It had been a long and eventful day for everyone and tomorrow promised to be longer still.
While Emily was tucking Daniel into bed, he asked if she and his father were made at him.
"No," she said, "Why would we be mad at you?"
"Because of James."
""I don't understand," Emily replied, baffled, "Is this about James getting into the forge?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell him to do that?" Emily had a good guess what was on her son's mind.
"No," he answered.
"Then why on earth would we be mad at you?" she asked. She wanted him to say the words.
"Because I didn't stop him!" Daniel was clearly troubled about this. "I didn't even know he was there!"
She knew it. "Daniel," Emily said in the voice of maternal authority she learned from Victoria, "You are not responsible for what other people do. Do you understand me?"
He nodded.
"If you told him to do a bad thing and he did it then you are partly guilty," she said, using the word 'guilty' thinking it was a better word than "responsible" to use with a nine year old. "But your father and I know you wouldn't do that. We're very proud of you."
Daniel let her kiss him on his forehead. She smoothed his hair with her hand and sighed, "I wish you would stop carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders."
~~BBB~~
After Heath and Sarah left to go home and everyone else had retired to bed, Audra sat alone in the parlor beside her mother's coffin and cried the million tears she had stored behind her eyes.
As a girl and then as a young woman, Audra had shared her inner life with her mother: her hopes and fears, triumphs and mistakes. As an adult, she had kept so much from her and had bore her pain utterly alone. She wanted to spare her mother from her pain.
~~BBB~~
Nick was sitting by the fire in the bedroom, lost in thought, glass of whiskey in his hand, when Emily came in and started to change into her nightgown. She had taken to wearing a nightgown to bed years ago because too often a crying child needed her in the middle of the night and she got tired of getting dressed in the dark and the cold.
After eighteen years of marriage, Nick and Emily had reached a comfortable routine together underscored by mutual trust, an occasional but usually unyielding difference of opinion, and punctuated by a not infrequent celebration of each other. He could still make her weak in the knees and she could still take his breath away.
Late at night, in their own room, when the kids were in bed and the day's work was done, they would sit and talk about the hopes and concerns that were just between them.
"Daniel feels guilty about James," was all she said. They both knew the boy had compassion and empathy, maybe too much because, though they agreed these were good traits, he suffered because of them.
"He still awake?" Nick asked.
"I think so."
Nick groaned as he stood up, not because he resented having to reassure his son. He wanted to do that. But years of barroom brawls, bullets, and general hard living were starting to catch up to him and his body ached, especially when he'd been sitting for long.
"Son," he said as he entered the boy's room and sat on the edge of the bed, "your mother says you feel guilty about what James did today."
"Kinda."
"Well, I feel pretty bad about it, too. But I don't feel guilty about it. And you're no more guilty for what he did than I am." Nick pondered what he just said and thought it was pretty good. "There's a difference between feeling bad and feeling guilty. We all feel bad about James for doin' what he did."
Daniel thought on that for a moment, and then said, "Okay, Pa."
Nick lovingly ruffled the hair Emily had just smoothed and then returned to join her in their room.
"Jarrod's gonna have his hands full with that boy," he told her as he sat back down in his chair facing hers.
Emily sat in the rocking chair she had when she married Nick, a chair which had now helped soothe five babies. She had her nightgown on and her long curls were freed from the pins which held them up during the daytime. Nick wished she'd wear her hair down all the time. She smiled. "His curiosity is admirable, though."
"His curiosity is gonna get him in a heap of trouble one day. If he were my kid . . . "
He knew he didn't need to finish his sentence and Emily changed the subject.
"It was nice to see Jarrod and Will talking tonight," she offered, bringing up the topic of Will perhaps going to college.
Will had never exactly come out and said he didn't want to stay on the ranch but the signs were there. He was an exemplary student, happy and eager to learn at school, and was always more interested in the business of the ranch than the actual running of it. Emily – and Victoria - wanted to encourage him towards a university degree but Nick was stubbornly resistant to the idea.
He frowned into his whiskey. "Ranch needs more than one Barkley to run it and he's the better head of the two."
"And the better roper," she reminded him. Emily taught all the kids how to throw a lasso, including Leah and Grace.
