by Jae
Maybe Amy would have an easier time talking to someone who wasn't part of the family.
She walked to the hay barn, opened the big doors, and listened.
Hay rustled.
"Amy?"
Silence.
"Amy? If you're there, please answer me. I'm worried about you."
"I'm fine," Amy's voice came from the hayloft. "Go to bed."
Rika left the lantern on a hook, groped for the ladder, and climbed through the hay door. With her arm in a sling, she struggled, but the thought of Amy alone and hurting urged her onward.
"What are you doing? You'll hurt your shoulder!" Amy hurried over and helped her into the hayloft.
"I just want to make sure you're all right," Rika said.
Amy didn't answer, didn't tell her she was fine. She sank into a pile of hay, wrapped her arms around her legs, and pressed her forehead to her knees.
"What's going on?" Rika walked over, knelt, and touched Amy's shoulder.
The muscles under her hand were stiff.
"What happened with your parents?" Rika asked.
"I can't tell you. I want to, but I just... I can't." Amy let go of her legs and flopped into the hay.
Not a lot of things had the power to upset Amy like this. For Amy, only her family, the ranch, and the horses mattered. Rika stretched out in the hay next to Amy. Their arms touched, but Rika didn't move away. "Your father," she said and took a wild guess, "he's not your father, is he?"
Amy scrambled upright.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
"Half right," Amy mumbled. She slung her arms around her knees again and rocked back and forth as if to soothe herself. "How did you know?"
"You asked him if Nora is even your mother. I know you love your parents, and you'd never ask something like that if you hadn't just received shocking news."
Amy blew air through her nose. "You have no idea."
"You know what I would say if someone told me that my father isn't really my father?" Rika didn't wait for Amy's answer. "I'd say, 'Oh thank the Lord!'"
"That's different," Amy said.
"I know. Your father... Luke, he's a good man and a good father."
"No."
"No?" She squinted at Amy. "Don't be stupid, Amy. You have two parents who love you. Don't you know how precious that is? What difference does it make if he's your father by blood or by choice?"
Hay rustled when Amy lifted up on her knees and loomed over her. "You don't understand." Her voice rose to a growl. "He's not my father. He's no man at all."
Rika blinked. "What?"
But Amy didn't answer. She dropped back into the hay and pressed her hand against her mouth as if she was sorry she had said anything.
"No man at all," Rika whispered. What did that mean? She pictured Luke: tall, with the wiry strength of someone who had worked hard his whole life but didn't have her own father's heavy build. His gentleness was so much like Amy's, not because they were related, but because they were both —
Rika sucked in a breath. "He's a woman."
Amy said nothing. Her silence spoke volumes.
"It's true? Are you sure?"
"Who would make up something so crazy?" Amy mumbled.
Rika rubbed her forehead, but it didn't help her think more clearly. What on God's green earth was going on? She thought of the dying soldier who had confessed her true identity to her. Was Luke like that?
No. The soldier had dressed as a man to follow her betrothed into battle, but Luke loved Nora. Even if everything else was a disguise, that part was true.
Amy's parents were two women who loved each other. Lord. How many of them are there? Are there really so many women couples, and I just never knew about it? Maybe it should have been a shock, but for some reason, it wasn't. When Rika looked at Amy, she understood why Luke preferred life with Nora to life with a husband.
"Nothing makes sense anymore." Amy threw her arm across her eyes, shutting out the world. "And at the same time, a lot of little details make sense now. Why they taught us to always knock on their bedroom door. Why Papa... Luke never went to see Doctor Tolridge, no matter how sick he... she was."
"Come here." Rika wrestled her right arm out of its sling and opened her arms.
Amy didn't resist. She melted against Rika, resting against her uninjured shoulder as if they had lain that way a thousand times.
Carefully, Rika lowered her sore arm and clutched Amy to her body. Hot skin pressed against her own, and Rika nearly groaned. She trailed the fingers of her left hand through Amy's locks and down her back, feeling the smooth skin beneath Amy's shirt. For an instant, she imagined continuing on her path and letting her fingers wander down Amy's buttocks.
She shook herself. Stop that. You can't have such thoughts. Not now. "Did they tell you who your father, the man who fathered you, is?"
"Some man in Boston," Amy said. When she snorted, her breath warmed Rika's neck. "Well, at least I wasn't fathered by a stranger in a brothel."
"What? A brothel? Where's this coming from?"
"Mama... she..." A tear splashed onto Rika's skin. Amy wiped it away, her hand lingering on Rika's collarbone.
Rika cleared her throat. Twice. "What about your mother?"
"She worked in a brothel after I was born. She doesn't know who Nattie's father is."
Despite Amy's heat against her, Rika's body went cold. She clutched Amy tighter. "That's horrible."
"Why did this have to happen?" Amy whispered. She buried her face against Rika's neck. Warm lips brushed Rika's skin.
