A/N: Thanks for R&Ring. It's nice to know that some of you are reading and actually enjoying:) Remember how I said I thought the story was too dark? Well, consider yourselves warned...
XXXXXX
OCTOBER 27th, 1885
Lily hardly takes any food or water. Woody and I are worried for her, but there seems to be nothing we can do.
She sits and shivers by the fire or sits down by the pond and Bug's grave. She talks about him sometimes, recalling things he had said or done. She talks about Baby sometimes, too, as if she were still alive.
"O, Jo! I hear someone crying! Could it be Baby? I think she's hungry. Could you go in and fetch her in the cradle for me?" she will say, and I will go silently into the house.
Other times, she seems as clear as day. One morning I sat outside churning the butter, and she came and stood looking out onto the pasture.
"God I had this place," she said. "The dust, the heat, the lack of privacy. I hate it. I wish I'd never come here." Then she walked away down the bank, and I didn't see her for hours.
Woody came from Sweet Grass with a letter today for her from Pittsburgh. She seemed to be cheered a little by that, and went off by herself to read it. She didn't say anything about it when she came in for supper.
Later, she and I sat by the fire after Woody had gone to the bunkhouse for the night. I sewed, but she said her hands were too stiff from the cold to sew, so she sat there staring into the flames.
And then she started to speak, and I hesitate to put what she said down on paper.
She started by saying, "There's news from my family back east."
"O?" I said, as if I hadn't been waiting all day for her to tell me what the letter said.
"Yes, it seems Papa's business isn't what it used to be."
I put my sewing down and looked at her then. There was an eerie calm about her.
"What did they say?" I asked her.
"They've had to let go some of the employees at the mill and some of the servants, too. Mama's doing most of the work herself now."
"Well, when you go back home, you'll be able to lend a hand, then," I said promisingly.
"They don't want me, Jo," she said in a voice like a child's.
"Of course they do! You're their daughter!" I insisted.
"No," she said and shook her head sadly. "Papa didn't say as much, but they don't need another mouth to feed. I don't think they can even afford the train fare back home."
"Hell, I'll pay your train fare, Lily," I said.
"No," she shook her head again so resolutely it took my breath. "I can't go home. I don't belong there anymore. I'm not fit."
I couldn't speak for a moment, and I searched my mind for reason why Lily Seely would think she was not fit to live in proper society anymore. Finding none, I said to her, "That's ridiculous. What else will you do, Lily?"
She lifted her shoulders in a kind of indifferent shrug. "Henry Slokum is looking for a wife," she said flatly.
"O, you can't mean that, Lily! You're not going to marry Henry Slokum!" I would have laughed if I thought she wasn't actually serious.
"Why not?" She turned to me with a fierceness that surprised me. "He'd take care of me, wouldn't he? He'd never beat me or mistreat me. I'd never want for anything."
"But, you don't love him!" I said.
She looked away from me again. "What does that matter? I lost everything I've loved. I lost the man I truly loved, Jo."
I thought she must have meant the man she left behind in Pittsburgh or even Matt Seely. But then she went on. She was looking into the fire with a far off look in her eyes.
"I didn't think it would end up this way. I should have known. I should have known! O, I blame myself. If I'd known the way things would have turned out, I never would have..."
She stopped, but then I knew with certainty that the man she was talking about wasn't Matt, it was Bug, and she blamed herself for his death.
"We can't blame ourselves for what happened to Bug, Lily," I said to her with sympathy, but she turned to me again with fire in her eyes again.
"I can! I do!"
I opened my mouth to speak, but she had jumped from her chair and was kneeling beside me. She took my hand and pressed it to her cheek and spoke with such an urgency in her voice. "Jo! Promise me you won't wait another day! It's right there in front of you.! Woody loves you, and you love him. Don't waste love!"
"I don't want that, Lily," I said to her as gently as I could, and I pulled my hand from her grip. "I told you. Love is nothing but a disappointment."