"And the better roper," Nick laughed quietly & raised his glass to her.
There was soft knock at the door and they both assumed it was Daniel needing more reassurance.
Thus, Emily's eyes were focused about four feet from the floor when she opened the door in order to meet the boy's eyes. Instead, she found Audra standing there.
"I'm very sorry, Emily," Audra said, "Can you help me with my dress?"
"Of course!" Emily replied and she slipped out the door, closing it softly behind her.
Emily followed Audra down the hall and around the corner to the guest room. Audra had not unpacked and only one bag was open, a gloriously beautiful white silk nightgown lay across a nearby chair.
"Audra," Emily said, "I am so very sorry about your mother. I know how much she wanted to see you but between your travels, her arthritis, and my babies, we were simply not able to get up to Seattle."
New tears slipped down Audra's cheeks and she smiled at her brother's wife.
"It's my fault, Emily, for not making the time to come see her," said Audra, who then turned around so Emily could unfasten the multitude of hooks down the back of her dress.
Audra slipped out of the bodice of the dress, exposing her chemise, a tightly laced corset, and a very large, very dark blue and purple bruise covering her left shoulder blade and disappearing beneath her underclothes.
Emily gasped and Audra instantly realized her unintentional indiscretion. Normally, her maid helped her undress and maids only talk to each other. And they don't expect explanations.
"Oh, that!" Audra said dismissively, "I lost my balance yesterday coming down the stairs and fell against a wall."
But there were other bruises, lots of them. There were bruises of various colors and sizes up and down Audra's arms, some of them in the shape of large fingers.
Emily reached up to touch a faded yellow bruise, barely noticeable even up close, on Audra's jaw. "And this?" she asked. "That's an old bruise and I know you're not clumsy."
Audra turned to face Emily and pleaded, "Please don't tell Nick!" Emily knew the plea was an admission that the bruises were not the result of accident.
Emily could find no words and wasn't sure she could even speak as the truth of the bruises sank in. For a moment she thought she was going to be sick.
"Emily, I'm fine, really I am!" Audra said, trying to sound reassuring. "It's not as bad as it looks."
Emily stood still, eyes wide, mouth open, and wondered how it couldn't be as bad as it looked. That any man would inflict such bruises on a woman was unbearable to her and Emily couldn't understand why Audra would make excuses for it. For him.
"No, Audra," Emily said, finding the words she needed to speak, "It's not fine. Audra, it's not fine at all."
The two women stood facing each other in silence for a prolonged moment before Emily spoke again.
"Audra," she said, "I'm very glad to have you home. And safe. We will talk about this tomorrow." She wanted Audra to know she wasn't going to forget or ignore what she saw. She turned around and walked slowly towards the door.
"Emily!" Audra called out softly, "Promise me you won't tell Nick!
Emily stopped and turned around and, seeing Audra's bruises from a new vantage point, was shocked all over again .
"I can't make that promise," Emily said. And she left the room.
Nick was in bed, asleep, when Emily slipped back into the room. What she had just witnessed was far more upsetting to her than Victoria's unexpected death the day before. Yesterday, she barely knew what to do, but this, she had no idea what to do about this.
She tiptoed over to the table by the fireplace and poured herself a small whiskey. Only then did she notice her hands were trembling. She drank the whiskey in one swallow.
She thought about waking Nick but only for a brief moment. There was no use in upsetting him in the middle of the night when he couldn't change it and Charles was too far away to confront tonight.
Emily knew in her bones that Nick's first impulse would be to beat Charles bloody, maybe worse. While Emily was not opposed to that, she also thought it might not be the best solution to this very bad situation.
Emily started to wonder how long Audra had been treated so badly and she suddenly found herself emotionally exhausted.
She poured herself another small glass of whiskey, drank it fast, and heard Nick stir in his sleep. Her thoughts turned to her own marriage, her own husband. Hardly mild mannered, Nick never laid a hand on her, never threatened to in any way, and she'd seen him very angry many times over the years.
She turned the lamp down, walked softly over to the bed, and took off her nightgown. She crawled under the covers and pressed as much of her skin against his as she could. She kissed him until he woke up and they made love, slowly, silently.