“I suppose I am a little tired,” Layton answered stiffly.
“Or cold, more likely.”
He felt those eyes on him, searching, studying. “Unless you are sporting a heavy coat beneath that blanket, you are probably colder than I am.” Layton stepped a little closer to the riverbank and a little farther away from her. Distance was key.
“I am a little chilled,” she admitted with a hint of a laugh. “I knew my excursion would be short today, but I had to come.”
“Why is that, Marion?” Her Christian name slipped out before he had time to check it.
“Tradition, I suppose.” Her offhand tone held a wistfulness that piqued Layton’s curiosity.
“Another story?” he pressed.
“Of course.”
“Well, then, I am eager to hear it.” Layton turned back toward her and smiled, a mistake he recognized in an instant. She returned his smile, and it was all he could do not to kiss her again. Instead, he walked a little past her and leaned against a tree, hoping he looked suitably casual and unaffected.
“Once upon a time.” She smiled a touch saucily, and Layton looked away as subtly as he could manage. “A handsome young man and a kindhearted young lady met and fell in love. They were married and soon had two children, a strapping son and a loving daughter.”
Layton smiled in spite of himself at the familiar opening. He hadn’t been expecting one of her storybook stories. Something in her tone when she’d told him her trips were tradition had led him to think this story would be a chapter from her own history.
“The kindhearted young lady was a very attentive mother and a lover of nature. Every Sunday, after church, she walked with her daughter along the banks of a mighty river, watching the birds in the sky, admiring the flowers during the spring, noting the changing leaves in autumn, searching for Drops of Gold in the winter when they stopped to sit beneath their amazing tree.
“Every week, they walked along the river, stopping in the same spot to watch and admire and share their thoughts and dreams. When the daughter was but a babe, her mother wrapped her in a blanket to keep her warm. As the daughter grew, she continued to wrap a blanket around her shoulders during their walks. Her father often joked that there was no need for clocks on Sundays with his two ladies keeping so rigorously to their schedule.
“They walked every Sunday without fail. Until one day when the young girl was all of ten. Sunday came and went without a single person walking that particular stretch of bank or sitting beneath the magnificent tree.” Marion’s expression grew strangely distant. Her tone lost most of its cheer. “The girl’s mother was ill. Very, very ill. She told her daughter she wished they could walk again one more time. But by the next Sunday, she was dead.
“Her daughter never missed another Sunday walk nor the chance to sit along the river and watch. It was a balm for her grief and a tonic for the loneliness that would come afterward.”
The story ended there, abrupt and unresolved. And Layton knew, suddenly understood, the truth about all of the stories: the handsome young man, the kindhearted young lady, their strapping son, and their loving daughter. This was Marion’s family, her memories, her history. The Drops of Gold he’d so inconsiderately dismissed the first time she’d shared the idea with him were her connections to her past, to a much-mourned mother. The boy who’d accidentally shot his dog was her brother, the same brother who’d caused such ruckus at the dinner table. The father who’d laughed along, who’d searched out his son in the tragedy, was her father. The mother, who was so obviously the sunshine of the tiny family, was Marion’s mother, the mother she still seemed to mourn heavily and for whose death she carried in her heart a feeling of responsibility.
“Oh, Marion,” he whispered. How had this woman managed to brighten his life, his and Caroline’s, so much when her own was so rife with tragedy?
She turned her face up to him. The shimmer of an unshed tear stood in stark contrast to the smile she offered. “I love to sit here—or stand, as it were—and think of her, to remember all of the things we spoke of. I have fished out more Drops of Gold in my twenty years than is probably advisable. I’m bound to expect something spectacular out of life after collecting so many harbingers of good fortune.”
“Then the stories are true.” He hadn’t meant to sound so disbelieving, but the realization came as something of a shock.
“I always said they were.” A chuckle softened the scold.
“Does Caroline realize you are telling her of yourself, of your family?”
“No.” Marion shook her head. “There is a certain degree of anonymity to telling these things the way I have. I can warn Caroline against a few of my own childhood entanglements without being required to admit my folly.” She laughed lightly, but a serious look crossed her face. She moved absently toward him. Layton welcomed the nearness, wishing pointlessly that she could always be at his side. “Eventually she will want to know how the story ends, what becomes of the family she now knows nearly as well as I do.”