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Walt giggled. “You can do that?”
“I sure can. I’m strong from working so hard. Just like you are. You have to be strong enough to tell Mama and me when something bad happens, so we can take care of you. You can’t be afraid all the time.”
Walt seemed to consider what Earl was saying. “I will.”
“Now, I think it’s time for a certain young man to go to bed.”
“I have to milk Sally!”
Earl smiled. “You’re right. You do. Come on. Let’s go get that cow taken care of so we can have some milk with our breakfast.” He took Walt’s hand and the two of them headed out to the barn to take care of the cow.
As Charlotte finished the dishes, she couldn’t help but wonder why Howard had been cruel to Walt. There was no reason for it. He definitely wasn’t the good man she’d always thought he was.
She got all of the dishes put away and her kitchen was spick and span again. She wanted to go out and join Walt and Earl, but she knew it was time to let her men be together. They couldn’t be a real family if they didn’t spend time together.
When they came back in, Walt seemed to be telling a story. “And then he fell in the mud!” Walt laughed uproariously at the end, and Earl joined in.
Though she had no idea what had been said before, Charlotte laughed as well. It was just so nice to hear Walt talking again. And now he was speaking in full sentences, something he’d never done before. Maybe when his papa had made him promise not to tell about being hit, he’d thought he should just stop talking and not say anything at all.
Earl and Charlotte tucked him into bed together, and Charlotte kissed his forehead. “Thanks for telling us what happened, Walt.”
Walt nodded. “It’s my job to tell when people hurt me. Or if I see someone hurt someone else. It’s part of being a man.”
Charlotte smiled and nodded. “It is.” She knew those words were Earl’s, but she didn’t mind at all. She couldn’t think of a better influence for her son.
As they left Walt’s room and closed the door, she flung herself into Earl’s arms. “Thank you so much!”
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, but he knew differently. Pushing Walt as he had got the boy talking again and talking about things neither of the adults wanted to think about. “How do you feel about what he said?”
Charlotte shook her head. “It’s so hard to believe. Howard was a small man, only an inch or two taller than I am. He never seemed to be violent, and I saw him back down from several fights.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does?”
“Sure. When a man is small, and he can’t fight others, he sometimes looks for something smaller than him to hurt. In Howard’s case, Walt was it.”
“That’s really sad. I’d rather he’d beaten me than Walt.” She was livid, thinking of the man she’d been married to for seven years, hurting her innocent child—a boy who had cared for nothing as much as pleasing others.
“Would you have stayed with him if he’d beaten you?” Earl asked.
She laughed. “No, I would have moved back up on top of the mountain in the cabin where I was raised, and I’d have taken my child with me. Why would I do anything else?”
Earl smiled. “And that’s why he didn’t hit you. Heknewyou wouldn’t stay. He had to choose a victim who wouldn’t fight back but would stick around and let it continue to happen. Walt was perfect.”
“How do you know all this?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been a listener my whole life. If someone needed to get anger or sadness off their chest, I was there for them. You learn a lot that way.”
“I guess that’s better than being the town outcast.”
He frowned for a moment. “I wonder if there’s more to that than you know. Could Howard have been saying things about you that made people avoid you?”
“I don’t think so!” But how would she know? No one really spoke to her until the last year or a little more. “It’s possible, I guess.”
“I’ll investigate, and we’ll figure it out. But first, there’s something else I need to do.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
