Chapter 11
Jarrod went off to town alone the next morning, hating to do it, giving too many good-bye kisses to his new wife, knowing he could not spend every minute of every day for the rest of his life with her but wishing he could. "Don't worry about her," Victoria said to him privately. "She's fitting in here just fine, and I promise not to tell her about the time you tried to break a horse with your own leg broken."
"Or any other embarrassing stories I'm not here to respond to?" Jarrod asked.
Victoria just gave a smile and pushed him lightly toward Beth at the door. He and Beth kissed one more time before she gave him a light push out the door. When Beth turned, her mother-in-law was standing there in the foyer – and Beth suddenly realized she was alone with her husband's mother for the first time.
Victoria understood her nervousness. She just waved Beth into the living room. "Now comes the fun part," she said. "He has clothes that need mending. Mostly socks, but he has a tear in the seam of his favorite shirt. I hope you're up to this."
"Oh, I am," Beth said. "I was the only child and being a girl, I was well-trained in darning socks and mending seams."
Victoria sat down with her on the settee and pulled out her sewing basket from the side toward the fireplace. "We'll have to get you your own basket, because that husband of yours can be rough on his clothing."
"Really?" Beth said as Victoria handed her a pincushion and a small pair of scissors. "That surprises me."
"He tries hard, but sometimes he's just as rough and tumble as Nick and Heath," Victoria said. "And sometimes he just gets into trouble, like any other man."
That made Beth suddenly remember the man she and Jarrod had met in town the day before, Cass Hyatt. She wasn't sure why, but she was distinctly uncomfortable when she thought of that man, and uncomfortable because Jarrod just brushed him off saying he wasn't important. Beth wasn't so sure about that.
But before she could ask about him, Victoria went on. "So, tell me, what were your parents like?"
"Oh, they were both originally from England," Beth said as she threaded a needle and picked up a sock to darn. "Unusual for where we lived – mostly descendants of German immigrants in our part of Pennsylvania, near Harrisburg. I was born in Philadelphia, but my father wanted to be a farmer, so that's where we ended up. I grew up in a lovely old fieldstone house, where the hills just rolled and rolled."
"And you went to a teacher's college?"
"I did. After my fiance was killed – " She suddenly realized she was breezing into the subject too blithely. "My fiance was killed at Gettysburg."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Victoria said. "You must have been very young."
"Yes, I was, but a lot of us lost fiancés and husbands and brothers at Gettysburg. It was a very hard time."
"I'm sorry I led you into that."
"No, no, it's all right. I know Jarrod served, too. I know how worried you had to have been about him while he was gone."
"Yes," Victoria said, remembering. "He was gone for four years and then three more at school. He was my boy when he left, and he came back a man. I missed almost a third of his life then. When he came back, I hardly knew him."
"The war changed everyone," Beth said. "But Jarrod is a fine man. I do love him very much, Mrs. Barkley. I know I came here so suddenly it must be making your head spin."
"Not really. Jarrod was never one to talk to us about the girls he might be seeing. I always got the feeling he was waiting for that special one before he let us know he'd found her." Victoria smiled at Beth. "He's found her. I couldn't be happier."
Beth almost got misty-eyed.
They went on sewing and chatting until it was time for lunch. Victoria and Beth spent some time with Silas in the kitchen while he explained what he was fixing and how Jarrod liked it. "This afternoon, we'll work on dinner together, you and I, and give Silas a chance to tend the garden," Victoria said to Beth. "We'll fix something Jarrod particularly likes."
"Thank you, I'd like that," Beth said. "So far we seem to have the same tastes. I hope that keeps up."
"Oh, you'll probably discover that he likes sweetbreads and you don't or something like that, but don't let it worry you," Victoria said. "Despite all my teasing, Jarrod is not that demanding a man, not when it comes to food."
