26
Louisa
* * *
Two days after the wedding, Theo returned to work. The house felt empty without him. We’d spent so much time together that I missed him. At breakfast, perhaps sensing my loneliness, Quinn asked if I’d like to take a walk with her and the little girls. I gladly accepted.
The temperatures were still cool this time of morning. Dew sparkled on the flowers and shrubs. A bunny hopped into the path in front of us and froze, staring at us with one eye. Delphia squealed and lunged toward the poor animal, scaring it back into its hiding place. Never daunted, Delphia ran ahead toward the pasture. The horses nibbled grass and batted flies away with their tails.
“Give these to Lucy and Bell.” Quinn took two small apples out of her apron pocket and handed them to the girls. Delphia and Addie thanked her and ran toward the fence, then dexterously climbed over it and into the pen.
We walked toward the rose garden in silence. Birds chirped from the trees, and the grasses of the meadow swayed gracefully in the breeze.
“What do you think of the spot Theo likes for your cottage?” Quinn asked as she scooped to smell a yellow rose.
“I like it very much.” What wasn’t there to like, after all?
“And you don’t mind living so close to all of Theo’s family?”
“Quite the opposite.”
She straightened and looked up at the sky. “I wasn’t sure Theo would come back to us. Of all the kids, I thought he might be the one who wouldn’t return.”
“Why?”
“Because he was ambitious. I thought he might want more than our little town could offer.”
“I’m glad you were wrong.”
She gazed at me with a thoughtful expression. “I was worried, you know, about the two of you. But I can see I was wrong.”
“Why were you worried?”
“I wasn’t sure you loved him,” Quinn said. “I knew how he felt about you. Loving a woman who didn’t love him back would be a curse worse than death for a man like Theo.”
“I wasn’t sure I could love a man. I didn’t know what it was before. Love, that is. At least not for myself. I could see others had a special bond. My mother and father, for example. You and Alexander. I didn’t think it would come to me.”
“Until you feel it yourself, it’s almost impossible to imagine.”
“Was it that way for you?” I asked.
“I didn’t think much about love one way or the other,” Quinn said. “My only thoughts were for my mother and sister. We were so devastated after my father died, both emotionally and financially. I had to step up and take care of them. Which led me here.”
“To us.” I smiled. “You made all the difference for me. And now, marrying Theo, my good fortune seems to have come back to you once more.”
She touched my cheek with her cool fingers. “No, dear one. You did all this yourself. The first day you stepped into that classroom, despite all the reasons why you shouldn’t or couldn’t.
“You must miss your mother.”
“I do,” I said. “Father too.”
“When I lost my mother last year, I was heartbroken. For all my life, I’d been doing things to please her and make her proud. When she passed away, it left a big hole in my life. There’s not a day I don’t think of her dozens of times. No one loves us quite like our mothers.”
“She didn’t have to love me,” I said. “Yet she did.”
“When mothers leave too soon, as your birth mother did, there should always be someone there to take their place.?
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