Authors: Joyce Wright
I walked into the small two room office to find it empty. Being that it was lunchtime I didn’t expect the doctor to be seeing any patients and walked into his office/ exam room without knocking. Much to my shock I found the doctor, his pants down around his ankles and a woman. I couldn’t have determined who the woman was if I had tried. I covered my mouth with my hand when an audible gasp escaped my lips.
He turned his head just enough to take in the site of me, but didn’t stop. I immediately ran from the office.
The tears that had been lying behind my eyes even prior to seeing the doctor now streamed down my face with a relentless pace. It occurred to me in that moment that I truly had nowhere to go and no one to lean on. Maggie was a friend but I barely knew her. What I really wanted was to go back to Walker and tell him I had lied, but I didn’t even know if he wanted me back. Maybe it was my fault for not giving into the doctor last night, but what left the biggest impression on me was the fact that no regret or fear and shown on his face when I had caught him there with God knows who. I eventually found my way back home and truly wanted to be anywhere else in that moment. When the doctor came home he didn’t mention anything of what had occurred earlier in the day. His attitude was so nonchalant that it actually made me question for a moment if I had seen what I thought I had seen.
When we laid down to go to sleep that night his words let me know that everything was exactly how I had seen it when he let me know that from this moment on I was never to bring myself unannounced to his office. He also said in so many words that what a man did when his wife was not around was his business, and his alone. He was openly telling me he would lay down with another woman after we were married and I had no say in this? I didn’t realize that when I signed up to be a mail order bride that I was signing myself up for a life of unhappiness. How had I gotten to this point and how was I supposed to continue on knowing what I now knew? I tried to sleep that night and what disturbed me was the reason behind my inability to sleep had nothing to do with a feeling of sadness about what Dr. Carlisle was doing. Despite my best intentions I felt no romantic feelings for him and the hope I had been holding on to that those feelings would grow, was now entirely diminished. What bothered me more than anything was something I had seen when I walked in that room and found him with that woman. Like a dream you cannot quite place, I saw something on the wrist of the woman who was laying across his desk that looked so familiar to me, yet I wasn’t able to place it. I had to keep reminding myself to focus on that, instead of thinking about my encounter earlier that day with Walker.
The next day I continued my usual routine of cleaning, shopping and cooking. I wasn’t really sure how I was supposed to respond to such a situation with my soon to be husband so until I figured it out I decided to go through the motions. My weekly stop at the bakery unfortunately resulted in me running into the same ill mannered Sheriff’s wife and I did my best to steer clear of her as much as possible. I looked over the display case with far more intensity than necessary in hopes that she would not want to disturb me.
“Oh Dahlia!” She exclaimed as if we were the best of friends reuniting after an extended period of time.
“Mrs. Peters.” I responded a bit more coldly than intended.
“How are you?” Her voice held so much sympathy you would have thought I’d just buried my entire family.
“Quite well, thank you.”
“That’s right sweetie, you just put on a brave face.” She said while her arm extended to pat me on my shoulder.
My eyes nearly leapt from my face as I took in the sight of her bracelet. That same blue topaz and pearl piece I’d seen dangling from the wrist of the woman that was with the doctor. Honestly the piece was quite ugly but it was also rare, and judging by the recognition now showing on her face she was the one I’d walked in on.
“Excuse me.” I said while setting my things down on a random shelf and walking out of the bakery.
I had absolutely no idea what to do with this information. If the doctor turned me away I would have nowhere to go and no means of helping my family back home. My fear for my family was the only thing keeping me in the presence and good graces of the doctor.
I returned home early that day just in an attempt to clear my head a bit. I was surprised when the doctor arrived home earlier than normal.
“Good afternoon, what brings you here so early today?” I said in greeting.
“I thought I made myself pretty clear last night that you were not to meddle.” His words became more venomous as he walked aggressively towards me. I backed up until I bumped into the kitchen table and then backed myself into the chair taking a seat.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Without a response the doctor brought his hand to his shoulder and swung with all of his force hitting my face with the back of his hand. As soon as his hand made contact I flew backwards in my chair landing on the floor stunned.
“You say anything to anyone, you so much as mention my business to others… and you won’t be around to tell about it.”
With that he left the house. I allowed myself only a few minutes of shock before I got up and attempted to right my kitchen. I picked up the items that had fallen from the table and glanced at myself in the mirror. The entire right side of my face had already begun to swell and the red imprint was turning different shades of green and blue.
A knock at the door startled me from the mirror, there was no chance I could let anyone see me in this shape. I walked quietly to the door trying to listen to any sounds coming from the other side.
“Dahlia?” It was Walker’s voice. What was he doing here?
“Listen, Dahlia I need to talk to you. Please.” His voice sounded so pleading and urgent I couldn’t hold my ground and keep my silence.
“You shouldn’t be here.” I said, my voice cracked and meek from the tears I had cried.
“Open the door, are you okay?”
I couldn’t respond right away, only because his words brought more tears to my eyes.
I cleared my throat in hopes that my voice would sound stronger. “I’m okay but you can’t be here.”
