“To you and the new Mrs. Webler.”
August had not stopped smirking. “You’re mad.”
“Please. I’ve just given you my blessing.”
“You don’t have to pretend.”
But that was what he had done for the entirety of their relationship, whenever it was asked of him. At every juncture that August had gifted him a gesture of love, it served only as the precursor for the detachment, the chilliness, that was bound to follow, and Caleb would be left to pretend the kiss, the touch, had never taken place at all. Each erasure was like a bruise, and each pained him equally. It was why when they had finally consummated their feelings, at this very pond, only weeks before August enlisted, Caleb had decided to join up with his friend. He thought, in the foolish part of his brain which had made him love August in the first place, that it would bring them closer. Perhaps more importantly—and even more foolishly—he feared what would happen if August was left in the presence of other soldiers without him. To imagine him building bonds that might very well discount their own was an impossibility. No, he had to go. He had to follow his love. It was hardly a surprise when August cozied up to the other boys, building friendships and ignoring Caleb like he was his little brother, best left in the tent while the others went out for a smoke, or to talk of the girls back home. Nor was it a surprise now to hear he was to wed Natasha Beddenfeld. The only thing he could do was play nice. Pretend, as he always had when it came to August’s cruelty, that his world wasn’t coming apart at the seams. That his heart wasn’t broken.
Caleb sat up. The trees, only a short while ago still burnished with gold from the sun, had dulled, their sheen stamped out by the onrushing night sky.
“Perhaps we should go,” he said. “I told my father I’d have supper with him.”
They stood together. The scenery was motionless, the pond before them a dark pool of ink. They brushed the grass off themselves, the specks of mud.
“You needn’t worry,” August said. “This won’t change anything.”
He once again put his hand on Caleb’s jawline, his thumb on his bottom lip. This time he did not squeeze his face. There was a tenderness. He said nothing more, simply let go and started back home.
CHAPTER 9
She was on her own. That was what it was. The conclusion came slowly to Isabelle, cropped up as a fear, the trailing vapors of an idea that lingered after Caleb’s death. Her first thought, upon her son’s return, was that these inclinations would vanish. Instead they had strengthened over time, and now she was privy to a perspective on life that might once have overwhelmed her: an existence of uncompromised freedom.
The understanding stole into her consciousness as a kind of awakening, a spiritual outpouring, then assumed a physical manifestation, in the parts of herself she discarded. The widow’s blacks had been the first to go—even before she knew Caleb had in fact survived—relegated to the back of her closet without a second thought. Next came her projects, those obligations of little significance: a purple merino cap she’d been knitting suddenly felt like a waste of fabric and time, and her workbox went missing under the bed, not to be seen since; she left her roses untended mid-bloom, forgetting some weeks even to water them, until their petals wilted and drooped, corpses in plain sight of all who came down the lane.
Early on, this inactivity was a pulsing shame. She sensed her old self, the dutiful and productive self, knocking at her conscience, begging to be let back into her life. But this feeling passed, and what took its place was something akin to bliss. Sitting on the porch with Mildred was not a respite from another task but a way to spend the day. Cleaning the kitchen could wait until tomorrow; dusting George’s study could wait a lifetime. There were stretches where she did not even bathe. A life without motion, without expectations—it was the secret she kept from the outside world, for no one else comprehended the great joy in abandonment, in giving up and starting over with a blank page, a page that might never be filled.
Truthfully, she had George to thank. He’d ventured off first, altering the order of their home, and shored up his grief in the two boys who lived now in their barn, the land they worked together. After that she’d had to face life by herself, to brave it anew each morning upon waking, and to continue without knowing where the journey might lead her, if anywhere at all.
There were still moments of doubt. When Silas had returned, galloping up on horseback in a veil of dust, the disturbance in his countenance on beholding her disheveled appearance and the unkempt environs around the cabin was matched only by his confusion an instant later at the sight of Caleb.