There was no remorse in his eyes, and his voice was void of emotion. Emilia pulled at the reins on her mare. “I need to go. Maybe you don’t want to do the right thing, but someone has to.”
“It was nice to get to know you, Emilia. Goodbye,” Derek said softly, but Emilia still managed to hear it.
“Good luck, Derek,” Emilia replied so quietly, she thought he couldn’t possibly decipher her words. She turned herself and her horse away from him so he wouldn’t be able to see the tears that were beginning to flow down her cheeks, mingling with the soft rain that was falling evenly now.
She touched her heels to the horse and made her move, despite the cold and uncomfortable conditions. Surprisingly, the sprinkle only lasted long enough to completely soak Emilia and make her feel chilly. Then it stopped, leaving the grey clouds behind as if preparing for something worse later on.
She had no trouble following the directions she had been given in town. It was straightforward and just as the man had said it was. But as soon as she headed down the road, she knew why the woman in the candle shop thought it was dangerous.
It was a lonely road, with no homes nearby and no other people traveling on it. There were bushes and trees crowding in on both sides, offering an excellent place to hide to anyone who might be lurking. It was a desolate road where anything could happen. Emilia found herself jumping and searching around herself whenever she heard the slightest noise.
The trees and bushes eventually thinned out to cacti and scrubland. Every once in awhile, there would be some taller trees, and then there would be nothing but flat land with a few rocks, cacti, and shrubs. She hoped Lily had gone at a slow pace. There were several hours between them.
In fact, the more Emilia thought about it, the more she realized that it might be near impossible for her to catch up to Lily. She touched the sides of her horse so she would go a little faster. The horse had already taken her to town and back though, and she was certain that the mare was probably getting tired.
She wondered what would have happened if Lily hadn’t left that second note. Would Lily be angry with her for following? Emilia thought about it for a few moments. It almost seemed as if Lily had wanted someone to come after her. Why would she have left the means for someone to do so otherwise?
Maybe she felt scared and wanted Emilia to find her, to stop her from leaving. Emilia hoped that was the case because if it wasn’t, there was little hope that she would catch up to her cousin.
---*---
Emilia slowed her horse to a walk so she could get a drink of water from the canteen she had brought from the house. It felt soothing as it ran across her parched tongue, but in minutes her mouth was dry again. She worried about drinking too much. It wouldn’t be good to run out of water in this heat, so she tried to limit her sips to every 15 or 20 minutes.
The hot Texas sun didn’t care that it was already late afternoon and was bearing down on her back with a vengeance. There were times when Emilia felt like she needed to stop for a break, where her breath came to her unevenly and her heart pounded a little too hard, but she kept herself moving. It seemed as if no one else was coming. She was the only one who could bring Lily back, now.
She thought back to Derek. She had believed in him. He had been so kind to her, and then, at the last moment, he had betrayed her. How could he have done that? Why had he seemed so cold toward her? Maybe she had said or done something wrong.
It was so confusing. His unfeeling face filled her mind. He had seemed like a different person. She had never expected him to do or say anything like what he had done. It was like she didn’t know him at all.
And she had seen him with the Carson family. There was nothing insincere in the way he had talked to them. He seemed as if he loved them like a family… and yet, he had said he was just using them.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. She needed to focus on finding Lily right now, nothing else.
Chapter 30
The sun didn’t let up as time went on—in fact, to Emilia it seemed that it only grew hotter. The clouds had melted away, leaving the air hot and humid. She could see the steam rising on the muddy spots of the trail.
Despite it having to be five or six in the evening, it was still plenty warm. She could see why her mother thought she would never be cold in Texas. While there were some nights when it got very chilly, she wasn’t sure this night would be one of them.
Just when she was about to give up, she spotted a figure up ahead. Her heart thumped in her chest. What if it wasn’t Lily, but some bandit waiting for her to pass before attacking?
Emilia tried to still her fear as she grew closer and closer to the figure. Finally, she could make out enough to see that it was indeed Lily.
As soon as Lily spotted her, she jumped up from where she had been sitting on the side of the road. “Emilia! What are you doing here?” Her cousin looked both shocked and relieved.
“I had to come after you. I know you said not to, but when I found out where you were really headed, I had to come.” Emilia paused as she dismounted from her horse, happy to be standing on her own two feet again. “This road is dangerous; what were you thinking? You should never have come out here alone!”
