John
Anne rose to her feet, fetched the coffee pot from the stove, two cups from the cabinet, and returned to her seat.
“About two years ago a friend of your father’s came to us one night with plans to leave for Canada. Rumors were starting to spread about men striking gold in the mountains.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve seen the stories in the newspapers.”
“Work was scarce at the time for your father, still is actually, but that isn’t the point.” She laughed at her own words as if she thought they were funny. “We had some pretty rough months.”
“So Father accepted the offer and left?”
“Well, yes, but only after we discussed the prospect for a few days. It was a hard choice to make, Cora, leaving everything he knew . . . leaving me. He didn’t wish to leave, but we needed the money.”
“How long was he there?”
“For about a year,” she exhaled a deep sigh. “In just a few months, he’d secured more money than he had in several years working in Tacoma. Gold was abundant, people were striking riches beyond their dreams, and your father wanted a piece of it for us, and for you.” She poured herself a cup of coffee. “He sent that letter a week before the accident.”
“Accident?”
Her eyes misted with tears. “They were packing a few horses through a canyon and his horse slipped. He tried to leap off, but his foot caught in the stirrup,” she paused, catching her breath. “A friend of his brought his belongings home to me.”
“But, why give the claim to me?”
She glanced at me and then at his unfolded letter I caressed between my fingers. “Cora, he loved you to the moon and back. His only regret in life was not giving you what you deserved.” She tapped her finger on the envelope containing the deed. “This is all he had to give.”
Anne stirred cream and sugar into her chipped, porcelain cup, and my thoughts drifted with the evaporating steam, too clouded and fuzzy to formulate rational feelings.
After she took a sip of her coffee, she tugged something from her pocket and slid a tattered leather book across the table under the palm of her hand.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Your bank book.”
“My what?”
“A few weeks after your father and I arrived here, your father opened an account for you at the Bank of Tacoma. Since your mother forbade him to see you, he thought the account was all he could do to provide for you. Over the last fifteen years, we’ve made deposits into the account in hopes that one day we would see you again.”
I grabbed the petite book and opened it. My father’s chicken scratch writing littered the pages, along with a few more legible entries that were obviously Anne’s handwriting.
“I continued to deposit the money your father wired from Canada, which helped secure you a pretty nice balance.”
I flipped through the pages until I reached the last entry, and nearly fell off my chair. The last deposit had just been a few days before I arrived, leaving the balance in the account at nearly five thousand dollars.
“I don’t feel right accepting this,” I said, setting the book down and sliding it back across the table.
“Why?”
Resting my hands against the table, I pressed against the wood, and pushed the chair away. I rose to my feet and ran from the kitchen.
Anne followed me into the living room where I hesitated. Gazing out the large bay window onto the street, my eyes followed the people passing by in motorcars, carriages, and on foot.
“What about you?” I muttered. “How do you plan to pay for the house, for food, and for clothes? I can’t take that money from you.”
“Oh, don’t you worry about me. The house is paid for, I have quite a bit of money saved from his work in Canada, and the dress shop down the street hired me to work a few hours a day.” She inhaled a sharp breath and smiled. “Besides, a wedding would be more of an appropriate expense for your money than groceries for an old widow.”
I snorted at her insinuation and continued to stare out the window. My whole life had been one dishonest declaration after another. And, everyday from this one, the situation would only worsen if I continued the path I traveled.
“I don’t know if there will be a wedding.” The weight of my words increased the volume in my tone—another lie for my life, for in truth, I knew.
“Why?”
“For so many years I believed you seduced my father away, that you hoodwinked him into your arms by one means or another. Of course, I was only a child and didn’t understand love.” I turned to face her. “The words he said to you in that letter . . . he never would have said them to my mother.”
“And, you don’t believe Christopher would say them to you?”
“To be honest, I don’t believe he would, but—”
“Not all love is equal, Cora, we all feel and express it in different manners, and none of them are right or wrong.”
I shook my head. “It’s more than just that. I don’t believe I would be able to say those words to Christopher, either.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“Anne, reading that letter had been nearly unbearable. Father loved you—a kind of love that dripped from the deepest part of his heart into the ink, and down onto the paper. Staying with Mother would have suffocated him, killed him deep inside until he would have been a shell of a person.”
And, I knew how that felt.
“I don’t love Christopher as Father loved you.” My gut wrenched as I faced the window once more. “I don’t miss him. I don’t long to see him. We are as mismatched as my parents were, doomed to repeat the failed attempt at love and marriage.”
