Jail Cell
There were no windows in the basement cell, and the light from the lantern cast long shadows along the floor and up the far wall. Judah was standing with his back to her and didn’t even turn around when she stopped in front of the small cage where they’d been holding him for nearly a week.
It was inhumane to say the least. His room contained a mat on the floor, a tattered blanket, and a bucket. Hope thought if she laid down on the floor inside the cell, she could likely touch all four walls at once. And he’d suffered all of this on account of her.
She didn’t want to startle him, but since he hadn’t moved at all since she’d entered, and she’d been standing there for several seconds, she finally decided to just say something. Maybe once he realized it was her, he’d come back to reality. “Judah?”
His head flinched, and his shoulders straightened, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. When he turned to face her, it was slow, cautious, but as soon as his eyes fell on her face and he saw that he wasn’t hearing things, and she really was standing before him, he made the few steps it took to reach her in a hurry. “Hope?” He reached through the bars and gently touched her face on the side away from the bandage. “Is it really you? Oh, my God! Hope, I thought you were gone!” His other hand was around her waist, and he pulled her as close as he could until she was pressed up to the bars, being careful of her injury all the while.
Tears cascaded down her cheeks as a laugh mingled with a sob and escaped her lips. “It’s me,” she assured him. A look of relief washed over him, and his blue eyes filled with tears as his hands swept over her, brushing back her hair and caressing her cheek. “I’m alive.”
“Thank God,” he said again. “I thought for sure....”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and she was glad because she knew he’d thought if she died it was his fault. She reached through the bars then and snaked her hand around his waist, wanting to touch him as much as he needed to feel that she was real. He pressed his lips to her forehead, and Hope slid her hand up to the back of his neck. Without a second thought, his mouth found hers, and Hope cursed the bars that separated them. Despite the inconvenience, she relished the taste of him, his scent, the fact that his arms were around her again. Her tears mingled with his as he continued to kiss her and it wasn’t until his hand grazed her bandage that he finally pulled back. “How are you?” he asked, not moving away at all but looking into her eyes.
“I’m all right,” she said even though all of the movement had sparked a fresh ache in her head. “Doc says my skull is fractured, but it’ll heal.”
“Thank the good Lord for that. I thought you were gonna die, Hope. Your head was bleedin’ so much, and you wouldn’t open your eyes.”
“I know. Thank you for taking me to the doctor. If you hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have made it.” She ran her hand down the front of his shirt, seeing that there were bloodstains on it and thinking how savage it was that they hadn’t even allowed his sister to bring him fresh clothes. “But none of that matters now. We just need to get you out of here.”
Judah dropped his eyes. “I’m not sure that’s possible at this point, Hope. They’ve been trying to lynch me for days. Sheriff Roan would love to set up the gallows himself.”
“Well, Judge Peppers is on the way, and I’m not gonna let that happen. Look, those folks’re mad because they think you did this on purpose, but once I tell them the truth, that I fell of my own accord, they’ll disband, I’m sure of it. Besides, Mr. Canton has newspaper clippings that show you didn’t harm Sylvia either. They’re wanting to make you into something you ain’t, and I’m not gonna let ‘em.”
“Well, I see they have messed with the wrong schoolteacher,” he mused, and Hope felt fire coming into her cheeks for a different reason altogether. “I am so very sorry that this even happened, Hope. It was my fault, whether it was an accident or not. I never should’ve let you go down by yourself.”
“It wasn’t your fault at all!” Hope shot back. “I should’ve listened to you and waited. I was the idiot who thought climbing down a tree in a long skirt was a good idea.”
“You wouldn’t have rushed off if I hadn’t been acting like a fool,” he reminded her.
Hope hadn’t had the chance to think about exactly why she was rushing away from him, but his words brought the scene back to her now. He’d danced with her, sang the song her father used to sing to her and her mother, “I’ll Twine ‘Mid the Ringlets,” and then she thought he was going to kiss her. She’d taken off because she was confused and didn’t want to get hurt again. In a way, perhaps he was right, but that didn’t make the fall his fault—it was an accident.
“I think you need to stop blamin’ yourself for everything that happens to the people you love. You seem to be of the opinion that you’re cursed or something, Judah, and that just ain’t the case. You’ve had a lot of horrible things happen to people that you care about, but what happened to me wasn’t an act of God or a punishment. It wasn’t the devil stickin’ his hand in where it don’t belong. It was me rushing off in a tizzy and gettin’ my feet tangled up, and that’s all.” Hope thought she was getting to him, but she couldn’t be sure. This was her last chance to convince Judah that they could be together.
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