Blue Candy

The four days Leila spent alone were deeply strange.

Taking the old man's half-joking words to heart, she locked the windows and brought the hunting rifle that hung in his room to rest beside her bed.

Even after preparing for every contingency and climbing under the covers, she kept waking. She startled at the night birds' cries and suffered nightmares that came without warning. Between dreams of being beaten or abandoned, that man's face would flash through. And whenever it did, the memory of that kiss rose with it, dragging the dream deeper, like a swamp.

Then the sun would rise, and a day that felt as if it might never end would begin.

Leila moved without rest. She tended the livestock, worked the kitchen garden, swept and scrubbed every corner of a house that was already clean. She washed every curtain and every set of bedding and reorganized the storeroom. Reading and studying as she usually did was impossible. Somehow the letters would not come into focus.

But the days were too long, and she was alone, and after pacing in restless agitation she would find herself facing another night of nightmares.

On the morning of the fourth day, tightening the strings of her apron as she stepped into the backyard, Leila stopped dead in her tracks.

How strange. Bill spent most of every day at work, and apart from the times she helped him, Leila lived her own days of housework and study. Being together had never meant doing everything together. It had only meant sitting at the same table, coming home in the evening to a house warm with lamplight, talking over an ordinary day—and that was all.

"This is the first time," she murmured blankly, the realization striking her all at once.

From the day she had been cast out and met Bill Remmer, there had not been a single day they had been apart. Bill had always been at her side, and Leila had never once been alone. At the start and end of every day, without fail, Bill had been there.

But now she was alone.

That fact, which she only truly understood after four days, brought another realization with it: how lonely, how wretched, how afraid little Leila Lewellin had been in the days when she wandered the world by herself.

It was a long while before she managed to walk again. Even while she scattered feed for the chickens and milked the goats, her eyes kept darting toward the far side of the yard.

Her wish for him to come home had become as urgent as a prayer. If only Bill came back, everything would be all right. Once she was no longer alone, the sorrow of having to grow up, the memory of that terrible first kiss, all this confusion and helplessness—every bit of it would vanish.

"Kyle Etman."

At the name that came suddenly from behind him, Kyle turned in surprise. His father was standing behind the chair; Kyle had not even noticed him approach.

"Yes, Father."

Kyle rose quickly. On the desk lay a book open to the same page it had been on for days—ever since the evening he had declared he meant to marry Leila.

"You're home early."

Kyle looked from the still-bright window to his father's face. Dr. Etman's mouth curved gently as he regarded his son.

"It's the weekend, Kyle."

"What? Oh—already?"

"I won't ask where your mind has been. I think I know without being told."

Dr. Etman gave a low laugh and sat in the chair Kyle had just left—a sign that there was something serious to discuss. A little tense, Kyle pulled over the chair from the table and sat facing his father.

That night his father had given him no answer. After looking at him for a long time, he had only said they should take a few days to think. Kyle knew well enough that when his father spoke in that tone, with that expression, nothing he said would make a difference.

So he had waited—enduring the urge to run to Leila, enduring the painfully slow crawl of the clock hands. He could not wound her with a promise that was not yet certain.

"I understand how you feel. I understand how much you care for Leila. Even so, Kyle—you're both still too young to be talking of marriage."

"But you married Mother the year you entered medical school."

"That was twenty years ago."

"And Miss Brandt, who's only a year older than Leila, is getting engaged next week."

"That's—"

"The young lady from the Arndt family Mother introduced me to was the same age as Leila."

Though his face was set, Kyle refuted each point carefully. In the end, Dr. Etman laughed.

"So your feelings are rather more serious than I thought."

"I know I'm still young. I know what you're worried about, too."

"And knowing all that, do you still like her enough to dig your heels in like this—so unlike you?"

"Yes."

Kyle answered without a moment's hesitation. To him it was as natural as breathing; there was nothing to think about.

"As for helping Leila go to university—well, our family could become her patron."

His father's gaze was mild, yet firm.

"Leila is a fine girl. She's good-hearted and clever. I know that well enough, Kyle. If she wants it, I'm willing to support her education."

"Of course I truly hope she can keep studying what she loves. But Father—what I want most of all is to marry her."

"Marriage is not a matter that concerns only the two of you."

"I'm not saying family and circumstances, face and standing, don't matter at all."

"Then why this stubbornness?"

"However important those things are, Father—they can't be more important than the person you're going to spend your whole life with."

"Kyle."

"I want to become a good doctor, a good husband, a good father—the way you have. But Father, for me, all of that begins with Leila."

His heart had begun to pound as if it might leap from his chest, but Kyle held on and kept speaking the words he had carried for so long.

"I want to live with her, beside her, as someone good for her. As a good husband to Leila. As a good father to the children we have together."

He could feel his face growing steadily warmer, but he did not stop.