“You don’t know that for certain, Cora, but in time—”
“We’ve been together long enough to know. Deep down, the ever-present notion has plagued me. Looming with the warning I shouldn’t ignore the questions whispering in my mind. Yet, that is all I’ve done—foolishly ignored the signs. Christopher would care for me and provide me with a good life. He is a good man, Anne, he’s just not the man for me.”
A motorcar halted in front of the house, and I peered through the sheer curtain hanging in the window, drawing the lace from my line of sight.
With a sharp intake of breath, sickness swirled in my stomach toying with the idea of retching. Christopher strode across the street with Mother on his arm. Marching toward the house, her nose crinkled like she’d smelled rotted mold.
Chapter 6
“Where is she?” Mother shouted, bursting through the front door and shoving past Anne.
Hiding behind the bedroom door, I gazed through an inch wide crack. Mother’s footsteps pounded the hardwood floor, as she paced the living room, echoing through the whole house with deep, vibrating, thuds. Each clunk mirrored the pounding of my heart.
“Where is she?” she shouted again.
Christopher strode through the door behind her. He nodded toward Anne as she allowed him in. His gloved hand rested upon the chair, while the other rested upon his hip, and he groaned under his breath.
“You must be Christopher.” Anne extended her hand.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Colton. Yes, I’m Christopher Payton.” He cleared his throat and glanced at Mother who had scoffed when he called Anne, Mrs. Colton.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you as well. I’ve heard a lot about you, and—”
“Yes, yes, this is Cora’s fiancé, though, why you need to make Christopher’s acquaintance is beyond me. It’s not as though you will ever see him again.”
“Victoria, I have every right to meet the fiancé of my step-daughter, and besides, making one’s acquaintance is the cordial thing to do.” Anne shut the door a little harder than usual.
“Anne, we are pa
st being cordial with one another, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know if I would say that, but you are in my home so I think a little respect is in order.” The boldness in Anne’s voice amused me. Usually, people recoiled from Mother. Clearly, no matter what grievance Mother tried to hit Anne with, she would stand her ground.
“Is that what you call this ramshackle of a house?”
“Well, Victoria, no one invited you, so if you don’t like my home, you can leave at any time.”
“Oh, believe me, as soon as I fetch my daughter, I will be out of this wretched town.”
“I’m rather curious as to how you found where I lived. Given the ridiculous story you told Cora about a mansion with elegant columns and countless house staff.”
“I cannot help what a child imagines or dreams up on her own, especially when she was crying for a father who abandoned her and moved away with his whore.”
My nails dug into the wooden doorframe as anger boiled through my veins. She would not hold me chained to her lies anymore.
Flinging the door open, it slammed against the wall with such force it nearly knocked a framed picture to the floor. I stomped into the living room.
“I didn’t make up stories,” I shouted. “And, don’t you dare call her a whore.”
“How dare you shout at me and wave your finger in my face like some spoiled, insolent brat.”
“Insolent?” I snapped. “You waltzed into my home, uninvited, and then pointed the finger of disrespect while casting your vile words about.”
“Cora, this isn’t your home. You belong in Seattle with me and with Christopher. You do not belong here, with her. We have a wedding to plan and you have a life to prepare for—a life in Seattle, not in Tacoma.”
Mother cared for me as much as she cared for a pair of old shoes that had been cast aside. She wasn’t here for me, she was here to rub Anne’s nose in losing, finally. Mother didn’t live in a small house, she possessed a maid, and she possessed a daughter who planned to marry the rich man standing in the room beside her. She held everything and Anne held nothing, and she wanted to prove it.
“My life is wherever I decide to create it. Where I decide, not you.”
“Pack . . . your . . . things . . . now,” she said through gritted teeth.
I stepped toward her, stopping with my nose barely inches from hers. From the look on her face, the audacity of my actions shocked her.
“No.”
“Cora,” Christopher said, stepping in between us and grabbing my shoulders. “Come with me.” He tried to lead me into the kitchen, but I wiggled from his grip.
“No. I’m not leaving Anne alone with her.”
Mother’s mouth gaped open. Her glaring eyes focused on me, not that I cared. She could shoot me with darts of loathing if she wanted, but I’d grown immune to her poison.
Christopher sighed and retreated a few steps—a rather shocking pause. Only fools questioned him, and I never played the fool before as I never dared to face the consequences. He grabbed the bridge of his nose with one hand while the other rested on his hip.
“Cora, we need to talk in private.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Private conversations do not belong in public settings.”
Looking at his expression and hearing his words, I wanted to laugh. Private, public, and proper—the three values of his everyday existence, the three values he forced upon me daily, and now the three values I wanted to fight against with every ounce of power in me.
From this day forward, those values would no longer hold me captive in a life I didn’t want.
