Page 52 of Always to Remember
Meeting his gaze, she straightened her stance and angled her chin defiantly. “Well, I had to make certain he wasn’t going to come in here.”
“I told you I’d see to it he didn’t come in here.”
“And you’re a man of your word.”
“I’d die before I went back on my word.”
Turning away from her, he walked to his table and fingered the smaller instruments. “I won’t be working on the memorial anymore today so you can go on home.”
“Where are the headstones? I don’t recall seeing any.”
“I’ve seen them and I’ll find them,” he said as he stared out the window.
“Everything is such a mess in here. Do you want me to help you find them?”
He spun around. “I want you to go home.”
She tilted her nose. “Maybe I don’t want to go home.”
“You’ve got no choice. Your condition was that you’d look over my shoulder while I worked on the memorial. Now, I’m not working on it, and I’m not inviting you to stay.”
“I didn’t realize my company offended you.”
His eyes captured hers and shackled them to the truth. “I’m not the one who was afraid Tom might see me here.”
Her cheeks flamed red as she lowered her gaze. “You have to understand that the hatred people feel toward you goes beyond your shadow to touch those around you.”
“I do understand that—only too well, as a matter of fact.”
“Then you can’t blame me for not wanting to be seen in your company.”
He turned his attention back to the fields beyond the window. “No, I don’t blame you.”
“Do you want me to let Lucian know you need him?”
“No, I’ll take care of it.”
“They’ll need me to play the organ at the memorial service. You can work on the monument tomorrow without me. I’ll try to stop by in the evening to check on your progress.”
“You do that, Mrs. Warner.”
His father never took money for children’s markers. Meg shook her head. Little wonder they still lived in a house made of rough hewn logs while other folks had bought lumber and rebuilt their homes once the sawmill had opened.
She stared past the wooden buffalo grass to the darkening sky. “A storm’s rolling in,” she said quietly. “He said it always rains when someone dies. I never noticed. He notices everything.”
“We really need to give Clayton a name,” Mama Warner said as she rocked slowly in her chair. “It takes this old brain of mine too dadgum long to figure out who you’re talking about sometimes.”
Sighing, Meg turned away from the window. “Sally Graham’s baby died.”
Mama Warner ceased her rocking. “A sad thing to lose a child. Lost four myself. You’d think it wouldn’t hurt losing a little one but the pain is as great as if they’d been with you all your life. You can’t remember what it was like before they touched your heart, and you can never forget them.”
Meg walked across the room, knelt, and took the aged hands into her own. “Do you want to hear something amazingly wonderful?” She smiled. “Before he died, his father carved a headstone for a child and inscribed the exact words on it that Sally wanted for her daughter. Can you believe that?”
Mama Warner worked her hand free of Meg’s grasp and cradled Meg’s chin within her palm. “Do you believe it, child?”
“Of course.”
The older woman smiled. “Then that’s all that matters.”