For a moment, it looked as if Lily was about to defend herself, and then she shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess it was a spur of the moment thing. When I talked to the lady at the candle shop, it sounded so logical to look for my mother’s family.”
“Logical? You are out here all alone.” Emilia glanced around. “And now we are out here all alone.”
“I know, I know. I stopped riding because a while back some men rode past me. I didn’t like the way they looked at me, and then I started thinking about what if they were waiting up ahead? Tell me what to do, Emilia. I just wanted to find my family.”
“You already have a family, Lily. I’m your family. Your mother is worried sick, and the twins are beside themselves. They are your family. Don’t go searching for people who don’t know you. Even if the same blood runs in their veins, they will never love you the way Aunt Carolyn does.” Emilia watched her cousin’s face carefully, searching for any sign that she was getting through to Lily.
“You’re probably right.” Lily still didn’t look completely convinced.
“I know I am right. Your family had been searching for you. You knew they would. They love you.”
“I know,” she admitted. “This was silly.”
Emilia put her hands on her cousin’s shoulders until Lily looked up at her. “It’s not silly. You wanted to find answers, just like anyone would have wanted to. I think that this just wasn’t the best way to do it.”
Lily nodded. “You’re right. What do we do now? It’s almost dark. We can’t make it home before dark, and riding out here at this time is…”
“Do you know if there is anywhere around here where we could spend the night?”
Lily’s face twisted in concentration. “Actually, I think there is a cabin just a bit from here. Pa and Ma stayed there with us once when we were going to town. I think I remember how to get there.”
“Whose is it? Does someone live there?”
“An older man and his wife built it, but then they had to go back to the city because the wife got sick. No one has lived there for years. It’s better than being out here in the open.” Lily paused. “Do you think I’ll ever find out about my other family?”
Emilia looked away for a moment. “You know, even if you don’t, maybe it’s for the best. I’m not sure you will ever find a family who cares for you any more than the one you already have. Come on, we should hurry if we want to get to the cabin before we can’t see.”
Emilia hurried to mount her waiting horse and follow Lily as he led the way. She would make sure they talked again later, once they were settled safely at the cabin.
The road that Lily took them on looked even more dangerous than the last. It was more of a trail, winding through rocks, brush and trees. After what seemed like a long time, Emil
ia could no longer see the main road.
It was past dusk, and it was getting hard to see anything at all. “Are you sure we aren’t lost?” Emilia asked.
“No, I know where we are. It’s just a little further up ahead,” Lily promised.
Emilia decided to trust her. It wasn’t as if there was anything else, she could do. For a moment, she worried about Derek not being able to find them, and then she remembered that he wouldn’t be coming. She hoped that the time they had spent together would at least have meant enough to him for him to tell George where they were. If he didn’t, then getting home was up to the two of them.
Emilia hoped that they’d make it without any unfortunate events taking place. Just when Emilia was sure that Lily was lost and that there was no cabin in the woods at all, a little wooden structure came into view.
It was nearly completely dark and very hard to see—and what she could see made her shiver. The roof sagged in the middle and the glass was broken on the front windows. The trees had grown over the house so that it looked like they were leaning down over it menacingly. There were vines covering one side. It looked dark and foreboding. An old rusty pump with a withered wooden trough stood off to the side of the building, and a tiny leaning outhouse was slightly behind the main cabin.
Lily led her up to the front porch. They tied their horses to the thin limbs of the nearby trees and then walked over to the cabin door. She brushed spider webs away from the entry and turned the knob, which creaked with a rusty protest.
Emilia could tell that Lily had been right when she said that no one had lived there for quite some time. Even from the outside, it looked dusty, and there was grass growing up all around, even in front of the door and through the cracks in the floor.
They pushed against the door and wiggled it back and forth, trying to get it to give way. After an extraneous amount of effort and lots of grunting, it finally opened suddenly, and a chair in the dark room overturned as the door hit it.
Emilia had to suppress a shriek. She realized she was shaking in fear.
“You okay?” Lily asked. “We’ll light a candle and you’ll see that it’s not so bad once we go in.”
“Right, I’m sure there’s no one in there,” Emilia replied, trying to reassure herself.
The wood floor creaked as they tentatively stepped in. The air was stale and musty and felt heavy and forbidding. It was all Emilia could do not to turn and run back outside.
“There must be some matches in here somewhere,” Lily said, searching around the fireplace. The moon had come up and was casting a dim glow through two of the windows.
As her eyes adjusted, Emilia could make out what looked like a simple low bed in the corner and a stack of wood near the fireplace.