“Dahlia I can’t leave. I need to tell you something. I was wrong to send you away. It wasn’t because I didn’t care about you.” He paused.
“I was afraid I cared too much. I had only just lost Victoria and I felt so badly for the feelings I was developing for you. Please just talk to me.”
Silence was my only response as I tried to stifle the sobs that broke free from my lips.
“Dahlia open the door, I can tell something is wrong. One way or another I’m coming in.” His voice warned me but never in a threatening way.
I opened the door tentatively and held my eyes to the floor, afraid of what his response would be when he saw my face.
“Jesus! The doctor did this to you?” He asked in horror as he took my face in his hands gently while looking me over.
“I’ll kill him!” The rage showed in both his face and his tone.
“No! There’s nothing you can do, Walker. This is my mess.” I pleaded.
“No it isn’t! I put you in this situation and I’m going to fix it. Get your things, we’re leaving.” He ordered.
I wanted so badly to leave with him but knew the doctor would never let me go so freely. I covered my face with my hands trying to stop the tears from falling from my face.
“Dahlia, please don’t cry.” His voice was so tender as he wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“I did this and I’m going to fix it. Please trust me.” He said and for the first time, gently kissed my lips.
I let my eyes stay closed for too long, taking in the moment.
“I’m going to fix this, I promise you.” He said while bringing my face up to his again.
We quickly gathered my meager belongings together as my mind raced trying to find a way out of my predicament.
On the ride back to Walker’s ranch I told him what happened; walking in on the doctor with the Sheriff’s wife and the doctor hitting me. The outrage seemed to boil over, making his face red with anger. When we arrived at the ranch he quickly grabbed his gun and showed me how to use it.
“If anyone comes back other than me, don’t let them in. If they come at you, shoot them.” He said with absolute seriousness.
My breath hitched in my throat and the tears found their way down my cheek again.
“Please don’t go! Maybe he won’t come after me.” I pleaded while holding on to the sleeve of his shirt.
“I have to go. We aren’t going to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives.”
My fear for Walker’s safety sat front most on my brain, but I played his last words over and over again in my mind. “The rest of our lives.” It was hard to imagine a happy ending but I wanted so badly for that to be the case.
It was three hours before I heard a horse making its way down the drive. Running to the window I looked out to find Walker making his way back home. I run from the door and made it to him just as he was dismounting his horse.
“Walker!” Before I could even utter another word I grabbed on to him, hugging him as tightly as I could.
“It’s okay, Dahlia, everything is fine.” He said while smoothing the hair on the back of my head.
“Fine? What happened?” I asked in disbelief.
Taking my hand Walker lead me back into the house.
“I let him know that his secret affair with the Sheriff's wife was safe with us. But if he ever tried to come near us I would go straight to the Sheriff. And then I punched him in the face.”
I laughed briefly but was immediately embarrassed that I would find such a thing funny.
“We may need to go to the next town if we need a doctor though.” He joked.
“Dahlia, will you stay with me now? I promise I’ll never let you go again.” His voice was pleading.
His hands caressed my face and felt the fullness of my lips with his fingertips.
Breaking our contact he pulled me to my feet and walked me the short distance from the table to his bed. I was facing the bed as he stood behind me. He pulled my hair to one shoulder and kissed the back of my neck.
“Tomorrow let me make you my wife.”
**THE END**
Chapter One
“Violet, if I lace you any tighter you’re going to do one of two things: either you’re going to fall over in a faint while you’re saying your vows, or your bosom is going to pop right out of your dress and you’ll scandalize Rev. Whitacre!”
“Just lace me tighter, please Lily. I want to look nice on my wedding day and I don’t want to disappoint Lucas.”
“If having a swooning bride doesn’t disappoint him, nothing will,” Lily Cavanaugh muttered. “What are you going to say when the corset comes off? You do know you can’t wear it on your wedding night, I hope?”
“I’ll think of something! Now just lace me tighter.”
Lily pulled fiercely. “That’s as good as it can be, Violet. You’re not some puny little miss, you know. Why would you want to be? I’ll tell you something about men---“
“Yes, yes, I know. A man doesn’t want to hold onto a tree branch. A man wants a woman with curves. A man wants a woman who looks like she’s alive and well, not dying of consumption. I know all that, Lily, and you’ve told me a dozen times. But sometimes, sometimes, I wish I was—I wish I was willowy.”
“Willowy? Willowy? What’s that? And where do you get these notions?”
Lily stepped back to survey her handiwork. “Don’t laugh too hard, don’t breath too deep, don’t chase after those twins or I won’t be responsible for what happens. Now what’s this willowy business?”
“Willowy. You know what willowy means.”
“I know what it means for a willow tree. I’m darned sure I don’t know what it means for a woman. Lucas Jackson isn’t coming all the way from West Texas to wrap his arms around a tree and you remember that. You’re a fine woman, Violet DeFlore, and even if I am your sister, I’m saying it and I stand by it.”
