Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  The question was cynical and made her feel ashamed of herself. But nothing in life came free. There had to be a cost that she wasn’t seeing. And surely Cameron’s motivation had to be something stronger than uniting a mother and daughter whom he didn’t know.

  Or was that fair? She and Cameron were no longer strangers. Last night she had leaned back in his arms and found comfort in his scent and the hard strength of his body. Later she’d spent a restless night battling thoughts she had certainly never directed toward a stranger. They knew each other’s habits. But still . . . to interrupt his life to help her—and pay for the inconvenience—she didn’t understand why he would do that.

  As the sun popped above the horizon, she drank yet another cup of coffee and forced her mind to Claire. Her darling, sweet-smelling baby. Not a day passed that she didn’t think about her daughter and wonder how tall she was and what color her hair had become. Had her eyes remained blue? Did she resemble Clarence or Della’s side of the family? How did she spend her days? What was her favorite color and flower and holiday and song and, and, and.

  These thoughts hurt. But it eased her some to imagine Claire safe and protected and living in comfort.

  Now Cameron had shaken that image. Maybe Claire was a sickly child. Maybe she’d been felled by a childhood disease. Or maybe Mrs. Ward was still queer in the head, maybe she treated Claire badly. Maybe money was scarce and Claire lived in penury.

  She didn’t know.

  That was the thought digging at her mind as she went about her morning chores. She didn’t know what Claire’s life was like. And now she had doubts about her previous assumptions.

  When Cameron came to the house for breakfast, she slammed a plate in front of him and sat down hard.

  “Aren’t you eating?” he asked.

  “I’m too angry to have an appetite.”

  “All right.” He put down his knife and fork. “Why are you angry?”

  “I’m glad you asked,” she said, speaking between her teeth. “I can’t figure out if you’re some kind of fairy God-father sent here to work magic, or if you’re a devil in disguise, here to destroy any peace of mind I might have had.”

  “I’m just a man who’s spent a third of his life trying to do right.”

  “Right by whom, Mr. Cameron? Maybe your idea of right isn’t the same as my idea of right. Have you ever thought about that when you’re making decisions about other people’s lives?”

  “Why in the hell are you so upset about this?” The flat look in his eyes stated that her reaction was a far cry from what he had expected and had hoped to receive.

  She shoved back a wave of hair and glared at him with flashing eyes. “How dare you just announce that you’re going to fetch my daughter! What gives you the right to disrupt her life and mine? Exactly what is your plan, anyway? You kidnap her from her grandparents—you, a stranger—and then drag a frightened little girl a thousand miles west, and set her on my doorstep before you wave good-bye?”

  The more she talked, the angrier she got. The gall of him. Jumping from her seat at the table, she paced in front of the stove, waving her hands.

  “And then what happens, Mr. Cameron? Do you imagine that Claire and I will fall on each other with joy and happiness? Or do you picture a woman who knows nothing about children, and a shocked child who believed her mother was dead? Do you picture a child missing the people who have raised her, and her own room and belongings, and her friends? Do you picture a woman bowed with guilt because she can’t give that child a comfortable life?”

  “If the problem is money, I’m willing to . . .”

  She threw up her hands, appalled. “Stop right there. Don’t insult me by implying that I’m trying to pry money out of you!”

  “Good Lord.” He stood and threw down his napkin. “I never met a woman who was so damned hard to help.”

  “And I never met a man who was so eager to interrupt his own life to help a woman he didn’t know until two weeks ago!” She faced him across the table, hands on hips, her hair flying around her face. “If your friendship with Clarence was so strong that you feel this much obligation . . . then why didn’t you give me his letter ten years ago? Why did you wait until now?”

  When he didn’t answer, she threw up her hands and stormed out to the front porch and down the steps. Stopping at the cottonwood, she pressed her forehead against the rough bark.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Cameron said from behind her. “If you want your daughter, I’ll move the earth to get her here. If you don’t want that, I’ll saddle up right now and ride out. You can forget I was ever here.”

  She hit the tree trunk with her fist. “No matter what I decide, I’ll regret the choice for the rest of my life. If we bring Claire here, I’ll hate myself for depriving her of comfort and a very different future. If I don’t see her, I’ll hate myself for missing an opportunity that won’t come again.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing, damn it, don’t say anything.”

  In her heart she knew he was a decent man trying to do a good thing. He’d expected gratitude and excitement. Maybe a flood of tears. And she’d surprised them both with a gale of anger.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, pressing against the tree bark until her forehead hurt. “What if she hates me?”

  There it was, the monster question that dwarfed everything else. She couldn’t have said it aloud if she’d been facing him.

  “You’re her mother,” Cameron said in a low voice.

  “I left her. I got on a train and left her behind.”

  “You had no choice, Della.”

  “Of course I had a choice. I could have stolen her from them and run away. Or I could have found work in Atlanta and stayed near her. Maybe if I’d begged hard enough, the Wards would have let me stay with them. I could have done something instead of getting on that goddamned train.”

