“Why did you not tell me?”
“Would you have stayed? Would a ruined girl with a baby have been enough to hold you?”
“A son.” He shook her again, but more gently. “And what would Daniel have thought when his boy came out with black hair and blue eyes? When it was taller than him at ten?”
“Daniel knew. I didn’t even pretend it was his.” She tossed her hair back. “Daniel knew what you were, and he knew what I was, and he didn’t care. He was willing to raise our son as his.” She choked on a sob. “He dug a grave with his bare hands. Didn’t need a shovel, the baby was that little. And he cried with me. He’d looked forward to raising a son of yours. ‘Another little Michael,’ he’d said.”
“No.” He shook his head, but the dawning look in his eyes told her he knew. Remembered what they’d been to each other, and knew the logical outcome.
“It wouldn’t have mattered, Michael.” She laid it out patiently, the way she would have to a student. “I was already ruined. People saw you coming and going from the teacherage. There was talk. With or without the baby, I would have lost my job. But Daniel stepped in. He did what you weren’t man enough to do.” She waited until her voice was relatively steady. The rain fell between them, in sheets, blurring his face. “It’s over, Michael. It’s been over for a long time. I’m going to bed.” She turned on her heel, kept her back straight as she walked through the mud, back to the circle of wagons.
Michael watched her go, small against the rain, but with her shoulders squared. He wanted to take her, to wrap her in a magic cloak like the ones in Ma’s fairy tales. But he’d never seen such a cloak, any more than he’d seen an elephant on the prairie. He had done that to her, Michael Moriarty, taking what he wanted. The way he’d always done.
Pace was already asleep, his rhythmic snores filling the wagon. Michael shucked his wet clothes and crawled into his bedroll. What was Caroline doing now? The mother of his son—the only son he knew about, anyway. Beautiful Caroline. If he could only run to her, to do anything to make it right, to banish that raw pain from her face. But the time for that had been three years before.
The rain drummed on his canvas roof as he remembered the dance at the schoolhouse.
He and Daniel had arrived together, cracking mild jokes about what the new schoolmarm from Back East would be like. “Maybe she’ll rap our knuckles,” Michael had joked, to which Daniel had replied, “Maybe yours, Michael. I don’t plan to get out of line.”
Then their first glimpse of her royal-blue ball gown, so wrong but so right; sapphire earrings; light brown hair curling around that heart-shaped face. They had exchanged quick, best friends’ glances of delight.
But from that first night, she’d belonged to Michael.
She had turned from whoever she’d been talking to. She’d seemed lit from within at this new adventure, and everything had been an adventure to Caroline Pierce. “And who’s this?”
He’d been tongue-tied for the first and last time in his life, and Dan had answered for them both for the first time in his life. “This big fellow who appears to be struck dumb is Michael Moriarty, and I’m Dan O’Leary.”
Michael managed to claim her for the first dance. He’d found his voice easy enough and she, hers, as they’d swapped tales of New England and Ireland, as they whirled to the music of two guitars and a fiddle on one of those August nights that never really got dark.
The other young men of the district put up a halfhearted show, but by the end of the evening they were done competing for Caroline. Nobody wanted to compete with Michael Moriarty. They’d invited Daniel on their outings, both for propriety’s sake, and because they both genuinely liked him. But soon their friendship went places even Daniel couldn’t go. Michael began visiting the teacherage on his own. One October night, when the moon was full and the smell of leaf mold wafted into the cottage, she had given herself to him. He had been her first.
She had been the first one who’d mattered.
Michael remembered those nights, their laughter, the moon making a stripe across the cottage floor. Caroline’s hair spread on the pillow, her even breathing. Her face more exquisite than ever in the candle glow of a late supper. The hurried mornings, when she’d pushed him out the door before parents started dropping off their children. And he had tempted fate by leaning back for one last kiss, then a second. Many women would have pressured him into marriage, or tried to. Caroline never had. She’d never asked for more than he could give.
