New update! Sorry for the short length, it's late and I don't want to jump into the next section in this chapter, since it's a bit longer. : ) Enjoy!
Kimball stood a pace away from the blonde and looked at her incredulously. "What?"
Summer blinked tears away and looked to the side. "I'm sorry, Kimball."
"After all I said to you about waiting until Oregon," Kimball said, "that was to prevent something like this, and then I'm gone, what, a week, and you're already laying out with the clown from the Scott wagon?"
"Kimball, I'm sorry," she said, tears running down her face now. "He was…charming. And I didn't think I'd ever see you again…I…" she trailed off. "He's dead anyhow. Got run through by the horns of one of Minelli's cattle. Two days after we…" she sighed. "Gosh, Kimball, I'm so sorry."
"What do you expect me to do now, huh?" Kimball asked. "I'm not even sixteen years old, you expect me to take care of a girl who messes around and a baby that isn't mine?"
"I won't mess around anymore!" Summer said. "That was a stupid, stupid thing, and unless I'm wrong about all the nausea, I'm paying the price! Please, Kimball, I didn't love him. I love you."
Kimball looked at her. She seemed so small now, her cheeks wet with tears and her eyes pleading with him. He softened slightly, his hurt not quite overcoming his relief to be back in the wagon train with her…and, if he was honest with himself, relief that Sycamore Scott was dead. "I love you too," he said. "But you know how complicated this makes things."
"Kimball, I'm not coming to you because I want male protection," she said. "I'm coming to you because I'm relieved you're alive. And it's not like I didn't tell you."
Kimball nodded. "I know." He looked at her another moment, then sighed and opened his arms. Summer walked into his embrace. "Thank you," she said.
He smiled tightly, putting a hand up to her head. "It's going to be okay."
"Now it will," she whispered, cuddling closer to him.
Kimball knew that his time away from Summer, and her vulnerability had weakened him, perhaps too much. But he was far from home; his siblings and mother were all mourning one person or another, and he felt helpless to do anything about it. At least Summer was someone that he could help and protect.
Teresa didn't sleep anymore.
She dozed off occasionally, but it was always after hours of tossing and turning in the tent, and her rest was never long or fulfilling. Madeline suggested that it was because she was alone, but she knew that that wasn't it. She would be totally capable of sleeping if her mind was at rest, but with Jane being not only out of the tent, but out in the wilderness with no protection, with Grace and Wayne in mourning, and with Kimball seeming unsettled by something at dinner that evening, her mind was racing in a million directions, she felt strung out, and her heart ached, and the result of all those factors meant that she wasn't getting any rest.
At least Grace and Pete were fairly close…possibly closer than she had always thought, if the way they'd looked at each other at supper was any indication. And Kimball had danced with Summer that night at the fire, so perhaps what was bothering him wasn't a great deal either – though if he was still acting oddly in the next few days, she was going to ask him what was going on. As for Wayne, Gale Bertram had put him in his night watch, so he at least had a distraction.
Gale Bertram. He'd called her Mrs. Mashburn that evening, and Teresa had been surprised with how negatively she'd felt about that. It was she, of course, who asked that no one refer to her as Mrs. Jane, but now that she had reverted to her first husband's name, it didn't feel right. Walter Mashburn, though she'd had his name until two years ago, had widowed her over a decade ago. He wasn't a part of this woman, who was halfway across the country – probably more than halfway by now – and very much a different person than the young woman who had married the rich man. Teresa entertained the idea of dropping both of her previous attachments and reverting to the name Lisbon again, but she knew that wasn't right either. Teresa Lisbon was still there, deep down, as part of her past, but she knew that she'd been influenced too much by the people that had come into her life since her first marriage to ever be that young woman again. She was Teresa Jane now, whether she was angry at her current husband or not.
She wondered if walking out on him made her a hypocrite, since she too was refusing to see him through with his problems. But she reasoned that she had been trying, and he wasn't giving to her what she'd given him. It was only then that she got out, cut her losses, and done what was best for her family.
But now that she was back in the wagon train, now that her children had people their own age to support and to be supported by, she longed for the man she'd spent the past two years loving. She didn't know where he was or if he was okay, and it was slowly hitting her that she'd allowed an emotionally unstable man with limited hunting experience to wander off alone.
Teresa tried to fight down the panic that rose in her chest whenever she allowed herself to entertain that thought. She'd accepted by now that she couldn't stop loving him, but the last thing she wanted was to betray her children again. She had had a choice – let Jane fend for himself, or let her children do so.
Patrick Jane was a grown ass man. And, Teresa reasoned, if he still loved her, or cared enough to put his living family above the dead who could no longer be helped by him, then he could return to her. He knew where she was.