  His big hands closed gently on her shoulders. “Where would you have run to with no money? How would you have supported yourself and your daughter? There was no work in Atlanta after the war. It was chaos. And staying with the Wards? That was never an option, Della. You know that. You did the only thing you could.”

  She turned and fell against him, her forehead burning. “She’ll never forgive me. Never. Once she sees me, she’ll know that I left her. The reasons won’t matter, not to her and not to me. I left her!” She hit his chest with her fists. “I let them steal her. I left my baby.”

  He stood as solid and unyielding as the tree until her arms fell to her sides and she collapsed against him, her face wet with silent, choking tears. Scooping her into his arms, Cameron carried her away from the house.

  Worn out, she lay against his chest trying to sort things through and failing miserably. She opened her eyes when he placed her on the grass beside the creek and handed her a wet handkerchief.

  “Thank you.” Gratefully, she pressed the hankie against her hot face. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking off your shoes so you can put your feet in the water.”

  “All right,” she said after a minute. It was as good an idea as any. Maybe better than anything she would have thought of. “Never mind the stockings,” she said when she saw him eyeing her hem uncertainly. She pushed her feet into the creek and let the cool water flow over her workday stockings. Amazingly, she felt better almost immediately. When he didn’t say anything, just sat beside her chewing on a blade of grass, she looked up through the branches of the cottonwood. “I wish it would rain again.”

  The sky was a vast empty canopy, not a cloud in sight to sail on the hot wind. Her garden was suffering and the range grasses were turning August brown. Everyone went a little crazy this time of year.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said quietly.

  “So you can blame me when you’re hating the result?”

  She grimaced. “I hadn’t thought of that, but it strikes me as reasonable.”

  “No one can make this d
ecision for you, Della.”

  When had he started calling her Della? This wasn’t the first time, she realized, but she hadn’t really noticed until now. She guessed a man who had held her in his arms twice could call her by her first name. To hide the sudden color in her cheeks, she pressed his damp hankie to her eyes.

  “I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do,” she said, the words coming hard. “I never dreamed an opportunity like this could happen. Now that it has, I feel— I don’t know—all confused and upset and wrong inside.” She had believed that nothing could frighten her anymore, but she’d been wrong.

  “That’s not what I intended.”

  “I know.” She touched his sleeve with the tips of her fingers, then moved her hand away. “I’m all stirred up, thinking about things I thought I’d buried so deep I couldn’t find them again.”

  Before Cameron rode into her life, she would have said that she thought about Clarence and Claire every day, and that would be true. But she saw now that she’d thought of them both by skimming the surface. She’d kept a barrier between herself and the pain of how she had failed them.

  “The thing is, I long to see her. Just see her. That would be enough. See for myself that she’s healthy and happy. See what she looks like.”

  “We could do that,” Cameron said after thinking about it.

  She stared at him. “Go to all that expense and travel all that distance, just to look at someone? That doesn’t make sense.” He had to be suffering the August crazies.

  “Let’s settle this money issue. I have plenty of money. No, let me finish. I’ve earned large sums since the war, and I’ve banked most all of it. What is there to spend it on?” A shrug lifted his shoulders. “Believe me, this trip won’t make a dent in my circumstances.” He slid a glance in her direction. “I can afford to do this, and I’d like to.”

  “We’d just look at her, that’s all.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Oh Lord.” A wave of electricity raced through her body. “Maybe this is possible.” She could see Claire. She could fill her mind with memories. She wouldn’t disrupt Claire’s life, wouldn’t alter her future. Claire wouldn’t have to leave anything behind or live in reduced circumstances. And she would never have to know anything about Della. Della could ease her heart by just looking.

  Claire wouldn’t hate her. Claire would never have to know.

  She wanted to scream and shout and run spinning out on the range, wanted to throw her arms around James Cameron and find the words to make him understand the miracle he’d offered her.

  She clenched her hands and stepped out of the creek, drying her feet on the prairie grass. “What do you want in exchange?” she asked softly.

  Stiff with offense, he stared at her, then walked toward the barn without a backward glance.

  Damn it. Dropping her head, she pushed the heels of her palms against her eyelids. But it was such a large gift of time and money . . . how could she understand?

  “I’m sorry,” she shouted at his retreating figure. He didn’t look back, but if today was the day an outlaw took a shot at him, she didn’t want her last words to him to be an insult.

  Chapter 7

  The air is heavy and moist. Spring turning into summer has filled yards with colorful flowers for weddings, or funerals.

  Della inhales the fragrance of roses, thick enough to penetrate the heavy folds of her veil, and knows she will hate the scent forevermore.

  Mr. and Mrs. Ward walk slightly behind her. Their faces are deeply shadowed, though sunlight gleams on the black lacquer of the hearse, bright enough to hurt Della’s eyes.

  She blinks hard, watching iron wheels roll across the cobblestones. The stones are uneven and some are missing in the aftermath of war. Her heart stops each time the hearse dips or lurches over a broken stone.