The tips of Rika's breasts hardened. Her head swam with sensation, but she forced herself to focus on Amy's words, not her body. This was serious. Amy needed her. "Would you rather they never said a word? Keeping so many secrets all of these years..." Rika shook her head. "That must have been so hard on them."
Amy lifted her head off Rika's shoulder. "On them?"
"You don't honestly think they were out to hurt you? Whatever they did, they did for you and Nattie. Your mother didn't have a choice. You don't understand how it is to be all alone in the world. For all your strength, you're so innocent..."
"I'm not innocent." Amy's voice rumbled against Rika's skin.
Rika swirled a handful of Amy's hair between her fingers and smiled. "Oh, yes, you are." It was part of Amy's appeal. "You have a kind heart, and you help any creature who needs you. But back East, in Boston, things are not like that. I saw children with dirty faces and hollow cheeks on the street every day. Once, I gave a loaf of bread to a little boy who was clutching his stomach because he was so hungry. My father got so angry..." She closed her eyes. "He broke my wrist."
"Oh, Rika..." Amy trailed her fingers along Rika's right arm and cradled her wrist.
It was the wrong arm, but Rika didn't mind. The touch was soothing. "Between starving and doing whatever it took to keep herself and you alive, your mother didn't have a choice. It doesn't make her a bad person."
"I know. I'm not judging her. It's just... They should have told us sooner," Amy said.
"They were afraid of losing your love." A ball of emotions lodged in her throat, making it hard to continue. She kept her own secret for the same reason. "And? Did they?"
When Amy cuddled closer, a few strands of her hair tickled Rika's skin. Rika shivered.
"Did they what?" Amy asked.
"Lose your love."
Amy gave no answer. Maybe she didn't have one. She laid her face against Rika's neck, and Rika cradled her head. Once, she had lain that way with Jo during a long night when her coughing wouldn't stop, but holding Amy felt different.
The feeling in her belly wasn't just the protectiveness of a friend. It was fiercer, but at the same time gentler than what she had experienced before.
Is this what love feels like?
She gave a shake of her head, nearly displacing Amy from her comfortable spot. You didn't love Willem and you don't love Phin, so how could you feel love for Amy, a woman? But when she stroked the red lo
cks, marveling at the vulnerability of this strong woman, she thought, How can anyone not love her?
But of course there was no future in thinking like that. Rika had spent a lifetime listening to reason, not feelings, and she couldn't afford to change that now. "Ready to climb down?" she asked.
Amy shook her head. "Stay with me?"
Sleeping in the hayloft when she had a perfectly good bed was crazy, but Rika nodded and pulled Amy closer, basking in her warmth and her company for as long as she could. Monday, her wedding day, would come all too soon.
* * *
Phin slung the reins around the brake and walked around the wagon to lift Rika up on the seat.
"You going into town again?" Luke asked.
"No," Phin answered. "Just driving around, looking for some flowers Hendrika can wear to the wedding tomorrow."
Luke nodded from her place on the veranda.
Her. Rika still found it hard to believe that Amy's father was a woman. During breakfast, her gaze had returned to Luke again and again, searching for any hint of female curves beneath the shirt and vest.
She found none. Luke's disguise was perfect. Rika wondered how it might feel to live her life constantly hiding and pretending.
You're about to find out.
Phin stepped up to her and put his hands on her hips to lift her onto the wagon.
The calluses on his palms snagged on the linsey-woolsey dress just as Amy's did, but his touch felt different. It didn't cause the mix of heat and tenderness.
So what? That feeling isn't necessary to survive and live a content life, Rika told herself.
But that old, familiar way of thinking could no longer convince her. Something had changed inside of her. She realized that survival wasn't enough. I don't want to be just content. I want to be happy. After working hard for months, her whole life, really, she had earned it.
"Wait." Rika turned in Phin's arms.
"What?" He smiled at her. "You changed your mind and don't want flowers for the wedding?"
Behind her, Old Jack snorted and stamped his hoof, waiting to get going.
Rika gulped a mouthful of air. She opened her mouth, not sure what she would say until she heard the words. "I can't marry you."
His hands jerked against her hips. "What?" He stared at her.
Rika stared back. She had hesitated and argued with herself for days or maybe weeks, but her sudden words surprised her as much as they surprised him. She straightened and said again, "I can't marry you."
"Why? I know people expected us to marry the minute I got back, and I admit I dragged my heels, but —"
"It has nothing to do with you."
Blond brows drew together. "What's the matter, then? Why the sudden change of mind?"
"When you learn the truth, you'll be the one who won't want to marry me."
"Let me be the judge of that." He supported his elbow on one crossed arm and tapped a finger against his chin. "What's going on?"
Blood rushed through her ears. Her lungs couldn't get enough air, no matter how fast she breathed. A thousand thoughts and doubts raced through her mind. Should she tell Phin?
