~ ~ ~
Their arrival back at the house had thrown everybody into chaos. She had still been faint from the unpleasant events in the alley, and Sam had been forced to carry her in. Whatever her father may have been expecting as they entered the parlor, it hadn’t been Sam carrying his daughter as if dead to the world, her clothing torn and spattered with somebody else’s blood.
The household exploded into unfocused action, with Sarah and Becky running around like chickens with their heads cut off, pulling Sam first one way, then another; he had finally had enough and taken Kate up to her room, laying her on the bed and leaving her with the women to attend to her.
As the women helped her out of her ripped dress, Kate could hear her father and Sam talking quietly in the hall. Each frantic question of her father’s was met with a quiet, soothing answer from Sam, and soon she recognized the sound of her father’s normal voice again. Until the front door opened and Jake walked in.
Kate was glad that she wasn’t there to see it; it was terrifying enough to hear her father speak to Jake like that. He used a voice—and vocabulary—that she had never heard before, and she never wanted to hear it again. An hour later, as she lay resting in bed, there was a light knock on her door, and Jake came in to see her.
His gait was stiff, as if it were painful to walk, and when he knelt by the side of her bed, she could see that his eyes were red, though she couldn’t tell if it was due to the way their father had raged at him or the paddling he’d received.
“Kate,” he croaked, before his voice broke completely and he dissolved into tears. “I’m so sorry.” Jake leaned over and hugged her, and she found her own anger at him washed away. She hugged him tightly and found herself trying to soothe him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “In the end there was no harm done. But where were you?”
She could feel him shaking his head. “I was talking to Sally Kinney,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow.
Kate slapped him on the back of the head. “I should have known,” she said. “Lucky for you Sam came along. You’re in his debt now.”
“I know. Dad said the same thing.” He straightened up and wiped his eyes. “I’m going to go find him now and say thanks.” Jake leaned over and kissed her cheek. “That won’t ever happen again.”
“Better not,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be talking to girls in the street like that anyway. There could be girls right under your nose who like you; there’s no need to chase down every one you see in town.”
He backed away so that he could look at her. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she said. Suddenly she felt exhausted, and she hid a yawn behind her hand. “I think I’d better get some rest now.”
Jake stood and laid his hand against her cheek. The pained look she saw in his eyes wouldn’t disappear for weeks, finally worn away only by the passage of time. “Good night, Kate.”
She squeezed his hand. “Good night,” she said, and she turned over in bed as Jake extinguished the lamp and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. Although she was exhausted—she felt more physically tired than she could ever remember, in fact—sleep would not come to her. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the tall digger leaning over her, ripping her dress open and exposing her to the three of them there in the alley. As much as she tried to think of pleasant things, to fill her head with images of the ocean waves rolling to shore, or the way the green fields spread out away from the farmhouse, those pictures were soon erased by the memory of the men’s hands tight on her wrists; of the sound of their breath, like panting dogs; of their smell, a sour, dirty stench that seemed to have stuck to her even after a hot bath.
Kate turned over and opened the nightstand drawer to retrieve the matches. She lit the lamp again and lay there staring at the ceiling for a long time, trying to make her mind as clear as the blank white expanse that hung over her. Everything is fine, she told herself. It was scary and it’s normal to feel upset, but in the end everything is fine. In spite of the counseling she tried to apply to herself, her eyes stung as tears appeared and welled up. She blinked and the tears raced each other down opposite cheeks, finally jumping from her skin to the pillow below.
For a girl who had grown up near the ocean, she was now experiencing an eerily familiar sensation. It seemed like she was afloat in a sea of terror. Emotion rose and fell within her, leaving her calm in one moment and teetering on the edge of a wave the next, as if she would capsize at the next second and find herself drowning in fright. Kate sat up and wiped the tears from her face. Her heart was pounding and she realized that her breath was raggedly flying in and out of her lungs as if she’d run all the way from town. It felt like she was suffocating.
She rolled out of bed and began to pace quickly back and forth, as if she’d been thrust into a race she hadn’t asked to enter. She felt like a volcano had awakened inside her, as if pressure were building up higher and higher, and shortly she’d reach a point of no return. I’ve got to calm down. I’ll lose my mind if I keep doing this. She thought back to a dog that she had seen as a child; it had been kept in a tiny pen outside a house that she passed every day while walking with her nanny. The dog would race back and forth inside the little cage, tirelessly passing the few steps from one side to the other, and she clearly remembered the day it had been let out of the cage. Kate and the nanny had stood for minutes and watched the dog, now free, yet pacing back and forth in the same small space as if it had never been let out of the cage at all. It had seemed funny to Kate as a girl. Tonight it seemed terrible.
She stopped pacing, closed her eyes, and tried to relax her clenched fists. She fought to take in a full breath, gasping like a drowning woman, and her eyes flew open again. She was facing the window, and up the hill she could see Sam’s cabin, a figure silhouetted against the glow from inside.
There, his form clearly visible against the lamplight behind him, was Sam, sitting at the window. He’s watching me, she thought, then immediately corrected herself. He’s watching over me. She knelt at the window and rested her forearms on the sill. There could be no mistake; he was there like a soldier on duty, making sure that she was safe. Kate was able to take a deep breath and felt her heart begin to slow. She watched as Sam raised his arm, waving to her across the darkness, as if sending her a message. As if telling her that she could rest easy, that he was protecting her even now. She felt herself grow calm as she remembered the way he’d held her against his body, her head against his chest as they rode together out of town.
I’ve been so wrong, she thought. He’s not just some farm boy, not just some bumpkin. Tonight he was my answered prayer. She raised her hand as well, waving to him in the night, before she stood up and returned to bed. Kate blew out the lantern and turned over to watch the glow from Sam’s cabin. She couldn’t have known, of course, but she was fast asleep long before Sam finally ended his vigil and his own lamp went dark as well.