The Wedding Quilt

She let out a sob, then gripped her fist to her mouth. “People tell you it’ll get better,” she stated on a tear-drenched voice. “They pat you on the arm and say, ‘She’s at peace now, dear,’ and they keep going. They don’t want to see your grief. It makes them uncomfortable, you see.

“During the funeral, everyone was so compassionate and understanding. It was such a shock—it happened so fast. One minute she was there, standing in the kitchen, laughing, talking, making plans for my wedding. Then, the next, she was simply…gone.”

She didn’t speak for a minute, and he heard her swallow hard. “But then, life goes on, as they say. After a while, you become this robot. You go through the motions, you behave as if everything is back to normal, but you know that something is terribly, terribly wrong. When you see people on the street, you smile and you accept—dread—the sympathy in their eyes, but they don’t want you to speak of it.”

She stopped, taking a gulp of air, another sob escaping. “But inside, inside you have this silent scream that never, ever goes away, never stops. And you just keep on moving through each minute, each hour, each day. And that scream keeps following you until you think you’ll go stark raving mad from hearing it. It…it never ends.”

Unable to bear any more, Kirk gathered her into his arms, rocking her gently, whispering soothing words into her ear. Remembering the days when his own mother would try to comfort him, he said something in Gaelic to her, unaware that he’d even done it. He held her close, letting her sob quietly into the night, letting her purge herself against his strength.

How long had she carried this pain? How long had she been the one to be strong while her brother and her father depended on her to become a surrogate for her mother? How long had she struggled to become that perfect replacement, knowing she could never be the one they all longed for, the one she longed to have back in that little kitchen?

And, what had happened to those wedding plans she said her mother had been working on?

He had so many questions, but he didn’t ask for any answers tonight. Tonight, he held her, and with a silent prayer, he asked God to give His strength over to her, and her suffering family. He asked God to give her the comfort he wasn’t sure he could bring.

And in the asking, Kirk offered up the only thing he did have to give. He offered up his heart.

“Kirk,” she said at last, her voice raw, her words muffled. “What did that mean, what you said to me in that beautiful language?”

He pulled her tight against him. “It means, ‘I am here, little one.’” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I am here.”

She leaned her head against his chest, her cheek touching on the steady beat of his heart. “For a little while at least,” she whispered.

Chapter Four (#ulink_7f135be6-01e7-561f-ae6f-8acae93dcfec)

Kirk lifted her away so he could see her face in the moonlight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She sat up, wiping the last of her tears, purposely distancing herself from the warmth of his embrace. “It means…well…you’ll be gone in a few weeks. I can’t start depending on you. I won’t start depending on you. I shouldn’t even be talking to you now. I mean, you came here to repair the steeple. You don’t need me or my troubles getting in your way.”

He turned on the bench to stare at her, wondering if the woman could read his thoughts since that was precisely what he’d been telling himself earlier. “I don’t mind hearing your troubles. I just don’t know if I can help.”

“No, you can’t help,” she said as she got up to walk to a nearby fence. “And I don’t normally go around feeling sorry for myself. According to the Bible, I’m supposed to rejoice, knowing my mother has gone on to a better place. And sometimes, I can do that. Then other times, I can’t. I’m selfish because I miss her, but I’ve accepted my mother’s death.”

“Have you?” he had to ask. He got the impression she hadn’t really come to grips with any of this. When she didn’t answer immediately, he asked, “And have you accepted the way your father treats you?”

She whirled to glare at him. “I don’t have much choice there. He’s my father and he needs me.”

“Why does he talk to you like that? Why do you let him?”

Rosemary swallowed back the urge to spill her guts to this man. She couldn’t let him know; she couldn’t let him see the pain, the open, festering wound that would never heal, no matter how hard she prayed, no matter how much she tried to forgive herself each and every day. “I…I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said into the wind. “After all, it’s really none of your concern.”

He lifted off the bench to come and stand beside her. “You’re right. It’s none of my business, but I think I’ve provoked this whole situation. Maybe if I knew what happened, I could understand better.”

“There’s really nothing to understand,” she tried to explain. “My father is still grieving, he’s still angry because my mother’s death was so senseless. I have to hold fast and hope that he’ll realize he can’t change any of it.”

Kirk knew she wasn’t telling him the whole story. So her mother was killed in a car accident. That was a tragedy, no doubt. But why would Clayton take out his anger on his daughter? Suddenly, a sad, sickening thought crossed his mind. Well, he’d wondered it since he’d seen Rosemary and her father together that first day, sparring; he had to ask it.

“Does your father blame you somehow—for your mother’s death?”

She turned away, her staunch silence shouting at him.

