This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [103]
Graves, the hotel man, got up from a cot where he lay fanning himself.
“Well, well, well, Miss Kuykendall.”
Jesse drew the soiled register pad forward and scribbled something.
“This lady will take that front room with the windows on the south.” He spoke in a clipped, no-nonsense tone. “You’ll bring her meals over from Mrs. Hutchinson’s place three times a day. And you’ll keep your mouth shut.” Quick as lightning, he reached across the counter and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt, pulling him almost off his feet. “If any harm comes to her or if she’s bothered in any way, I’ll stomp you to death.” He gave the man a vicious push. “I’ll be back, and she better have no complaints.” He picked up Summer’s trunk, and with a hand beneath her elbow ushered her up the stairs.
At the door of the room he left her with the promise to return the day after tomorrow. The room was not the one she and John Austin had shared. For that she was thankful. She wanted no reminders of a time when she was full of hope, confident that she and her brother would be happy under the protection of Sam McLean.
Sam McLean! The name lit some flame that had never been lit before. Such a burning hate and fury took hold of her that she shook with the fever of it, and every vestige of self-control went up in a white blaze of emotion. With a terrible little sob, she pummeled her stomach with her fist, blind to everything but the fact that her brother’s child grew within her.
When the storm passed, she was quiet, head bowed, a little dazed by the evidence of her own feelings. She suddenly felt terribly sick, her stomach convulsed and she removed the lid from the chamber pot just in time for it to catch the vomit that gushed from her mouth.
Weakly, she leaned against the wall and wondered numbly if her face had gone as white as it felt.
Slowly, she stumbled toward the bed, walking as if she carried a heavy load, undressed, and lay down.
With extraordinary clearness of mind, she seemed to see the entanglement clearly. Her mother had fallen in love with Sam McLean while her husband was away fighting the war, but when he returned she went back to the Piney Woods with him because it was her duty to do so. But Papa had loved her, she almost cried aloud. He loved her dearly. Sometimes, he’d pull her down on his lap and whisper to her. How could Mama have done this to him? To me?
For hours, Summer lay awake staring into the sunlit room, then into the shadows and finally the darkness that was no blacker than her own thoughts. And every minute, her despair and apprehension grew deeper. A few short months ago, she had not even known Slater existed. And then her mother had died, and by an utterly unexpected chance she was here. He had woven himself into the very fabric of her life, befogging her judgment so she could not help herself when he kissed and caressed her. And because of her wild infatuation for him—Summer’s mind stumbled over the word “love”—she had turned her back on her Christian teaching, her moral obligation to keep herself pure for her husband. She had imagined that together they could make a world of their own, a family out of their love for each other.
It is strange, she thought painfully, that God’s punishment is so vicious. Where in the Bible did it say something like, “Thy sins shall be washed away”? Where was the all-seeing Providence that was forever leaning out of the window of heaven to put things right? Was her sin the unforgivable sin? Maybe this punishment was not to last, she thought hopefully. She had missed only one of the bleeding periods that came to her every twenty-eight days. No, she told herself sternly, that was wishful thinking. She was well into what would be the second period. She couldn’t pretend that everything was all right when it was really all wrong.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them once more it was morning, and the hotel man was pounding on the door.
“Open the door, I got yer grub.”
Summer raised her head. The room swayed and her stomach turned