Allegheny didn't wait for his return. She went on to bed, but Jackson was there in the morning with breakfast ready and waiting. He wasn't acting like he was still angry, but she came towards the table very slowly ready to dart at a moment's notice. She didn't know what to say to him, but he saved her the trouble by speaking first.
"I forgive you. It's the least I can do since you've forgiven me and given me another chance."
Had she forgiven him? A little astonished with herself, she realized she had, but trusting him was a whole other issue. "Well, what I did was wrong and partly out of spite, and I'm sorry. The other part is I was worried about the kind of father you'd be."
"I'm going to be a good father. You'll see. Not the kind who disciplines with anger but the kind who disciplines with love. I'm not the man I was before. And I'm going to be a good husband too."
"You know something? I believe you will. If I didn't, I wouldn't still be here."
She forced herself to reach out and pat his shoulder. It wasn't a great show of affection, but it was a start. And the way he smiled, he acted as if she'd given him a great gift.
When she carried in a pot of beans for supper that evening, he rushed to take it from her and carried it to the table himself.
She didn't know whether to feel annoyed or amused.
"How you feeling?" he asked.
"Fair to middling, I guess," she replied as she sat down at the table. She wondered if all this concern was over her or the baby. But then she remembered how well he had taken care of her when he thought she was merely sick, so very possibly he was caring for them both.
sss
Knitting was not something she was terribly accomplished at, but unlike cooking, she had come to the marriage knowing how to do it. She'd found yarn squirreled away in a box and used it to knit the baby a pair of socks. They were a neutral off-white so they could be worn by boy or girl, but unable to bear it being totally drab, she'd added a band of red at the top.
She showed them off to Jackson when she'd finished. He didn't comment on them right away. He looked like he didn't quite know how to respond. She realized in retrospect she probably should have asked permission as the balls of yarn had likely belonged to his mother. "I've gone and done it again, haven't I? Taken from you."
He found his voice. "No, what's mine is yours. I was just thinking that Momma would have wanted the yarn to be used for her grandbaby. They're very beautiful."
For the first time, she felt like they were a family: her, Jackson, and the unborn babe. And she had to admit though she still missed her parents and brothers, it was actually kind of nice.
sss
"You know what I wish I had more than anything right now? Horseradish. I don't even like the stuff that good, but right now I want it more than anything," Allegheny commented over more knitting. She was working on a baby blanket now. It was going to have stripes of every color in the yarn supply.
"Then that's what you'll have."
She looked up in surprise. "No, don't run all the way into town today. It can wait until grocery day. It's cold, and there's a chance of snow."
But he did it anyway. He was gone a little over 3 hours on the errand. She started getting anxious the last 30 minutes or so because the fat, feathery flakes began to fall, but he arrived home safely.
As she held the jar of white-looking sauce in her hands, she wondered if he had always been this sweet and she'd just never noticed. He wasn't loud or obvious about the things he did. He just did it without expecting her appreciation.
She hadn't imagined his temper, she knew that. But with that part of his personality better controlled, she was finding things about him she could like. Like the fact that he worked so hard. She had been so resentful of her chores that she hadn't noticed he worked just as hard if not harder himself. And he had brains under his hillbilly persona. That had come as a shock to her.
Even more shocking she realized as she continued to stare at the jar of horseradish, she had fallen in love with him.