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Contempt laced his words. She took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves and prevent herself from saying something she didn’t want to. “What I did is none of your business.” She turned and looked him in the eye. “You left me. You left town and said you were never coming back. Was I supposed to sit here and pine away for you for the rest of my life because I gave you my virginity? Well, I didn’t. I moved on. While you were off being mad at the world, the rest of us were trying to go on living without you. You made your choice. Now you have to live with it.”
He opened his mouth but closed it before saying anything.
Betsey walked around the table and headed to her bedroom. “I have things to do, Aaron. See yourself out.” She didn’t wait for an answer and didn’t take a breath until she stepped into her dark bedroom. The sun had gone down, the light from the moon spilling into the window to light the room enough to see. The freshly washed blankets from Samuel’s cradle were still on her bed. She grabbed the first one and had folded it completely before she heard the door open and close. The nervous tension pulling her shoulders up to her ears released. A few minutes laterBen said, “We’re back.” She tossed the blanket to the cradle and grabbed another.
“Samuel wasn’t interested in Pansy at all but he loved the hay.”
At the mention of Samuel’s name, a sharply inhaled breath caught her attention. She whirled on her heel to find Aaron standing at the bedroom door. He hadn’t left like she’d thought. The door opening and closing was Ben coming inside, not Aaron leaving.
Ben stepped into view a moment later, Samuel cradled in his arms. He stopped, his gaze landing on Aaron before he shifted to look at her. “Am I interrupting?”
“No. Aaron was just leaving.” Except, it didn’t look as if he had any intentions of doing it now that Ben stood not three steps away from him. Aaron was staring at Samuel. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing as he stared down at him. When he lifted his head and looked over at her, her heart slammed inside her chest so hard her breath caught.
“You named your baby Samuel?”
She wanted to lie. Wanted to tell him it was Benjamin, just like she’d begged Ben to do, but Aaron wasn’t stupid and she wouldn’t pretend he was. Samuel chose that moment to get fussy and started kicking in the blanket Ben had wrapped around him. Ben gave Aaron a glance before stepping past him to come inside the bedroom. When he handed the baby to her, he gave her a pointed look and whispered, “Do you want me to stay?”
She wanted to beg him to but it would be pointless. As much as she’d dreaded this day, she knew it would come eventually. “No,” she said. “I’m fine.”
He kissed her forehead, then Samuels, and left the room, going to his own and closing the door behind him. When she and Aaron were alone, the air grew thick with tension.
Samuel let out a small cry. She turned to settle him in the cradle but taking the blanket away, she knew why he’d turned fussy. He was soaked clean through.
She sat on the bed and took her time changing and putting a dry gown on him. She cradled him against her shoulder and grabbed for his thin blanket still on the bed when she saw Aaron out of the corner of her eye. She hadn’t heard him move. He was at the foot of the cradle and she dreaded the look on his face. It would either be filled with more anger or bewilderment because he knew Samuel was his. Either way, she didn’t want to have this conversation with him. Not now.
Betsey didn’t move from the bed, nor move Samuel from her shoulder. She stared out the window, the ticking of the clock on the dresser near the door the only noise in the house other than the fire burning in the main room. When she saw Aaron lean back and brace his weight against the wall, she knew he wasn’t leaving.
Betsey named her baby Samuel.
The words kept ringing inside his head on repeat as he stood there watching her. He’d yet to see the baby’s face, and even though the light in the room was dim, he saw that cap of light blonde hair on the kids head. Caleb’s hair was as black as a raven’s wing.
As he stood there staring at them, those months he’d been gone flashed through his head in reverse until he reached the day he left. It had been the first of June when he’d cut out and by then, he’d been meeting Betsey under those willows for close to two months. He counted the months again on his fingers, then counted them a third time just to be sure.
His stomach clenched tight, nausea filling his gut until he thought he was going to be sick.
He’d lost count of the number of times they’d laid together under those willows and he’d thought he’d been careful, theyboth had, but if Betsey gave birth in February, then she got pregnant while they’d been together.
He rubbed his hand over his face. Was this why his ma and the rest of his family acted so odd whenever he mentioned Betsey’s name? Did they know and not tell him?
She still hadn’t moved and the silence was more telling than anything. “Betsey.” She didn’t so much as flinch when he said her name. He watched her sit there and breathe, the baby sleeping against her shoulder. “Is he mine?” The moment he said the words out loud, his stomach rolled.
For a brief moment in time, he’d entertained the thought of having a family but not like this. Betsey finally stood and laid the baby down in the cradle and tucked a blanket under his chin. Staring down at him, he didn’t have to ask if the baby was his. He knew it was. He looked so much like Nathaniel it was eerie. His baby brother looked more like him and Sophia than he did Noah and this kid—Samuel—looked like him.
He was glad he was leaning against the wall. He wasn’t sure his legs would hold him had he not been. He waited for Betsey to acknowledge him but when she didn’t, he reached over and grabbed her chin, turning her head so she’d look at him. Tears flooded her eyes and he felt like the biggest shit in the world. He’d not only left her when she begged him not to go, he’d left her pregnant and trying to raise his baby alone.
He swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “I’m sorry.” The words were so softly spoken he wasn’t sure she heard them. When the first tear fell and she raised a hand to swipe it away, he felt gut-punched.
Samuel grunted in his sleep and they both turned to look at him. Long minutes passed before he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” He looked at her when she didn’t answer. “I’ve been back for days. You could have sent word out to the house or told me when I took you from the saloon, but you didn’t. Why?”
“What difference would it have made?”
“What difference?” He scoffed. “That’s my son, Betsey. It makes all the difference in the world.”
“Why?”
“Why? What do you mean why?”
Her jaw clenched. “If I would have told you the minute you rode into town, what would you have done?”
