Chapter 34 – Emmett - Making Plans

The afternoon bought visitors, with Mr and Mrs Allison and Jeb coming over with gifts for the baby and a bottle of whisky for me. I was touched that they'd made the effort. Usually people in our area would be there after a birth with casseroles and stews and baby gifts, as well as offers of help for the new mother, but the circumstances of Rosalie's baby were unusual enough that for the most part our friends and neighbours had remained wary. It was nice to have the Allisons come over and give their best wishes.

"Aww Emmett, look at you!" Jeb laughed, climbing up the porch steps.

Sitting in the rocker with Jem asleep on my shoulder and drooling down my back, I grinned at him. "Just doing my bit to help out."

Mrs Allison leaned over and kissed my cheek. "Congratulations Emmett. Now, let me have a look at this little darling, while I go and visit the new mother." She scooped up the baby and then she and Ma disappeared inside to visit with Rosalie.

Jeb was still looking at me in amusement. "Who would have thought our hell-raiser Emmett was going to turn into Mr Domestic with a baby so quickly?"

"I wasn't a hell-raiser," I protested with a guilty laugh. It couldn't be denied that I'd had a little more than my fair share of fun in my time.

Mr Allison chuckled, and Pa winked at me. "I don't know Emmett. How many times have I had my belt to you?"

I rumpled my hair. "Well, I'm all grown up and responsible now I guess."

"Well, congratulations lad," Mr Allison said sincerely.

"So what next?" Jeb asked. "You having a wedding, or what? If you don't mind me asking."

I shrugged. "I don't know. I think we'll have to go to New York first and sort out Rosalie's affairs there."

It seemed as though that was the only option. Once Rosalie was up and about and we were both over the initial exhausting weeks with a newborn baby, we did what we could to find out what our next move should be. We asked the minister, and then we used the last of the money from selling Rosalie's rings to consult with a lawyer. While he could have helped us it would have cost a fortune, which we didn't have, and would be a very long and complicated process. He was also not familiar with New York law, and with Royce residing there it was probably where we would need to file. His suggestion was to go to New York and approach Royce directly, and hope that he was in agreement with us that divorce was the answer. Then we could all work at finding the easiest and quickest method of attaining one.

Glumly, Rosalie and I walked from his office back towards home. Neither of us spoke until we reached home and went into her bedroom. Rosalie lay down on the bed and began to feed the baby, and I lay carefully down beside her, looking at her softly.

"He'll never agree," she said flatly, as if we were in the middle of a conversation. "Not if he thinks it's something I want."

"Maybe he will?" I suggested hopefully. "I mean, we haven't heard from him since he sent his lawyer down here. Maybe he decided that he doesn't care if you want to spend the rest of your life with a bunch of…what was it? Oh yeah…inbred hillbilly hicks."

Rosalie didn't smile at my joke. "I think I've hurt his pride, and he's not one to let that go. Imagine what everyone must have thought when his beautiful wife ran away…he'll hurt me any way he can just to get back at me. But it's not just me anymore. It's Jem too. Whatever he feels about me, he'll think that's his baby and he should be the one to say how he's raised."

"Yeah." My smile faded and I brushed my hand across the silky hair sticking up over my Jem's head. He popped off Rosalie's breast with a burp and lay asleep between us, his hands curled up in fists on either side of his head. The idea of someone, anyone, trying to take this baby away from me made my heart lurch. Not Royce King the Third…his name is James Emmett McCarty and he is ours!

Rosalie rearranged her clothes, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby. "He can't be allowed to have Jem," she whispered fiercely. "He can't. I don't trust him not to hurt him."

"No one is going to let him have Jem," I said, knowing even as I said it that it was not going to be so simple.

"I want you to raise him," Rosalie said, leaning over the baby and kissing me with an unexpected ardour. "I want him to grow up to be a man like you, with integrity and honour. I don't want him to grow up thinking that the world owes him what he wants, and that he can hurt people just because he feels like it."

