AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
Trigger warning for discussion of abortion. Not super detailed, but still may be difficult if this is a trigger for you.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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As time went on, Carol became aware, somewhere down inside herself, that Evie wasn't coming back from her wedding. Or, at the very least, she wasn't coming back any time soon. Carol watched as the time rolled on and she accepted that she, alone, would be responsible for the education of her students. Everyone else would know it, too, if Evie ever sent the letter, which Carol simply felt was coming, announcing that she and her new husband had decided not to return to the territory. So Carol relaxed into her role.
She learned about the rhythms of her students. She learned, from watching Daryl, what to expect from them as far as attendance went. She could watch his concerns and actions on the farm—listen to his conversation at night—and know whether or not most of her students would make it to the little one-room schoolhouse the following day. On days when there was an energy of expectation and anxiety surrounding Daryl that indicated some work that needed to be done, attendance would be low. On days when Daryl was more relaxed and his conversation turned to other projects, like clearing land, that would help expand the farm, attendance would be high in number.
And Carol learned to react to those rhythms. Instead of admonishing the students for their absences, Carol worked with them. She granted days of vacation whenever it felt truly necessary so that students could work without feeling that they were choosing their future livelihood over an education that they obviously felt was important enough to pursue. When they returned, Carol never found that she was disappointed in them, either. They came back light hearted and ready to continue with their studies. They came back unburdened by worries over the backs of their parents and grandparents.
One day, when Carol hadn't anticipated the absence of all her farm students, she released the others early and sent them home with the lessons that they should do for the night. Admittedly, she was as relieved as they were that the day wouldn't prove as long as usual because she was tired and there were things that she needed to take care of before she rode back to the farm.
Carol left Toby inside the schoolhouse so that he wouldn't follow her. She left Jubilee tied outside in the shade. On foot, Carol walked to town—and then she made her way just outside of it. Carol knew well that there were ways to get to the house without being too visible. She'd used them herself and she knew that many of the so-called "respectable" women in town used them. More of them than would ever admit were Andrea's personal customers and, out of necessity and a drive to make things convenient for her customers, Andrea had established ways to make it look like you were going somewhere else when, in reality, you were making your way to the back entrance of the house.
Carol found the back entrance with ease and knocked on the door. She expected Andrea to answer, but instead she found a working girl that she didn't know. The young woman stared at her for a second and then shook her head.
"Miss Andrea ain't takin' nobody," the woman said. "Come back in a couple weeks."
Carol shook her head and put her hand up to stop the door before it closed in her face.
"I'm not here for that," Carol said. "I'm just here to see Andrea. To talk to her."
The young woman shook her head again.
"She ain't seein' nobody," the woman said. "You heard me."
"I'm a friend," Carol said. "I used to work here. She knows me. She'll see me."
Apparently recognizing that Carol wasn't going to simply leave, the woman stepped back and let Carol into the house. She closed the door behind her.
"She don't wanna see nobody," the woman said.
"She'll see me," Carol insisted. "And if she tells me to leave? I'll do it. But I'm going to see her."
"She ain't gonna like I let you in here," the woman said.
"Then I'll tell her that you didn't have a choice," Carol said. "I know the way to her quarters."
She left the woman there, probably deciding how she might protest Carol's entrance into the establishment, and she made her way to Andrea's room. The door was closed, as it almost always was, and Carol tapped at it to announce her presence. From inside, she heard Andrea's voice and her pulse picked up.
"I'm fine, Sarah," Andrea said. "Leave me be."
"It isn't Sarah," Carol responded. "It's Carol. I need to speak with you. May I come in?"
There was silence from beyond the door. Whether or not she was taking a liberty that wasn't hers to take, Carol turned the knob and opened the door. Nothing about Andrea's room was any different than it had been when Carol had been there before. It was the same room. It was decorated in the same way.
Andrea was in bed. She was sitting, propped against her pillows, and as soon as Carol entered she reached for her cigarette case and selected a cigarette.