“Rosemary?” He urged her around, then lifted her chin with the pad of his thumb. “Is that what this is all about?”

She faced him squarely, her eyes full of shame and disgust. “Yes,” she whispered. “He blames me. And you will, too, if I tell you the truth.”

With that, she whirled and ran back toward her house, toward the torture her father would surely inflict on her once she slammed that screen door behind her.

Kirk heard the door slamming shut. It was as if she’d just shut him out of her life.

Over the next few days, Kirk managed to avoid Rosemary as much as possible, considering that she worked at the church, considering that he worked outside, mostly with a bird’s-eye view of the comings and goings across the street, considering that he longed to see her again, that he yearned to hold her again, considering that he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

He had to remind himself that he didn’t want to get involved. He told himself, this way, neither of them would get hurt—especially Rosemary. She didn’t need the complication of a short-term relationship added to her already stress-filled life. And short-term it would have to be. He never stayed long enough for anything else. That he was even considering having a relationship with her was enough to make him antsy and restless, and distracted.

Today, frustrated and tired from a day of scraping rust and paint from the gables of the church roof, he decided he’d take a late-afternoon hike up onto Alba Mountain. The trails behind his tiny trailer led straight to the top of the peak, according to Reverend Clancy.

Tomorrow, he’d interview people for the complete crew, then he’d get started on the steeple. That task would occupy his mind enough to keep him in line and away from Rosemary Brinson. Right now, he just needed to escape into nature, to let his mind wander. He needed time to think and regroup. The mountain peak would be the perfect spot.

It should have been.

Except that halfway up the steep, winding path that lifted to the rocky peak, he spotted Rosemary sitting in a field of wildflowers, in what looked like a cemetery.

Aunt Fitz had said she’d buried her husband up on the hill. Was that where Rosemary’s mother was buried, too?

He stopped, catching his breath more from the sight of the woman sitting there than from the exercise.

She was wearing one of those soft, flowing dresses she seemed to favor, its colors rivaling the wild yellow roses and delicate pink-and-yellow-tipped lady’s slippers bursting to life all around her. Her hair moved in the breeze, lifting away from her face in chaotic shades of deep red and burnished brown. As he watched, she reached one hand out to touch the headstone in front of her, closing her eyes in a silence that only the angels could hear.

He should have kept moving. He was intruding on a private moment, between Rosemary and her mother. Yet he couldn’t seem to find the strength to put one hiking boot in front of the other. He couldn’t move. He could only stand there, watching her, wanting to go to her.

Like a doe sensing danger, she opened her eyes and looked up, right into his eyes. For a brief time, she didn’t move; she just sat there staring up at him, her expression a mixture of surprise and knowing. Then she waved to him and sent him that bittersweet smile he was beginning to need to see.

He forgot about scaling the mountain.

Rosemary saw him through the trees and felt the lurch of her heart against her chest. She’d sensed someone was near, she’d felt someone’s eyes on her.

And somehow, she’d known it would be Kirk. She’d avoided him since their gut-wrenching encounter the other night. She was embarrassed by her tears, by her confessions, and by her need to have someone hold her. She disliked weakness in anyone else, but especially in herself. She’d avoided him, and she’d thought about him.

She’d thought about him enough in the past few days to conjure him up at any given moment, during work, during prayer, during play with the children. She’d thought about him, and wished she could just get the man out of her mind. She wanted to forget the way he’d held her; she wanted to remember the feeling forever.

Rosemary reminded herself that he was a drifter, a wanderer. His work was important to him, and because of that work, he couldn’t stay in one spot for long. In spite of their closeness, she sensed an aloofness in him. Kirk held himself away from people, like a casual observer, watching and analyzing. He had to keep moving. And she had to stay here. Besides, if Kirk knew the real reason Clayton treated her so coldly, he’d turn away from her, too. And she couldn’t bear to have him do that.

She told herself these things as he approached her now, looking like an ancient warrior from long ago. He wore hiking boots and jeans, and a torn T-shirt. His unruly hair was having a high old time playing in the wind off the hillside. His eyes, though, oh, his eyes. They held her, making her forget her pragmatic logic, making her forget her own self-disgust and guilt-laden remorse, making her long for something intangible and unreachable.

Automatically, Rosemary gripped the sun-warm gray stone of her mother’s headstone, as if asking for counsel. The silence answered her, as it always did when she came up here to visit her mother’s grave. Only the wind and the chipmunks and the swallows gave her any conversation. Now, even nature’s comforting forces seemed to go silent.

There was an intruder in the woods.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Kirk said as he came up the hillside to the level incline where Alba had buried its dead for two centuries. “I can leave if you’d like.”