by Carla Kelly
It was the owner’s turn to raise both hands against their sudden intensity. “Hey, hey, slow down! Tig Wilson.”
Della’s heart plummeted. She couldn’t put a finger on what she had suddenly been hoping, but someone named Tig Wilson wasn’t it. “Owen, I don’t know anyone named Tig Wilson.”
“She’s the wife of Bob Wilson, the biggest rancher in these parts,” the man in the shadows said. “I’m Ed Sanford and I own this place.” He chuckled. “Business is always slow, but we like Hastings. Been here for years.”
Sanford came closer and it was his turn to stare, wide-eyed, at Della. He looked her up and down so thoroughly that Della wondered if she had a leaf plastered to her face, or maybe her shirtwaist was unbuttoned.
Apparently too thoroughly for Owen’s taste. “Um, Mr. Sanford, this is my wife,” he said firmly, emphasizing the word. “We’re the Davises. We stopped here today to leave something …”
Della clapped her hand on Owen’s arm. “Do you think you know me?” she asked, hardly breathing.
The proprietor was obviously a man not prone a rude stare. He nodded to Owen. “Beg pardon, sir, but your wife bears a remarkable resemblance to Mrs. Wilson. That’s all. Could happen to anyone. All the same …”
“Tig? That’s her name?” Della asked.
“No. Only part of it. I can’t remember the rest.” With a glance of apology, Sanford peered more closely at Della. “Ma’am, you look pale. Want to sit down? Maybe unbutton your coat? I’d hate to have you keel over into the tobacco twists.”
She made no objection when both men took her by the arm and led her to a bench by the entrance, where the sun shone in and warmed the room a little. Della did as he said, unbuttoning her coat then untying the strings to her winter hat and removing it because everything felt too tight, too everything.
Sanford gasped, swore, and immediately apologized. “Jeez, ma’am, I’m not one to pop off like that, but your hair!”
“I. Like. It,” Owen said, equally firm again.
Sanford threw up his hands. “I’m making an idiot of myself, but ma’am, Tig Wilson has a head of hair just like yours. Gray, of course, but …”
“Please, please, what is her real name?” Della asked. This was no time to cry, not now. The doctor had told her she might be more skittish, but this was no time for Baby Davis to complicate matters.
The pressure of Owen’s hand on her shoulder calmed her. “Can you recall her real name?” he said.
“No, no. As I remember, Mrs. Wilson came to town about seven or eight years ago, after the Molly Bee closed. The town was bigger then, but I’d never seen anyone like her before. What a beauty,” he told them, “and what a resemblance.”
“Her whole name?” Della prompted, but kindly.
Sanford tipped his head back, maybe hoping for an answer to appear in the rafters. “Something Greek. That’s all I know.”
“Tig. Tig. I don’t know,” Della said, hopeful and not hopeful at the same time. She had looked at pictures of Greek statues and knew something about relative resemblance. Welsh were short and dark-eyed. Greeks were olive with curly hair.
Mr. Sanford snapped his fingers. “Antigone! That was it. Antigone. Anyway, she got a job cooking at the Wilson Ranch. I think she took care of Mrs. Wilson, who died a year or two later.” He shook his head. “The first Mrs. Wilson was quite a lady, I assure you, and the whole town mourned. I guess Bob didn’t want to lose a good cook, and truth to tell, there are lots of men who wouldn’t have minded someone as pretty as Tig in their house. She wasn’t young, but she was charming. We all like her.”
“She lives here?” Owen asked.
“Out at the ranch. She comes in now and then, but she never misses March 10, when she leaves flowers on some miner’s grave.”
Della put her hands to her face and sobbed out loud. With a creak to the bench, Owen sat next to her, wrapped her arms around her and held her tight.
“It might not be her, m cara. I mean, you said your mother’s name was Olympia.”
Blindly she took the handkerchief Owen held out to her and blew her nose.
“It is. But Owen, what else don’t I know?”
“Your mother? Seriously?” Sanford asked.
