“How are you doing?” Addie asked. “The letter must have shocked you.”
“Yes, it did.” I looked out to the water where the girls were taking turns being tossed into the water by Delphia. “It’s inevitable, Addie. I have to accept my internment.”
“Internment?”
“Is that what I said? I meant engagement.”
This made us both laugh, a little manically.
She sobered, tilting her head toward the sky. Her hat, not held by pins, slid from her head to hang down her back. “James, what if you were to refuse? What would happen to you?”
My initial reaction was to say,nothing. I would be free, that was all. Sadly, the truth wasn’t that simple. If I ran away, my life would fall apart, perhaps ruined forever. “I would be plagued with guilt for the rest of my life. I’d be fired from my job and probably never hired as an editor again. Since they’ve already announced the engagement in the paper, it would embarrass her and make me look like a cad. All of which would make me an outcast among New York City’s elite society. I wouldn’t care about that part, I guess, except I have no idea what I would do for a living. My job is all I have.”
“They’ve trapped you,” she said flatly.
“They have. Everything I’ve worked for would have been for naught. And there’s my family to consider. Can you imagine if it were up to you to save this lot?” I gestured toward her sister and nieces.
“I can imagine it, yes. At the same time, I know my parents would never put something like this on me.” She placed her hand over her mouth and mumbled an apology. “It’s not my place to say any of this. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s all true.” Her father wasn’t a gambler and irresponsible. He was a pillar of society, a self-made man despite the easy route he could have taken by staying in England and becoming Lord Barnes as he was destined to do; he’d made his own fortune in America. I wanted to say,Lucky for you,but kept it to myself. She shouldn’t be punished simply because she’d been blessed to be born a Barnes rather than a West.
What happens when one walks away from his expected fate as Lord Barnes did all those years ago? I’d have thought it interrupted the order of things and caused harm. But it didn’t. Not for him. Instead, it made his beautiful family possible and for them to enjoy this creek where the water ran clear and trout made their home and little granddaughters splashed and squealed with joy.
I simply couldn’t do it. I had to save my family. “Tell me about this.” I tapped the stack of papers.
“Read it for me, James? Tell me the truth. Is there anything in it good enough for publication?”
For now, I could do this, I thought. A favor for this beautiful young woman whose family had taken me into the fold all those years ago. This I could do.
“I’ll start right now.”
She breathed in and then out before resting her forehead on her knees and speaking into them. “I hope I won’t be sorry I asked.”
I draped an arm over her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “You won’t be.”
* * *
I spentthe next two hours reading through the typed manuscript. To my delight, it was good. However, it was not what I’d expected. I’m not sure what I’d anticipated, but it wasn’t this. They were stories of the Barnes family before Addie even came to be. Of a time when Miss Quinn Cooper had arrived in Emerson Pass as a young woman ready to take on the teaching position at the newly built school and the five little children who so desperately needed a mother. This was the story of their family in the making. A family not of blood but one of heart.
Addie had taken the stories her older siblings had told her and made them into the novel of a family meant to be together. Again, fate, this giant question, I thought. Would I ever understand how it all worked? Was fate beyond our control? Did we simply follow our already fated path? Or did we make our own destinies by our choices?
I was halfway through when Delphia declared it time for lunch. The children, wet and happy, fell onto the quilt, claiming near starvation and dire thirst. While the ladies got them settled with lunch and a cold drink, I helped myself to a sandwich and a beer. The sun had risen higher in the sky, stealing the shade. Delphia made everyone get up so we could pull the blanket back into the cool shadows near the embankment.
I took a long drink from the beer and went back to reading, making mental notes on sections I thought could be expanded or tightened. In general, the writing was engaging and the characters lovable. On the occasion when I’d read a manuscript I particularly liked and became excited about, I felt a tingle at the base of my spine. This was one. There would be a readership for this book. I could help her get it published. Yet another reason to marry Lena.
A while later, I set the last page facedown on the rest of the stack. Addie was in the water with the girls, but she must have sensed I’d finished because she looked over at me. Her fearful, hopeful expression made me laugh.
“It’s good, Addie,” I called out to her. “I told you not to worry.”
She looked up toward the heavens before breaking into a grin. “Thank goodness you think so.”
I grinned back at her. “I have some notes, but you’ve got something here.”
“I told you.” Delphia, who was coming in fast on the rope swing, let out a whoop right before she plunged into the deepest spot of the swimming hole.
Addie, dripping with water, was making her way toward me. The little girls were quietly playing in the sand a few feet from me, oblivious to the drama around them.
“Can you tell me now?” Addie asked. “Your ideas, that is.”