Lula looked at him, searching his face for anything—anger, disgust, hesitation—but she didn’t find it.“What do you think?”she asked, her voice quieter now.
He didn’t answer immediately.Instead, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Because I didn’t know what you’d do,” she said.“And I couldn’t risk it.”
“Risk what?”
“This.”She gestured between them.“This life.You.I care for you, Sebastian.I couldn’t bear the thought of you turning me out.”
Sebastian let out a slow breath.“You should have trusted me,” he said.
“I didn’t know if I could.”
He nodded once.“That’s fair,” he said, though his tone had cooled slightly.
Lula felt it.The shift.It was small, but there.“I wasn’t trying to deceive you,” she said.
“You were hiding something important,” he replied.“That’s not the same thing, but it’s close enough.”
She flinched.“I told you when we met that my past was my own.”
“And I said the same,” he answered.“But we’re not strangers anymore.” They looked at each other across the table, the stew growing cold.“You should have told me,” he said again, more quietly this time.
“I’m telling you now.”
He nodded slowly.“Yes,” he said.“You are.”
They were silent for a bit, and after a moment, Sebastian picked up his spoon again.
“Your stew is going to go cold,” he said.
Lula blinked at that.“It already has,” she said.
He almost smiled.“Then we’ll eat it anyway.”
She nodded.She knew everything wasn’t fixed, but she still felt better.She was glad she’d finally told him everything.And he hadn’t asked her to leave.Yet.
*****
The next morning, Lulawoke before fully opening her eyes to the unfamiliar sensation of peace.For an instant, she could not think why her body felt so strangely unburdened, why the air in the cabin seemed thinner and easier to breathe.
She lay still for a moment.Beside her, Sebastian was already awake, though he had not moved away.He was lying on his back with one arm crooked beneath his head, looking toward the ceiling in the thoughtful way he had when he was not yet ready to speak.When he turned at the slight rustle of the blankets and saw her watching him, his expression changed from pensive to caring all at once.
“Good morning,” he said, and there was nothing strained in the words.There was something easier in it now, as though the wall that had stood between them for so long had fallen in the night.
“Good morning,” Lula answered, but the words came out softly, cautiously, because however much relief she felt, some part of her still could not quite believe the night before had ended as it had.She pushed herself up on one elbow, searching his face.“Sebastian...”She stopped, not knowing how to ask the question without sounding foolish, and yet needing the answer.“Are things truly all right between us?”
He turned fully toward her then and reached for her hand beneath the blankets, drawing it into both of his with such unhurried certainty that her eyes stung at once.“Lula, listen to me,” he said.“I am not going to send you away.Not today, not next week, not because of anything you told me last night, and not because your mother thinks she can call you back as if you belong to her.You’re my wife.I will not cast you off for having suffered, and I will not punish you for loving a good man before you ever knew me.”
Lula closed her eyes for a moment, relieved.“I know it’s shameful,” she whispered, “but I thought once you understood it all, once you knew the reason my parents hated Bill and why the town did too, that you might look at me as they did and decide you could not endure the sight of me in your home.”
“Then you were wrong,” he said.He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss against her knuckles.“This is your home as much as mine.No one is putting you out of it.And if anyone has a right to anger, it is me at the people who taught you to expect abandonment from every direction.”
She smiled at him through tears she did not bother to hide, and when Sebastian smiled back, the whole little room seemed changed by it.
They rose together a few minutes later, not in haste, but with the easy quiet of two people who no longer needed to measure every word before speaking.Lula fed the stove and set water to heat while Sebastian pulled on his boots and shrugged into his work shirt.
When she reached automatically for the oats, Sebastian leaned one shoulder against the table and said, with the ghost of a smile, “Do not forget the cinnamon on my account.I would hate to think yesterday’s sadness scared it off forever.”
