by Jae
"I always tried to teach you by example, but in this one thing, I failed." Luke's voice rose barely above a whisper. "I hid out of fear. But that's the thing about keeping secrets. The longer you keep quiet, the harder it becomes to tell the truth." Silver-gray eyes met Amy's. It was like looking in a mirror.
Amy swallowed and looked away.
Silence filled the parlor. What now? Could their family survive this? Were they still a family?
"If Papa isn't... if he..." Nattie paused and tugged on her hair with both fists. "...she isn't our papa, then where do we..." She gestured at Amy, then pressed her palm to her own chest. "Who's our father, then?"
Amy's stomach twisted itself into knots. For some reason, that thought hadn't yet entered her mind, but Nattie was right, of course. A woman couldn't father children, no matter how long she'd lived as a man.
"A father is the person who's there to pick you up and make it all better when you fall and skin your knees and who's watching over you for three nights in a row when you're sick," Mama said, eyes alive with passion.
True. Luke had done all of that many times. One of Amy's earliest memories was sitting in front of Luke in the saddle, strong arms keeping her safe. Her throat burned with tears. How could that all be an illusion?
"That doesn't answer my question, Mama," Nattie said. "Don't we have a right to know?"
Mama rasped her teeth along her bottom lip. Her fingers tightened around Luke's until Amy could no longer tell which fingers belonged to whom. Mama looked at her. "He was a dashing young man I knew in Boston."
"Did you love him?" Nattie asked.
"I thought so at the time." Mama stared off into the distance as if she could see the past. "But I had no idea what love really was. I wasn't as mature as the two of you. My father and brothers ignored or bullied me all my life, so I was starved for attention. Rafe gave it to me."
Rafe. So that was her father's name. Not Luke. "What happened to him?" Amy asked.
Luke wrapped her arm around Mama and drew her against her body.
"He wasn't ready to be a father," Mama said.
He didn't want us. The thought cut like steel. But Luke did.
"If he wasn't ready to be a father, why did you have me?" Nattie asked.
Silence stretched through the parlor, interrupted by Mama's ragged breathing.
Mama leaned against Luke's shoulder and looked at her.
Luke nodded. "They deserve the truth. We can't hold anything back now."
There was more? Amy's insides trembled. Her knees felt as if they would collapse under the burden of yet another revelation.
"Rafe is not your father, Nattie, just Amy's."
Nattie stiffened against Amy's side. Her breathing stopped. "What? We're not real sisters? Not even that is true?"
"You are sisters. You just had different fathers."
"Who was mine?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me!"
Mama's mouth tore open in a silent sob. Tears ran down her face faster than Luke could brush them away. "I don't know, sweetie, I really don't."
Amy clutched Nattie tighter. "You don't know? But, Mama, how can you not know?" A thought slammed into Amy, robbing her of breath. "You weren't... violated, were you?" She sucked in air, but none of it seemed to reach her lungs.
"No, not like you think." Mama laid a trembling hand across her eyes. "When I met Luke, I was working in a brothel."
Amy's knees buckled. She sank onto the divan and dragged Nattie with her. "A brothel?" Mama, forever the embodiment of love and goodness for Amy, had worked in a brothel? Had sold her body to strangers?
Nattie pressed her forehead to her knees and groaned. A steady stream of "no, no, no" fell from her lips.
"She had no other choice." Luke no longer looked down in shame. Shoulders squared, she stared at them. "She had no family, no friends, no money. No one offered work to an unwed woman with a child. It was either the brothel or letting you, Amy, starve to death."
She did it because of me. Guilt added to the queasiness in Amy's stomach. Images flashed through her, memories she had all but forgotten. Faces of young women. The tinny plunking of a piano. Rough laughter and cigarette smoke drifting upstairs. Had she lived with Mama in the brothel?
"It was a very bad time in my life, and I'm not proud of it," Mama said, her voice a whisper. "But still, a few good things came from it. You, Nattie. And I met Luke." Her tears stopped flowing.
A myriad of thoughts buzzed through Amy's mind. "You met..." She stopped and licked dry lips. "...in a brothel?"
"It's not like you think," Mama said. She brushed her fingers across Luke's shirt. "Luke was never anything but the perfect gentleman."
Nattie lifted her head off her knees. She straightened and clutched her stomach. "And Papa..." Her gaze flitted to Luke, then away. "Luke decided to disguise herself as a man so that you could pass yourself off as a married couple?"
"No, Nattie. I lived as a man long before I ever met your mother. She married me without knowing I was a woman."
"When did you find out? How?" Countless questions tumbled through Amy's mind.
"On the way to Oregon, Luke was shot, and I treated the wound."
A vague image rose from the haze of Amy's memory: her papa huddled under a blanket in a wagon, face bruised and pasty, and Mama crouching next to him, just as pale. She tried to remember what had come before that.
