Her Hesitant Heart by Carla Kelly

Author:Carla Kelly [Kelly, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472003829
Publisher: HarlequinUKLtd
Published: 2013-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Susanna Hopkins woke up early. There was that moment of panic when she wondered where she was—whether Frederick was drunk, sober, demanding, compliant, suddenly sad or bent on mischief. Once the moment passed, she lay there and made a raft of decisions.

The first one was the most important, because she knew it affected all the others: on that morning in a place where she never thought her life would take her, Susanna decided to forgive her cousin Emily Reese for being stupid. She decided to overlook the enormous lie that Emily had concocted to make her divorced cousin somehow more palatable to censorious people who knew too much about each other. Emily was too stupid to think of consequences, and she had probably meant well.

“I can live with that,” Susanna mouthed more than whispered, not wanting to wake anyone. Of course, the only people awake were the O’Learys through the wall. She smiled and listened to the baby’s tiny wail, and then silence, followed by two parents talking softly to each other. The voices were indistinct, but they were a mother and father sharing a moment with Mary Rose O’Leary, the army’s newest dependent.

Susanna lay there and reminded herself that for a time, she and Frederick had done that after Tommy was born. She reminded herself that those had been wonderful, drowsy moments, shared with a baby she was getting acquainted with, created with a husband she loved. Matters may have gone terribly wrong five years later, when business concerns started to collapse and rye whiskey became an enticing substitute for reality, but they hadn’t always been bad.

“I can live with that,” she murmured again. “We had good times.” She soothed herself with the fact that she never would have married a man she hadn’t loved. There was a time when Frederick Hopkins would have made any woman look twice. She knew, even now, that if he had not pushed her face into the mantelpiece, and blind instinct hadn’t made her flee for her own safety, she would be there still, protecting Tommy, as if nothing was the matter. She suspected there were many women in precisely her position.

“I can live with that, too, even though it is unfair to women,” she whispered. She had heard stories about women crusading against “Demon Rum,” and been aghast at such unladylike behavior. Didn’t those rabble-rousing women know that a woman’s sphere was the home? She understood that kind of courage now. Liquor had probably destroyed more homes and hopes than marital infidelity, and wives often suffered in silence. Bravo to the brave crusaders, she thought.

Time passed and both duplexes were silent now, Mary Rose back to sleep, maybe slumbering between her parents. On her side of the wall, Susanna heard Daniel Reese snoring, the sound more comforting than grating. She decided to forgive him for being light-headed, too. He loved his son and wife, and was probably a pretty good commander of a company of infantry, out here in the wilds of Wyoming Territory.

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