Of course he was the last to come home. He had promised to stay to the end.
I saw him from an upstairs window, a lone figure on a white horse. Agrippa had gone left at the fork to Stockbridge and John had kept right. I saw him when he was still a ways out, just a speck on the long, straight road through Lenox.
The girl I’d once been would have tucked her skirts into her bodice and flown out to meet him, stretching the length of her leg and the size of her heart. But though my heart raced, my legs could not, and I went to the willow tree instead, needing a moment with Elizabeth before I greeted our beloved John.
It gave the others time to welcome him, all the many women in his life. I heard Ruthie shrieking and Polly sobbing and Hannah telling both to pipe down. Then there was laughter, babbling, and boisterous kissing and finally the rumble of my name on his lips.
“Where is my wife?” he asked, and I heard a frisson of doubt. Had he really feared I wouldn’t wait?
“She is beneath the willow tree with Mother,” Ruthie informed him and everyone else within a mile.
“She said it was only fair that Mother be part of your triumphant return,” Polly said, parroting me word for word.
“Ahh.” Relief resonated in the sigh. “That sounds like Samson.”
“We like her, Papa,” Polly said.
“I love her,” Ruthie declared, always in competition with her sisters.
“I will never like her as much as I loved Mother,” Hannah warned. “But she will do.”
“Thank you, Hannah. And when did you get so tall?” John asked, and I could hear his dismay amid his delight.
“I have always been tall, Father. You are just enormous, so you never noticed.”
Mrs. Paterson, bless her gracious heart, intervened. “Come, girls. Let’s go inside and give your father and Deborah a moment.”
“And Mother,” Hannah reminded.
“And your mother,” Mrs. Paterson amended. “Good gracious. What a strange assortment we are.”
I heard them depart as his tread grew closer, and even though my back was turned, I closed my eyes just to hear him come, the way I’d done in the Red House, tracking him through the halls, waiting in anticipation for every moment I got to spend with him.
“I would like to feel that fearsome gaze on my face again,” he said, pausing just beyond the tree, Elizabeth’s stone between us. I reached out and touched the cold surface, an acknowledgment, and then ran my hands down the blue dress I’d worn to marry him. I’d had to wear it many times since—a good dress is not something to waste—but the moment I’d seen him from the upstairs window, I’d run and pulled it on, wanting to start our marriage where we’d left off. I’d had no time to properly dress my hair, and I’d drawn it back into a smooth tail. It was much longer than Shurtliff’s had been, but I liked the combination of the dress and the soldier’s queue.
“Welcome home, sir,” I said.
I turned slightly, unable to hide my smile. It was better to laugh than to weep, but then I saw his face, every dear and perfect line, and I could not jest or call him sir. I could only stare and drink him in. It was impossible that a man, bedraggled and windblown, saddle-weary and uncertain, could still look like John Paterson.
Impossible.
“I can’t breathe,” he said. “Looking at you . . . I can’t breathe.”
“Nor can I,” I choked. “I haven’t breathed since Philadelphia when Anne turned me back into a girl.”
Surprised mirth split his cheeks and parted his lips, and we laughed together amid our tears.
“Thank God for Anne,” he said, wiping his cheeks. And still we stood, gazing at one another without closing the space, elongating the incomprehensible joy of reunion.
He stooped and picked up a rock near the base of Elizabeth’s grave, and brushed the snow and debris from it. I thought he would set it atop the marker, an acknowledgment of his own, but he showed it to me instead, a smooth stone, ordinary and unremarkable, sitting in the palm of his hand.
“Once you told me that you loved in different amounts. Big piles and little piles,” he said.
“You remember that?”
“I do. You said your love for me was a mountain on your chest.” His voice quaked, and he wrapped his fingers around the little rock.
I nodded, and pressed a hand to my heart, afraid it would burst forth without me.
“How big is the pile today, Samson?”
I could not endure the distance any longer and flew into his arms, knocking his hat from his head and the breath back into my lungs. He braced his feet, swept me up, and kissed me without waiting for me to answer, ravenous and unrestrained, his ardor and relief matched only by my own.