“You don’t think I’ll look ridiculous in them?” Becca asked after dinner that night. They’d just finished the dishes and she’d asked Will to wait a minute before he disappeared into his office for the evening. She needed his opinion. After all, they made a lot of public appearances together.
“I think you’ll look beautiful.”
The air in the kitchen was charged as their eyes met, held, spoke things they wouldn’t allow themselves to say.
Becca swallowed. “You don’t think they’re too young? I haven’t worn jumpers in years.”
“Maybe you should have.”
Not sure what he meant by that remark—was it a compliment or a dig at the way she’d changed? Becca gathered up the maternity clothes and started fold
ing and returning them to the bag. But she couldn’t erase the brief glimpse she’d had of Will’s desire for her. Or the answering inferno she felt in herself. They’d been making love since they were seventeen years old. In all that time, they’d never gone more than a week without it, and usually they reached for each other several times a week. They were now going on four months.
Becca was deathly afraid of the way that fact changed their future.
“I had lunch with my mom and sisters today,” she said as she folded. He was still standing there. And she wanted to keep him with her as long as she could.
“It’s Wednesday. Right,” he said as though only just remembering. “How are they?”
“Good.” Sari was great. Her sister had a new strength, a strength she’d never had, even before Tanya’s death. “We’re wrapping up the Samuel Montford biography.”
Will came over to the table and sat down. “Tell me about him.”
Becca looked at him silently for a moment, wondering why he’d stayed with her when almost every night for the past few months he’d escaped to his office as soon as the dishes were done. She was afraid to hope that he missed her as much as she missed him. Desperately. Afraid to trust that somehow they’d find a way back to each other.
“I really feel a kinship with him.” She started slowly, speaking of a subject that meant a lot to her and was without pitfalls. Leaving the rest of the clothes piled on one end of the table, she sat down across from Will. “Samuel Montford suffered and survived emotionally painful things, but his spirit remained intact, and that gives me strength.”
“How so?” He leaned forward, his interest plainly visible.
She told him about Samuel’s early hardships, his broken dreams, lost family, broken heart. The way he’d responded by giving years of his life to helping Indian tribes, whose lands, whose very way of life, were being stolen from them. She described what Samuel had learned from the tribes, lessons about family, community, responsibility. Finally she told Will how Samuel had met the missionary woman, fallen in love again.
Will listened intently, asking pertinent questions. Until that last bit. He looked a little skeptical when it came to Samuel’s second foray into love.
“Samuel knew, even before he and Lizzie moved to Shelter Valley, that the town’s major enterprise was going to be a university that rivaled his beloved Harvard.”
Will nodded. “He founded the university, of course,” he said. As the current president, he certainly knew the school’s history. “Inspired by those Indian tribes’ strengths, their values—though not their religions, per se—the university began with what, these days, we’d call a mission statement. The students at Montford were not only to learn knowledge and skills from textbooks and classes, but from the example of the people who taught them. They were to learn the importance of honor, of wisdom and strength, of acceptance and peace. The value in retaining an open mind…”
Will had been reciting almost by rote, but his voice slowly faded.
“I’d forgotten that,” he said softly, looking inward as his fingers tapped the kitchen table.
Becca sent up a tiny silent prayer.
“Did you know that he wrote that mission statement in memory of Clara and their lost son?” she asked him.
Will shook his head.
“And in honor of Lizzie and the children they had together. He wanted to change the world.”
“I’ve never heard that.”
“The best thing about all this…” Becca’s voice was passionate as she tried to communicate with her husband indirectly, since that was the only way she seemed to be able to reach him. “The best thing is, he really believed he could change the world. Even after all his disappointments, he didn’t give up.”
Will nodded. His head still bent, he glanced up at her.
Nervous to push any further, Becca sat back. “Did you know that most of his instructors were his scholarly companions from Boston?”
“I didn’t,” Will said, his face relaxing into an interested smile. “It’s a shame so much of this information became lost or obscure.”