Alert, Della watched him as he looked up, brightened visibly and pointed through the open door. “We can solve this in a minute. I see Mrs. Wilson right now, coming out of the milliner’s. It’s usually her last stop before she leaves town. How about I go get her?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Breathe, Della,” Owen said. “Just breathe. Close your eyes.”
What could she say to that? Della breathed in and out slowly. The dried herring still bothered her, but her mind was miles away, remembering another child. As she watched in her brain, the little girl smiled and waved at her, blew a kiss, and then faded.
The door opened. She heard Owen’s sudden intake of breath. Della opened her eyes, and her mother stood before her.
Della sat still, unable to move and breathe at the same time. The woman with her face gazed with Della’s eyes into Della’s face. The woman closed those same deep-set eyes and bowed her head.
“Della Olympia Anders,” she said finally. “You’ve come home to me.”
Della leaped to her feet and they were in each other’s arms, her mother patting her back and caressing her as if she wanted to make up all at once for so many long years without her baby.
“Well I’ll be,” Sanford said. “No one’s going to believe this.”
“Mama,” Della managed to gasp out. “Mama. But your name …”
“Olympia Antigone Stavrakis, now Wilson.” She smiled at her daughter. “Bob—Mr. Wilson—calls me Tig.” She held her off to see Della better. “I know you have a birthmark on your ankle.”
Della started to laugh. They hugged each other.
“And my hair is the great trial of my life,” Della said, which must have sounded like the funniest thing ever because Mrs. Wilson nodded and laughed too.
“I told Frederick, your father—blessed be his memory—I told him I would put a little olive oil on a comb because that would help.” Her face clouded over. “Did he, after I left? Tell me he did!”
“He did,” Della said softly. Because of the long-overdue letter that her Uncle Karl gave her last year in Winter Quarters, she knew this woman standing so close to her had an additional layer of anguish. Mrs. Wilson needed to know every tiny detail of her child’s life that she had missed, when her father dragged her away from her baby. Della had so much to tell her, so she started with the simplest thing. “He always used a little olive oil.”
“Della still does.” Owen held out his hand to Mrs. Wilson. “I’m Owen Davis, and I believe you are my mother-in-law.”
“What is this shake?” Mrs. Wilson asked. “That’s not the Greek way.”
Della watched in delight as her mother grabbed Owen, kissed one cheek and the other, and then threw her arms around him. She glanced at Mr. Sanford, who, from the gleam in his eyes, enjoyed every second of the drama playing out in front of him. She had no doubt that word would spread within minutes, giving the citizens of Hastings something to talk about for years.
“I didn’t know your middle name was Antigone,” Della said. “There is so much I don’t know about you, and I want to know everything.”
“And what happened to you in the past years? I hope you have had a lovely life.”
What to tell her mother about life with the Anderses, her hard work scratching for an education, and her impulsive “escape” to Winter Quarters, where everything changed? She held out her hand to her husband, who was having his own struggle with her mother’s question.
She watched her mother, her beautiful face wreathed in worry, likely concerned that maybe Della hadn’t had a good life because she wasn’t answering right away. Looking from husband to mother, found at last, Della thought of all the awful times, the times when she thought she could not live another minute. She weighed them against the depth of
her love for Owen Davis and Angharad, and friends who never wished her anything but well, and she dismissed the hard times forever.
In the deepest part of her soul, she knew beyond all logic and reason that every good moment and every bad moment had conspired to bring her right here to Hastings, Colorado, at the perfect time. Bishop Parmley had told her once that the Lord was mindful of her; he was right.
“I have been greatly blessed, Mama,” she said quietly.
Chapter 47
L
Owen knew Tig Wilson wouldn’t even consider that her dear child spend a night in the Hastings Hotel. He wasn’t surprised in the least when she insisted they come home with her for a few days. He had no plans to argue the decision apparently made without words between mother and daughter. He knew he was going to relish every moment of this reunion.
Still, Uncle Jesse needed a telegram explaining why they would be a little late, considering that Owen and Ray were due to head north again almost immediately to negotiate the purchase of lumber for the new town of Raymond.
