Chapter 29 – Rosalie – A Visitor

"Good day folks," Pierce called with an attempt at friendliness, as he emerged from the vehicle.

I was having none of it. "What do you want?" I snapped.

"Now, now Rosalie, is that any way to greet an old friend?"

"Since when were we ever friends?" I said. "Just say what you've come to say and then go."

All pretence at good humour vanished, and Pierce glared at me hatefully. Behind me, Miss Adeline emerged from the house, leaning the shotgun ostentatiously against the side of Emmett's rocker. Pierce looked horrified, and I saw him swallow hard.

He's scared. Good.

"I've come from Royce," he said to me. "He's been beside himself over your disappearance Rosalie…he was desperate to find out if you were safe and well. He's had private investigators looking for you for weeks."

I fought to keep my face expressionless.

"After they told him you were here, he sent me right away to come and fetch you…he's prepared to take you back and wants you to come home," Pierce went on.

"Prepared…to…take…me…back," I repeated slowly, unable to keep quiet. "HE is prepared to take ME back…as if I would go back after what he did to me!"

"Now look Rosalie, don't be silly about all this," Pierce said impatiently. "So you had a bit of a tiff with Royce. That's no reason to embarrass the whole family by running off! Get in the car and I'll take you back, and Royce has said he's prepared to forget this and go on as before."

"I don't want to go on as before!" I snarled. "I don't want to go on with Royce at all…I'm sorry you've had a wasted trip Pierce, but I'm staying right where I am and you can tell him that I'm never coming near him again."

"Well, that's going to be a problem," Pierce said calmly. "Because you still have something that belongs to Royce, and even if you refuse to come back, he still wants it."

"What?" For a moment I was baffled, and then I realised and felt my whole body go taut as I curved both hands protectively over her belly. "No," I said, my voice like ice. "The baby is mine."

Mine. And I will kill you before I let you take it away from me and treat it the way you treated me. My baby will have better than that!

"Well, Royce doesn't agree with that," Pierce said with a malicious smirk. "He's not having his son brought up by some inbred hillbilly hicks out in the middle of nowhere. The child is a King Rosalie, and it's going to be brought up as one."

Emmett couldn't have moved fast enough to stop me, but I don't know if he would have anyway as I snatched up the shotgun and pointed it straight at Pierce Kennedy's heart.

"Get. Out," I muttered through gritted teeth, my eyes glittering with a fury beyond anything I'd ever felt before. "Get out of here, and you tell Royce he can go to hell if he thinks he's going to take my baby."

Pierce tried to look unconcerned, but he was moving pretty quickly back to the car. "I'll tell him Rosalie, but don't expect that this is the last of it. Royce is entitled to his child, and he's going to come for it. So be ready."

As the car disappeared down the end of the road, the white-hot rage left me, and I found myself shivering in abject terror. Miss Adeline came over hastily and took the heavy shotgun out of my hands, propping it up against the house.

"Let's just get this out of your hands," she said soothingly, and then put her arms around me and hugged me tightly. "Come on Rosalie, keep it together."

I couldn't stop shaking. "He wants the baby…he can't do that! He can't have my baby…can he?"

"Well, he can't have it now," Miss Adeline said stoutly, patting my belly. "It's safe inside for the moment. But afterward, legally…I don't know Rosalie." Her face was troubled.

I turned to Emmett, sinking down to the porch beside the rocker and pressing my face against his thigh. His big hand cupped the back of my head and stroked my hair- the closest he could come to hugging me with his chest so painfully mutilated.

"We'll work it out," he said, striving to sound confident. "He can't come and take the baby."

"He doesn't even want it," I said flatly. "Not like I want it. He wants it like it's a trophy, something he can possess and show off, that's all. He wants it because I tried to take it away."

As if it could hear us talking about it, the baby rolled and kicked in my belly, and I put a hand down to feel it on the outside as well. The feeling gave me strength at the same time as it calmed me, and I took a deep breath and smiled. "There's no point in worrying too much now. He can't do anything until the baby is born, and who knows if he'll still want to by then."

"That's a good girl," Miss Adeline said. "Perhaps we can have a talk with the minister at church and see if he has any suggestions for us too."

I doubted the minister would have any particular help for us, but I was willing to ask everybody in town for advice if it meant I would find out how to stop Royce from taking my baby.

"I do have to ask though," Miss Adeline went on, "Do you actually know how to shoot that gun?"

"Oh." I looked at her a little sheepishly. "Well…no."

She chuckled. "It was a good bluff then…anyone would have sworn you were a sharpshooter the way you held that. If you're going to go about waving guns at people though Rosalie, you had better learn how to use them first."

"Do you know how to shoot?" I asked in surprise.

"Of course I do. It's never going to hurt a girl to know her way around a gun, just in case she should ever need it," Miss Adeline said. "When he's better, get Emmett to teach you. But for now, I'm going back in to make the dinner."

Hannah went with her mother, and Maggie and Elizabeth settled down in the shade of the porch to play jacks. Will and Stephen, after bragging to me about their prowess with the shotgun and offering to show me how to use it, headed off towards the river. I stayed sitting on the porch, leaning against Emmett's leg, his hand in my hair.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you out today," Emmett said eventually, sounding frustrated. "I know you didn't really need me, but it was killing me to know that I couldn't have even stood up out of this chair, let alone defended you."

I rose and sat on the rocker beside Emmett, so that I could look at him. "It's really fine. I think I got the point across."