Lily DeFlore Landis was not a woman to scatter compliments as if she were sprinkling salt on beef, but she meant was she said. Violet appreciated the sentiment from her sister, but it didn’t change the fact that she wished she were dainty and petite like her sister Rose, or tall and rangy like Lily. Instead, she was packed into her corset on her wedding day so that her bridegroom, who had never seen his mail-order bride in person, would be impressed by her generous curves.
She knew what Lily would say if she could hear her sister’s thoughts. Look what being skinny had gotten Rose. Never strong after birthing the twins, Rose had just faded to nothing, and there was that husband of hers, already remarried, and to a wife who didn’t want the babies, because she wanted her own. And hadn’t that no account haberdasher knuckled under to his wife, leaving Violet with two babies , and she knowing nothing about children, having none of her own, nor a husband. And hadn’t Violet had to sell the boarding house that she’d run after Ma and Pa died because she couldn’t cook and clean for boarders when she was trying to raise two little hellions. It had been Lily who had told her that she needed a man to take care of the breadwinning so that she could be a mother to those children. Lily would have taken them, but she had a houseful of her own, and anyways, Violet had promised Rose that she’d be there for them and Violet never was one to let go of a promise.
Lily frowned at her younger sister. “You are as God made you, Violet. With a heart as big as the state of Texas and a smile as bright as a moonlit night. I’ll tell you something else, though it’s not a ladylike thing to say. A man wants a woman he can hold onto.”
“Charlie doesn’t seem to mind you being spare,” Violet pointed out.
Lily guffawed. “Charlie knows where to find the holding spots,” she said.
Violet’s eyes grew wide. Charlie was as silent as Lily was voluble, a tall, slow-moving, quiet man whose conversation mainly consisted of ‘yes, ma’am,” “no, ma’am” and “mebbe.” Envisioning her laconic brother-in-law in the kind of bawdy activity that Lily referred to was too much of a stretch of the imagination. “I suppose Lucas will find plenty of holding spots,” she said worriedly.
Lily smacked her sister on her backside. “I reckon he will,” she declared, fire in her eyes. “I reckon he’ll be glad of them, too, a lonesome bachelor with a ranch and nothing to listen to but those cattle bawling all the way across the Red River. I’m telling you true, Violet DeFlore and you listen to me good. Don’t waste your youth thinking about what you’re not. You were the smartest of the three of us, the only one who could cook as good as Ma, and hear me out: Charlie loves me for sure, but if he wasn’t afraid of me hitting him over the head with a skillet, he’d admit that he’s more partial to your kiss pudding than anything I serve up.”
Violet looked up at her older sister, suspended between hope and doubt, her beautiful hazel eyes reflecting her emotions as if they were a pool into which all her feelings were swirling. “Truly?”
“Truly. If you weren’t my only living sister, I’d scratch your eyes out. Now let’s get into the parlor and see what those young’uns are up to. I don’t count on Charlie, Mack, and ‘Lige being able to keep them under control forever.”
As they went down the stairs, Lily reflected that if anything was going to scare Lucas Jackson back into bachelorhood, it wouldn’t be Violet’s size. It would be those twins. Two years old, quick as the devil and twice as mischievous, Rendell and Rosie Gregson didn’t remember their Ma, and they’d grown up without their Pa, who’d moved his sorry backside off to Missouri after marrying up with that snooty dressmaker who wanted a husband but not the children that he’d fathered with another wife. Minding those two was a full-time task; Violet was too lenient with them. Lily reckoned it was because she still saw them as motherless babes since Rose’s death, but Violet was a mother to them and a good one, too, for all that she spared the rod more than a birth mother would. Maybe Lucas Jackson could be firmer with them. If Violet would let him.
It had taken both Charlie and Mack to follow the twins to make certain that they didn’t break anything in the parlor, even though the children were drawn to the vases of autumn flowers that Lily had picked to spruce up the room. ‘Loge’s task had been to pick up the contents of Lily’s sewing basket that the twins had spilled onto the floor. A grown man and two boys couldn’t keep two wee ones under control, Lily thought; it was a good thing men weren’t in charge of raising children.
“Rosie Grace Gregson! Rendell James Gregson! You listen up or I’ll take a switch to you.” She wouldn’t, and hadn’t, but it was part of Lily’s delivery and with eight children of her own to raise, she wasn’t going to alter her script just because Violet had never raised a hand to the twins. “If you behave, you’ll get cake. If you don’t behave, you’ll go to bed without your supper.”
The twins understood the tone if not the concept, and they stared at their aunt, fascinated by her words and tone, but not subdued in the least. “Your Ma is getting married today and she doesn’t need to have you two setting things on edge with your harem-scarum ways---“
“I’m not their Ma,” Violet objected. “Rose—“
“See here, Violet. Rose is gone. I’m sorry it’s so, but sorry won’t bring her back. You’re the only Ma they’re going to know and it’s about time you stepped up to the name as well as the work. You’re getting a new name today; you’ll be Mrs. Jackson for the rest of your life. You might as well be Ma, too.”
“That’s so,” Charlie said, standing beside his wife as if they were making a formal pronouncement.
“Listen to him, chatting like a magpie,” Lily said indulgently. “Weddings just make him an old softie. Next he’ll be cryin’ when you say ‘I do.’”