The Soldier's Bride (3 page)

He curled his toes snug in his woolen socks and bit his bottom lip. Slender fingers grasped his hand and pulled. He looked up into the clear blue of Rhonda’s eyes and tried not to see Jessie there. She paused and he knew she was doing the same thing—trying not to see Jessie in the dimple under his left eye or the red highlights in his hair. She pulled again, and he allowed himself to rise with the momentum and follow her out of the bedroom.

“I’m tired,” he complained as he shuffled down the hall.

Rhonda turned around and looked at him. “Me, too.” She gave his hand a gentle squeeze and nudged him into the kitchen. “Here it is.”

She pointed at the music box open on the table with a ballerina frozen mid-twirl. Leland swallowed, but his throat didn’t seem to be working right, his saliva caught and he choked. His chest burned, his eyes blurred, and still he was choking.

“I need a beer.” He gasped for breath and moved toward the icebox.

“Wait.” Rhonda put a hand on his arm and pushed him into a chair situated directly in front of the music box. She leaned over the ballerina and turned the brass key until the melody began again and the ballerina finished her pirouette and started another.

He watched her spinning to the tune emanating from the music box and shook his head. “Why?”

“Because it’s time for us to heal.” Rhonda sank into the chair next to him. “I traded the cradle to a woman who lost her husband in the war. She has a baby boy who’ll never know his father. She smiled at me anyway, Leland, and said she needed to give this music box away so she could keep on living.” Rhonda motioned to the music box. “We still have a chance to live. I don’t want to give up on that.”

The table in front of him was polished with a satin finish, and the grain of the wood was hardly noticeable, lost in the deep mahogany. Leland rubbed his finger along the edge of wood he had sanded and shaped so carefully, the same way he’d shaped Jessie’s cradle. The music played on, and the melody climbed higher to sweeter notes that reminded him of Rhonda’s lullabies. He sucked in a breath, fighting the tightness in his chest. The chair scraped along the floor as he pushed it from the table and stumbled toward the icebox.

“It was an accident. Drinking won’t change that. Jessie’s gone.”

His hands closed around the beer bottle squeezing nearly hard enough to break the bottle and crush the shards of glass into his hands—the same hands that would never hold his little girl again. He choked, this time on a great ball of tears rising up his throat. Woolen socks made it easy to shuffle down the hall, and he leaned against the door frame for a moment, his chest heaving with sobs.

After prying the top from his beer, he drank and swallowed his tears then sank into a heap on the floor. Grimy fingers rubbed the jagged edge of the bottle cap and flipped it into the air. It bounced along the hardwood floor—ping, ping, ping—in perfect time with the music box as the notes reached for the sweet strains of a lullaby again. Leland held his breath, listening to the tinny music, and stared at the mound of brown glass in the corner. The bottles rested against each other like a graveyard of lost hopes and dreams.

The screen door slammed and a whoosh of air rushed down the hallway. It lifted dark strands from Leland’s head like little fingers once did when his baby girl rode on his shoulders through the woods. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head against the wall and listened to the music dance with the wind. The smell of lavender overtook the scent of liquor, and the sound of small feet pattered against the floor.

Rhonda reached around the back of the music box to turn the crank.

“I don’t wanna hear no more music today,” Leland muttered.

She continued winding as if she hadn’t heard him. When the music began playing, she looked at him, her blue eyes piercing his drunken stupor. “I spoke with the Giffords today. They were asking about their chairs. I didn’t know how to tell them you’re still staring at the same pile of wood you were four months ago.”

He shrugged and peeled the label on the beer bottle.

“You’re not the only one who’s hurting!” She grabbed his beer and threw it against the wall. The glass sprinkled over the floor, its tones discordant with the melody playing.

“Did you know the day she died Jessie got into your shoe polish and smeared it all over my good rug? Black shoe polish, Leland, and I was so mad. I spanked her and yelled at her and asked her why she was always making a mess of everything. I told her she was three years old now—old enough to know better.”

He straightened up and his eyes were clear with understanding. “Don’t.”

