“The buggy is ready when you are.”
Letty spun around at the sound of Mike’s voice. He stood in the doorway, a strange, haunted expression on his face that quickly faded. She turned away from his probing eyes.
“I’ll get Patrick.”
“I’ll get him. He’s getting too big for you to carry.”
Without waiting for her to reply, he went to the cot at the end of the kitchen and scooped the sleeping child up in his arms. Patrick’s dark head drooped on Mike’s shoulder and his arm went about Mike’s neck. Mike adjusted the boy carefully and lovingly against him. Unable to look at him holding their child, Letty went into the parlor to get Helen.
When she reached the yard, Mike’s horse was tied behind the buggy. He stood beside it, talking to Harry and Mr. Watkins, Patrick asleep on his shoulder.
“Put Patrick on the seat. Helen will hold him,” Letty said crisply, helping Helen up into the buggy and climbing in beside her.
“That won’t be necessary.” Before Letty could take up the reins, Mike placed the sleeping child in her arms. He went around to the other side, stepped into the buggy and settled himself beside Helen. Letty, settling Patrick against her, felt the little girl cringe away from him and snuggle to her side.
“Bye, Letty. Bye, Mike,” Oleta called. “Next time we’ll come to your house, Letty, so you can play the piano.”
“Yes, do that,” Letty said automatically. “Thanks for the lovely time.”
“Come again,” Mrs. Pierce called.
“I’ll be over soon, Letty.” Sharon spoke with her eyes on Mike.
Finally, the buggy moved down the dark lane to the road. The silence was thick and heavy. Letty felt as if she were in another world. She clung to Patrick. He was a precious weight in her arms, and Helen, snuggled against her side, was a buffer between her and the man whose silent presence screamed at her. Filled with misery and bewilderment, Letty’s mind skittered in a thousand directions.
Tired in body and mind and longing to drop into a deep dreamless sleep, Letty kept her face turned to the side. The voice in her head that had nagged at her persistently for the past week whispered that Mike could be telling the truth about that spring five years ago when he was told that she was dead. Even so, she thought now, too much time has gone by. She had cut herself loose from that old life, built for herself and Patrick a new background and a future here on Grandpa’s farm.
She was not the frightened, insecure girl who had trembled in her father’s presence. Nor was Mike the delivery boy who plucked the ribbon from the lilac bush and waited for her beneath the willows. She had been rejected and condemned by her family, thrown out into the night, and told not to come back. Instead of crushing her spirit as her father had hoped it would do, it had made her stronger.
Mike was a man now. He had gone to war. Jesus, my God! The thought came to her that perhaps he had suffered an injury that would prevent him from fathering more children. That would explain his interest in Patrick. A small sob escaped her.
Mike glanced at her when he heard the sound. Now was not the time to talk to her. He would wait until they reached the farm. By then, the little girl between them would be asleep.
Woodrow barked a greeting when they drove into the yard. The shaggy dog ran around the buggy, then stopped to thump at fleas with his hind paw as he waited for Mike to notice him.
“You keeping an eye on things?” Mike patted the dog’s head and went around to Letty’s side of the buggy. “Sit still,” he said when she began to shift Patrick in her arms. “I’ll help you with him in a minute. Is the little girl asleep?”
Letty nodded and worked at pulling the legs of Patrick’s breeches down to cover his knees.
“Letty, look at me. Please—”
Letty turned her face a fraction and looked down at him. He had removed his hat and placed it on the top of the buggy. The moon, dim behind a wayward cloud, shed a pale light on his upturned face. Midnight-black ringlets, always resentful of brush and comb, fell down on his forehead. If she could believe what she saw in his eyes, it was tenderness, it was pleading, it was . . . pain.
Inside she trembled.
“Letty, sweetheart, I want you to know that I’m not here to cause you trouble,” he said quietly. “I’ll not hurt you and I’d die before I let anyone else hurt you.”
“Then why are you here?” she demanded in a shaky voice. “Go away before Patrick gets too fond of you.”