Nothing.
Just a few hazy memories of Mama, Tess, and a busy town full of oxen and horses. She couldn't remember her life before Luke had joined the family.
"And after finding out, you still stayed?" Nattie asked. "I don't understand."
Amy did. Mama is like me. And Papa... Luke is too.
"Maybe one day, when you fall in love, you will, Nattie." Mama's thumb caressed Luke's knuckles. "I married Luke to give my daughters the best life possible, but I stayed with her because I love her. You can't just walk away from the person you love." Mama looked at Amy.
Was this another message for her? Did Mama think she was in love with Rika? Am I? She kneaded the back of her neck, where a knot of tension sent painful flares to her temples. Her whole life had crumbled, and she had no idea how to crawl from beneath the ruins.
Hamilton Horse Ranch
Baker Prairie, Oregon
June 26, 1868
AMY LINGERED IN the doorway.
On the other side of the room, Nattie sat, bent over something on her desk. When she shifted, Amy saw that Nattie wasn't reading a book or studying a document. Nattie was staring into a handheld mirror.
What is she seeing? Amy wondered.
Nattie saw her in the mirror and flinched. Slowly, she turned around.
They stared at each other.
"Are you all right?" Amy asked, still clutching the doorframe.
"No."
Amy took a step forward, into Nattie's room, and reached out a hand, then drew it back. What was there to say or do? Nothing could change that their family lay in shambles.
"Do you think this is why we were never really close?" Nattie's voice sounded sluggish, as if something inside of her was numb and frozen. "Because we're only half sisters? Do you think we're so different because I'm like my father?"
The agony on Nattie's face made Amy's eyes burn. She walked across the room. "Are we so different?" She no longer knew. Finding out Luke's secret had united them and brought them closer than they had been in years. "We both love horses and the ranch, and we want to be more than just some man's wife."
"If we have so much in common, then how come we've never spent much time together?" Nattie white-knuckled the mirror she still held. "Why do you never really talk to me?"
"We talk all the time," Amy said.
"Not about the important things. You never share your thoughts or feelings."
Amy lifted her hands. Why is this suddenly about me? But the pain on Nattie's face kept her from harshly denying it. She glanced down at the mirror on Nattie's lap as if it wou
ld show her glimpses into Nattie's heart and soul.
When a pain-filled gaze met hers, she understood. It's not about me. It's about her and where she fits into our family. "That has nothing to do with you. You're my sister, and I love you."
"Why, then?"
"I guess I never grew out of the habit of seeing you as my annoying little sister who kept me from riding out to the range with Papa."
Nattie lifted her chin. "I'm not a little girl anymore."
"No, you sure aren't." Sometimes, Nattie was more of an adult than she was. But in the last few years, Amy had learned to keep her growing attraction to women to herself, and in the process, she had shut out Nattie not just from that part of her life, but completely. "I'm sorry. I should have talked to you more, asked your opinion on things, and shared my thoughts. It's just that..."
"What?"
Amy pressed her lips together so tightly that she felt the blood drain from them. She didn't want to lie, but neither could she tell Nattie the truth. "I'm not ready to talk about it." She wasn't sure if she'd ever be.
Head tilted, Nattie stared up at her. Her eyes were dark and her wet lashes clumped together. "I don't want to lose you too."
With one long step, Amy reached her and pulled her into a fierce embrace. "You won't."
* * *
When Luke's breathing told Nora that Luke had finally fallen into a restless sleep, she slipped from beneath the tangle of Luke's limbs and got out of bed. Without lighting a lamp, she tiptoed down the hall and opened the first door. "Nattie?"
No answer.
Nora stepped farther into the room.
A sliver of moonlight showed her that Nattie's bed was empty.
Her stomach churned. Had Nattie run away?
Oh, Lord, please...
She peeked into Amy's room.
That bed, too, was empty.
Without taking the time to dress, Nora hurried down the stairs.
The door was open, confirming Nora's fears.
She reached for the screen door but stopped when she saw two people sitting on the veranda's top step. They sat in the darkness without a lantern, but Nora thought she could make out Nattie's familiar shape and a taller one next to her.
"Whatever he's done, it can't be as bad as how my old man treated me. Luke's not like that. He'd never hurt you."
Nora recognized Phin's deep voice. His trust in Luke loosened the bands of panic that had tightened around her chest.
"No, but... oh, Phin, you have no idea." Nattie's voice was choked with tears.
"Tell me what happened," Phin said.
Nora's tightened her grip on the screen door when she realized Luke's life was in someone else's hands. Would Nattie reveal Luke's secret?
Nattie sighed. "I'm not sure I understand it myself."
"What can I do to help?"