She stood and paced in front of him. “You should’ve seen her face. She looked at me with tears running down her cheeks and said, ‘I just wanted to paint a picture.’”

Rhonda pulled at a stray curl near her temple. Her lip trembled. “But I was so angry, I sent her to her room, and I grumbled the whole time I tried to clean that shoe polish out of the rug. I didn’t hear her go outside—I didn’t know she was out there until I heard her singing. I went out to look for her and tell her she needed to go back to her room, but she was hiding from me. I knew you were bringing that load of wood around and I tried to find her.” Wet drops splattered the table and Rhonda covered her face with her hands.

She didn’t have to say any more. Leland saw it all in his mind’s eye. He had been singing, too, on that day, whistling and humming and all around making joyful noises. So happy about the number of orders coming into his shop and the bargain he’d got at the lumberyard. He’d pulled around the corner by his shop and backed his truck in like he always did. He saw a flash of color, heard a scream, and then Rhonda was there screaming about Jessie. He’d run over his sweet baby girl, and she was gone before help could arrive.

Within minutes, it seemed people were crying everywhere and the wind was howling, too. The great limbs of the oak tree swayed and creaked in the sky. Leland had heard the trees groaning against the gusts of wind, as if their very roots were tearing away from the rocks and soil deep underground.

At the cemetery, the women tied black scarves around their hair to keep it from blowing wild. He hadn’t heard anything that day except the moaning of the trees. If there had been an axe, he might’ve cut every one of those trees down just so he could quiet the wind. It sounded so much like the pain in his heart echoing through his mind.

Leland shuddered. How could he tell Rhonda he was afraid to enter his shop again? He’d tried to go back after Jessie died. He’d even picked up his planer and began smoothing out the wood in broad strokes. But the wind had lifted bits of sawdust and as they swirled through the air and irritated his eyes, he’d heard singing—Jessie’s singing.

He dropped his tools and ran, sobbing until his throat felt parched. He knew he could drink for the rest of his life and never quench his painful thirst. Maybe that’s what he wanted. To shut out the singing, the dancing, the feel of Jessie’s little hand in his, the warmth of her smile.

Rhonda sat at the table with her head in her hands now, crying harder than he’d ever seen her cry. He reached out his hand, but then brought it back and rubbed the stiff whiskers on his chin.

“We don’t have anything left, Leland,” Rhonda said between sobs. “I’ve used up the last of the money my father left us. I’m going to look for a job.”

With furrowed brows, he raised his head and opened his mouth to speak.

“If you refuse to work, what choice do I have? There won’t be any money for liquor though.” She lifted her head and caught him with a fierce gaze. “Think about what you’re doing to us.” She pushed the chair back and stood. “I’ll be back later.”

The cemetery is where he would find her, if he dared to follow. He hadn’t returned to the cemetery to see the tiny grave. Rhonda went every day for the first six months and now after almost two years, not so often. The music stopped playing. Leland reached over to close the lid on the ballerina staring at herself in front of the mirror.

He hesitated when the reflection of bloodshot eyes and sallow skin caught his attention. A lock of hair curled above his eyebrow. His mouth was covered in unruly whiskers from his unkempt mustache. What could a man do in his circumstance? A man who had killed his own daughter?

He slammed the lid of the music box down with the questions screaming through his head, throbbing with the thought,
Why couldn’t it have been me?

~*~

Rhonda waited two more months hoping Leland would find the strength to live again. The music box played its melody and Rhonda attempted to talk to him, but he stayed locked inside his drunken mind, tormented by his mistake.

Early in the morning on July twenty-eighth, she sat at the magnificent dining table and wrote a letter. On a separate piece of paper she wrote a note, folded it, and put it inside the compartment of the music box where the ballerina slept. She took two suitcases and five boxes out to the edge of her yard, loaded them into her cousin’s truck, and left.

Leland didn’t even notice she was gone until the next day when he awoke from his usual alcohol-induced slumber accompanied by a headache hammering against his skull. The house was quiet as he shuffled into the kitchen toward the sink and splashed cold water on his face. Water droplets hung on the ends of his hair and pooled on his shoulders, the dripping sound magnified in the stillness alerted him that something was amiss.

