He’d never been this serene when I’d nursed him. We’d both struggled, both been distressed. And I’d finally given up. I couldn’t help feeling resentful of the way he grasped the bottle, looking sleepy and half-drunk. My own emotions made me feel guilty and low. I had failed, not the innocent boy in my arms.
My failure at nursing was the one thing Mrs. Sawyer had been understanding about, the one thing that hadn’t caused her face to screw up with displeasure when it came to how I did things. “I don’t know why you keep trying to force it when it’s obviously causing you both misery,” she’d said. “I didn’t even attempt to nurse my boys, and they were perfectly happy babies.” But then she’d teared up and left the kitchen, and I’d heard her crying in her room over the mention of Cole and I wished so hard I could do something to help her pain. I couldn’t do anything to help anyone. And I’d wanted to nurse Hudson. Preston was single-handedly keeping the farm afloat, and I couldn’t even nourish our son from my own body.
The house was quiet. Preston was working as usual even though it’d be dark soon and Mrs. Sawyer had gone to a book club at a friend’s house in town and wouldn’t be home for hours. I was glad she was finally getting out, and I was glad to be free of her for the night.
I ran a hand over Hudson’s head, his eyes half-closed with the drowsiness that came with the late hour and a milk-filled tummy. He blinked up at me, struggling to stay awake so he could fit in a few more minutes of flirting and I smiled down at him. His eyes drifted half-mast again and I had the sudden picture of dropping him and his head hitting the floor with a bone-cracking smack. Fear lashed through me and I clutched him tighter against my body, my heart racing. I wanted to cry, but I held back the tears. What was wrong with me?
It felt like I swayed between moments of alarm and long periods of a dull hopelessness that wouldn’t lift. Had the depression of this house settled into my bones so deeply that it was now part of who I was? Would I be this way forever? Carrying a sense of listless melancholy all the days of my life? A tremor of fear moved through me at the thought.
Sometimes I pictured myself picking up the baby and just walking away from this farm—out past the split-rail fence, through the scorched, abandoned farmland where I’d once lost myself in childish fantasy as I picked vibrantly colored wildflowers, wove them into crowns, and pretended I was a fairy.
Maybe I’d end up back at the small shack where I’d been raised, despite hating living there so much. Despite every effort to stay outside more than inside, I pictured it now as a refuge . . . somewhere quiet where the only reason the walls felt as if they were closing in was because the space itself was so limited, not because it had the ability to crush my heart. I’d still had dreams there. Here . . . here my dreams had died. They had crumbled to ash and that ash was still slogging through my veins, making me feel so very, very hopeless.
What was wrong with me?
The back door opened and Preston walked in, shooting me a weak smile, his eyes going to the baby now fast asleep in my arms. He came over and bent to kiss him on his forehead, giving me a kiss on my cheek. He smelled like sweat and soil—the deep, masculine earthiness that had once made my heart race and my blood heat. But now it just elicited a dim recognition and nothing more.
What was wrong with me?
He didn’t seem to want me either, though, and the knowledge was an anguish that sat heavily on my heart. He’d never told me he loved me, just that he’d always wanted me. At least I’d had his passion . . . once. Even for just one shining moment in time—he’d wanted me that night. I didn’t doubt it and I’d hoped that it had meant he’d want me again.
He glanced over his shoulder as he washed his hands. “Want me to put him down?”
“Sure. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes or so. You must be hungry.”
He nodded and after he’d dried his hands, he walked back over to me and squatted down in front of the chair where I sat. I moved the baby forward in preparation of Preston lifting him from me, but he didn’t move to do so. I glanced at him and he was staring at me intensely, something flickering in his gaze that I wasn’t sure how to read. Was it desire? Did he want me, after all? I stared at him, my muscles tense, waiting for him to say something.
“Lia—”
“Yes?”
“Are you . . . how are you?” His voice was soft, a little bit raspy.
I opened my mouth to answer him, but I didn’t know why he was asking, what, if anything, he was looking for.
I don’t know. Help me. I don’t know. “I’m fine.”
His eyes moved over my face again for a moment and I wanted to cry. But that was the last thing he needed. He was hanging on to the farm by a thumbnail, I knew that, and I couldn’t add to what he was already struggling with.
He frowned slightly, hesitating. Then he reached up and trailed a finger down my cheek, sighing as his hand dropped away. He took the baby from my arms and stood, walking out of the room with him.
When he came back down a few minutes later, I was serving up dinner. He sat at the table and we ate in silence. When I looked up, he was staring thoughtfully out of the window. I looked back over my shoulder. “What?”
“If we get some rain in the next few days we could save one more strawberry crop. Just one more. It would save the farm.”
My heart fell even lower than it already was. “There’s no rain in the forecast.”
“I know.” He dug back into his food, and I tried to take a few bites but had no appetite. The dark cloud that followed me around seemed to have stolen all my physical pleasures, too.
“I stood out there tonight, though,” he started and I looked up, surprised that he was talking so much. His mother was usually here providing the chatter and Preston was generally quiet, even if it was just the two of us, which it rarely was, “and I said a prayer to Cole.” His eyes moved to mine. “I thought if anyone could bring the rain, maybe . . . maybe it was him.”
I froze, my heart stuttering and then picking up speed. It was the first time he’d mentioned Cole’s name since he’d died. A short huff of breath escaped my mouth, but Preston didn’t seem to hear it.
His eyes moved away from mine to the window behind me. He looked sad, but he didn’t only look sad and for a moment it shocked me out of the trance I’d been living in for months now. I couldn’t quite discern the other emotions in his eyes but they were there. I waited, holding my breath, wanting him desperately to say more, to clue me in to what was going on in his mind, in his heart.
“Just for the farm to be okay,” he murmured distantly. “It’s all I want.”
My heart throbbed, but only with a faraway sort of ache. Want me! my mind screamed. Let me be enough, or at least something. Just anything at all. Give me something to hope for.