She could pretend all she wanted that she was fine—and she probably would—but Carol could immediately tell that she wasn't herself. She wasn't even as put together as she normally looked when she was going to bed for the night—her paint washed off and her hair braided up—and she was visibly covered with a light sheet of sweat.
Carol closed the bedroom door behind her and immediately walked to the bed. On the tiny bedside table, she noticed the bottle of laudanum and the clean glass that had probably been sitting there, unused, for some time. Beside it was another glass and a small jug of water. That appeared to be the only glass that Andrea thought she needed.
"You shouldn't be here," Andrea said. "You have no reason to be here. You need to leave."
In her current condition, Andrea was entirely unable to sound as authoritative as she normally did. She sounded weak and tired. Her attempts at being demanding sounded washed out.
"If I didn't have a reason to be here, I wouldn't be," Carol said. "Although it seems you need somebody here."
A very slight hint of a smile crossed Andrea's lips seconds before she practically swallowed it away. Carol waved away the smoke that hit her nose and turned her stomach slightly and Andrea moved the cigarette a little farther away from Carol in response.
"Someone is going to see you," Andrea said. "If they haven't already. You're a respectable woman, Carol. I heard about it. You got a husband. A good one, from what I hear. A nice farm and a fine house. You're teachin' school." She laughed to herself. "I always knew you coulda been somethin' like that."
"You heard it from Merle," Carol said. Andrea shrugged her shoulders. "I know he comes ever' week without fail. Sometimes in the middle of the week if he can talk himself into a day off and an extra couple dollars from Daryl for work done on the farm."
"It don't matter where I heard it," Andrea said. "As long as it's true. And he might be given to brag, but Merle don't lie."
"You're not seeing anyone?" Carol asked. "Not even Merle?"
Andrea shook her head.
"Not for a bit," Andrea said. "Who would want to see me right now? Besides—can't risk an infection."
Carol swallowed and nodded her head. She'd worked there long enough to know what was ailing Andrea.
"Is it that bad?" Carol asked.
Andrea shook her head and offered Carol the best smile she could. It might have been convincing too, if Carol didn't know what Andrea's eyes usually looked like. She knew them well enough, though, to see they were clouded over with pain—whether it was physical or not, it was hard to tell.
"I just let it go too long," Andrea said. She sucked in a breath and snubbed out her cigarette. "Was my own fault. I just—let it go too long. I'm fine, though, and you should go. You're gonna get found out."
"I come the back way," Carol said. "Didn't nobody see me. And if they did? Don't matter. I can explain myself—and I will, if that's what I gotta do. I come for a reason and if I'm takin' care of a friend? A good friend? While I'm here? How can they say that's wrong and still preach all they go on preachin'?"
Andrea frowned at her.
"If you're here, you might as well sit," Andrea said. "Back and forth too quick will draw attention. What'd you come here for? What do you want?" Carol sat on the edge of the bed, whether or not that's where Andrea was inviting her to sit, and she stared at the bottle on the bedside table. Andrea must have taken her silence for reluctance because she spoke to her again before Carol could answer her questions. "Was Merle lyin'?" Andrea asked. "He ain't good to you?"
Carol smiled to herself and shook her head.
"He's the best to me," Carol said. "I can't be convinced that there was never no better man made in all the world."
"Then what are you doin' here?" Andrea asked.
Carol swallowed.
"He's the best husband that ever I could ask for," Carol said. "And there ain't nothin' I can't tell him. He's willing to hear it all, even if it pains him. But—that doesn't mean I want to cause him unnecessary pain and so—I needed a friend. You're the only one I ever had that, besides Daryl—that I never knowed to judge."
"What do you need?" Andrea asked.
Carol raised her eyebrows at Andrea and gestured with her head toward the table.
"Right now? You to take your medicine," Carol said.
Andrea shook her head.
"You know I don't like it," Andrea said. "People who drink it develop a fondness for it that I'm not keen on having."
Carol laughed to herself.
