“There’s no use in Beth ever knowing. It would hurt her pointlessly.”
“I’d want to know,” she said, turning back to confront him.
“Well, you’re not Beth.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not Beth. Silly me, I was only your wife.”
“Briefly,” he reminded.
“Too long,” she said, knowing it was a lie.
Stepping off the veranda, she disappeared into the darkness.
“Lord, I know I don’t have a right to him. He was never really mine. We were too young, but I love him.”
Tears blurred her sight. Her steps faltered and she searched the sky. God was there; He was beside her no matter how foolish her actions, yet she didn’t believe in her heart that He could help her face this. It was too hurtful, too unthinkable, yet so true—Adam belonged to another.
Chapter Two
It was impetuous…daring…stupid, they’d decided in the dawn of reality.
Propping his booted foot against the windowsill, Adam tipped his chair back and focused on the rain pattering against the study window. They had been so young. Young and crazy.
Steepling his fingers to his forehead, he relived the summer of ’91. What a pair they’d been. Innocence mixed with the foolish cup of youth.
It had started with puppy love that steadily blossomed from the time Adam had first seen pretty little Vonnie Taylor at the First Freewill Church’s annual Fourth of July picnic. Add a summer night and a full moon and you had trouble. He’d grown from a barefoot show-off into a seventeen-year-old man. Vonnie Taylor had sprouted from an impish tease into a fifteen-year-old woman, who, with the glance of an eye, could reduce him to a bashful kid.
Add the forbidden—neither was supposed to speak to the other—and you had the seeds of a budding rebellion.
In those days neither one of them understood the bitter feud that raged between the two families. They knew there was bad blood between P.K. Baldwin and Teague Taylor, but at nine and seven, they didn’t attempt to understand the origin of the dispute. The hatred between P.K. and Teague had happened long before Adam and Vonnie were born.
Adam was piling potato salad on his plate that hot July afternoon. Vonnie had sidled up beside him, dressed in a lavender calico dress and matching bonnet. She’d sipped a cup of cool lemonade, tilted a dangerous look up at him and read him his future. “I am going to marry you someday, Adam Baldwin. We’re going to be man and wife. Forever.”
He’d about dumped his plate of food in Flossy Norman’s lap.
“You don’t even know what that means,” he accused, feeling a red blush crawl up his neck. He didn’t either…exactly. Forever. He didn’t think so.
Tilting her chin haughtily, she glared at him in challenge. “Do too.”
From that moment on, Vonnie Taylor hadn’t been far from his thoughts.
Adam slid further down in the chair, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth when he recalled the sassy little girl she’d been. They’d been too naive, and too caught up in teasing each other, to care that P.K. Baldwin had forbidden his boys to associate with the Taylor girl. Consequently, the Baldwin brothers went out of their way to plague her. And she returned it in kind.
Every Sunday Adam and Andrew stared a hole through Vonnie the whole time they sat across the aisle from her in the First Freewill Church.
The diminutive black-haired charmer stared right back—singling out the eldest, Adam, to unleash her flirtations upon. He’d poke out his tongue, cross his eyes, push up his nose in preposterous faces in hopes of making her laugh out loud. But she’d look right back at him over her hymnbook and never crack a smile. Though he’d do his best to stare her down, she wouldn’t budge an inch.
The years passed and the Sunday-morning glances became less hostile. Liquid, clear-blue eyes searched sleepy lavender ones with mild curiosity. Shy Sunday-morning smiles replaced silly faces, and his efforts to attract her attention grew more bold.
He tied Beth Baylor’s braid to the church pew.
He silently, but no less earnestly, rolled his eyes while emphatically mouthing Ilda Freeman’s soprano solos along with her.
At fourteen, he responded to the preacher’s request for hymn suggestions by shooting his hand into the air and waving it for attention. He’d requested that they sing “Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear.”
Vonnie had refused to look at him as the congregation dutifully turned to page thirty-six in their hymnals and sang “Gladly, The Cross I Bear.”
Adolescence evolved into mid teens. Young, lithe bodies filled out. His narrow shoulders broadened, legs lengthened, muscles grew hard, and the peach fuzz on his jaw became a real beard that confronted him daily. Her oval face matured into a puzzle of tilted violet eyes, pert nose and narrow chin. Her quick, thin body softened and rounded. The silent interest between the oldest Baldwin boy and the Taylor girl flourished.
By his seventeenth birthday he’d developed a full-blown case of puppy love for her. That was the summer they’d started sneaking away to Liken’s Pond. Things were starting to get out of hand. They both knew they were courting danger, but that made their secret meetings even more fascinating.
The pond, one of the few that survived the hot summers, was tucked behind scraggly creosote bushes that lined the bank. A few yards out, yuccas pointed white flowers toward the clear blue sky, their green spiny leaves contrasting with the sandy soil. Piñon and cypress trees crept close to shade the banks after noon. Juniper trees mingled with mesquite bush. But where Adam and Vonnie sought privacy, the sycamore shaded them in the summer, and floated its leaves like boats on the water in the fall. It was a special place, a place of wonder.
It was Saturday. Chores were done. A shimmering sun beat down on the scorched earth. The fragrance of grass baking in the heat-saturated air.
The pond was a good two miles from George Liken’s house. Only an occasional, wandering Hereford intruded upon their privacy.
Treading water, they faced each other, arms looped over shoulders, savoring the stolen moments. If P.K. or Teague ever got wind of the secret meetings, their budding relationship would stop.
“What did you tell your father?”
“Told him I’d be with Tate Morgan shoeing a horse. He’ll say I was if anyone asks. What about you?”
“Doing needlepoint with the new neighbor, Nettie Donaldson. I asked God for forgiveness.”
Even now, years later, Adam could smell the sweetness of her skin, still see the silken curtain of her hair floating in the water—
“Am I interrupting, son?”
Adam brought the chair legs to the floor with a thump, sat up straight and forced himself to focus on his father, who stood framed in the doorway. Still a commanding figure, at fifty-two, his snow-white hair was the only external evidence that time was passing.
