Page 68 of A Convenient Heart
Mr. Goodall looked to Merritt. “You go on back inside, Miss Harding. Your students are waiting for you. You’ve done good work tonight, this week. You don’t need to worry about your job.”
Jack felt a sense of satisfaction as her face glowed under the praise.
“But—” Polk spluttered.
Goodall clapped a hand on the other man’s back. “I think we’re finished here.”
Beauchamp had already started down the street. “Won’t hurt to go and visit Mr. Duff right now.”
The night went quiet as the three men continued arguing on their way down the street. From inside, voices of children and parents were muffled.
Jack stood shivering on the edge of the boardwalk. He felt a sense of satisfaction. He’d accomplished what he’d come back to do.
…one of the esteemed residents of my town.
Was there a chance he could stay?
Merritt was concentrating on her cousin. “Nick, come in and watch.”
But as Jack watched, some pain passed over Nick’s expression. “Not tonight.”
Merritt looked sympathetic and understanding. “Perhaps next time.”
Jack had figured a man who’d once wanted to be a teacher might like to come in and watch the children perform. But Nick shook his head again, sharing secrets with Merritt that Jack didn’t know.
Nick left and then it was only Jack and Merritt standing in the quiet night. She was facing away from him as she reached out and pulled open the door, letting light spill out. He couldn’t help remembering the way she’d cried just after the last time he’d seen her. Maybe he should go…
Except she turned and looked at him, the glowing lamplight gilding every side of her like she was some kind of angel. His heart twisted.
She motioned him forward, and he sent another prayer upward to the God he’d only begun to introduce himself to, that his luck wouldn’t run out yet.
She handed him his coat, and he hung back at the rear of the room as she moved through the throngs of parents and kids. Nobody seemed terribly traumatized, everyone chatting like tonight was any other night.
Merritt stood on the stage and asked everyone to sit down, asked the kids to start all over again.
When he thought she would’ve stayed up front to keep things running, she leaned over to whisper to one of the bigger girls and then skirted the crowd that was watching the children with rapt attention to stand next to him along the back wall.
“You left,” she whispered without taking her eyes off the action on the makeshift stage.
“I did.” He’d only made it as far as the next town over. Between Cecil on the train and his own conscience, he hadn’t needed much convincing. “I didn’t get far. I realized I’d left behind everything that mattered.”
He heard the catch in her breath but also saw one of the men in the back row craning his neck to catch sight of the two of them before he turned back around.
So Jack didn’t take her hand or turn toward her, even though everything inside him longed to take her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry for lying to you, sorry for putting you in danger. But I’m not sorry we met?—”
“Me neither.”
Her whispered words sank into him, to the deepest part of his heart, and for the first time since he’d left her in the preacher’s parlor, he felt a beat of hope, like the first crocus leaf popping out of the snow in spring.
He couldn’t stop himself this time, turned toward her, though he was careful to hide the way his hand closed over hers with the shift of his body.
Her eyes were luminous as she gave him her entire focus.
“I know we haven’t known each other long and that you’ll want to know a lot more about me before you can say the same, but”—he swallowed hard—“I’m falling in love with you.”
“Oh, Jack.” She was looking at him in such a way that he couldn’t help inching closer. “I know enough about your honorable intentions that I’m falling too.”
Her words settled inside him, breaking him apart and putting him back together. He felt like a brand-new man, at once effervescent with joy and grounded like a foundation stone in a house.