If he’d been a different breed of man, it would have ended there. He would have eventually married her, taken to farming or some other respectable job, made her happy. But the call of the road had been too strong. That, and the need to outrun Ireland.
He winced now at the way he’d left her: showing up at the schoolhouse after class with his pack on his back, blithely announcing his departure to see his own elephant.
She had hidden her feelings well, laughed and joked, wished him “Bon Voyage.” And all the while, his child had been growing in her. Why hadn’t she told him?
Because she’d never asked for more than he could give.
Why hadn’t he told her, that he was leaving to protect her from whatever Ireland had for him?
Because she would have wanted to come with him.
He had left Summer Pasture in order to protect her. And the result had been anything but protection. Dan and her child gone, her home gone, herself subject first to the pointed cruelties of a small town, and then to the random cruelties of this journey.
Michael tossed on the hard wagon floor and groaned to himself.
A son.
A son by Caroline. The best of both of them.
~*~
Caroline mounted the crate that served as a step to their wagon. Jenny was asleep, her damp clothes shucked in a corner, only her fair head visible outside the bedroll. Jenny. Were they really any different? Sin was sin, whether in a young girl who enticed men to buy drinks or a young woman who gave herself to the love of her life. Didn’t much matter in the end. Caroline folded her clothes with knife-edge precision, even though they’d never dry that way. Oh, the comfort of ordinary tasks. She shrugged into her nightgown, a dry but less than fresh one, and braided her hair quickly and carelessly. As quickly as her breaths were still coming.
She should have known she couldn’t be merely a business associate to Michael, any more than he could have been just a friend in Ohio. Too much had passed between them.
She remembered again the wrenching pain of his departure. She had suspected she was pregnant, not showing on the outside, barely controlling her nausea, managing to bid him a cheery goodbye as her world—their world, she’d thought—crashed around her. She’d tried to convince herself it was only a stomach upset, until the doctor two towns over confirmed that it was anything but. The doctor three towns over offered to help her get rid of it, but why add murder to her sins?
If only Michael had waited a week, waited until the school board meeting where they’d questioned her character. Maybe then he would have stayed. But she’d wanted him to stay of his own free will, and doubted that would ever happen. She’d been right about that, at least.
She had never figured out how much Daniel knew, and when. On the spring day the school board finally dismissed her, he was waiting at the teacherage.
They’d taken a long walk, not talking, down to the mill creek bridge, where the rushing water caught the sun and flung it back. They had stood well apart, leaning on the battered wooden rail, when he’d asked her to marry him. She had said yes, and they’d sealed the deal with a handshake. She’d been able to live on in the village, secure as Dan’s wife, and only the most vicious had continued to shun her. Daniel’s love was like a cloak. People respected him, and because of that, they tolerated her as his choice.
Without words, he’d known from the start that the baby she carried wasn’t his. But he’d crafted a cradle, a small chest of drawers, and later, the coffin. He’d been the one to show her
the tiny, wax-like form. His mother, her midwife, had been crying too hard.
But he had covered her with his love, and their God would cover her now.
Silently, with her knees drawn to her chest, Caroline rocked to and fro and mourned her baby once again.
~*~
Michael pulled a barrel up to the fireside and looked at Caroline. “I’m sorry about last night.”
Caroline poured coffee into his tin cup and ladled oatmeal on his plate. Jenny, with the resilience of youth, was already up and gone.
This morning, this rain-washed dawn, Caroline looked as neat and pretty as ever in a blue gingham dress, her hair tamed by bone hairpins. Only her face looked pinched, and he knew she hadn’t slept any more than he. He remembered last night's wet ringlets snaking down around her shoulders and the look on her face when she’d told him he had had a child.
Caroline concentrated on the thin stream of milk for his oatmeal. “It’s all right. We were both excited. Where’s Mr. Williams?”
“He slept in. We’re staying over one day, just to give Mrs. Potter a chance to rest up.”
