Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,49
maybe he scared her. Devil worship wasn’t a joke; he’d been too young to know any better.
Maybe he shouldn’t have told her. Wasn’t something he told too many people.
“Was Minnie in that too?”
“We all were to some extent.” He hated to tattle on her, but he couldn’t lie to Poppy.
“So she knows about you?”
“Yeah. We never talk about it, though. There are just some things you can’t talk about.”
“I understand that.”
“I was kinda hoping you would. Talk to me about what makes you understand. You keep alluding to it, and I’m curious.”
“You’re curious? About me?” she asked lightly. Like she wanted to tease him instead of be serious.
He’d let go of her hand after they’d gotten to the porch. But now he pushed off the post and walked over to where she stood in front of the banister, her hands on it, now leaning over the railing with her tongue out.
“If you’re trying to get a snowflake, you’ll probably have to get off the porch. You’re never gonna stretch far enough to get out from underneath the eave without falling over the banister.”
“Maybe I want to fall over the banister. Maybe that’s preferable to telling you what you want to know about me.”
“Hey. It can’t be that bad. Can’t be worse than what I’ve done.”
What in the world could she have done? What could make her so ashamed that she couldn’t admit it, especially after what he’d said?
She straightened, then turned, propping her hip on the banister and facing him. Her arms crossed over her chest, and she looked up at him.
“I suppose you’ll be angry at me if I don’t tell you?”
He hesitated for a minute. Time slipped by between them. He didn’t want to give her an answer that wasn’t true.
“I guess I just told you something that not too many people know about me. But that doesn’t mean that you’re required in any way to do the same. I don’t want you to feel like you have to. And no. I won’t be mad. It’s your right to either tell me or not.”
“You know, I want to trust you. And just for the last few minutes, I’ve been biting my tongue over trying to say anything. I’ve never had to do that before.”
“No pressure.” He truly meant that. As much as he was even more curious now than he had been, he definitely didn’t want to hurt her. “If it’s going to upset you. Don’t worry about it.”
“It probably will. But I’m going to tell you anyway.” Her voice was firm. “You might even have heard about it. Some people have. It’s one of the stories that are so unbelievably bad it made the national news.”
His stomach balled up. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed. He had a feeling he didn’t want to hear what she was going to say.
“I grew up on a farm too. I was the third child out of eleven children. When this happened, my mom was pregnant with Hazel. She and my dad and I were doing the milking that morning.” She let out a hard breath. “We all took turns. It was just my morning.” She lifted a hand, as though that thought needed extra emphasis—that it was randomly her turn to milk. “That’s just the way it was. It was winter, and we had a fire in the woodstove in the kitchen. I know, people don’t have woodstoves anymore. But when you have eleven kids, you have more help than you do money. And wood was free. We actually heated our whole house with it. And in northern Missouri where we lived, it got a lot colder than it does here.”
He got the feeling she was giving him extra details just because she was trying to build herself up to saying whatever it was that she needed to say.
He let her talk.
The real temptation was to close the distance between them and put an arm around her. It probably wouldn’t make things easier for her, but it would make him feel better. He’d been wanting to do it for a while.
“Dad had fixed the fire, got it going in the woodstove. My sisters would be getting up in an hour or so to make breakfast which would be on the table when we were done milking the cows. My brothers would be getting up about the same time to come out and feed, but it didn’t take quite as long to feed as it did to milk. We always had everything