She thought of Amy, of the pain in her eyes last night. Did she really want her children to look at her like that one day?
Rika drew in a breath, inflating her cheeks, then let it escape. She turned her head to see if Luke could overhear them but realized Luke was no longer on the veranda. "I'm not Jo," she said, voice low even though they were alone now.
"You go by Hendrika."
"I am Hendrika. Hendrika Aaldenberg."
Phin's hands dropped to his sides. "Hendrika Aaldenberg." He repeated the syllables. "You didn't just send a tintype of a friend. That was a picture of Johanna. You're not Johanna."
Rika dug the tip of her boot into the dust. "No, I'm not."
"Then where is she?" Phin asked. "If she didn't want to marry me, she could have —"
"She's dead." Rika peeked up through half-lowered lashes, every muscle in her body like stone.
Phin's face flushed. A vein pulsed in his right temple. "What in tarnation...? Dead?"
"I didn't kill her," Rika said, in case his thoughts were running in that direction. Her heart pounded in time with the vein in Phin's temple. "She was my friend. I think she had brown lung disease."
He folded muscular arms across his chest, a solid barrier between them. "And you stole my letters and the train ticket off her cold body?"
"I-I... It wasn't like that." Her legs trembled, and Rika shrank back against Old Jack's warm flank. She curled her lip inward and bit down on it. "I did it because I had no other choice. I lost my job and my place in the boarding house, and I spent most of my money paying for Jo's funeral. I had nowhere to go but the poorhouse. I didn't have the time to start my own correspondence with a bachelor out west. I'd have starved in the meantime."
"If that's really true, why didn't you just tell me? Why lie?"
"Because you'd have sent me back," Rika said.
"You don't know that." He unfolded his arms and tapped his chest. "I'm not heartless, you know?"
No, he wasn't. But before she had come to Oregon, Rika had found little reason to trust in the goodness of people. "Are you saying you'd have married me anyway?"
"I didn't know Johanna, and I don't know you, so what difference would it have made?"
Thoughts flitted through Rika's head like shuttles hissing back and forth in a loom. "Why are you so intent on marrying a stranger?" She had wondered about it for weeks, but only now did she dare ask. "Why not marry one of the young women here in Baker Prairie? Why didn't you try to court Nattie?" Or Amy, she almost added but didn't want to say it out loud. The thought of Amy with Phin made her vision dim to a hazy red.
Phin stumbled back. "No, that... she..." He rubbed the stubbles on his upper lip. "She'd never have the likes of me."
Rika's thoughts cleared; the mental shuttles stopped flitting as if the end-of-day bell had rung. Ah. "Did she say that?"
"She doesn't need to. A blind man could see that she deserves better than a ranch hand without a penny to his name."
That comment stung. Rika took a step back. "I don't have a penny to my name either."
"That's different. A man needs to take care of his wife. If I courted the boss's daughter, everyone would think I'm just doing it to get the ranch one day. I don't want Nattie to think the land is worth more than she is."
"But why advertise for a wife even though you care for Nattie?"
Phin's lips formed a thin line. "Pining away for her has no future. I need to move on."
When Rika opened her mouth, he cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Enough of that nonsense. What happens now?"
"I'll try to find work." It wouldn't be easy to find employment as an unwed woman, but once she found work, she'd send Phin money. "I swear I'll pay you back what you paid for the train and the stagecoach tickets."
"Not necessary," Phin said.
"But you need the money." For a rancher just starting out, every cent counted.
"I need a wife. And you need a husband." His gaze drilled into her, then softened. "Maybe if I took the time to get to know you — the real you — I'd like you. We could try."
Rika's mouth fell open. When Old Jack swung his tail and she almost tasted horsehair, she snapped her mouth shut and continued to stare at Phin. She had expected shouting and cursing, maybe even a slap to her face, not this calm offer to take her anyway. "You... you still want to marry me?"
"If you promise there'll be no more lies between us." He held out his hand as if he had sold her a horse and wanted to close the deal.
Rika hesitated. What are you doing? she shouted at herself. This was what she had wanted all along, wasn't it? To be married and safe for the rest of her life. Now she could get it without having to spend her life as Jo.
She thought of Amy, then shook her head. Those feelings had no future. For goodness' sake, say yes!
Phin tilted his hand. "So?"
&
nbsp; * * *
Amy dipped the pen into the ink well and paused with the nib above the paper. "Dear Rika," she murmured and wrote it, trying for her smoothest penmanship. She paused again. Tomorrow Rika would marry Phin, and Amy didn't know what to say to her.
Don't marry him, she wanted to write. But of course she didn't. She had nothing to offer Rika.
"Just wish them all the best for the future," Nattie had said. But if it was that easy, why had Nattie been in her own room for the last two hours, trying to compose a letter of congratulations?