"There's nothing you can do." Nattie's voice was muffled as if she was burying her face against Phin's shoulder. "But you being here, sitting with me, makes me feel better."
Nora tried to tiptoe back, but as she shifted her weight, the creaking of a board underneath gave her away.
"Boss? Is that you?" Phin stood.
"No, it's me." Nora stepped onto the veranda, her gaze instantly trying to discern Nattie's expression in the darkness.
"I'll leave you two to talk," Phin said.
After he disappeared into the night, Nora crossed the veranda on bare feet and sat on the top step next to Nattie.
Isaac the owl hooted in a pine tree behind the house.
For the first time in her life, Nora didn't know how to talk to Nattie, what to say to make everything all right.
"You're in your nightgown, Mama," Nattie said.
Nora tugged the thin fabric over her ankles. Unlike Nora, Nattie was fully dressed. Had she wanted to run away? "I couldn't sleep, and I worried when I found your bed empty. You weren't about to just up and leave, were you?"
"What? No. Amy's the one who runs when she's scared, not me."
Another knot of worry lodged in Nora's throat. Where was Amy?
"She's in the hayloft," Nattie said as if sensing Nora's thoughts.
The knot in Nora's throat loosened. At least Amy hadn't gone far. "Have you talked to her?"
"A bit. But she's not ready to talk."
Again, silence fell between them.
"My father... do you think he was a good man?" Nattie didn't look at Nora but stared straight ahead into the night, her arms wrapped tightly around her pulled-up knees.
"Your father is upstairs in the bedroom, and yes, she's a good person."
"Mama..."
"I know what you're asking, Nattie, but I don't have an answer. I don't know who fathered you." She placed her hand on Nattie's cheek and guided her around to face her. "It doesn't matter. You're your own, wonderful person."
Nattie trembled beneath her hand. "But I don't look like you and Amy, and I'm not Papa's... Luke's daughter either. I don't resemble any of you."
"That's not true. You're so much like I was at your age that it sometimes takes my breath away. And you have that little bump," she tapped Nattie on the nose, "just like Luke does. You were so proud of that when you were little. Luke influenced you so much more than the man whose blood you share ever could. She taught you how to ride, where to find the juiciest strawberries, and how to be a good human being. You have always loved her so much, and it breaks my heart to think that it might change now."
Tears burned in Nora's eyes, and when she blinked, they spilled over and ran in hot trails down her cheeks.
"It won't," Nattie whispered as if afraid to say it aloud. "I still love him... her, but I'm so confused. I thought you and Papa met and fell in love and then had Amy and me. But now everything is different."
"Not everything," Nora said. "We still love you."
"But doesn't love include trust? In all those years, you never once considered telling us?"
"We thought about it a thousand times. Not telling you had nothing to do with lack of trust. We were afraid that you might not be able to accept it... to accept Luke... and our love."
Nattie rubbed the bump on the bridge of her nose, a gesture that reminded Nora so much of Luke that her heart hurt. "Well, finding out you lied to us all these years sure doesn't help me accept the situation. You were in my shoes once. Weren't you terribly angry with Papa... at... her when you found out she'd deceived you all along?"
It was hard to remember herself as the young woman who had been so scared to love again. "I wasn't just angry. I was devastated. I thought my plans of a happy family life were ruined."
"But they weren't?"
It hurt that Nattie needed to ask, but Nora understood. After discovering such a fundamental lie, Nattie wouldn't take anything for granted anymore. At least not for a while. "I can't imagine loving anyone — man or woman — more than I love Luke." Nora trailed her fingers through Nattie's shiny black hair. "Luke and I, we did things a little backward and we're a pretty unlikely pair, but that doesn't mean our love is any less than you thought. It doesn't mean you are any less. Luke chose to be your parent because she loves you. Do you understand that?"
When Nattie turned toward her, her knees pressed against Nora's thigh. She sniffled and then nodded. "I think I do."
* * *
Rika stepped out of the cabin. Moonlight filtered through the shadows on the veranda, and she thought she saw someone sitting on the steps leading up to the main house.
Amy?
Quickly, Rika crossed the ranch yard.
"Amy?" Nora's voice cut through the almost darkness.
Rika lifted her lantern so that Nora could see her face. "No, it's me, Hendrika." When she came closer, the circle of light illuminated Nora and Nattie huddling close on the top step. "Everything all right?"
"Yes," Nora said, but it didn't sound convincing. "Nattie, you best go to bed. I'll look for Amy."
Nattie stood and dusted off her skirt. "Give her some time, Mama. You know Amy. If you climb up
in that hayloft now, you'll only chase her away."
After some hesitation, Nora said goodnight and followed Nattie into the house.
Rika stared after them. Should she go to bed too and give Amy some time alone, as Nattie had suggested? But she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep.