Victoria and Beth enjoyed lunch together before they dove in to preparing dinner. It was a dish to be very slowly cooked and required a lot of cutting up of vegetables, so Victoria and Beth had a lot more time to talk. As Victoria explained the dish they were preparing, how it was one of Jarrod's favorites, Beth suddenly realized how much she didn't know about her husband. "The little things, as well as the important ones," she said. And she said, "I wonder if we shouldn't have waited." And it worried her that she really felt that way.
"Oh, no, Beth," Victoria said. "You loved each other and you trusted each other. However, if there's anything that husband of yours won't tell you about himself, you ask me."
Cass Hyatt flew into Beth's mind, out of nowhere, dark and ugly. "Do you mean that?"
"Yes," Victoria said, curious.
"Who is Cass Hyatt?"
Victoria never got the chance to explain, because suddenly Jarrod's voice was coming from the foyer. Beth burst into a smile like the sun and ran out to him. Victoria followed along slowly, and as she arrived, Beth was started up the stairs to change her clothes. Jarrod was taking her out somewhere.
Victoria saw how her son beamed as he watched his wife disappear upstairs, and she stepped up to him. As he put his arm around her, she said, "Somehow I think you're very much in love with that girl."
"Now, whatever gave you that idea?" Jarrod asked.
And then Jarrod took his wife off somewhere.
And then he brought her back, dead in his arms.
XXXXXXX
Nick and Heath came in fast from the range. Victoria met them, in tears in the stable yard. "What happened?" Nick asked fast.
"She's dead, she's been killed, they went for a ride together and someone shot her and she's dead," Victoria couldn't keep from blustering.
Nick took his mother in his arms and held her, the tears running down his face.
Heath could hardly catch his own breath, but he asked, "Where's Jarrod?"
"In his room with her," Victoria said. "The doctor's here, but she's dead. She's dead. Oh, my God, she's dead – "
Nick and Heath looked at each other, sobs grabbing them both. They looked up toward Jarrod's room. They couldn't believe this was happening. They couldn't even imagine what was happening to their brother now. They had no idea what to do but stand there, staring, and crying, before they got themselves together to go up and try to help Jarrod.
Epilogue
It was over that fast. In the blink of an eye, less than a week of marriage, scarcely two days after they had come to know her, not even 48 hours since Jarrod had brought her joyously into the house and they had shared champagne with their new sister-in-law, she was gone. Shot dead. They were certain Cass Hyatt was behind it – Sheriff Madden had him locked up at least for now. Maybe he intended to shoot Jarrod, maybe he intended to shoot his wife, but whatever Hyatt's intention, it was Beth who bore the bullet. Now she was in the ground, beside the father-in-law she never met, and her husband stood staring, wearing an expression his family had never seen before. Distraught, disbelieving, but shut down at the same time. And something else.
They couldn't know that in his heart, all Jarrod could see was his wife's dead face, and her star falling from the sky and crashing into his as it did. They couldn't know that he was reliving every moment, every instant of a life together that should not have been over when it had only just begun. They couldn't know that all he could understand was that they were piling dirt on top of Beth, on top of him, on top of everything, and with every shovelful he kept hearing the word, "No," over and over and over.
What his family could see were his eyes, blind to everyone around him, lost in his grief, and in something else.
Heath and Nick stood aside from their brother and their mother beside him at the grave. They could see Jarrod's face. They knew what they were looking at was beyond pain, beyond mourning.
Heath said quietly, "He's gonna explode, Nick. It's already happening."
"I know," Nick said just as quietly. "I thought I knew every look in Big Brother's eyes but I never saw this one before. Heath, we gotta be ready for anything."
"We can't crowd him," Heath said. "We can't push. He won't be able to take that."
"I just can't believe this is happening," Nick said.
"Me neither," Heath said. "It just – ain't right."
They looked at each other, tears in their own eyes, for that sweet woman in the ground, for their older brother and the agony he was in, for what they both knew was coming and dreaded more than anything in their lives.
It was coming. How it would unfold and how it would end, they couldn't know. But it was coming, and they couldn't stop it.
And Jarrod just stared into the ground.
The End