“I can’t do that, Letty. I’ve just found you.”
“You came here to embarrass me,” she accused.
“No, sweetheart—”
“Don’t say that! I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
“I know that I’m not alive without you. I’ve been half dead since I came home that spring and found out I’d lost you.”
“I’m Letty Graham now. My friends think I’m a widow. Patrick thinks his daddy is . . . dead.”
“Don’t ask me to leave. I can’t.”
“Why did you have to come back now and upset my life and Patrick’s? You’ve put me in the position of having to be decent to you or make a fool of myself.”
“I swear to God, Letty, I believed you were dead.”
“I waited for you—humiliated and scared. When you didn’t come, I had to make up a lie and live with it. Only Grandpa knows the truth.”
“As God is my witness, I’ve told you the truth. That spring when I went back to Dunlap they told me you had died during the epidemic. A service had been held at the church. My mother knew of my love for you, but she didn’t go because she knew that she wouldn’t be welcome.”
“Even if what you say is true, too much time has gone by. We’re not the same now.”
“My feelings for you are the same. I still . . . love you—”
“No! You want Patrick!” she blurted.
“I want both of you. I never knew I had a son until the day I rode in here. I won’t deny that I want Patrick to know that I’m his daddy. I’ll love him and work as hard as I can to give him a good start in life, but I’ll not tell him anything unless we tell him together.”
“I’ll not have him thinking of himself as a . . . as a bastard,” she hissed the last word. “When he grows up, he’ll think his mother was a . . . was a loose woman.”
“Patrick was conceived out of our love for each other,” Mike said almost angrily. “If he’s half the man I hope he’ll be, he’ll be proud. Have you forgotten the vows we said beneath the willow, Letty? I’ve always considered you my wife.”
“But I’m not your wife. When Cora told Papa I was pregnant, he threw me out. He said that as far as the family was concerned, I was dead. He called me a whore, a slut, a harlot, a spawn of the devil. I was fifteen—” Her voice broke and she swallowed a sob.
An angry rumble came from Mike’s throat.
“I had nowhere to go but here. Grandpa and Grandma took me in. They never condemned me. They loved each other and they . . . loved me. Grandpa almost grieved himself to death when Grandma died.” Words tumbled out as if a dam had broken. “He gave her such loving tender care. And when Patrick was born, he . . . he was here to do for me when I was too weak to get out of bed. I’ll never leave him. Never! Patrick and I are all that he has now. He took care of me when my . . . own mother turned her back on me, and I’m going to take care of him for the rest of his life.”
“I’m not going to try to take you and Patrick away from your grandpa. I just want to be a part of your lives too. I explained that to him. He understands.”
“It wouldn’t work.” Letty drew in a sobbing breath. “Do you think I could face the Watkinses, the Tarrs and the Pierces if they knew I had made up the story about my husband being killed in the logging camp?”
“Dear God! I could kill that son-of-a-bitchin’ father of yours and that conniving sister for what they’ve done to you.”
“Oh, Lord! I don’t want anyone to know I’m related to her!” She spit the word out of her mouth as if it were
as bitter as gall.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. Please don’t worry.” Mike’s fingers moved over Letty’s hand and squeezed before she wiggled it free. “I’ve heard your voice in my dreams a thousand times saying, ‘Mike, I’m scared.’ My sweet love, you don’t have to be afraid now. You’re not alone. As long as I live you’ll not be alone.” His voice vibrated with tenderness.
“I’m ashamed of Cora. She’s a hypocrite! A flimflammer!”
“She’ll be found out . . . someday.”
“And when she is, it’ll bring disgrace down on Grandpa and Patrick. She’ll try to bring me down with her . . . tell that I lied when I said I was m-married. Everyone will know that Grandpa lied too. And the disgrace would follow Patrick for the rest of his life.”
“What happened is more my fault than yours. I shouldn’t have gone away until we were sure you were not . . . in the family way. You’re not alone in this,” he insisted.
“I have Grandpa—”
“He won’t always be here. I think he’s worried about that.”