I kissed her back, feeling the heat and desire of her touch as her hands roamed over my shoulders and down my back. My body ached to touch her, and I would have rolled over her had I not heard the little squeak of Jem jammed in between us. I laughed a little ruefully and looked down at the round dark eyes looking up at me quizzically.

"Nice timing buddy," I said, letting him grasp my finger.

Rosalie laughed, and then looked at me guiltily. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" My finger was in Jem's mouth, his gums clamped down with surprising strength. I took his two tiny feet in one hand and brought them up to my lips so I could kiss the tiny toes.

"For…that. Because we haven't…" Rosalie was floundering for the right words, her face bright red. "You might be the only person in the world to become a father without…"

"Hey," I said gently, reaching over and touching her lip. "It doesn't matter. One day…I'm good with waiting. You've only just had a baby."

"It's not just that though," Rosalie said quietly. "After all, Jem's over six weeks old now."

"The marriage issue? I thought maybe you wanted to wait until we were properly wed." I made a surprised face at Jem, opening my eyes and mouth wide and shaking my head, until I was rewarded with his wobbly, gummy smile.

Rosalie shifted restlessly. "No, it's not even that. After all, the only grounds for divorce in New York seems to be adultery and I'm quite willing to bear the disgrace of being the guilty party if that's what it will take for Royce to go along with it. I don't think there's a single person who believes that, when it comes to each other, we're still chaste."

"What is it then?"

Rosalie looked away from me, tickling Jem with a long piece of hair which made him wrinkle up his nose and smile at her. As I watched him smile I was struck by the thought of how much that smile made him look like Rosalie.

"I'm scared," she said, so quietly I almost didn't hear her.

"Of…me?" I asked softly.

"Maybe a little." Rosalie still didn't look at me. "I'm scared because…because it always hurt. Because it made him cruel. And I don't want anything between you and I to change, and I'm scared if we bring that in then it will change. I love you Emmett, and I don't ever want to be afraid of you, but…"

Her voice trailed off. I rolled off the bed and took Jem with me, keeping my back to Rosalie to hide my face as I took in her words. He had hurt her, in more ways than I knew, using that most intimate of acts against her. And now she was afraid that I was going to do the same thing, that maybe it was inevitable in a relationship. My heart ached with what she'd gone through, and the way the fears and worries must have plagued her.

Wrapping him up like a bug in a cocoon I placed Jem in his cradle, and I went back to lying on the bed with Rosalie, looking at her quietly.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked, her finger tracing a row of stitching on the quilt.

"Rosa girl, I'm never going to be angry with you for telling me what you are really thinking and feeling," I said sincerely. "That's how we make this work- by being honest with each other, and by sharing what's going on in our heads. And you didn't say anything to make me mad."

"I didn't know if it bothers you that I've done those things before. That you won't be my first."

I shook my head. "No. But your experience…sex isn't meant to hurt you, beautiful girl. The fact that he used it as a way to hurt you is unconscionable. I want to be with you in all the ways that a man and a woman can be together, but I want it to mean something. I want to touch you and make you feel good because I love you and because you should feel good in your own skin. I want to be with you because I love you, and I want to be as close to you as I can. But it's only going to happen when you're ready to trust me, when you truly, honestly believe that I am not going to hurt you."

Rosalie moved closer, burying her face in the crook of my neck and shoulder. I held her, running my hand down her back and over the curve of her hip, listening to the distant sounds of the children out in the yard and Ma talking to Maggie and Hannah in the kitchen.

"Well," Rosalie eventually said with a sigh. "I do love you, and it seems almost a pity to be charged in court with adultery if we never even did anything."

