Gwen squeezed her hand, and Rose felt even more embarrassed that she was showing her so much concern. Rose also didn’t know why she had started to cry. She didn’t like crying in front of Gwen. She wanted to be just as strong, and crying over something so small and foolish was just weakness, and she hated weakness.
“My mother loved me,” Rose explained. “She was stupid, but she loved me. She gave me what food we found and lied about having eaten. The following winter when we couldn’t find any more nuts or roots, we ate pine needles.
“My mother died from a fever. By then she was not much more than a skeleton.” Speaking about it brought back her face, the sunken cheeks, lips drawn back showing her gums. “It wasn’t the fever that killed her. It wasn’t starvation either. My mother died of pride-stupid, foolish, asinine pride. She actually died of it. Too proud to ask anyone for help. Too proud to admit her husband was a lousy, miserable bastard. Too proud to eat her share of the…”
She lost her voice. It stalled in her throat, which had closed without warning, as if the taste of what was coming up was far too bitter to suffer on her tongue. She took a breath that shuddered its way in and wiped the stripes of tears flowing down her cheeks with the heels of her hands. “She was too proud to eat her share of what little food we had. She told me she had. She swore she did. But every time I complained about being so hungry it hurt, she always offered me a nut or a partially rotted turnip, claiming she had just found two and already ate hers.”
Rose sniffled and wiped her eyes again.
“After she was gone, I left my pride in that little hut and begged my way to Medford. I’d do anything. Once you’ve spent an afternoon chasing a fly around your house for dinner, once you’ve eaten spiders whole and drooled over worms found while burying your mother with your bare hands, there’s nothing beneath you. All I wanted was to live-I’d forgotten everything else. A clod of dirt doesn’t have dreams. A bit of broken stone doesn’t understand hope. Each morning, all I wanted was to see the next dawn. But you changed that.”
Gwen struggled to sip her tea, as she, too, had wet streaks on her cheeks.
“You aren’t like my mother,” Rose told her. “And you aren’t like me. You stand up for yourself and for others. You make the world be the way you need it to. I can’t do that. Jollin can’t. No one can-no one but you.”
“I’m nothing special, Rose.”
“You are. You’re a hero and you can see the future.” They sat for a time listening to the rain drum overhead. The shower had turned into a full-on pour and the runoff a curtain of water. Somewhere a metal pail was making a muffled set of pings, and the road was filling with water as puddles joined together to form rivers and ponds.
“Why don’t we talk about Dixon instead?” Rose offered a sly smile.
Gwen peered at her over the beautiful new cup with a suspicious squint. “What about him?”
“Rumor has it he proposed.”
Gwen looked shocked. “He did not.”
“Etta says Dixon offered to make ‘a proper woman out of you.’”
“Oh … that.”
“So he did!”
Gwen shrugged.
“What did you say?”
“I told him we would be good friends, always. He’s a very good man, but…”
“But what?”
“He’s not … him.”
“Him? Who’s him?”
Gwen looked embarrassed and shuffled her feet under the blanket. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head, then covered her face with the blanket. “Maybe he doesn’t even exist. Maybe he’s something I’ve invented, pieced together over the years. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself he’s real and isn’t just my hope of what is possible.”
“You’re turning away a good-living, hardworking, breathing man for the idea of an imaginary one?”
She peeked out from the folds. “Foolish, huh? Some hero.”
“Well … it’s very romantic, I guess, but…”
“You can say it-stupid. That’s what I’m being.”
“What if this white knight doesn’t ever show up?”
“He’s not a knight. I’m not sure what or who he is, but he’s definitely not a knight. And if he’s not just a figment of my imagination, then he’s coming.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I sent Dixon to bring him.”
“What? How did you-”
“I read Dixon’s palm and saw that he would be the one to bring him here.”
“Wait. I thought this man, this not-a-knight, was just a dream, a fantasy of yours.”
“He might still be.” Gwen paused and looked as if she might stop there, but Rose was not about to let her quit now, not after being forced to vomit up her whole life story.
“Explain, please.”
Gwen frowned. “On her deathbed, my mother made me promise to come here … to Medford. And I received those gold coins from someone telling me the same thing. That’s why I was given the money. To help … him.”
“To help who?”
“Him.”
Rose shook her head, frustrated. “Make sense, will you?”
“I can’t, because it doesn’t. I don’t know why I was supposed to come to Medford. I don’t know who this man is-or anything about him. I just know that I have to be here when he arrives. I have to help him and…”
“And what?”
Gwen tilted her head down, hiding her eyes.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been waiting so long, thinking about him, you know? Wondering what he might be like. Who he really is, what he looks like. Why I have to be the one.”
“Are you saying you’ve fallen for a man you’ve never met?”
“Maybe.”
“But that’s okay because you’re supposed to, right? The two of you are meant for each other, yes?”
She shrugged. “No one said anything about that. It’s just what I want to believe. He could be married for all I know.”
“Did they at least give you a name?”
She shook her head with an awkward smile. “I’m ruining my reputation with you, aren’t I?”
“Are you kidding? You can do magic and have a mysterious destiny. I want to be you.”
Gwen smiled self-consciously. “Everyone has a destiny.”
Rose looked at her hand, then thrust it out. “What’s mine?”
Gwen stared a moment. “You’re not afraid? Even after seeing what happened with Stane?”
“I said I wasn’t afraid of you, didn’t I? And this proves it. Go ahead, look into my future. Maybe I have a mysterious stranger coming my way too. Only don’t tell me about my death. I think I’d rather not know, okay?”
Gwen sighed. “All right, let’s take a look.”
Rose watched as Gwen opened her fingers and spread out the skin of her palm.
“This is interesting. You are going to fall in love. He’s handsome, too, a kind face. You’re going to fall in love and-” The tight grip she held on Rose’s hand relaxed and while she continued to stare at her palm, Rose could tell she wasn’t focusing on it. Her sight shifted to the decking of the porch.
“With who? Who will I fall in love with? Do you know his name?”
Gwen let go of her hand and reached for her tea. She lost control of the saucer and the beautiful porcelain cup slipped, fell, and shattered.
Gwen gasped as she stared at the broken shards of pure white scattered on the porch. “I’m so sorry.” When she looked up at Rose, there were tears in her eyes. “I’m so very sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Rose offered. “We can get another one.”