“Here they are! Pa left them, in case anyone ever needed them…” Emilia could hear the sadness in her cousin’s voice. “It’s strange to think that they’re still here and he’s not.”
Lily struck a match, lighting up the small, barren room for a moment. It took the two girls a good while to get a fire started. Once the cabin was illuminated by the flickering flames, Emilia was able to get a good look at the place.
The bed didn’t have a cushion or any covers. There was a folded blanket on a shelf nearby, but it was so full of dust, Emilia wasn’t sure it was good for anything more than sitting on.
Dust falling from the chimney made the fire crackle. “Are you sure we should be using the fireplace?” she worried.
“It’s fine. I’m sure everything is a bit dusty, but it will be fine.” Lily seemed sure of herself as she sat cross-legged and warmed her hands against the flames.
“I wonder why no one else has lived in this cabin since the owners left. Couldn’t someone claim it?” Emilia asked as she looked around.
“I suppose so. I guess it’s just not worth it. It’s not really near enough to town, so whoever lived here would have a hard time getting supplies. There isn’t any water nearby for crops. It was just a bad place to settle.” Lily turned her hands palms up in a sad gesture.
“In a way, I guess it’s good no one settled here, or we would have no place to stay tonight.” Emilia gave Lily a forced smile. She wasn’t sure how she felt about staying in the cabin. It was a little spooky being in the little house at all. What if someone found them there alone? She felt very uneasy.
Once they had rested for a while, they explored the rest of the cabin, not that there wasn’t much that couldn’t be seen from the front of the fireplace.
There was a weathered broom in the corner of the room, as if a sad reminder that someone had once cared about keeping the place clean. Emilia took it and swept everything from one side of the wide-open room to the other, trying not to raise dust as she did.
Once she had done this twice and was somewhat satisfied that she had gotten everything and had chased the spiders away, she helped Lily lay out the two blankets that Lily had taken with her from the house.
Emilia was happy that Lily had come prepared for her trip. She had even brought some bread, cheese and salted pork, as well as a canteen full of water. She had only drunk half of it throughout the day and once they combined it with what Emilia had left, they had plenty to drink.
They ate their meal in silence until Emilia couldn’t take it anymore. “Aunt Carolyn is really worried about you.”
“I know.” The guilt was plain on Lily’s face. “I keep thinking about what I did, and I realize now that I was wrong. I mean, I still want to look for my family’s history, but I should have talked about it with my mother.”
“I think she would be glad to hear that. You know, George was really worried about you, too. I’m surprised you didn’t tell him about all of this.”
“He was? What did he say? Are you sure he was worried about me?”
Emilia giggled. “Yes, he most certainly was. He demanded to know where you’d gone and then went after the sheriff. I hope that they figure out that you aren’t even in Bransford and come back home instead of looking for you somewhere else.”
“Didn’t you tell anyone?” Lily gave her a shocked look.
“No, well… I tried.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
Emilia sighed. She hadn’t planned on talking about it, but now it seemed like she didn’t have a choice. She went into detail about Derek and what had happened with him telling the town about her father.
She also told Lily about talking to him on her way back from his ranch and how he hadn’t even cared that Lily was in danger.
“Are you sure he said those things? That doesn’t sound like Derek at all. I haven’t met a kinder person out here. It’s so strange, I’ve known him for a long time and he has never said anything like that.”
Emilia nodded. “I know, it was strange to me, too. I guess I had sort of started to have feelings for him, and now it’s like I didn’t know him at all.”
Lily’s mouth fell open and she appeared as if she’d never been told anything more surprising. “You have feelings for Derek? This couldn’t be better. I’m sure he cares about you, too. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I just wanted to wait for the two of you to discover it.”
Emilia shook her head. “He doesn’t like me that way, if he even likes me at all. I even told him how he felt and he didn’t say anything. Then, he treated me like a stranger when he knew I was coming after you.”
“Hey, who needs Derek, anyways? I’ll come back home with you and I’m sure we’ll find you someone much better.”
Emilia nodded and bit her lower lip. She knew her cousin was trying her best to cheer her up, but it wasn’t working. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done to anger Derek or make him treat her that way.
She glanced worriedly at the fireplace. “Are you sure this fireplace is all right?” A bit more dust fell into the fire, and it seemed like there was a bit of smoke along the inside on the ceiling.
An Enduring Love to Heal Her: A Historical Western Romance Book Page 23