“When that time comes I’ll . . . do what I have to do.” Her words came out on a strangled sob.
They stared at each other for a moment that was so still that it seemed time had ceased. A feeling of emptiness shot through her at the thought of what might have been.
Her wet eyes blurred her vision.
The realization that except for chance he would never have known she lived or that he had a son sent a surge of emotion through Mike that was both tender and fierce. Memories blazed for an instant in his eyes. He longed to pull her into his arms. He loved this woman with a cherishing kind of love that made him only half alive when he was not with her. He wanted to hold her in his arms, plant another child in her warm, fertile body, keep her by his side forever.
“Letty, Letty—” he sighed. “You’re my same Letty, yet so different.”
“You’re different too.”
“Can’t we try to work this out together . . . for Patrick’s sake?”
Before Letty could answer, Helen stirred. “Are we home?”
“Yes, dear. We’re home,” Letty said gently, her eyes still on Mike’s face.
Mike let out a long slow breath. He had not said half of what he had wanted to say, yet he had made progress. He covered her hand with his and squeezed it gently. She didn’t pull her hand away and his heart filled with hope.
“Let me have Patrick.” He took the child from Letty’s arms. “We’re home, son,” he said when, disturbed, the boy whimpered a protest. “You’ll be in your bed soon.”
CHAPTER
13
Morning came and with it a spring storm. Letty let Patrick sleep after Jacob announced they would not be going to church.
“We’d be wet as a couple drowned rats by the time we got there,” he grumbled. “God ain’t goin’ to slam shut the pearly gates ’cause we miss a time or two.”
Letty agreed but didn’t voice it. She hadn’t been inside a church since she walked out of her father’s church that Sunday, the day Cora told him and her mother she was pregnant. She had attended the graveside services for her grandmother and for a few friends who had died during the epidemic but steadfastly refused to go to Sunday services with her grandfather and Patrick. She knew it was a source of gossip in the neighborhood, but it didn’t bother her.
The storm was still raging at midmorning. Thunder rolled and wind-driven rain lashed the house. Letty checked the doors and windows for leaks. A small puddle of water began to form under the door in the parlor. She placed a rag rug against the door to absorb the water. A stunning crash of thunder seemed to fill the house. It was still echoing when another roared in its wake.
Letty hurried back to the kitchen. Helen, sitting on Jacob’s lap, had hid her face in his shoulder.
“There, there, little’un. It ain’t nothin’ but a old spring storm givin’ my wheat field a drink a water. It takes thunder to jar the water outta the clouds.”
“Helen’s scared of the storm, but I ain’t,” Patrick announced proudly. He played with the iron bank, shooting the same five pennies into the bear time and again.
“You’re not,” Letty corrected as she stirred the syrup she was making to pour over egg whites to make icing for Patrick’s birthday cake.
“I’m glad it rained ’cause me ‘n’ Grandpa don’t have to go to church. But I wished it hadn’t’a rained on my birthday ’cause Grandpa said we could fire off the Roman candle.”
“You won’t fire it until tonight. By then it’ll have stopped raining. Then everyone from miles around will see the lights in the sky and know it’s your birthday.”
“Oh, boy! Can I go tell Dolan we’re going to fire the Roman candle tonight?”
“In this rain? I should say not!”
“I didn’t get to see him. He went out before I got up. I wanted to tell him it’s my birthday.” Patrick’s chin was tilted defiantly; a stubborn look covered his face.
“I expect he knows,” Letty said and dribbled a little of the hot syrup in a cup of cold water. As it immediately formed a solid ball, she removed the pan from the cookstove.
“Why’d you tell him to stay in the barn?” Patrick demanded suddenly.
Letty’s head jerked up. Her eyes moved from the stiffly beaten egg whites to where her son sat on the floor. He was looking at her with his head resting on his fist, his eyes slanting up at her, his brows drawn down in a frown. She turned her face away and closed her eyes for an instant as an exquisite pain caused her heart to stumble. She had seen that same expression on his father’s face many times.