"So they do to whisky, as well," Carol confirmed. "Yet you've never been against a swallow or two of that when the time called for it." Carol shook her head at Andrea. "I've heard you talkin' to girls before. Plenty of times. Just because you never said it to me don't mean I don't remember what'cha said. Just because your heart's hurting? It don't mean your body's gotta be. You're doing nothin' right by punishin' yourself double."
To drive home her request, Carol poured water into the unused glass and took the laudanum bottle. According to what she'd been taught before, she dropped about ten drops of the liquid into the glass and gently shook the glass before she offered it in Andrea's direction. Andrea tried to refuse it, but finally took it when Carol made it clear that she wasn't backing down from her demands that Andrea drink the liquid. Finally, Andrea did drink it down. Carol knew it would only be a matter of minutes before at least some of Andrea's discomfort was relieved. Some of it, Carol knew, would take a lot longer to pass. There was some pain that only time relieved—if it ever went away.
"Why are you here?" Andrea asked, putting the empty glass on the table where it had sat before. She helped herself to another of her cigarettes and offered Carol one that Carol refused. She didn't deny anyone their use of tobacco, and Daryl quite enjoyed it too, but she didn't care for it. She didn't feel she had to pretend that she did.
"Why did you let it go so long?" Carol asked. "That's not you. You don't never let it go past a week that your moons don't come on you. You know it well enough—it weren't an accident."
Andrea ran her fingers over the blanket and studied it like she wasn't familiar with it and it hadn't been on her bed for a long time.
"I was foolish," Andrea said. "I knew it when it started. Right away I knew it. My moons didn't come and then? They didn't come again. I hid it." She laughed to herself. "Like it was just mine and it weren't gonna have no effect on nobody else. Nobody in this house. I hid it. Kept it to myself. Even hid it from Doc. Told him all was fine when he come by checkin' on the girls. I guess I was thinkin'—I could be a mother. I mean—plenty of women that aren't decent women are mothers, even if they got no business bein' so. And I was thinkin' maybe you run outta chances, ya know? That one day—there's just no more bein' a mother 'cause you didn't take none of the ones you coulda took." She looked at Carol like she expected to see judgement in her eyes. Carol was sure she didn't see any, because there was none that Carol felt there. "I got foolish," Andrea said. "And it weren't until I realized I couldn't hide it any longer that—I knew this ain't no kinda life for a child. And I wouldn't be no kinda mother. So I sent for Doc. He didn't scold. Had Lila hold the cloth over my face—so I don't remember a thing that was happenin' until he woke me up and said it was done. Said I could be up when I felt like it—but guard against infection a couple weeks at least."
"For what it's worth?" Carol offered. "I think you'd be a fine mother."
"A disorderly house ain't no place for a child," Andrea said. Carol shook her head. She couldn't argue with that. Not at all. Andrea sighed. "You didn't come here to hear my woes, Carol. And you didn't come here to make sure I was taking opium. So why'd you come?"
Carol shrugged her shoulders and laughed to herself, though the feeling that squeezed her breath out wasn't really humor.
"I don't even know if it's fit to say," Carol said.
"You come here for a reason," Andrea said. "And you don't stay here longer if you don't tell me that reason. You got a life, Carol, but it ain't here."
"I don't want a life here," Carol said quickly. "That ain't why I come back. Like I told you before. Come lookin' for a friend."
"Then tell me what you need," Andrea said. "And go back to your life."
Carol laughed to herself again. Andrea's voice had hardened just as it always did when she wanted to let any of her "girls" know that she wasn't accepting their disobedience.
"I think I might be expectin' a child," Carol said.
Saying it out loud almost robbed Carol of her air again. She hadn't said it out loud to anyone. Not even to Toby or Jubilee. She hadn't said it out loud to herself, even. She feared saying it out loud. She feared it wouldn't be true, and saying it out loud would be admitting that she thought it was true. It would make it just that much worse when she realized it wasn't.
So she'd been keeping it quiet, inside of her, while she waited for the disappointment that she expected to come when her moons came on her again. But they hadn't come.
Andrea moved around and sat up in the bed.