And everyone else. Caroline, for one, looked played-out. “Did you sleep?” He eyed her over the rim of his coffee cup.
“What do you think? Did you?”
No sense lying. They would never lie to each other again. “Of course not.” He chewed silently for a few minutes.
What a morning. The sun climbed in the wide blue sky around Chimney Rock, and dew glittered in the short grass. Everything smelled fresh and new. The colors were paint box bright, the day clean as only a day after rain could be.
Michael concentrated on his food. “What did you name him? My–my son?”
“He didn’t live long enough to be named.” Caroline took precise, tiny bites of her cold cornbread. She coated her spoon with a thin film of oatmeal and put it to her mouth.
He wiped his mouth on his thick bandana handkerchief. “I guess I owe Daniel. I already owe him so much—for being my friend, my first friend in America, and for taking care of you.”
Caroline’s head shot up. For a moment, he saw cold fury in those hazel eyes. But her voice was as precise as those tiny bites. “I’m not yours to worry about. Why should it matter if he ‘took care’ of me?”
“Because I loved you, Caroline.” Why hadn’t he realized it? “I loved you as much as I could. I was only twenty-two. I didn’t know any better. I loved you as much as I was capable of.”
“Then why did you leave me?” She was standing now, her small fists knotted, the knuckles white as she stared down at him.
Could he tell her now? No. Ireland was coming closer, ever closer. He could feel it. Kelly and Kennedy were far from stupid. They’d be on their way by now, vengeful for themselves as well as Hawthorne. He made his voice gentle, reasonable, though his heart was about to pound out of his chest. “I left you because I didn’t know any better. I went searching for something that didn’t exist. And I’ve regretted it ever since.” As he looked up at her, he knew it was true.
Caroline.
“I shouldn’t have gone.” He was babbling, but oh, how good to get it out. “I should have stayed with you, set us up in a little place of our own. I didn’t find anything I didn’t have with you. You were the woman born and bred for me. I knew it the night of the schoolhouse dance, and I knew it the day I rode out of town.”
She had always been with him, on the trail, down in Mexico. He had wondered what she was doing, hoped Daniel treated her well. Whenever he'd seen something new, his first thought had been to show it to her. No other woman had fixed that kind of hold on him. On some level, all levels really, it had always been Caroline. He waited for a smile, or even a softening. But as she looked at him, he saw neither.
Her voice was toneless. “Well, Michael, it’s too late now. The babe was a seven-months child, just like Sarah’s. He’d still be dead if you’d stayed. I’d best get some of these dishes done up.” She took the coffee pot and the iron kettle and trudged toward the spring, her shoulders slumped as she walked out of sight.
He loved her. He ran to catch up with her. Who cared what the others might think? His long legs overcame hers in a few strides. He caught her arm. “Wh–what do we do now?”
She looked up at him, her eyes once again veiled as they had been for most of this journey. “We don’t do anything.”
17
They took to the trail the next day.
Caroline trudged along beside her team, her face hidden by a huge sunbonnet. She was quiet, serving Michael and the others in her efficient way when they stopped, but without comment or smiles.
Even Pace noticed her subdued ways. “You got a headache or somethin’” he asked over their evening meal. “Mebbe I can get someone to drive for you tomorrow.”
As she scooped more stewed prairie hen on his plate, Caroline met his offer with a set face. “I’m fine, Mr. Williams. It’s just—” She gave him a faint smile. “There isn’t much to talk about these days.”
Nothing but sky and grass, dead boys and dead babies, the talk they stepped around.
Had she been this brave when she’d carried Michael’s child, and the scorn of an entire community?
Michael bent his head over his second helping. No, there was nothing to say, even for him.
Pace belched his thanks when supper was over.
Michael followed Caroline to what passed for a creek, and watched from a distance as she dipped their cooking pots in the shallow water. She’d taken to washing the dishes by herself, avoiding even Martha’s company. As though she’d been the one to do something wrong.