I could see her eyes pool with tears, and she spoke with such sadness. "Love is never a disappointment, Jo. Only the lack of it."
She rose then and sat back in her chair and said not another thing.
As I finish this, she sits there still. I told her I would go to bed as soon as I was done, and she only nodded.
My head is still swimming with what she said. Why does she blame herself so for Bug's death? I have an idea, and it chills me to my bones.
OCTOBER 28th, 1885
I will begin at the beginning and try to make sense from what happened today.
I rose in the morning to find the bed next to me empty. The sheets were cold. I stretched and blinked. Light spilled in from the outside, and I expected to see Lily stirring at the stove, but all was still.
I called out for her, but I got no response. I threw back the covers and crossed to the door. Woody was coming in from the bunkouse, yawning lazily. When he saw me there running around in my nightgown, he hurried over.
"What is it, Jo?"
"Lily! She's gone. Have you seen her?" My voice had risen in panic, and we both began to call out for her.
I hurried down the bank, hoping that she had merely risen early for a stroll in the October air and that we would find her picking wildflowers for Bug's grave. I knew it wouldn't be so. I knew sure as I breathed what I would find when I came over the crest.
I fell to my knees and cried out when I saw her, my hands pressed to my mouth in a scream. Woody heard and ran past me, stumbling down the hill all the way.
She lay face-down in the pond, her white nightgown billowing around her, her wet hair twisting on the surface like a nest of water moccasins. Woody waded in up to his waist and lifted her limp body out of the pond and onto the bank.
I had found my feet and had come to her side was we frantically brushed away her hair from her face. It was too late, we knew it then. Her skin was deathly white, and her eyes were unseeing. Woody sank back on his heels in resignation. There was nothing we could do. Lily was gone.
We carried her back to the house, and I lovingly brushed the dirt and weeds from her hair and wrapped her up in an old quilt. It was then that Dr. Macy arrived. He had heard about Bug and came by to see how we were faring. I could hear him talking to Woody outside the house in hushed voices.
He came in then and stood beside the bed where I sat with her body. I looked up at him, wondering what he would say about this awful thing.
"Lily Seely drowned accidentally," Dr. Macy said firmly. "That's what my report will say. She went out this morning for an early swim. She lost her balance and was drowned."
It isn't true, of course. We all know it. But I thanked him, and Woody came inside. I could see his eyes were red from crying too.
"Where should we take her?" he asked softly. "We can bury her at her place or here with...the other graves."
"Here," I said immediately.
"Do you think she might want to be buried with her baby?" I noticed he didn't mention Matt.
"Lily's soul is already in heaven with Baby and...anyone else she cared about. It matters little where we put her body," I said with practicality. I am not given to some of that religious sentimentality.
O, I now understand why Lily blamed herself for Bug's death. I will never know what happened between her and Matt Seely on that day he ended up dead on the road to Sweet Grass. The events of that terrible day died along with Lily. Was she distraught with grief over Baby's death? Did she blame Matt somehow? I don't know, and I'm not sure I will ever know. I only pray that her poor soul has found some peace.
Woody went out to start on her grave, and I don't know what it was that gripped me. I tore out of the house with Woody calling after me all the way. I was on a horse, kicking up a trail of dust, and into Sweet Grass, riding as if I was possessed.
I didn't slow until I reached town. The street was crowded with people going about their usual business. How many of them, I wondered, had ridden up to my house with bandanas pulled up to their eyes?
I slid from the horse, and they all looked at me curiously the way they do. I'm only the crazy Cavanaugh woman.
"Who was it?" I screamed with fire in my voice. "Was it you? Was it you?" I grabbed men by the shirt collar as they passed me by, and they looked at me with guilty shrugs. I saw Malden then. He was shuffling out of Nigel's store with a smirk on his face.
"You! You killed an innocent man! You're a murderer!" I screamed. Nigel had come out of the store at the sound of my voice.
"Now, those are strong words, Miss Jo," he said with that same smirk in his voice. "You got proof?"
"I saw you with my own eyes!" I spat.