I’m done with being weak.
“I will not leave this room.”
“Do you know the trouble you have caused?” his voice resonant with annoyance. “I had to cancel a very important meeting for this trip in order to bring you home.”
“You didn’t have to come. Neither of you did.”
“We didn’t know when you were planning return to Seattle,” Mother snapped.
“I told you I would return after the funeral, which was today, not that you care.”
“Well for once your perception is correct,” Mother laughed. “I don’t care.”
Christopher raised his hand toward Mother to silence her. Her expression said she didn’t entirely want to, but she obliged.
“Cora, you simply vanished. You should have sent word when you arrived. I searched the train station for hours looking for you before I realized what you had done.”
My cheeks flushed with the anxiety bubbling in my chest. Declaring my own independence to myself was certainly a lot easier than telling him.
I needed him to understand my reasons, to remain a sincere, supportive man, and not allow blinding anger to crush any chance of sympathy.
Such was probably too much to ask—and a petrifying truth. How do you break your promise of love and expect any entitlement to sympathy and understanding?
Only a cruel woman would expect such, and so I braced myself, squaring my shoulders and standing a little taller—a stance that he noticed.
My clammy right hand wiggled my engagement ring off my left finger and I held it up for him to take.
“We don’t love each other enough for me to wear this.”
Mother gasped, slapped her hand over her mouth as she shook her head, and spun on her heel toward the window, unable to watch the scene in the room. Her utter disappointment radiated from every pore in her body. I would pay for my words, and she would make sure of it.
Christopher retreated from me, raising his clutched fists in the air. He dropped them down at his side as he shook his head.
“Keep it. And, may you look upon it every day and hold nothing but regret for your choice.”
He marched for the front door, pausing as he turned the doorknob and glared at me one last time. “I went against my better judgment in courting you. I allowed my father to twist my own opinion when everything inside me said to walk away from you. I was such a fool to listen to him, to follow his belief.”
He swung the door wide, but hesitated before he stepped across the threshold. “You’re a lost, weak and dithering, pathetic, mess of a little girl who will never amount to a woman worthy of the title of anyone’s wife. Good bye, Cora.”
“Christopher, wait,” Mother cried out, following him. Before she could reach him, he slammed the door in her face.
She turned toward me. “How dare you let that man walk out of your life?”
“Don’t talk to me,” I commanded.
“You go after that man right now, young lady.”
“I don’t love him, Mother, and I don’t want to marry him.”
“Have you lost your senses? What do you mean you don’t love him? For the last year all you have thought about was becoming his wife.”
“No, that is all you thought about. I just played along with your heart-set plan.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me. I know you loved him.”
“Surely, I cared for Christopher, but those feelings were manipulated by you. We aren’t meant for one another, just like you and Father weren’t.”
“You know nothing of my relationship with your father.”
“I know that I don’t want a loveless marriage, and I won’t sacrifice finding the one I’m meant for in order to be with the one you want.”
“I don’t know what drivel this woman has been filling your head with. Your father loved me. She manipulated him away from me, lying to him about what he truly wanted.”
“No, he didn’t love you, not in the way he loved Anne. He could never have loved you as deeply as he loved her.”
Mother spun toward Anne. “I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve filled her head with lies.” Her lips were presse
d so tight against her teeth, her words were barely decipherable.
“She didn’t fill my head with anything of the sort. I read a letter Father wrote to her. I saw, in black and white, the love he felt for her.”
“Why are you defending her? You’ve only been gone a few days and all of a sudden you are . . . I don’t even know what to think . . . who are you, Cora? You are not the daughter you were when you left.”
“No, Mother. I’m not. I’m the daughter who has learned who her mother really is and what she has done.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve done nothing but love and support you.”
“I know all about your lies. You told me father had money, that he lived in a huge mansion, and that out of spite, he never sent you a dime of support.”
“Those were not lies, he never sent me a penny, and how was I suppose to know he didn’t have money.”
My eyebrow twitched. “You told me he never cared about me, never loved me, never tried to contact me, and they were all lies.”
“If he loved you so much why didn’t he write to you or try to contact you at all?”
“He did. He sent me countless letters that you returned to the sender. He loved me. He cared about me. He wanted to have contact with me, and you stood in his way and lied to me.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I swear, sometimes, Cora, I just don’t understand where you get these preposterous notions. Your imagination astounds me.”
I stared at her in disbelief for a few seconds before stomping off to the bedroom to snatch the letters. I shoved them into her arms with as much force as I could without knocking her to the ground—though the thought of thrusting that hard did cross my mind.
In the Land of Gold Page 5
