Page 39 of Always to Remember
Meg knew the box. It sat in a corner beside the window. Kirk had made it, using cedar. The scent circled Meg as she shoved the box across the floor to the rocking chair.
Leaning forward, Mama Warner rubbed her fingers over the bluebonnets that Clay had carved in the lid. Her wispy white hair fell across her cheeks and along her shoulders as though it were delicate lace. She lifted the lid and carefully placed the carving of Kirk inside the box. “There will come a day when I’ll tell you to take this box home with you. You do it without questioning me. This box and the things inside it are for you.”
“I don’t want the carving he made.”
“A day will come when you will want it. When you’re young, you wish for things in the future, but when you grow old … you wish for things from the past.”
“This box should go to your children.”
“Had Kirk not died, this box would have gone to him. He loved you. He’d want you to have it. I want you to have it, and I’ll ask you to take it before I die so my children won’t be fighting over it. I’ll be leaving them enough around here to fight about. They’re Texans, and Texans surely do enjoy their fights.”
“Not all Texans.”
“We can’t seem to steer the conversation away from Clayton. Why is that? What did he say to make you cry?”
Meg felt fresh tears well within her eyes. “He told me Kirk had grown a beard.” She laid her cheek against Mama Warner’s knee. “It hurts. It hurts to know he saw Kirk after I did and knows things about Kirk that I don’t.”
Mama Warner gently brushed her fingers over Meg’s hair. “I know, child.”
“I hate him all the more because his memories of Kirk are fresher than mine.”
“Memories don’t age, Meg.”
Lifting her face, Meg met the older woman’s blue gaze, a gaze that very much resembled Kirk’s. “No, but they fade.”
Eight
MEG SET THE PLATE OF BACON ON THE TABLE AND TOOK HERseat. Her father sat at the head of the table. To his left, two chairs remained empty. To his right, set another empty chair. Each served as a reminder of the young men who had once toiled in the fields beside Thomas Crawford.
Meg sat across from Daniel at the end of the table closest to where their mother had sat. In the thirteen years since her mother’s death, only dust and the gentle caress of a dusting rag had touched her mother’s chair.
Waiting quietly while her father and Daniel scooped food onto their plates, she missed the banter that had once been as abundant as the food. Enjoyable conversation during meals had ridden away with her brothers.
Daniel moved the bacon around on his plate before lifting his blue gaze to hers. “Burned it a bit, didn’t you, Meg?”
She tilted her nose. “I like it crisp.”
“Thought I heard you moving around in the middle of the night,” her father said.
She began filling her plate. She’d risen an hour earlier and thought she’d been quiet as she moved through the house. “I wanted to get my chores finished early. I thought I’d visit with Mama Warner today.”
Her father leaned back, chewing his food as intently as he seemed to be studying her. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Mama Warner of late.”
“She’s aging. I’m not certain she’ll be with us that much longer, and I want to glean some of her wisdom.”
Nodding, her father returned to his meal. With shaking fingers, Meg picked up her fork. She didn’t like lying to her father, but she feared he’d grab his rifle if she told him she was planning to spend the day in Clay’s company.
“We’ll be working Sam Johnson’s fields this week if you need us.”
The shortage of able-bodied men to work the fields was a hardship that the local families had overcome by gathering to work each other’s fields. With her father and Daniel working other farms, they seldom came home before dusk.
As Kirk’s wife, she’d grown accustomed to her independence. It had been an adjustment when she moved back home, but now her father expected no more from her than a meal at dawn, a meal at sunset, clean clothes, and a tidy house. Although it would no doubt wear her out, she was certain she could maintain all her chores and still spend a good part of the day watching Clay work.
“You need a husband.”
Meg snapped her head around and stared at her father.
“You need a husband and children to occupy your day, not an old woman,” he said.