  Gold leaves etch the glass in the hearse’s back window. There are forty-two leaves twining from a continuous vine. She doesn’t look beyond the glass.

  Sometimes there is music, which confuses her and makes her head ache. Usually the silence is profound, broken only by the clip clop of the horse’s hooves against the cobblestones. The rhythm of the hooves matches her heartbeat, which becomes louder until finally her pulse is the only thing she hears.

  She stumbles, catches herself and walks on, so exhausted that she’s falling behind. Anxious, she reaches beneath the veil and blots tears with her gloves, struggling to keep the hearse in sight.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  But the hearse has pulled ahead, suddenly a black dot in the distance. Lifting her skirts, she tries to run, but the hollowness inside has made her lighter than the air, which pushes against her and holds her back.

  “Wait for me. Please! Wait!”

  Della woke in a panic, her heart slamming wildly against her ribs, her ears ringing. Sitting up in bed, she pressed the sheet to her wet face and gulped deep breaths of air that didn’t smell like roses, thank God. There were no roses on her property and never would be.

  When her pulse settled, she sank back to the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, thinking about Clarence. Cameron had made assumptions about what Clarence would want, and so had she.

  “Tell me what to do,” she whispered. “Send me a sign.”

  By the time she’d climbed into bed, doubts had diminished her euphoria. Would seeing Claire make her life easier or harder? Would she return to Two Creeks with memories to sustain her for the rest of her life, or with a hole in her heart? And what if she couldn’t resist the temptation to speak to her daughter? What was the right thing to do?

  And then there was Cameron. Last night it had occurred to her that the trip to Atlanta was a lengthy journey. They were committing to spending weeks in each other’s company. On the one hand, the realization was exciting, even a little dangerous given the stirrings he roused in her. On the other hand, this trip would change her life, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It wasn’t much of a life, granted, but she knew the demons here: guilt, regret, loneliness, anger, emptiness. What new demons would awaken if she confronted the past?

  And there was something that Cameron wasn’t telling her. Frustrated, she sensed it in the measured manner in which he occasionally studied her, in the way he tightened his jaw and turned aside.

  But he was right, she thought later in the day, pausing in the midst of making a list of the things she had to do before she could leave. In her heart she longed to see Claire. Now that such a miracle was possible, she let herself feel the need so deeply that she swayed on her chair and thought she might faint.

  “Are you all right?”

  When she loosened her grip on the table, she discovered Cameron watching from the doorway. “I truly regret what I said yesterday. Down by the creek. I guess I don’t have to know why you’re making this generous offer.”

  “I’ve told you why.” He passed her and poured a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove. “Have you decided what to do with the animals?”

  He drank more coffee than anyone she had ever met. “I’ve made a list of people I can talk to.” She hesitated. “Should I offer to pay for the care of my animals? Or would that be an insult? What do you think? I can’t pay much, but I could manage a little.”

  “You know your neighbors,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t.”

  Since he seemed to thrive on coffee, she decided another cup would suit her, too. “Can you really afford the time for this journey? Shouldn’t you go after those bank robbers?”

  “If we run across an outlaw between here and Santa Fe, we’ll take him in.” He carried his coffee to the window over the sink and gazed out like he was impatient to leave.

  “We?” She blinked.

  “It could happen, but I doubt we’ll see any outlaws.”

  Working in the afternoon sun had dampened the dark curls on his neck and added to the mahogany tan darkening his forearms. Mentally Della traced the line of his shoulders and the muscles running down
his back.

  She loved to look at him. Ever since he’d arrived, she’d been finding chores outside so she could snatch glimpses of him when he didn’t know she was watching. At first she’d peeked at him to enjoy the novelty of having a man on the place. But now she watched because it was Cameron. And sometimes, embarrassingly, her mouth went dry at the sight of him.

  When she realized she was staring at how he stood with his legs apart, his boots planted, she pressed her lips together and bent her head over her cup.

  Remember this, she admonished herself: There is no future with a damaged man who’s a target for every criminal drifting around the West. There’s nothing but pain for a woman who loses her heart to a man who doesn’t care if he lives or dies. She needed to keep these thoughts at the front of her mind.

  “Cameron?” He didn’t say anything, but he tilted his head the way he did when he was listening. “It’s not easy for me to accept what this trip will cost and . . . I guess I’ve never met anyone like you, so I just . . .” She shook her head and twisted her hands together. “I don’t know how to tell you what this means to me, or how to thank you.”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  “This is strange, and I never thought I’d say such a thing, but it’s a little frightening to leave here. I know every square inch of this old place. I have my routine and it doesn’t vary much. There are no surprises. While out there,”—she waved toward the door—“everything will be new and different.”

  Now he turned from the window. “Maybe you’ll like those new and different things.”

  “That’s what frightens me the most,” she whispered. After a minute she cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Now, about the animals. We can’t leave tomorrow. I’ll need the entire day to call on these people and make arrangements.” She tapped a finger against her list.

  “I’ll take care of provisions.”

  “Provisions. Aren’t we taking the stage?”