In the telegram, he asked Uncle Jesse to inform Mabli that Angharad was going to be her guest for a little longer. Telegram sent, he squared with the hotel, retrieved their luggage, and climbed in the back of Mrs. Wilson’s buckboard, ready to enjoy the next few days of being the onlooker, watching a mother and daughter find themselves in each other.
He was aided and abetted by Bob Wilson, a powerful rancher, from the look of his land and holdings, but a man little more than putty in the capable hands of Antigone. Owen couldn’t help but wonder if such would be his fate under Della’s management. He sincerely hoped it was.
Once he recovered from the amazement and shock of seeing his wife’s veritable twin, Bob Wilson took the whole thing in stride. “Sometimes things get a little slow this far from town. We’ll have plenty to talk about, from here on out to the finish line.”
“You’re calmer than I was when they met,” Owen said. “I may never recover.”
Mr. Wilson was obviously made of sterner stuff. “Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you realize, well, no, you haven’t.” Or possibly not so stoic. Owen watched the old rancher dab at his eyes then look away for a long moment. Or maybe not too serious either. When he turned back to Owen, he motioned to the ladies. “Pretty wife you’ve got there, son. One of a kind.” They laughed together.
After giving her husband a smile unparalleled in its brilliance, Tig sat Della down by the fireplace. No words spoken, the mother and daughter simply held hands and looked at each other.
“Owen, let me tell you a few things about Tig. I know she’ll tell Della, but it’s a hard story.”
Owen nodded. No need to inform this genial rancher that he had hard stories of his own.
“Tig’s father took her away to Trinidad and another mine.”
“That’s not so far from here,” Owen said, and let out his breath in a whoosh. “That’s where she was all these years?”
“It might as well have been the moon. He forced her to marry an older Greek. He didn’t live too long, but when her father died, she was gone the next day. Frederick Anders meant everything to her.”
What could he say to that?
As time ticked away, Mr. Wilson gently reminded his wife that night was coming and asked about supper.
“I can cook. What about you, Bob?” Owen said, which brought both women to their feet immediately.
“Oh, no,” the women said together, and then they looked at each other and said in unison, “Yours too?”
Fixing the meal took longer than usual, with the ladies talking nonstop and then lapsing into silence as they stared at each other and fell into each other’s arms.
Owen found himself grinning like a fool one moment and then deadly serious the next, trying to imagine what would have happened if they had arrived in Hastings five minutes later. The merchant had said Mrs. Wilson stopped at the milliner’s on the way out of town. Owen had noticed the hatbox on her arm when Mr. Sanford stopped her. In a bare minute or two, she would have left Hastings, none the wiser. Better not think about it.
While the women did the dishes, Bob Wilson took Owen with him to make sure the hired man had finished his chores. Owen admired the neatness and order he saw everywhere. “You’ve been here a while, haven’t you?”
Wilson nodded. He rested his arms on the corral fence. “Maudie and I came here pretty early in the game. Raised two sons. Buried two others.” He nodded toward another ranch house on the other side of the field. “Our eldest lives there with his family. I’ll take you to meet them tomorrow. Our younger is enrolled in the animal husbandry program at Colorado Agricultural College.”
“And Antigone?”
“She’s been a blessing. It was tough when Maudie died,” he said simply.
“I have to know, unless this is not my business. Did you put up the stone marker for Della’s father?”
“Sure did. When I hired Tig to begin with, she told me straight up what had happened to her. When I married her, that marker seemed like a good idea. She visits Fred’s grave and I visit Maudie’s.” He glanced at Owen. “Surprised?”
“I am not. My first wife died in childbirth when our daughter was born. I visit Gwyna’s grave. Della tells me I’d better keep doing that, or it’s curtains for me.”
“Then we’re both lucky men.”
Mother and daughter talked long into the evening. When the grandfather clock struck ten, Bob got to his feet and stretched.
“Let’s you and I each get a hot water bottle,” he said. “It gets chilly here at night, and I’m no fan of cold feet.”
