CHAPTER 30

NEW BEGINNINGS

"Ichabod," I murmured as my eyes slowly drifted open. "Where are you? Please answer me Ichabod."

"Shh…he's here, but you must not excite yourself." A man with a slightly balding head hovered over me and placed a cool cloth to my forehead.

"No, no!" I sniveled more assertively, and trashed my head from side to side. "The horseman, Katrina…Ichabod!" I shrieked and sat up, drenched in sweat and yet shivering so hard my teeth chattered.

"Be still!" The man ordered, grabbing my shoulders. "Constable, I'm going to ask you not to interrupt me again," he said to a man who had just stormed into the room not moments after my outburst.

"Doctor, it's been almost a week and her delirium has not lessened. She wishes to see me, perhaps that will ease her mind, now please!"

"Very well," the doctor said reluctantly and the man pushed pass him and knelt down at my bedside.

"Ichabod," I whimpered my voice not more than air, but my eyes danced passionately when I saw him.

He took my hand in his own and held it to his lips. "Easy, love," he cooed and I couldn't help the grin that pressed my shriveled lips. He slowly rose, and sat down in the chair beside the bed, not loosening his grip. "How is she, doctor?" he asked, rubbing the flesh on the back of my hand.

"To be frank, trauma such as this should have killed her, but remarkably she'll be just fine." He sighed in bemusement. "It's a God-sent miracle she didn't loose the child."

Ichabod swallowed the lump of disbelief in his throat. "P-P-Pardon?"

"Why she's pregnant, Constable," the doctor stated wryly and I felt Ichabod squeeze my hand tighter as he gazed quizzically in my eyes that shimmered with fresh tears.

"I'm going to have your baby, Ichabod," I beamed feebly and felt his hand go limp. Suddenly, he toppled out of the chair and hit the floor with a thud.

The next three days I spent drifting in and out of a dreamless slumber. I didn't see Ichabod and the doctor said he had told him he wished to be alone. I feared about what might happen, as everything was so complicated that I refused to think about the twists and turns our lives had just endured, and would have to endure. Katrina was dead, and yet that fact had yet to resister. I was pregnant with Ichabod's child, and even that seemed unreal.

My muscles ached to stretch, and my skin yearned for fresh air to swathe my body. The stench of infirmity choked the atmosphere and I wanted to breathe the sharp and untainted air of winter into my lungs. I stiffly rose from the small bed and my legs began to quiver as I put my weight on them, but strengthened with every trivial step. Wrapping my shawl around my shoulders and pulling on my boots, I made my down the stairs and opened the door without much difficulty to face a bleak and dreary day. Heavy clouds hung in the sky, broad with shadowed fullness that seemed like they would burst with only a slight breeze. Some had already begun to leak a weightless snow that fell from the sky as if imperial fragments of opal. I stepped into the snow and felt the tickling pricks of snowflakes kiss my cheeks as they glided without restriction from the sky. I couldn't describe how happy I was to hear the crunching of snow beneath my feet or feel the tear drawing sensation as the icy air smacked the inside of my throat.

I noticed a cab near the stables. The pair of blacks stood lax in their harnesses, a hind hoof of each cocked as they waited. The cab driver sat hunched in his seat smoking a pipe and mumbling something I couldn't comprehend. Curiously, I made my way that direction. When I neared, I saw John walking toward the coach, dressed in a fine suit, a hat atop his sun bleached hair, and a cane hung futilely over his arm. "John, what are you doing?" I asked, tightening the shawl around my shoulders.

"Why, I'm leaving you, my dear." He flashed a smile as if the tragedy that occurred seized to exist.

I stuttered. "What…why?"

"Because," he began candidly taking my hands, "There was only one reason why I stayed in this God-awful town in the first place. And now, you have everything, Freckles – now that Mrs. Crane's dead. Before, I thought I had enough love for the both us. That I could be content only loving you and knowing you harbored lust for another man." I gasped at his vulgar remark, and began to say something, but his look silenced me. "But I soon grew to realize that it was more than merely lust that possesses you, and that I was stupid thinking I had enough love for us both. I see the way he looks at you, Melanie. And I see the way you look at him." He removed his hat and bowed before me before adding in a whisper, "And who am I to stand in the way of true love?" With a final sweep of his hat, he climbed into the coach and within a moment it surged to life and left me standing, thunderstruck, as it rolled out of sight.

I began to shiver, but it wasn't just from the cold. John words echoed in my head like a scream in a deep valley. I rushed back into the house, my mind completely hazy. "Ichabod?" I shouted his name as I ran through the rooms of the house like it was ablaze. Still weak, I coughed and breathed heavily, but I finally found him in the sitting room, staring at the flickering oranges and yellows of the fire in the hearth. "Ichabod?" I whispered and he turned to look at me, the hollows of cheeks a scepter white and his lips the hue of a dying rose. His eyes were different, foreign. They were slightly glazed from the hours he spent looking at the roaring fire, and the dark enchantments that once flourished in his irises were absent. His eyes were dead, like the glassy surface of a lake before the arrival of dawn. And like my own eyes, my heart began to sob and I rushed to his side, throwing myself at his knees. "Please forgive me, Ichabod. I didn't wish for this to happen." I shook with tears and buried my face in my hands. Ichabod brought his finger under my chain and gently raised my head. As I looked searchingly into face, I noticed a stream of tears flowing from the source of each eye. I brought a trembling finger to his cheek and brushed it over the rare tears as if to ensure they were real. They were.

"We're going to have a child," Ichabod grinned exhaustedly, and yet my bottom lip continued to quiver.

"I'm so sorry," I pleaded. "I regret-" but he placed a finger to my lips to silence me.

"No, Melanie. It's not going to be to be that way."