Page 47 of A Convenient Heart
He gripped the counter with both hands as he forced himself to say the rest of it. “When I was eleven, I was shipped west on a train, along with a car full of other orphaned children.”
He heard her soft intake of air and the rustle of her skirts, felt motion behind him as she sidled closer.
“The caretaker at our orphanage said we’d find families, but we were all pretty scared.”
He’d met Dewey on the train that day. The boy had been from another orphanage, and Jack had hardly known anyone at all. Dewey, three years younger, had been hiding his tears behind angry words, and Jack had known he’d have to calm the boy down or all of them would be in a heap of trouble.
So he’d started spinning yarns. Stories about the homes they’d find. Stories about a hero detective who helped people in the city they’d just left. Stories that he’d almost started to believe in himself. How could he not when the kids around him watched and listened with wide-eyed attention, believing that he was a hero himself, just because he told the stories?
“It took a while before I got taken in by a family. Me and Dewey.”
Jack had been disillusioned by then, watching the younger children, the delicate girls, be adopted. Dewey too, though he’d stuck by Jack’s side and still pretended to believe it when Jack told the story of the family they’d find together.
“They only wanted me. The—Farrs.” He was unable to hide the roughness of his voice. “But I talked fast”—the way he always had—“and convinced them to take Dewey and me both.” Jack had insisted they were brothers—the new scar on his palm had seemed so important.
What had happened later had been his fault. It was so clear now.
“They didn’t want a pair of sons,” he said. “They wanted hands to work their farm. Mrs. Farr was…” He bit back the sudden cry that wanted to emerge. Merritt was so quiet he couldn’t even hear her breathing. “If she’d been consistent in her anger, it would’ve been one thing. But a simple mistake made one day would get a scolding. A similar mistake the next might earn a beating.”
He’d never known what might set her off. He’d tried to guess, tried to complete every chore, keep the farm clean.
Jack coughed to cover the sob that wanted to escape. “She gave Dewey such a bad beating that he never recovered.”
Stop!
Jack had tried to stop her. He’d been fourteen and almost as tall as Mrs. Farr, but she’d had a thick leather belt in hand and had turned it on him while Dewey lay bleeding on the floor.
“He died a few weeks later.” Dewey hadn’t been right, even after a few days had passed. Had complained of stomach pains and headaches as he’d lain in his cot in the lean-to that was supposed to be their bedroom. Jack had covered for him, doing all his own chores along with all of Dewey’s. Jack’d been trying to devise a plan for the two of them to run away, but then it was too late.
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair, what’d happened to Dewey. Jack had been young, helpless to do anything about the injustice his brother had suffered at the hands of Mrs. Farr. When he’d run away, he’d promised himself he’d never let something like that happen again.
Merritt’s arms came around him from behind. She pressed herself against him, pressed her face into the back of his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t right. You shouldn’t have had to live through that.”
It was my fault.
He couldn’t say the words out loud, though they lived inside him.
If he hadn’t begged for his “brother” to come and live with the Farrs, Dewey would still be alive. If he’d fought harder…if he’d convinced his brother to run away…
Merritt held him for long moments, long enough for him to regain his composure.
I’m not John.
She loosened her grip on him, and he turned to face her, to say the words, but he didn’t get the chance.
She pressed both palms to his cheeks, reached up on tiptoe, and pressed her lips to his in a seeking kiss.
He felt it all. Her care, her sadness—maybe for herself, maybe for the boy he’d been.
He drank her in like a man dying of thirst.
When she pulled back, he saw the tears tracking down her cheeks. He reached up to sweep them away with his thumb, saw more sparkling in her eyes.
She was compassionate and fiery and everything he hadn’t known he wanted?—
A sharp knock on the door startled him into stepping back. He bumped into the counter. Felt for the hat that had been knocked askew.
Merritt glanced over her shoulder. “That’ll be Danna. We planned to get together.”
