Twice Loved (copy2) by Lavyrle Spencer Read Free Book Online Page B

her knuckles cracked softly, while from his side of the bed came a throaty sound, half relief, half despair. She heard the shush of the feather pillow as he turned to face her and ground his thumb into the back of her hand with possessive desperation.
    When he finally spoke, his voice was guttural with emotion. “Laura, I’m scared.”
    A thorn seemed to pierce her heart. “Don’t be,” she reassured, though she was, too.
    There were things he could not say, would not say, understood things that neither had ever admitted but that were suddenly implicit between them.
    During their childhood and adolescence it had always been the three of them, forever comrades. But it had never been any secret that Laura had eyes only for Rye. When news of his death reached Nantucket, Dan had suffered with her, the two of them walking the windswept beaches, knowing that particular torment reserved for those who mourn without the benefit of a corpse. Helplessly, they’d wandered, needing the proof of death’s finality. But that final proof was denied them by the greedy ocean, which cared little for man’s need to lay a spirit to rest.
    During those restless, roaming days, Dan’s despair was shorter-lived than Laura’s, for with Rye gone, he was free to court her as he’d always dreamed of doing. But he lived those days under a mantle of guilt, grateful that Rye’s death had cleared the way for him, yet sickened by that very gratitude.
    He had won Laura mainly by becoming indispensable to her.
    She had awakened one morning to the sound of the ax in her back yard and had found Dan there, chopping her winter wood. When the crisp weather warned of imminent winter, he had come again, unasked, with a load of kelp with which to ballast the foundations of the house against the intrusive drafts of the harsh climate. When she grew cumbersome with pregnancy, Dan came daily to carry water, to fill the wood-box, to bring her fresh oranges, to insist that she put her feet up and rest when backaches riddled. And to watch her eyes fill with sorrow as she brooded before the fire and wondered if the baby would look like Rye. When she went into labor, it was Dan who fetched the midwife and Laura’s mother, then paced the backyard feverishly, as Rye would have done had he been there. It was Dan who came to her bedside to peep at the infant and smooth Laura’s brow with a promise that he would always be there when she and Josh needed him.
    Thus, she grew to depend on Dan for all the husbandly support he was more than willing to give, long before he ever asked her to be his wife. They drifted into marriage as naturally as the bleached planks of ancient vessels drift to Nantucket’s shores at high tide. And if intense passion was not a part of Laura’s second courtship, security and companionship were.
    As in most marriages, there was one who loved more, and in this one it was Dan. Yet he was secure at last, for the rival who’d once claimed Laura was no longer there. She was Dan’s at last, and she loved him. He had never dissected that love, never admitted that much of it was prompted by gratitude, not only for his physical and financial support, but because he truly loved Josh as if the boy were his own and was as good a father as any natural father could be.
    But when Dan had stepped into the house this noon and found Rye Dalton standing there, he’d felt the very foundation of his marriage threatened.
    Lying beside Laura now, his throat ached with questions he did not want to ask for fear her answers would be those he dreaded hearing. Yet there was one he could not withhold, though his heart swelled with foreboding at the thought of putting it to her. His thumb ground against her hand. He swallowed and sent the question through the dark in a strange, tight voice.
    “What were you and Rye doing when I walked in today?”
    “Doing?” But the word sounded pinched and unnatural.
    “Yes ... doing. Why did Josh say you jumped when he walked