Eternity Read online

  Wrapping him in two blankets, covering his head, she pulled him to her and rubbed his back and sides.

  Josh came to her and carried Tem to the fire, where he had put the coffeepot filled with rainwater and a handful of Carrie’s tea. “Get out of those wet clothes,” he ordered.

  It was then that Carrie realized that she was nearly as cold as Tem. Moving to the back of the cave, she took off her clothes and wrapped herself in a blanket, then went back to Josh and Tem.

  Josh was holding his son to him as though he meant to put life back into him, and as Carrie watched, Tem’s eyes fluttered.

  “Tem,” Josh said. “I want you to talk to me.”

  Lazily, Tem opened his eyes and smiled at his father. “I fell. I saw the wild girl and I fell.”

  Josh looked up at Carrie. The poor child must have felt guilty at scaring Tem. “It’s all right,” Josh said, stroking his son’s damp hair. “You’re safe now and your wild girl told us where to find you.”

  “I didn’t get a rattlesnake.”

  “I’m glad that you didn’t.”

  Turning his head, Tem looked at Carrie, then back at his father. “You brought her.”

  “She wouldn’t let me leave her behind.” He smiled at his son. “Wait until you see the knots she can tie. Beautiful.”

  Tem closed his eyes. “Do you think Carrie is the best person in the world? The greatest?”

  “Right this moment I do.”

  Tem smiled, and within moments he was asleep.

  Moving close to them, Carrie stroked Tem’s forehead. “He’s still cool to the touch.” She looked up at Josh. There was blood running down the side of his head, and Carrie reached out to touch the place, but pulled her hand back.

  “You’d better get into something dry,” she said. “There are more blankets over there.” When Josh hesitated, Carrie said, “I’ll take care of him. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  For a moment she wasn’t sure that Josh was going to turn the precious burden of his son over to her, but then she sat down by the fire, and he placed Tem in her arms. Carrie thought that it was perhaps the most precious gift anyone had ever given her and surely the most trust that had ever been shown her.

  While she held Tem, Josh stood behind her undressing and wrapping himself in a blanket. When he was done, he went to the horses and unsaddled them, but the blanket kept slipping so Josh, with a curse of frustration, wrapped the blanket about his waist.

  Carrie smiled at the sight of his strong, muscular bare back. No matter how bad his farming was, it had put muscle on him. He dropped the saddles by the fire, then brought the bags of food and pulled out a big chunk of bacon.

  “I should have brought a skillet,” Carrie said guiltily. “I wasn’t thinking too well when I packed.”

  Taking a knife from his saddle bag, Josh sliced the bacon. “I can cook it on a stick,” he said, then looked up at her in a teasing way. “Or you can cook it with your cursing.”

  Feeling herself blushing, Carrie looked down at Tem. “I didn’t know you heard me.”

  “They probably heard you in Eternity.”

  She laughed. “That mare wanted to go down the mountain when I wanted to go up.”

  “She’s a bit lazy and frightens easily.” He was holding a piece of bacon on a stick and watching it fry in the fire. “Truthfully, I didn’t think you’d get her up here.”

  “Is that why you gave her to me? You wanted her to carry me back down the mountain?”

  “The thought did cross my mind.”

  Carrie didn’t say anything; she didn’t have to. He had not wanted her with him, had thought she’d be a hindrance, so he’d given her a horse that he didn’t think she could control. But she had controlled the horse, and she’d been a help to him when he’d found Tem.

  “I couldn’t have brought him up without you,” Josh said softly. “If you hadn’t been here, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  “You’d have managed,” she said, but she was pleased by his praise. She watched him for a few moments as he fried bacon. “You were certainly skilled at getting me out of my corset,” she said in a voice of mock indignation. “Have you had much practice with corset strings?”

  Josh didn’t look at her, but concentrated on the bacon. “I’m better with corsets than with corn.”

  Carrie smiled because he had come very close to making a joke about himself. “Where did you learn so much…about corsets, I mean.”

  “Not the same place I learned about corn.”

  Carrie frowned, because he had told her nothing.

  After putting three slices of bacon on a chunk of bread, Josh filled a mug with boiling hot tea. “Wake him up. I want to get this down him.”

  Carrie pulled Tem to a sitting position, although it wasn’t easy since her arms had gone to sleep while holding him. Tem was tired and sleepy and he had no desire to wake up, but neither Carrie nor Josh would allow him to continue sleeping.

  When he had drunk three cups of hot tea and had eaten a large bacon sandwich, he snuggled down by Carrie and went back to sleep. Sitting by him, she stroked his forehead, smiling down at him.

  “Nothing makes you realize how insignificant everything else is until you come close to losing a child,” Carrie said, and when she looked up at Josh, she saw that he was staring at her from across the fire. He was cooking more bacon for the two of them. With the rain closing off the outside of the cave and everything being darkness at the edges of the fire, it felt very intimate to be together. The firelight glistened off Josh’s bare chest. “Who do you think the little girl is? And did you see the old man? He helped me pull the rope up.”

  “I didn’t see him,” Josh said, “but it’s my guess that he’s Starbuck. No one that I’ve ever talked to has actually seen him. He’s a hermit.”

  “And the child?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of her, but then I haven’t been in Eternity long.”

  She watched him put bacon on bread. “Maybe your brother knows.”

  “Maybe,” Josh said in a way that let her know that was the end of that conversation. He handed her a sandwich and a cup of very strong tea.

  “Where were you before you came to Eternity?” She watched his face and was sure that she saw a flicker of pain go across it. What had he done that caused such a look? What had he done that made him keep his past a secret? Carrie was well aware that his children had been instructed to never tell anything about where they had come from or where they had been. Poor Dallas was so confused about what she could and could not tell that sometimes she thought she wasn’t supposed to mention Carrie’s brothers to Carrie.

  “I’ve been many places,” Josh said, and Carrie knew he wasn’t going to say any more.

  The intimacy was broken, for he was reminding her that she was an outsider. If she sometimes looked at the children and couldn’t imagine a life without them, she knew that Josh didn’t feel that way about her. To him she was someone who was going to leave in a few days, and he wasn’t about to share any secrets with her.

  In silence, Carrie ate her sandwich and stared at the fire, no longer attempting to make conversation. She chastised herself, for what had she expected, that she’d help him when he needed it and he’d say that he had misjudged her? Was he going to tell her that she wasn’t an empty-headed piece of fluff after all? If she hadn’t come to Eternity, if she hadn’t played a trick on Josh in the first place, Tem wouldn’t have decided to go after rattlesnakes, and Josh wouldn’t have needed to climb down a ravine and—

  “No stories about your brothers tonight?” Josh asked.

  She knew he was trying to lighten the silence between them, but it didn’t help. “Why don’t you tell me about your brother?” She said it with more venom than she’d meant.

  Josh looked at the fire for a moment. “He’s the best farmer in the world. Perfect corn; perfect beets. Everything in straight, even rows. I don’t think a bug would dare attack his plants.”