Brave Beginnings by Ruth Ann Nordin Read Free Book Online Page B

agree to. She could be very
content with this. All she needed to add were the children she and
Ernest would have together. Her heart ached. She remembered holding
her niece. She did want to hold her own baby. Looking at Ernest
again, she knew this was her only chance of having a baby. She
didn’t doubt he’d make a good husband and father. He’d provide well
for their children.
    When dessert was over, Julia helped his
mother and her aunt with clearing the table while the men retired
to the parlor to talk. Yes, this would be her life, should she
choose to accept it. It would be a routine. Predictable and safe.
Familiar. It could work. She could be content.
    Her mind cycled through these thoughts, and
after awhile, she suspected that she was trying to convince herself
that losing Chogan wasn’t the end of the world. There was life
after him. She blinked back her tears as she helped dry the dishes.
Ernest’s mother washed them, her aunt rinsed them, and she dried
them. It was orderly. Predictable. Safe. Familiar. It was fine, and
she could handle fine. Couldn’t she?
    “You’re awfully quiet,” Mrs. Freeman said,
peering around Erin’s head to look at Julia.
    “Oh, that’s how Julia is,” her aunt replied.
“She was a quiet girl too.”
    “Well, it’s nice to have you as a guest,” the
woman added.
    Julia smiled and said thank you.
    After they were done, Mrs. Freeman gathered
the tea set that was on a tray and led them out to the parlor where
she placed the tray on the table in the middle of the room. “Drink
it while it’s hot.” She poured the tea into the cups and handed
them out to everyone.
    Julia took her cup and sat next to her aunt
on the settee. Her aunt shot her a questioning glance but didn’t
say anything. Yes, Julia knew she could have sat closer to Ernest.
Ernest had a chair next to him, but she had been next to him at the
meal and figured that was enough for one night. So his mother sat
in the chair, and Ernest and his father, who remained across from
each other, continued their discussion. It took Julia a good minute
to realize they talked about the bank where Ernest worked.
    Julia yawned, and beside her, she felt her
aunt’s body shake in a silent chuckle. She had to force her
attention off of her aunt so she wouldn’t burst out laughing. Her
aunt was just as bored as she was.
    “We can’t give out a loan to everyone who
applies,” Ernest told his father. “There are some men who simply
cannot pay the debt back, so we have to be selective about who we
do business with.”
    “And that’s good,” his father agreed. “You
don’t need undesirables over there.”
    “It is important to maintain the right
image.”
    Julia’s mind began to wander as she sipped
the sweet tea, and as it did, scattered accounts from the past came
to mind. Most prominent were the times she’d spent hunting rabbits
with Chogan.
    “ You focus too much on me. I make
you...nervous?” he asked.
    “ Of course, you make me nervous. You know
what you’re doing, and you’re watching me,” she replied.
    “ I try to help.”
    “ Maybe if you didn’t stare, then it would
help.”
    “ I watch your technique.”
    “ Couldn’t you take a break and look at the
rabbits?”
    “ But I not make them stay still. They move
as they will. I can help you.”
    She sighed. “It’s just unnerving, that’s
all. I do better if I’m not being stared at all the time.”
    “ But it is nice to look at you.”
    At the time, his meaning didn’t sink in, even
though she suspected he meant that he found her to be beautiful.
Now, looking back, she understood what he was trying to tell her.
And then he had held her arms and angled the bow so she could shoot
the arrow right. Her skin still tingled from the memory of his
touch.
    She caught the tear before it slid down her
cheek. She stared at the tea in her cup so she could quench the
swell of emotion that threatened to come up to the surface. Not
here. She could cry all she