“I didn’t tell him to stay in the barn,” Letty said calmly, and automatically moved the wire whisk as she poured a thin stream of the hot syrup into the bowl of egg whites.
“You don’t like him. Bang!” Patrick shot the bear with a shiny new penny. “You don’t look at him . . . bang . . . or say anything to him. Why don’t you like him? Did he pinch you?”
“For crying out loud!” Letty set the pan back on the stove. “Why would you think that?”
“You wouldn’t look at the man who came to buy Grandpa’s cows after he pinched you on the titty. Remember? You slapped him. Then you didn’t set at the table when—”
“Patrick!” Letty gasped. She hadn’t been aware that her son had witnessed that disgusting scene in the barn with the cattle buyer.
“What? What’s this?” Jacob asked. “What’s this about Cadwaller?”
“He pinched Mama and said she had—”
“I’ll tell it if you don’t mind, Patrick. Mr. Cadwaller got a little fresh, and I put him in his place. Nothing to get excited about.”
“He said Mama had a pretty ass.”
“What?” Jacob shouted, scaring Helen who scrambled off his lap.
“Patrick, I swear.” Letty’s voice was heavy with exasperation. “You’re getting too big for your britches.”
“Will I get new ones?”
“Young man, you’ll get a spanking if you don’t shut up even if it is your birthday.” Patrick recognized that there was no threat in his mother’s words, but rather a reminder that at times boys were to be seen and not heard.
“Letty—”
“I’ll tell you about it later, Grandpa. It was nothing. Let’s forget it for now.” She glanced at the child on the floor and shook her head. He was as smart as a whip. Everything he saw and heard stuck in his mind. Heavens! The confrontation with the cattle buyer had happened months ago. Thank goodness he had been sound asleep when she and Mike had talked last night, or he would be blurting out every word.
While Letty worked, her thoughts scrambled for position in her mind. One surfaced above the others. Soon Patrick would need a man’s strong hand. Was she going to be able to handle him? Another thought crowded out the first one. Her son had the right to know his father. Even if Mike proved to be an uncaring father, Patrick had the right to know him and judge him for himself. But Patrick was a little boy, an inner voice warned. Oh
, Lord. What would he think about the lies his mother had told him about his dead father?
Last night before sleep claimed her, she had gone over every word that had passed between her and Mike. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind, now, that he was telling the truth about believing she had died during the epidemic. It hurt. Oh, it hurt to face the fact that her mother had cut her out of her life so completely as to declare her dead. It was her parents’ fault her child had come into the world a bastard. She would never forgive them or Cora.
Letty stopped beating the icing and stared at the black stovepipe. It had been five years and eight months almost to the day that she and Mike had parted. So much had happened to her since that time. So much had happened to him. Yet, last night he had seemed almost to be the sweet boy she had known so long ago. This morning, however, he was the quiet dark man again. He had brought in the milk, set the pail on the counter, and taken his place at the table without looking at her. During breakfast he and Jacob talked about the wheat crop and the sheep Jacob wanted to put in the woods as soon as the nightshade was cleared out. When he finished eating, he put on his slicker and went out.
“Mrs. Graham—” Helen tugged on Letty’s arm to get her attention. “I want to give Patrick a birthday present,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to give him anything, honey.”
“I want to. You gave him the bank and Grandpa gave him five pennies. Do you think he’d like to have my marble?” Helen stared up at Letty with big sky-blue eyes. Her little face had filled out during the weeks she had been at the farm, but she still had the forlorn look in her eyes.
“Honey, are you sure you want to give up your marble? It’s one of your treasures.”
“I want Patrick to have it.”
“All right. In the top bureau drawer you’ll find some white tissue paper. Roll the marble in it and tie each end with a piece of that red yarn I used to make your mittens. Slip it on his plate just before we sit down to dinner.”
The rain stopped, but the sky remained dark. Letty lit the lamp over the table and placed the birthday cake beneath it. When Patrick heard Mike’s step on the porch, he ran to open the door.
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