Free With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) by Ruth Glover Page B

the peace that invariably followed, Dudley raged over his father’s humiliation and his mother’s cruelty. Whether to feel more anger at his mother or his father, he couldn’t decide.
    Rising, Della kissed her husband’s cheek, ruffled his hair, and said, “There’s a dear. I was sure you wouldn’t object to my ordering a bottle.”
    Folding the paper, laying it aside, and beginning to gather up the breakfast dishes, she directed, “You men go and get ready for church while I take care of the dishes and get a chicken in the oven. First, Henley my dear, I know you’ll take care of straining the milk. Dudley, you seem to have gotten a smidgen of syrup on your shirt front; wipe it off, dear. That’s my boy. Do you think you can keep yourself clean while you hitch up? Your shoes, particularly—watch where you step. I’ll be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I do so look forward to Sunday service and the inspiration of Parker Jones’s sermon. Now you pay attention this morning, Dudley, and don’t sit in the back with the Jurgenson boys. Don’t you think that’s a good suggestion, Henley?” She turned to her husband with a brilliant smile.
    Henley swallowed a last gulp of coffee, heard his name, turned toward his wife, and said apologetically, “Sorry, hon, but I was swallowing. What was it?”
    “Henley, Henley, that wool gathering will surely get you in trouble someday,” Della said lightly. “Time to stop daydreaming, Pet. I said I thought the Jurgenson boys were a bad influence. Would you agree?”
    “I’m sure you’re right, hon.”
    Beyond Dudley’s remembrance were the early days when Henley’s submissive responses—“Whatever you say,” and “You’re probably right, hon”—had greatly irked his bride. Confrontations, even the smallest difference of opinion, had thrown Della into such a miserable mood that the young husband, to keep the peace, had begun using the terms. At first, he only succeeded in angering her further. But eventually, as Della became convinced that Henley was not being sarcastic, her annoyance ceased, and she took his answers as confirmation that her opinion was correct, her way best. Never had she understood that Henley was avoiding the scenes that had so marred their first weeks of marriage and so shocked him. And since he never spoke in anything but a peaceable tone, Dudley, too, usually heard without reaction. His father’s words, after all, were the words that set everything right.
    But as he grew older, things didn’t seem right. Dudley had a natural rebellion toward his mother’s overbearing ways and his father’s knuckling under. Once, in the barn, after a particularly strained encounter between his parents, ending with the accustomed giving in by his father, Dudley had burst out, “ Why, Pa . . . why don’t you stick up for yourself? You know you were right in there. I know it; I think Ma knew it, too. Why do you give in like you do?”
    Henley had rested on the handle of the pitchfork he was using to clean the stalls and said, reasonably, “She means well, son. Some people have this nature, you see, where they need to be right. I think your mother may be threatened in some way when anyone opposes her. It doesn’t hurt me to let her have her way, to give in, to bite back an angry response. It would only make for considerably more trouble if I didn’t.
    “And I don’t like trouble, son.” Henley spoke with a certain grimness. “I guess that’s your whole answer. I’m just grateful it’s me and not you. You’re the apple of your mother’s eye. Everything she does for you is out of love, I’m sure. I pray you’ll be allowed to grow up to be a real man. That’s what I want for you.” Then, with unexpected passion, he said, “I’d lay down and die for that.”
    His usual calm restored, Henley resumed his work.
    Eventually Dudley was to conclude that his father sometimes took abuse in order to keep his son from facing it. It made him