Page 41 of The Gift of Seeds
“I would have.” He smiled down at her. “And, most certainly, the Almighty would have.”
Instead of leaving, as she expected, he settled into the other chair across from her, appearing as if he had no desire to go anywhere. “I think, well, like me, you’ve made yourself small and unimportant.”
She scoffed. “Iamsmall and unimportant.”
“Then you haven’t been listening very well to Reverend Norton’s and Reverend Joshua’s sermons.”
“Pot!” She retorted with a smidgen of humor. “Calling kettle!”
He chuckled. “I guess God will notice we’re not there, even if no one else does. But I also think the Christ Child born this day would understand we are having our own, very different kind of service.”
We are?
“You brought me a Christmas present. Why…?” Hester trailed off. She could hardly ask him why he’d been so unwelcoming. “I hardly ever saw you.”
Dale swallowed and slanted her a quick glance before looking away. Now he was the one who couldn’t meet her eyes. “To my shame, I haven’t been neighborly. You see, you…you scared me.”
Me?Too dumfounded to speak, Hester touched her chest.What about me could possibly be frightening?
He took a breath, as if gathering his courage, before looking at her. “My father died when I was three. I have no memory of him. I lived in the family mansion with my maternal grandmother, mother, four sisters, one maiden and one widowed aunt, and three female cousins.”
Eleven women.Hester could only gape at him.
“The women in my family are all officious and overbearing.” He firmed his jaw. “In the case of one sister, cruel, even. But my mother was the worst. Grandmother Hilda tended to pick, pick, pick at me. But my mother used hands, whips, once even a fire poker—a heated one.”
Hester gasped.
“Both had impossible standards for all of us, but since I was the long-awaited son and heir?—”
“You carried everyone’s hopes and expectations.”
“And theirexpectations ofmanlinesshad nothing to do withmyexpectations. To avoid lectures and criticism and whippings, I learned to dodge my family as best as I could and say very little.”
Pulled in by his story, she leaned forward, feeling empathy for his plight.
“I was supposed to take over my father’s law practice, which had been quite competently run by two of his partners. But I wanted to work with plants. At college, I secretly took several horticulture classes. Soon after I graduated, my great-grandmother died. With an inheritance from her freeing me from the need to conform to my family’s expectations or else be punished, I ran away to Montana. I wanted to build a life away from people—especially women who made me feel… awkward, wrong, even unsafe. Ridiculous, I know, for a grown man.…”
Hester eyed him in disbelief at his vulnerability. “Do you feel unsafe with me?”
He sat back, tapping his chin. “How surprising.” A slow smile dawned on his face.
His reaction coaxed one from Hester in response.
“What about you? Were you always reserved?” he asked.
“Of cour…” Before she could finish, the memory came to her.Her father, tall, or so he seemed to her, laughing. Hair windblown. Running across a field to get a kite airborne.Hester at about age five or six and some neighborhood children following him like quacking ducklings, shrieking with laughter.
Hester inhaled a sharp breath.I hadn’t remembered.
He watched her, silently waiting.
“My mama was quiet. She had beautiful smiles, though. Papa was a salesman. Wasn’t home very often. But when he was, why, he swept us up in big hugs. Brought us candy. Danced my mother around the room. Then he was gone. And I don’t know why.
“This caused you to become reserved?”
“Perhaps….”
“How did he die?” With this question, Dale looked straight at her.