He just chuckled and waved his hand at some of the bystanders. "Why, I got a street full of people who can tell you that I was out at Redding's place all night the day that Indian was killed. Ain't that right?" he said, and several of the men nodded in agreement.
I turned around and looked at them in disbelief. "You're going to let him get away with this? He killed an innocent man! O, I know you all think I'm crazy, but no one's ever accused me of being a liar!"
Some of them looked away from me, and all was quiet except for a few nervous coughs and murmurs.
It was like I was watching myself then. That's they only way I can describe it. I charged at Malden, who still stood on the steps of Nigel's store. I had nothing, no weapon, just my bare hands, and O! I do think I could have killed him. He drew his gun, and Nigel grabbed me about the waist and pinned my arms to my side.
"Don't, Miss Jo!" Nigel said to me in my ear. "Bug wouldn't want this. It's not worth it."
It calmed me a bit. I knew he was right. Bug had often said how he hated violence of any kind. I had seen him many times carry a cricket or a spider from the house out into the yard rather than kill it. I wonder if that's how he got his name.
Malden still stood laughing as he tucked his pistol back into his holster, but my blood still boiled. Nigel let me go, and I headed back to my horse. My head was held high as everyone averted their eyes. I would not let them see me cry!
"Cowards!" I yelled as I rode off. "You're all miserable cowards if you let him get away with this!"
It was growing dark as I arrived back home. Woody never asked where I had been, and I never told. We buried Lily next to Bug and Mama and Pa, four graves right in a sad little row.
We walked together back up to the house and dropped into our seats at the table. There seemed to be nothing to say. I have never felt such despair as I did then. Lily's baby, Matt, Bug, Lily. All gone in the passing of a few months. She wanted that baby, and I think now that she must have loved Bug. She loved them, and she lost them. Is that what happens when you dare to love? Fate is very cruel indeed.
I looked over at Woody and saw there, too, such a pain in his eyes. I thought I was too tired, too drained to cry, but I did. I sobbed with an abandon still in the clothes I had worn since that morning. They were wet and muddy, and my hands were raw from the cold water, and I sobbed from the pain and the loss and the frustration. My whole body shook, and I rested my head on the table.
"Now, Jo. Don't...please," Woody said quietly to me. His hand reached out, and I could feel him stroke the back of my head. "Now, don't."
But I kept crying, and I thought I might not ever stop. He kept on whispering to me in soft little words. His hands were on my hair and my arms.
Then his fingers slipped under my chin and lifted my face up to his. "Don't cry, Jo," he said, and wiped my tears away with his rough thumbs. "Don't."
He kissed me then, long and hard, and I stopped crying. I let him kiss me. I wanted him to, and he whispered to me between kisses, "Let me love you, Jo."
I felt him scoop me into his arms and carry me to the bed where he stretched me out gently, and he kissed me on my face and down my neck to the little notch at the base of my throat, still whispering soft things to me.
He looked up at me and searched my eyes. I bit my lip and nodded, and I could feel him push my nightgown up. I knew it would hurt, and it did. There was a sharp, searing pain, and I drew my breath in between my teeth.
He stopped. I thought for a moment he might leave me, but he did not. He eased himself inside of me slowly. He began to move over me like water, and then there was such a feeling of warmth that started between my legs and filled my whole body!
I am not ignorant in what goes on between a man and a woman. I am a midwife, after all. But I did not know it would be like this. There was a sweet release. My body shuddered, and I cried out. And then there was a cry in him that seemed to rumble from his own chest, and he fell against me.
We lay twisted around each other for a long time trying to catch our breath. Neither one of us said much, but he hummed little pieces of a tune until we both started to drift off.
The fire was dying, and I got up to stoke it and write in my journal a little after Woody fell asleep. I don't know what to make of this day. I have sat here for almost an hour, trying to figure out what words to put down here.
There is nothing to say. I felt such bliss for a few moments! For a brief time, there was no sadness and death. But nothing has really changed. Has it?