I couldn't help laughing, rolling onto my back with Rosalie sprawled half on top of me, smiling down coyly. I kissed her again, and then as Jem began to wail I sat up and tipped her back on to the bed. "Naughty girl," I said with a grin, but inside I felt myself floating. She loved me, she trusted me, and she was going to be mine forever. "I love you," I said, as I picked up the crying baby and handed him to her. "But our first time is not going to be with my Ma in the kitchen beside us and his royal highness here crying for attention."

Rosalie took Jem and snuggled him into her shoulder, where he immediately stopped crying. "Who loves his mama?" she crooned. "Which baby loves his mama so much that he's going to stop crying?"

I wrapped my arms around both of them. "I love his mama," I said to Rosalie with a grin, kissing her one last time for good measure. "But now I better go and chop some wood, because I promised my own mama that I would."

I was still chopping wood when Pa came walking up the road from the Allison's in the dusk. The rich scent of the stew we were having for dinner was drifting out from the open kitchen door, and I could hear the laughter of Rosalie and Hannah as they played with Jem on the porch. Elizabeth, Stephen and Will were grabbing up the wood as I split it and stacking it in the woodshed for me.

"Daddy!" Elizabeth cried gleefully, jumping into his arms.

Pa hugged her and smiled at the rest of us. I wedged the axe into a log and stretched, groaning. "Hey Pa…good day?"

Pa nodded and set Elizabeth down. "Not too bad. I've got some good news for you though."

"Yeah? Stephen, some water for me?"

Stephen energetically pumped the handle and the water flooded out into my hands, which I then used to scrub my face and arms and hair. It was a warm evening and the cold water felt good and refreshing.

"Henry Allison sold the mare," Pa told me cheerfully. "Got a good bit for her too, which he credits to the work you put in to her. He sent your share home with me."

I stood up and dried myself off on my shirt before I took the envelope Pa had. I opened it up and my eyes widened- Henry Allison must have done well if this was my share. I couldn't help my sigh of relief. After visiting the lawyer, Rosalie and I were down to our last dollar. This would allow me to give Ma and Pa a chunk of money to pay them back for our keep all this time, and some left over.

"That's great," I said. "Thanks Pa."

"Henry also had a suggestion," Pa said, washing his own hands and face. "He was impressed with what you did with the mare, and wondered if you might want to do a similar thing? He'll pick up something untrained but with breeding from the sales, you can train it, then he'll sell it and split the profits again."

"It sounds interesting," I said truthfully. "You know how I like working with the horses, and it gives me something to do."

"I thought it might be worthwhile doing while you're not in any regular work," Pa agreed.

The two of us walked over to the porch and sat down. I leaned close to Rosalie and kissed her neck under her hair, and handed her the envelope. "Look, proof I'm not a completely useless layabout…I made us some money."

Rosalie peeked in and then gave it back to me with a strained smile. "That's enough to get us to New York."

"New York?" Pa said sharply. "You're not planning on taking my grandbaby away to New York I hope?" He looked possessively over at Jem, lying placidly on a blanket while Maggie played peekaboo with him.

I shook my head. "Not permanently." I glanced at Rosalie and then told Pa, "We saw the lawyer today. His best suggestion was to go to New York and try to talk to Royce. Adultery is grounds for divorce in New York, and everything is going to be a hell of a lot easier if we all just agree that it's the answer and work cooperatively."

"And you think this man will see it that way?" Pa asked doubtfully.

I shrugged. "Rosalie thinks not, but you never know. I mean, it's pretty clear the marriage is over. Even though it's not true, Rosalie will admit to adultery and take the blame if that's what it takes to get him to agree. He'll come out of it looking fine, and can move on."

"What happens if he refuses?" Pa asked.

"Then we try something else," I said, struggling to sound optimistic. "There are other states where we can stay long enough to qualify for residence and file there, if we have to go that route."

I didn't say how impossible that was. How on earth could we ever afford the legal fees as well as the costs to stay in-state somewhere with more lax divorce laws? But Rosalie leaned her head against my arm and I kissed her hair, and I knew I would do whatever it took to make this work out for us.