The music box sat on the table and a rustling sound behind it gave Leland a chill. He noticed a sheet of stationery tucked under the box. The window above the sink was open a slit. A draft crinkled the paper, lifting it and letting it fall.

“Rhonda?” The question hung in the stillness. He stepped toward the piece of paper on the table. It was some of Rhonda’s stationery—a soft green with an
R
embossed in the corner. “Rhonda, where are you?” he called even though his heart stuttered with the knowledge that she was gone. The chair creaked when he slumped into it and he stared at the note Rhonda had written. Lines blurred together. He rubbed his eyes, took a ragged breath, and began reading.

Leland,

A few days after Jessie died, I scrubbed that rug until my fingers were raw and then just stopped. I realized it’s just a rug and it’s only shoe polish, but I realized that too late for Jessie. Those first few months I went to her grave and told her sorry every day. I always cried, and it felt like my heart was as heavy as the stone sitting on that patch of grass covering our baby.

About a year after Jessie died, I went to the cemetery on a beautiful day and everything was quiet—even the birds. I thought about everything I could’ve done different, how she might still be here if I hadn’t lost my temper, and I cried again. Then the tiniest breeze began blowing and I heard something. Do you remember how Jessie used to sing? Always funny little tunes and silly words. I heard her that day. She sang like a bird welcoming in the new spring. I knew then that she was happy and God was taking care of her.

That doesn’t mean I don’t still blame myself the same way you do, but it means that I know it’s okay now for me to keep on living. Inside that music box, I found a slip of paper that says, “Don’t die with me.”

I know it’s too late for us. Jessie took a piece of our hearts with her, and we just can’t seem to fit ours back together the right way. But I’m ready to live again, and I hope someday you will be, too. I love you, Leland. I forgave you a long time ago and now I’m forgiving myself. I just can’t live with your guilt anymore.

Forgive yourself—allow God to forgive.

~Rhonda

Leland read the note again and shed bitter tears. He touched the peeling edges of the paper on the corner of the music box and thought about what Rhonda had written. What did she mean about finding those words in the music box? He reached toward the center compartment and stopped. If he opened it, the music would start again. He didn’t think he could handle that right now.

With careful steps, he walked into the sitting room and stared down at the rug underneath the coffee table. He remembered when Rhonda had picked it out from a booth at the county fair. Braided scraps of material of every shade of green one could imagine were woven together to form a swirling pattern that wound in ellipses to create the oval rug. And there near the center were the stains of heartache. The black shoe polish was now a dull gray and the material looked worn from scrubbing. Just blobs of darkness against the light green pattern, but Rhonda had known what those marks meant—they spoke to her heart.

She had never said she hated him, but Leland figured she must have, and he had been wrong. She forgave him, but how could he ever forgive himself for killing his daughter?

The dark spot on the rug looked blurry now through his tears and his throat felt dry, aching for a drink. Turning back toward the kitchen, he hurried to the icebox and pulled out a beer. He pried off the cap and drank so fast he choked, and alcohol sprayed everywhere as he coughed.

He leaned against the sink and stared at the green stationery wondering how he could ever know if Rhonda really meant it when she said she forgave him. The beer felt icy cold in his hand. He swirled the liquid around the bottom of the bottle and drank some more. He reached into the icebox and grabbed the last three beer bottles and looked down the hallway.

The wind snuck in through the open window and pushed against Rhonda’s note. The paper rattled as it skidded against the table and landed on the floor in front of Leland’s feet. With quick strides, he stumbled down the hallway, bumping into the wall and sending a picture of a rose bouquet crashing to the ground. He hurried into Jessie’s room and slammed the door then slid into his favorite spot on the floor and kept drinking.

Late in the afternoon of the next day, Leland awoke drenched in his own sweat and urine. Surrounded by beer bottles dripping liquid that meshed with his pool of waste, he sniffed and retched. The bottles clanked against one another as he fumbled for the door handle, eager to leave the putrid smell of the room.