A faint smile drifted across Emmett's face. "I'd say you did." He hesitated. "At least now we know that he knows where you are. You don't have to worry about hiding so much anymore…you could get in contact with your folks, or your friend Vera."

"My parents will try and make me go back," I said flatly. "I'm sure I've embarrassed them socially, and the only thing I can do to make it up to them all is go back to Royce, play nice and pretend that none of this ever happened. If they knew where I was…my mother would cry to see me in these clothes, and they would both be horrified at what I'm doing without."

"Well, maybe you should listen to them," Emmett muttered. "If you're doing without so much."

It took me a moment to realise that I'd offended him, and I struggled to explain, "No Emmett, you know I don't care…I would rather be here."

"You don't always sound so sure of that," Emmett responded quietly.

"That's because sometimes it's hard!" I heard my voice start to rise, and I took a deep breath. "Remember back in Rochester when you said that you were living in my world and it was hard? Well, now I'm living in your world, and sometimes I find it hard too! I didn't have to worry about bears and selling jewellery to pay for the doctor back in Rochester, you know!"

"No, you just had to worry about a husband that brought other girls home when you weren't around and then beat the shit out of you," Emmett snapped.

I didn't wait to hear more. I didn't wait to say more. Ignoring Emmett's call after me I jumped off the porch and stormed away, anger hot in my chest. Anger both at Emmett, for reminding me of things I would rather forget, but anger also at myself for making such a mess of things once again.

"So stupid!" I raged at myself. "Why do you make everyone turn on you? Why do you ruin every single relationship you care about?"

I was around the back of the house, realising with a kind of despair that I had nowhere to go. There was no privacy in the house. There were acres of woods and fields surrounding us, but I didn't know my way around them and the idea of getting lost or running into Emmett's bear was too intimidating for me to risk it.

Morosely I picked my way through the yard, skirting the chickens and wishing I had shoes on. Unlike the children, whose soles seemed to be made of leather, my feet were soft and the ground was prickly and uncomfortable. I wandered over to the barn, and then entered the lean-to beside it where the car, an old Model-T, was parked.

The engine was exposed, a wooden crate with some tools and pieces of the engine as well as an oil-stained manual left beside it. Curious, I picked up the manual and flipped through the pages, glancing from the pen-and-ink diagrams to the physical engine in front of me. Almost immediately I saw a deviation in the engine compared to the diagram, where someone had installed a part upside down. Cautiously I set about correcting it. Pleased with the neatness and precision of the result, I turned to the next section in the manual and began to follow the directions. Absorbed in cleaning and adjusting the engine according to the manual, I didn't hear anyone approaching until Emmett cleared his throat.

"Rose…what are you doing?"

"Hmm?" I said absently, tightening a bolt. "Oh…fixing this. I found the likely reason why it wouldn't run, and I think I've repaired it. But there's a few other things that aren't quite right and…"

"Since when do you know about cars?" Emmett sounded flabbergasted.

I looked up him, suddenly feeling guilty when I saw him leaning on a stick and sweating, realising that he'd dragged his injured body across the yard to find me.

"Shouldn't you sit down? You don't look great."

Emmett shook his head. "Standing up is better. Like I said…since when do you know about cars?"

I laughed. "I don't. But the manual explains what to do…it's okay that I worked on it, isn't it?"

"More than okay, if you can get it running," Emmett answered. "Pa and I can't make heads or tails of that damn manual, so if it makes sense to you then go with it."

I nodded, and then looked down at my bare, dirty feet. "I'm sorry about what I said before," I said quietly. "You know I am so grateful to be here, and I don't care what my mother would say about anything. I haven't given up anything that I wasn't willing to let go."

Emmett's face looked sad. "I know it's not perfect here…I know how far it is from what you had before. And sometimes I think it is too much for you to give up. That one day you're going to turn around and hate me because I brought you here and made you give it all up."

"No." I shook my head.

"But at least think about it," Emmett persisted wretchedly. "I don't mean you should go back to Royce King. But your parents could help you, there could be something…you could go back to being who you were before."

"Do you want me to go?" I felt sick. "Because if you don't want me here I won't stay."

"Emmett's face was white and strained. "No! I want…god, Rosa girl, I want you. I love you, and I'd give you the world if I had it! But that's just the thing…I don't have it. I don't have anything to give you at all…"

I perched on the edge of the wooden crate and looked over at him. "Can't give me anything? Emmett, you've already given it…you've given me safety. You've given me a place to have my baby, you've given me a family, and you've given me you." Feeling my face heat up, I looked down at my hands. "All of that is more than enough."

"Come here," Emmett said hoarsely, holding out the arm that wasn't leaning on the stick. I went to him, and he grasped my hand, squeezing it tight and then leaning down to kiss me. "I wish I could hug you!" he said with a half laugh, letting go and looking at me ruefully. "Damn and blast that bear!"

"I'm not sure you could hug me anyway," I said with a giggle. "It feels like I just get bigger every single day."

"You kind of do," Emmett admitted. "He's going to be a big boy."

"It might not be a boy," I said with a laugh. I couldn't stop the thought that it might be easier if it weren't a boy, that if the baby was a girl Royce would be much less interested in it. "Your mother told me all these old wives tales and she thinks it's going to be a girl."

"It doesn't really matter," Emmett said with a grin. "It's going to look like you and it's going to be beautiful, whether it's a boy or a girl." He sighed heavily. "And now, if it's all the same to you, I need to go back to the house and lie down…and possibly die because these claw marks still hurt like a bitch."