Cheryl St.John - The Mistaken Widow

Virginia opened a valise of fabric samples. The new dresses would all be black, of course. Muslin, bombazine and corded cotton for day wear, silks, grosgrain taffetas and shiny sateen for evenings and outings.

“How can you keep these on your feet?” Virginia asked, now kneeling before Sarah and noting Claire’s slippers. She poked one finger between her heel and the soft leather. “They don’t fit you!”

“Well, I—I don’t have to walk, just yet,” Sarah stammered.

“Your slippers are too large?” Leda asked, peering at Sarah’s feet with curiosity.

“My feet were terribly swollen before William’s birth,” Sarah tried to explain, her cheeks growing uncomfortably warm.

“You poor dear,” Leda said, and her gray eyes misted. “And our sweet, sweet Stephen bought you all new slippers.”

“Yes.” The word came out as little more than a whisper. It did sound like something Stephen would have done for the woman he so obviously adored. That wasn’t so hard to believe.

“Her dress for the service must be extraordinary,” Leda said firmly. “Stephen would have wanted it so. Elegant and fashionable, even though it’s for mourning.”

“A bustle, then,” Virginia determined. “And I have some black French lace I’ve been saving for something special.”

“But no one will even see it with me in this chair,” she said, wanting them to see reason.

“It doesn’t matter,” Leda said. “You’re a Halliday. Hallidays have a position in this community. Measure her feet. She’ll need slippers.”

William’s cry alerted them to his feeding time. Mrs. Trent appeared in the doorway holding him.

Glad to escape the escalating dressmaking plans, and always eager to spend time with her son, Sarah opened her arms for the infant. “Will you wheel us into the other room, please?”

Mrs. Trent did as Sarah asked. “I’ll have his bedding laundered now, and take my noon meal, if that’s all right with you, Mrs. Halliday.”

“Certainly.” Appreciative of the woman’s time away, Sarah sat near the lace-curtained balcony windows, nursing William and humming softly. Soon she’d be able to do more to care for him herself, and then she would feel more like a mother. Leda and Mrs. Trent pampered her so, their constant attention and sometimes smothering concern had started to annoy her.

Each day drew her further into indebtedness to the Hallidays, both financially and emotionally. But there was no backing out now, no way to loosen the comfortable but certain ties that were binding her to this home and these people.

She brushed her fingertips over William’s silky pale hair and inhaled his milky, sun-dried cotton smell. Where would they be now if not for Stephen’s kindness and Leda’s misplaced loyalty and trust? If not for Nicholas’s tolerance?

The possibilities were more than she wanted to consider.

She would have to honor her benefactors and the Halliday name. She would make a proper appearance before their friends and associates. Leda and Nicholas were the only ones who ever had to know the truth. Later, she would spare them the humiliation of a public discovery by simply letting others think Claire had chosen to return to her own family.

But for now, she’d narrowed her own choices and had none left but to play this charade to its inevitable conclusion.

Nicholas sat beside his mother in the church pew. In the aisle at his right, his sister-in-law sat in her wheelchair. He fixed his gaze on the brightly colored stained-glass windows forming an arch above the clergyman’s head. The minister’s softly spoken words floated on the air along with the scents of candle wax and Leda’s flowery violet toilet water. Nicholas took her hand with the tear-soaked hankie between both of his and absorbed her tremors.

Anger at the pointlessness of his brother’s death coursed through his own limbs. Why that train? Why that particular night? If only Stephen had stayed at the university. If only he’d been more sensible. If only he’d listened to Nicholas’s counsel on finishing his studies and then coming into the foundry business.

If not for Claire, they could have had Stephen with them the last few months. Unfairly, Nicholas wished Stephen hadn’t linked their family to this girl with questionable motives, and he resented sharing their grief with her.

Against his will, his gaze moved from her leg, jutting straight out beneath layers of black fabric, to her blackgloved hands clenched in her lap. If his mother hadn’t been determined to bring her safely to Mahoning Valley, Nicholas would have paid her off and sent her back to her New York tenement where she belonged, posthaste.

She’d had the last weeks with Stephen. The last moments.

The realization that he would never see his brother again hit him squarely between the eyes. Stephen had been a handful, even as a boy, and Nicholas, older and bearing the responsibilities for the business and his mother and brother, had done his best to bring Stephen up as he’d believed their father would have done.

Stephen had resented his intrusive concern. And he’d deliberately done all he could to get under Nicholas’s skin. Claire happened to be one of those deliberate and rebellious stands against what was expected of him. Their marriage would have turned into a farce.

Now Nicholas was left to deal with her.

“Nicholas?” his mother whispered. “It’s time for you to speak.”

He stood and walked the few feet to the pulpit the minister had vacated. The first person he looked at was the last one he wanted to focus on, but he couldn’t help himself.

Claire sat with her head lowered and her hands in her lap, presenting the top of her hat. She raised her head. The black veil prevented him from seeing her eyes, but it left her delicate chin and deceptively vulnerable mouth visible. Her lips had a puffy look, as though she’d cried recently. Convincing—to everyone else. She’d sewn for actresses, he reminded himself. She would know how to make herself up.

Nicholas drew on his years of steadfast responsibility and dependability, and in a calm voice spoke of Stephen as a child, as a growing boy, and as a young adult. He said all the things that his mother wanted and needed to hear. All the things that their family and friends expected of him. All the things that he’d deliberately avoided thinking of until now. And then he took his seat.

And screamed silently on the inside.

Stephen. Stephen. His free-spirited brother with the unflappable zest for life and laughter. With so much yet to do and discover, his life had ended…leaving so many things between them unsettled. Would this gaping void of pain and loss ever heal?

The time had arrived for the mourners to get into their carriages and ride to the cemetery. Fearing she would crumple if he didn’t support her, Nicholas helped his mother stand. Milos Switzer appeared at his side, and Nicholas directed him to push Claire’s chair.

It didn’t matter who pushed her chair, Sarah’s thoughts were consumed with the actuality of what was taking place and what she’d done. Someone helped her into the carriage, where she sat with her foot on a padded crate and stared idly out the window, grateful for the cloaking anonymity of the veil covering most of her face.

Now his grave. She would have to see Stephen’s grave. And come to terms with the fact that he might have been alive had he been riding in his own compartment that evening.

They stopped and moved away from the carriage again. Nothing mattered but the sight of the canopy ahead. Her heart raced and panic rose in her chest. Somewhere in her peripheral hearing, a bird sang its sweet morning song.

Spring rain had turned the grass a bright green; scattered headstones and mourners dotted its perfection. Beribboned flower rings and colorful bouquets couldn’t hide the crude mound of freshly turned earth that covered Stephen Halliday’s body.