Owen looked at Della, her head on her mother’s shoulder. “You’re suggesting we might not have anyone to put our feet on tonight?”
“Sure am. Do they look like they’re going anywhere?”
When Owen came downstairs in the morning, mother and daughter were curled up together on the sofa, Antigone’s hand protectively draped over Della, and Della’s hand gentle on her belly, mothers and children—three generations.
“I’m an ogre, but I have to be in Provo by the end of the week,” Owen told Della two mornings later when they packed to leave. The Wilsons were driving them to Hastings for a last visit to Fred’s grave and then down to the railroad in La Perla.
“No need to feel that way, my love,” Della said. “They’ve promised to visit me at least once in Provo after you leave for Canada again.” She put her hands on his chest. “And Angharad and I are coming north when school is out in May.”
“You are. I won’t argue,” he said, and he kissed her right before he put his dirty socks on her head, which made her laugh and swat at him. “Mr. Wilson told me that sometimes the path of least resistance is the way to deal with Greeks. I’ll bow to his superior knowledge.”
In Hastings, Della and her mother stood for a long moment looking down at Frederick Anders’s grave. Arm in arm, they returned to the buckboard for a quiet ride to La Perla.
They stood close together as the train approached, and then they wiped each other’s tears. Antigone kept looking back as they left the Davises at the depot. Owen’s hands gentle on her shoulders, Della waved until her mother was out of sight.
L
A day later, they left the D&RGW and rode the short line from Colton to Scofield. “I told Uncle Jesse we’d be back in Provo tomorrow. We have some friends to visit, m cara.”
The first friends lay in the cemetery, their wooden headstones already showing wear from the scouring wind. Some of the bereft had already exchanged wood for stone markers. The bare patches in the ground signaled gophers hard at work as usual, but some early spring grass poked up here and there.
“Time works on it, but I doubt this will ever be a beautiful cemetery,” Owen said later, looking down at Gwyna’s grave and talking to her in Welsh. He glanced over the rows to see Della still standing by Richard’s plot. She touched the wooden marker and moved toward David Evans’s little allotment of American real estate in this p
lace so far from the green hills of Wales.
“Going to Canada, Gwyna,” he said. “I’ll come back and tell you about it someday.”
Would he? He smiled inside, knowing in his heart that the other woman lodged there would insist upon it. He would be back to visit. He patted Gwyna’s headstone and walked toward Della. Those gopher holes were hard to spot, and he didn’t want her to trip.
They spent the afternoon in Clear Creek with Martha Evans and her three little ones, directed there by Rees Phillips, a miner Owen already knew: a good and patient Welshman from Monmouthshire. After Phillips left for his own place, Martha told them they were making plans for June.
“I hope you don’t think it’s too early,” she told Owen, while Della read to the children. “My little ones need a father, and he’s a good man.”
“He is,” Owen agreed, understanding more than he thought he ever would about moving on, whether with coal or mines or matters of the heart—maybe all three.
Visiting the Koskis meant hugs for Della and threats for Owen if he didn’t treat Della right. Owen thought it prudent not to mention a tent in the summer. Eeva bubbled over with news from Montana about Mari Luoma and her baby, ten months old now and already pulling himself up to furniture.
“She named him Vihtori Heikki, and he is thriving,” Eeva said. “There’s a man name of Adolph Hill too, who is keeping her company.” She gave a sigh of exasperation. “The clerk at Ellis Island couldn’t pronounce his Finnish name, much less spell it, so he became Hill.”
Moving on. They spent the night back in Winter Quarters with the Parmleys, who had invited Emil Isgreen for dinner too. A few months ago, it might have bothered him when the doctor took Della aside for a few words. It didn’t bother him now; he knew his wife’s heart. Besides that, the good doctor shook his hand and patted his back. “I knew you had it in you, Owen,” he said cheerfully and blew a kiss to Della as he left.
“He’s a rascal, to be sure, but he ordered me to let you do any heavy lifting and to walk for exercise,” Della said. She leaned against him and whispered, “I didn’t tell him about the tent.”
