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Alice took the dress from my hands, then fidgeted with the ribbon around the dress sleeve, avoiding my scrutiny. “It’s just that Hetta Murphy mentioned yesterday that she’s disappointed you and Michael married without so much as a by-your-leave to everyone around town.”
I snorted. “I’m sure she would. With her two unmarried daughters looking at spinsterhood down their long, banana noses with their bug eyes and coyote laughs, I’m sure she’s not happy that I’ve taken one of the prime bachelors off the marriage market.”
“Perhaps. But she also said in no uncertain terms, and it hasn’t been the first time, that I push myself too much into other people’s business. That I would be wise just to mind my own. It worried me that I may have butted in and pushed you and Michael into marrying that day last month, and that you had, well, regrets now.”
Oh, so that’s it.
“No, Alice,” I said, laying a hand on her arm. “Yes, it was impulsive and spontaneous, but it’s been a very good arrangement between us. We’re very happy together. Honest. No regrets.”
She eased. “Then I didn’t ruin...I’m glad. Very glad that you and Michael love each other then. I was so worried that I had made a mess of things for you both.”
I flushed at her assumption. Lust and love were two different things, and although Bryant and I had explored each other’s bodies in every highly satisfying way, no great declarations of love had been made by either of us.
A great question though. Did I love him?
Appreciated him, yes. Craved him in almost every way possible, no doubt. But love?
How could I even venture the possibility though?
In four more weeks I was leaving for my own time, or at least attempting to. How could I offer my whole heart to Bryant, knowing that it would be broken when we parted forever?
But there something else that I didn’t want to contemplate too hard. I knew that if I ever did give my heart completely to Bryant, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. I would have to give my entire self, my soul, my entire being as well. And if I did that, I wouldn’t just be scarred, once I returned to my old life. I would be entirely crushed into a million pieces, never to be whole again.
“We do care about each other, of course, but...”
“But not love,” Alice added at my hesitancy. “Can you grow to love him though, do you think? Because I know Michael, and he is completely smitten with you, Callista.”
Was he?
How could he, though? Yes, we shared many intimate conversations, but there was always something that he held back from me, some secret part of him that he wouldn’t share.
At first it hadn’t bothered me, but that mysterious wall between us continued to grow, thicken. Nothing I said or did seem to breach it. It was too reminiscent of the myriad of secrets my mother kept from me all of my life.
So no, I could never fully give my heart over to Michael Bryant. Not when he didn’t fully trust me with his.
“He doesn’t trust me, Alice,” I said.
“Of course, he trusts you, Callista.”
I shook my head. “Not with everything. You know I’m right. And I can’t fully trust him with my heart, when he doesn’t trust me with his secrets. So, no, I can’t love Bryant. It’s not possible, not for me.”
“I see.”
Alice picked at the new dress slung over her arm, then set it aside, walked over to the bedroom door and closed it, then turned back to me.
“Henry never knew his father,” she said.
The drastic change in conversation threw me for a startled second.
“Oh, that’s...too bad,” I said. “You never do talk much about your late husband, Zachary. Did he die when Henry was very young then?”
“There is no Zachary Bautista,” Alice said, fixing her stare with mine. “Henry never knew his father, Dale Montgomery, because the man left when I found myself with child.”
Oh. Wow. Hmm.
Alice evaded her stare when adding, “The man was handsome and charming and said all the things a young girl wishes to hear, except ‘will you marry me?’ He left the night I told him that I was carrying his child, and I never heard from the man ever again.”
So Alice was unmarried and pregnant in a time when women in this situation were pariahs, tossed from their homes and communities.
