Free Blue Moon by Jill Marie Landis Page A

with no notion of responsibility. She had up and disappeared toward the middle of March. Now the boys had no supervision at all while he was in the fields or out hunting.
    On the threshold, Payson paused and looked at the planks of the rough-hewn door. Although he felt as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders, he straightened them anyway and tried to summon a smile. The expression felt unnatural, more like a grimace. He set the broken plow handle against the outer wall.
    Swinging the door open, he stepped into the close, dark interior of the cabin. His gaze immediately went to Susanna and once more he was filled with dread. She was in the rocker, just as he had known she would be, staring into the cold, ash-filled hearth. Her slim, tapered fingers were knotted together in her lap, her head bowed. Long tendrils of her light brown hair straggled along the sides of her face. She did not even look up when he walked in and quietly closed the door behind him. He was scared to death for her, scared of what would become of them all.
    “Susanna?”
    His wife did not respond. Payson walked over to the rocker, stood behind her, reached out and laid his hand on her shoulder. He closed his eyes, wishing he could will his strength into her. She was only twenty-four, too young to dwell in the depths of despair for the rest of her life. That was what scared him most of all, the idea that one day she would tire of being so very miserable and take her own life. There was so much he could not forgive himself for already, that he doubted he could exist under such a burden, even for his boys.
    If there were only something he could do to bring her back, he would gladly do it to save her, but he had no notion what that might be anymore. There was no way to change the past.
    “Where are the boys, Susanna?”
    He wished she would shrug her shoulder at least, or give him some sign that she had heard him, but Susanna did not stir. Payson sighed. He walked past the shelves where his collection of books gathered dust. How long had it been since he had an hour to himself? Since he had been able to luxuriate in reading or work on one of his own poems? He ignored the books and went to the long trestle table that took up far too much space in the small room. He sat down, thirsting for a cup of coffee, too tired to make one for himself.
    He had barely hit the bench when the door flew open and banged against the wall behind it.
    “Little Pay’th cut hith head off!” Freddie, his younger son, yelled at the top of his lungs as he came flying through the door.
    Susanna did not even flinch. Payson got to his feet, concerned but not panicked. Little Pay had had an accident nearly every other day since they had moved to Illinois, and four-year-old Freddie was always happy to exaggerate every one of them.
    Payson was on his way to the door when Little Pay walked in with his hand pressed to his forehead. A trickle of blood showed between his fingers.
    “I cut myself down by the crick.” Little Pay, not having noticed Payson yet, was calling out to Susanna.
    “I’ll get a rag,” Payson said, stepping over the bench.
    Little Pay swung his gaze across the room, looking at Payson and then at his mother, who had not moved at all.
    “I didn’t know you were here, Pa.”
    Disheartened, the boy started across the room to get his own rag. On the way he bumped into the elegant carved sideboard shoved up against a wall, a remnant of their former life. It was a lasting piece of luxury, a wedding gift from Susanna’s father, one that looked as out of place in the crude cabin as a tinker at a governor’s ball.
    “Ouch!” Little Pay bellowed when he connected with the sideboard. “I hit my head again. I think it’s bleedin’ worse.”
    “He’th bleedin’ worthe!” Freddie echoed.
    The rocker started to creak.
    Picking up a dishtowel on the way across the room, Payson went directly to his older son. By now, Freddie had climbed up on Payson and