbuttoned her coat and draped it over the back of a chair, then sat down across the table. “Isaac stopped by last night and said Thomas left. I’m so sorry he had to go.”
“He didn’t even wait until morning, just packed as soon as he got the telegram.” She slanted a glance at the closed bedroom door where her girls slept, then shoveled another bite of oatmeal onto her spoon before letting it drop back into her bowl.
“Oatmeal?” Jessalyn nodded to the pot on the table. Making it had given her something to do, but she’d expected the girls to be awake by now. Then again, considering how late they’d stayed up crying over their pa leaving town, she shouldn’t be surprised they were still in bed.
“No, I don’t want oatmeal.” Tressa reached across the table and gripped her hand before she could plop another spoonful of oatmeal back into her bowl. “I want to know how you are.”
Sad, worried, missing Thomas. Wishing he didn’t have to be gone. “He needed to go, you realize. There wasn’t much choice about it.”
“That doesn’t tell me how you are.”
She looked down and stirred the oatmeal around in her bowl. “He asked me to go with him.”
“So why didn’t you?” Tressa’s words were soft in an apartment already filled with too much silence.
“The girls.” Her spoon clinked against the bowl as she kept a constant circular motion through the thick sludge. “Megan’s too little to make the trip, and Olivia’s too ill.”
Tressa reached for her hand again, but Jessalyn pulled it away and slumped over her oatmeal.
Tears stung her eyes, but rather than stem them, she let them streak her face and mix with her silent prayers.God, please save his hotel. God, please keep him safe. God, please keep us strong.
Tressa pushed her chair back and rounded the table, then wrapped her arms around Jessalyn’s shoulders. “What can I do?”
She shook her head. Nothing, there was absolutely nothing Tressa could do, because none of this was her fault. Oh, why hadn’t she taken Thomas back sooner? Why hadn’t she trusted him from the very moment he’d arrived in Eagle Harbor? Then they could have had even more time together before he had to leave. Instead, she’d pushed him away so many times, told himshe didn’t need him or want him around, when all along she should have been showing him how much she still loved him.
And now she might never see him again. She trusted he’d try his hardest to return to them, yes. But some things were simply out of his control, and she’d worry about him until she felt the strength of his arms wrapped around her and the thud of his heartbeat beneath her cheek.
Another sob welled in her chest, and she buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, honey.” Tressa sank into the chair beside her, somehow still managing to give her a sideways hug. “Don’t cry. Traveling to Deadwood is dangerous this time of year. It’s wise not to risk your daughters going.”
“And yet Thomas is taking the trip alone. Isn’t that somehow worse than taking it with another person?”
Tressa rubbed soothing circles on her back. “You did the same as I would have done.”