"When her name is part of it, it all feels so natural. Without her name… then, Father, none of it makes any sense to me at all."

The tremor had left Kyle's voice; it was clear and resolute.

"Without her, I don't believe I could become that kind of man."

He clasped his hands together on his knees and lifted his head to meet his father's eyes.

"I think the person you and Mother love in me has Leila in it, too. Maybe she's the one who made the best parts of who I am."

Dr. Etman returned his son's earnest gaze with equal seriousness.

"I don't want to lose her."

Kyle's eyes shone with fierce determination.

"Help me protect Leila, Father."

Even when evening came, Bill Remmer did not return.

Having run out of housework to throw herself into, Leila sat blankly in the chair on the porch and waited for him. Bill's empty chair beside her seemed strangely large.

What if something happened? An accident?

The ominous thought flashed through her mind, and she sprang to her feet. She remembered an article she had once read about a train wreck. And not only trains—carriages and automobiles crashed often enough.

She paced the yard in circles until the sunset began to spread, then gathered her courage and set out toward the entrance of the manor—a path she had not dared approach for the past few days, for fear of the Duke.

With every step she thought of Bill.

As a child, Leila had made a habit of imagining the worst. Unhappiness that found you unprepared was far too devastating. If you prepared even a little, you might face it with a shred more composure.

When the look in her relatives' eyes began to sour, she prepared for the coming misfortune. Even if they hit me, I won't cry. They'll say cruel things, but I won't let them wound me. Even when they throw me out, I'll behave with dignity and courage. On the way to the next house, I'll try to smile more brightly.

Whether those efforts worked or not, she learned to be hurt a little less and to smile a little more. Misfortune usually arrived exactly as she had expected, and because she had prepared, she could bear it more easily.

But with Bill, she did not know.

"Uncle…"

Calling him like a charm, she found she had already passed the manor gates.

Bill was not a man who would leave her and go. He would come back. But if he did not—if he did not—

Please come home.

Leila clasped her hands together as if in true prayer.

Don't leave me alone. Please.

It was almost laughable, how thoroughly those four days had undone her—she who had comforted him for worrying over a mere four days.

"Mama, where are you going?"

Little Leila had asked it innocently of the mother who had just pressed a pretty glass jar of candy into her hands—the first she had ever seen. Her mother that day had been as lovely as the candy she held.

"Far."

After looking down at her for a long time, her mother answered shortly.

"So you'll be late?"

Eager to eat a piece of candy at once, she asked impatiently.

"Yes."

"How late?"

"Very late."

"You'll come back before I finish all of these, though?"

When Leila shook the jar full of brightly colored candies, her mother only nodded without a word.

"Yes."

Again, a short answer.

"I will."

If you meant to abandon me, you should never have left an answer like that.

Her mother—called far too beautiful to live as a poor man's wife—had cast off her husband and child as if shedding a dress that did not fit, and vanished. Some said she had become the mistress of a high-ranking noble; others, that she had married a wealthy merchant and gone abroad.

People had inflated and twisted the rumors every which way, enjoyed them thoroughly, and soon grown bored. What remained was only a cruel reality: a man destroyed by his wife's desertion, and a little girl left neglected. The father who had once been tender spent every day thereafter drunk. He would no longer look at Leila. He said he could not bear a face that resembled her mother's.

Leila had savored the candy carefully and waited for her mother. By the time the bottom of that pretty glass jar began to show, she knew her mother would never return—but she did not want to admit it. That was why she had not been able to eat the last piece.

In the end she ate even that last candy on the evening she was left alone in the world. Her father, his body ruined by drink and weakened by illness, died. As if he had known the end was near, the father who had turned away from her smiled that day as he quietly looked at his daughter.

"When the flowers bloom, let's go to the park together, Leila."

He said it in a faint voice. And that evening he drew his last breath, so the words became a will of sorts.

If you meant to leave, you should have left no promises at all.

While her relatives, at a loss as to what to do with the troublesome child, merely watched one another for cues, Leila was left alone in the empty house. All that remained were meaningless promises and a single piece of candy.

Leila still remembered that candy—a blue one, so clear and pretty, glittering with light.

After several days, when there was nothing left to eat, she finally ate the last candy. When she bit down hard, the broken shards scraped the soft flesh of her mouth.

Salty blood welled up, but she crunched the candy to pieces and ate it, sobbing as she did. Grief was so sweet and so metallic. Outside the window the flowers were falling. It was a spring afternoon when the pale pink petals drifting on the wind looked just like snow in spring.

"…Uncle!"

Walking along the plane-tree avenue, Leila lifted her head—and her eyes went round.

"Uncle!"

A bright smile spread across her pale face at last.

"Uncle! Bill!"

She began to run toward Bill Remmer, who was striding toward her from farther down the road. It was at that very moment that the black car carrying the Duke turned onto the plane-tree avenue.