This was his chance to make it up to her. There was no better time. Michael squared his shoulders. You’ve never done much right, lad, he lectured himself. But you’ll do this right. And in this case, doing the right thing might not even pinch. His heart quickened at the thought of marriage to Caroline. He’d take her to the Colorado River, install her in a ranch house he’d craft with his own hands in that wild unspoiled territory. He’d build up the ranch, their ranch, and come home to her every night. Home to that smile. He could fix this.
She looked up as he approached, and brushed a curl of sun-streaked brown hair back from her face. “What can I do for you, Michael?” And how quickly, was the implication.
He dropped to the short grass. “I thought we could talk a little.”
Caroline went back to scrubbing a pot with sand. “I told Mr. Williams there’s not much to talk about.”
“Yes. Well.” How was this done? He gave her his most brilliant smile, but it was wasted.
She did not look up.
Time for the step, the leap, the plunge. “Caroline, I’ll be needin’ a wife when I start the ranch. I’m askin’ you to marry me.” There. That would make it right, banish his guilt, and he’d get Caroline in the bargain.
As the sun faded, a breeze sprang up. It would be a cool night for a change, but he already knew two people who wouldn’t sleep well. Shouts from the camp echoed back to them, children playing one last manic game before their mothers summoned them to bed.
Caroline rinsed an iron skillet, dried it with a frayed towel, and delayed her answer for at least a minute. “Why?”
“Why? Because–because a man needs a wife, and you’d be a good one. You’re free and I’m free.” And I love you, Caroline. But he couldn’t get the words out, not when he saw her face. This was supposed to be easy.
“You must have other women you can choose from,” she said, placing the pan in her split-oak basket. “Many of them.”
Michael flinched. She had good aim, when she wanted to. “‘Tis not them I want.”
“Yes. Well.” She scrubbed furiously at a turning fork. “It won’t be me.”
She couldn’t be rejecting him. Not him. “But why? Forgive me, lass, but I’m offering a better life than you could make on your own.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
He knelt and grabbed her work-worn hands. They were fr
agile in his large ones, the bones like birds’ bones, the blue veins showing through. He realized, not for the first time, the frailty of the woman who was on this fool’s journey because of him. “It’s not too late for us, Caroline. I want to make it up to you. I’ll be so good to you.”
Her hazel eyes were huge with disbelief. She wrenched away, with a force that knocked him backwards. “I’ll not be married twice because someone pities me.”
So that was it. Of all the fool—
She hadn’t known.
Michael’s words tumbled over one another in their rush to get out, to comfort her. “Acushla—my dearest—that’s wrong. Did you not know? Daniel loved you more than life. He loved you from the minute he saw you. ‘Twasn’t pity with him.”
Her chapped hands stilled and she looked up, a look that made him catch his breath. “Daniel loved me?”
“‘Tis true.”
“From the beginning?”
“Of course.” He smiled, but Caroline didn’t smile back. What ailed her?
“Daniel loved me,” she repeated.
“That’s what I said.” He laid it out carefully, as he would to a child. “Daniel O’Leary loved you from that first schoolhouse dance, and he never stopped. Sure and he would have courted you himself if I’d been out of the picture. I’m thinking he knew he couldn’t compete with me—” The minute Michael said them, he knew these were the worst possible words.
Caroline put the last of the dishes in her basket, very deliberately; got to her feet in one unhurried motion; and brushed at her skirt front. When she looked at him, her voice was flat. “You’re telling me I could have had Daniel two years earlier.”
Michael scrambled to his feet. “Well, yes, but—”
“I could have had Daniel and kept my job because Dan wouldn’t have taken advantage of me.” Her words were measured, deadly in their calm. “Gotten legally married, maybe even in a church. I would have had Daniel’s child instead of yours, and it might have lived.”
He had never thought of it this way. Of course she would have been better off with Dan; of course Dan missed his chance, at least in the beginning. There weren’t words, even for Michael Moriarty, to defend himself.
Westward Hope Page 11
