2
By the time I reached the mouth of the alley, the sun had already gone down.
I was about to push open the gate to that courtyard, so familiar and so strange at once, when a laugh drifted up behind me.
It was a lovely sound, clear and warm and gentle.
The sound I'd listened to for three years, and remembered for seven.
It was Bob Stephens!
My steps stopped, and I turned around without thinking.
And I froze on the spot.
Bob was standing under the maple at the mouth of the alley, in a clean, pale-gray dress shirt.
His arm was around a woman with curled hair, and he was smiling, handing out candy to a neighbor's child.
“Mrs. Chavez, I'll be away a few days, sorry to trouble you looking after my boy Eddie. It's just a little something, nothing much...”
The neighbor woman smiled and took the candy Bob held out, pressing it into the child at her side. “What do you say to Uncle Bob?”
The little one thanked Bob in a small piping voice, then went skipping off.
Once the child was gone, the neighbor woman patted the hand of the woman beside Bob. “Martha Fox, you've got a real eye, landing a sweet man like Bob. Your life together's only going to get better and better. And you two aren't so young anymore, when are you planning on a second one?”
The woman gave a coy little laugh and leaned into Bob. “Oh, Mrs. Chavez, don't tease me. Just Eddie alone is more than I can handle... have another and I'd be worked to death... Bob and I aren't planning on more. Eddie's plenty.”
The neighbor woman was about to press her further when the Stephens gate suddenly swung open.
A boy of five or six came running out, wrapped himself around Bob's leg, and called up in that small piping voice, “Daddy, Mommy, come inside already, I'm hungry.”
Bob stroked the boy's head, doting on him, then turned to the neighbor woman. “Sorry, Mrs. Chavez, the kid's fussing. We'll talk another day.” And with one arm around the child and the other holding the woman's hand, he went into the courtyard.
Watching Bob play the picture of a happy family, I felt the blood in my veins freeze all at once.
Seven years I'd spent in that poor mountain hollow of Millstone Village, face to the dirt, back to the sky.
Seven years fending off the village's old bachelor.
All so Bob could suffer a little less, so he could settle down and spend his life with me in peace.
I never imagined it was all one-sided, all in my own head.
He'd married me for one thing only: so I could take his rural labor assignment for him, and he could go have his good times with another woman. I didn't go charging in to cry and make a scene.
All those years in Millstone Village, when the assigned laborers stole my work credits, when the old bachelor cornered me in the woodshed, I never let a single tear fall.
I certainly wasn't going to hand this lying pair the satisfaction now.
I drew out the marriage certificate I'd kept hidden against my body for seven years, turned, and walked toward the police station nearby.
Since Bob had no heart left for me, I owed him no loyalty either.
He was going to pay for the seven years he'd stolen from me!
