This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [91]
“I’ll take the letter.” Summer’s voice was bitter. “It’s my mother’s letter. You opened it, read her secrets.” She held out her hand.
Ellen shrugged indifferently, and handed her the envelope.
“Is there anythin’ wrong, Summer?” Sadie stood hesitantly in the doorway.
“Sadie! Oh . . . Sadie!” Summer scrambled to her feet and ran to her friend. She threw her arms about the startled Sadie with a force that almost tumbled her over. She kept repeating over and over: “Oh, Sadie! Oh, Sadie!”
“What’s wrong? What’s she done to you?” Sadie held the wildly sobbing girl and tried to keep her balance.
“I haven’t done anything to her. She did it to herself.” Ellen’s voice was coldly aristocratic once again. “I’ve given her proof that she’s Slater McLean’s sister. If you’re a friend of hers, you’ll help her to pack her trunk so she can get away from here. If it’s discovered she’s slept with her own brother, she’ll be an outcast. No decent person will have a thing to do with her, and Slater will be hanged! I’ll leave you to convince her. I’m going to the porch to take some air.”
Summer sobbed out the story in Sadie’s arms. Afterwards, she lay on the bed, flat on her back, staring at nothing, as if her eyelids were paralyzed. Sadie brought a wet cloth, wiped her swollen face, and smoothed back her tangled hair.
“I don’t believe it.” She sat on the edge of the bed holding tightly to Summer’s hand and desperately trying to find a reason to believe the story was not true. “I ain’t never met nobody like her. She makes me feel like I’m a nothin’ when she turns her eyes on me. Couldn’t she of wrote the letter?”
“No. It was my mother’s paper and my mother’s handwriting.” The violet eyes that looked at Sadie were dry but puffed, and showed the effects of her violent weeping. “It’s true, Sadie. No amount of wanting it not to be is going to change things.”
“What’ll you do, Summer? Will you tell Slater?”
“I’m pregnant, Sadie.” She paused at the look of astonishment on Sadie’s face. The words were incredible and voicing them aloud put a permanence to them. “I can’t let Slater live with the bitter fact he made his . . . sister pregnant.”
“Oh, Summer! Oh, you poor girl!” Her own tears swamped her throat, almost smothering her words.
“I’ve got to go away, Sadie.” She leaned on her elbow. “Ellen has offered to help me.” She clutched Sadie’s arm. “It’s John Austin I’m worried about. Will you take care of him for me, Sadie? Please, do this for me. I’ll send for him as soon as I can.”
“Why, don’t you worry none about John Austin. But, but why can’t me and Mary go with you? We could all manage somehow. We could go off somewhere and I’d get work. We’d get by.” Sadie’s face was troubled. “I don’t want you to go off with that woman, Summer. Please don’t do it. Somethin’ bad will happen. I just know she ain’t no good!”
“I won’t stay with Ellen. Promise me you’ll stay here and take care of John Austin and that you’ll not tell anyone that I’m pregnant.”
“Course I promise. I’d do anythin’ you’d want me to do. But what’s Slater to think when you just up and go?”
“He’s too sick to be told now. He’ll be hurt, but it’s better this way. In a few weeks, or a month, I’ll be far enough away that it will be safe for you to show him the letter. He’ll understand then.”
“I don’t know, Summer. He’s goin’ to be powerful mad when you leave without tellin’ him. I don’t know if I can wait a month.”
“Wait as long as you can, Sadie. Even if he knows, he won’t be able to ride for quite a while.”
After that they were quiet, each lost in their own thoughts, but holding tightly to each other’s hands. Ellen paced back and forth on the porch, looking in through the open door from time to time. From an unsuspected source within her, Summer had summoned the strength to think calmly. A line from her mother’s letter staggered grotesquely across her mind: “I fear my sins of that wonderful summer are catching up with me.” Like my mother, Summer thought. I’m like my mother. But my sins caught up with me sooner, and I’ll pay for