"I see," Andrea said. "But you're a respectable woman now. A wife. It would be suiting for you to bear your husband a child. It would be...expected. You can't be comin' here to expect me to—help you."
Carol shook her head at Andrea.
"I want your help," Carol said. "But—not like that." She sucked in a breath and held it. It felt like her lungs might explode. She felt like she wasn't drawing in enough air. She thought that, maybe if she held it in longer, her lungs might feel like they got all they needed from it. It didn't work as well as she hoped. "If I was to have a baby? Andrea—it'd be such a blessing. I want a baby more'n I've wanted anything since I married Daryl."
"But he don't want it?" Andrea asked.
Carol nodded her head.
"He wants it," Carol said. "Though he don't talk about it like he used to. He's nearly give up talkin' about it. Like he don't wanna think on it if it won't never be true."
"Then what are ya doin' here?" Andrea asked, clearly growing tired of asking the same question over and over again.
Carol shook her head.
"If it weren't true?" Carol said. "An' I told him I thought it was? It'd break his heart, Andrea. Tear up his feelings. And I don't wanna see that. I don't wanna see him hurtin' 'cause I was wrong. Build him up just to tear him down." She tried to ignore the fact that her chest was closing up more and more and that her throat had started to ache like she was choking on something that was nothing more than her own fear. "But I don't have the strength to even walk to the Doc's alone. Can't even ride my horse there. I start shakin'—fearin' that it won't be true. Fearin' that he'll say it never can be. I turn ever' time I get near there. I feel like I need someone to pick me up and carry me in—like my legs don't even work. Because they don't work for me."
"And you want me to carry you?" Andrea asked.
Carol swallowed.
"Not so much in an honest way," Carol said. "But—you got a lotta strength when you need it. And I was hopin' you could see fit to give me some." She shook her head. "But I see it isn't a good time to ask that of you."
"You can't be seen in the street with me," Andrea said. "It won't be proper for you to walk with me. You know that."
"There's a lot in my life that ain't been proper," Carol said. "Lot that's been downright shameful. Walkin' in the street with you? It won't be the worst I've done."
"You know what people will think," Andrea said. "They won't like it."
"Daryl says we don't care what people think," Carol said. "And he ain't never. Don't suppose—if I was to explain it to him. He'd start carin' now. And I know—I don't. If you saw the way they look at me? Their respect isn't sincere, Andrea. And it'll never be. I got a job that I'll keep 'cause there's nobody else to tale it. But if they take it away from me?" Carol shrugged her shoulders. "I'd make out OK. I don't work because I got to work. Daryl takes care of us. We take care of the farm and it takes care of us. I work because I like teachin' the students. But if they don't need me?" She shook her head at Andrea. "If their respect was real? I'd have more friends that were willing to walk with me in the street. But they don't—walk with me, that is. They won't. But you would."
Andrea laughed to herself. She was looking better. The laudanum, for all her dislike of it, was doing what it was supposed to do.
"There's nobody I could say I wouldn't walk through the streets with," Andrea said. "It's never me that turns my head. It's decent people what don't walk with the likes of me."
"I come here for you to walk with me," Carol said. "But—maybe it ain't a good time for you to do that. I can't go alone. My body won't let me. And—I can't hurt Daryl. If it isn't true? If it's never gonna be? It's better to me that I don't never get his hopes high."
Andrea nodded her head. She moved the blanket away from her and it caught under Carol's weight.
"You'll help me get dressed," Andrea said. "The fresh air will do me good, but I can't go out lookin' like I look. Even I got standards."
Carol laughed to herself. Her chest fluttered at the thought of what was to come and her stomach twisted up a little. This afternoon she would either ride home feeling the heaviest that she'd felt in a long while, or she'd ride home so light that Jubilee would likely not even notice her weight. Carol got to her feet and pulled the cover back the rest of the way to free Andrea from the blanket prison that she'd made for herself.
"High ones," Carol said. "Especially for goin' to town. Let's get you dressed and lookin' respectable."