Open Country

by Warner, Kaki

  It was over. He would never forgive her.

  Maybe if she told herself that often enough, she would finally accept it and cut that invisible bond tying her so securely to a man who had no room in his heart for forgiveness. She was alone forever. The starkness of it settled like a stone in her chest. She wanted to weep. She wanted to rail at the unfairness of it. She wanted . . . she wanted. Him. Stupid woman.

  The stove ticked as it cooled. After a while, the growing chill penetrated her dazed mind, and she realized the wind no longer moaned around the eaves and snow had begun collecting in white crescents on the bottoms of the frosted windowpanes. She rose, put more wood on the fire, then returned to her seat. As she waited, that hideous scene with Hank continued to play through her mind until slowly self-pity hardened into indignation and finally anger. Didn’t he owe her something for saving his life? Didn’t he owe her at least a chance at redemption?

  The Seth Thomas day clock on the mantle had wound down to silence when a knock startled her out of her dismal thoughts. Rising stiffly after sitting for so long, she went and opened the door.

  A man she didn’t know stood on the porch. “They need you, ma’am.”

  “YOU’LL ANSWER MY QUESTIONS NOW,” HANK SAID.

  Brady looked up from the foreman’s desk in the shack by the mine. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Hell.” Pushing aside his paperwork, Brady sat back. “All right. Ask.”

  He looked as weary as Hank felt. After two days of digging through rock and splintered timbers to reach the trapped miners, the missing were all accounted for, and the injured were being tended by Molly and Doc in the church behind the livery.

  Two dead. Eleven hurt. A horrendous count.

  Tomorrow the cleanup would begin, and hopefully within a few days they’d learn why the new shaft had collapsed. Not that it really mattered how it happened or whose fault it was. As an owner and the man in charge of their mining operations, Hank knew he was responsible.

  He was so tired, he felt numb. Each day he’d worked from dawn to midnight. Each night he’d dragged himself back to his empty house to lie awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering how his life had moved so quickly from hopeful to dismal. He should have been paying better attention to the mines, rather than chasing after a woman who had never wanted him in the first place. He should have remembered what happened with Melanie and kept himself on guard. And he shouldn’t have lost his temper. It wasn’t like him to lose control that way. It sickened him to realize how close he had come to hurting a woman. He didn’t know who he was anymore, and that scared him.

  So now he stood before his brother looking for answers. Maybe if Brady explained how this farce of a marriage had come about, he might be able to find his equilibrium again. Since that scene with Molly, he’d felt as alien to himself as he had the morning he had woken up with no memory.

  But now that he had the opportunity to pose the questions that had preyed on him since they had ridden in with the snow two days ago, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answers. He sensed that once everything was out in the open, things between him and his brother might be forever changed.

  Too restless to sit, he stood with his back to the woodstove on the rear wall, arms crossed over his chest. “Was it your idea to marry me off to Molly?”

  “Hell, no.” Brady sighed and dragged a hand over his jaw. His usual stubble was longer, giving his face a haggard appearance, and it seemed to Hank there was more gray in it than he remembered. “By the time I got there, it was already done.”

  Brady explained about the railroad settlement, and how the doctor had said Hank wouldn’t live through the night, and that apparently Molly was so desperate for money she’d forced the marriage so she could get the widow’s portion if he died.

  Listening without interruption, Hank watched snow drift past the window and tried to ignore the sick, hollow feeling in his gut. It was hard hearing the sum total of his life reduced to a dollar value. Especially by someone he’d come to care for. Someone he’d trusted.

  “As soon as I rode in and heard about it,” Brady went on, “I confronted her. Said some things, made some threats. The usual. But it was too late. The marriage was done, although I doubt it’s legal, since you were unconscious during the vows. Then you woke up, and we knew you’d make it.”

  “To her disappointment,” Hank put in, trying to act as if it didn’t matter.

  Brady shook his head. “You would have thought so, but that’s the odd thing. The woman was hell-bent that you were going to live, even though she knew it would cost her the settlement money. That doctor, Murray, a crazy bastard if there ever was one, wanted to cut off your arm. Molly thought they should try to fix it. Murray said, ‘What did it matter, since you’d die anyway,’ then dumped it all on her and left. So she did it herself. It was the most godawful, horrific, bloody . . .” Brady ran a hand over his face, as if trying to brush away the memories. “I don’t know how she does what she does. No wonder she pukes.”

  “Pukes?”

  “After doctoring someone. Nerves, she says.”

  Hank felt a spark of sympathy and quickly smothered it out. None of this explained why he was still married or how Molly and the children ended up at the ranch. “Then what happened?” he prodded.

  “She tried to blackmail me.” Brady sounded amused. “Said since it looked like you were going to recover, if I paid her the amount of the settlement, she would get out of your life. I convinced her to come to the ranch instead.”

  Hank studied his brother, rankled at how Brady kept trying to manage his life for him, doing whatever he thought best, no matter who he stomped in the process. Hank was sick of it. “Convinced her or threatened her?” Hank knew his brother.

  “Actually, I gave her a choice.”

  Hank knew about Brady’s choices, like the time he gave their old enemy Paco Alvarez a choice between a quick hanging or a slow dismemberment. Hank was never quite sure how serious Brady’s threats were, and the idea of his brother using such brutal tactics on Molly sent his anger up a notch.

  “If she and the kids came to the ranch,” Brady explained, “and she tended you until you were well, then I would give her the money and she could go on her way.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or she could go to jail for fraud. Not that I would have taken her to the sheriff,” he quickly added, “but she didn’t know that. That’s when she hit me with the spoon.”

  Good for her. “And the marriage?”

  “I’d see that it was annulled.”

  And life would have gone on as it always had. Hank thought of the wedding ring he had bought when they had been in Val Rosa and thought he must be the biggest fool there ever was. “I’m well now. So why is she still here?”

  It was a long time before Brady answered. “You have to understand, Hank. You came within a breath of dying. After Sam’s death then Jack going missing . . . it scared the hell out of me. But she pulled you through.” Clasping his hands on the desktop, he lifted his head and met Hank’s gaze straight on. “She’s a good nurse, Hank. Better than Doc.”

  Hank waited, knowing there was more.

  “And Jessica will need a good nurse.”

  And finally Hank understood. “Christ, Brady.”

  Brady studied his clenched hands. “Doc thinks she’s carrying twins. She almost died when Ben was born, and you remember how bad it was later with Abigail.” When his brother looked up again, his blue eyes were filled with an anguish Hank had never seen. “I know you probably think it’s weak-minded, but if I lost her, Hank, I don’t think I could go on.”

  Hank regarded him in silence. Brady’s devotion to Jessica was total. Hank had found it puzzling at first, then amusing, then en-viable. His own feelings for Melanie had been mild in comparison. Comfortable and predictable, no ups and downs—until she married another man, that is, then it went down fast.

  But with Molly it had been different. There had been a connection the
re he still didn’t fully understand, and from the very beginning, it had felt . . . right.

  Wrong again.

  Anger sent him pacing across the small room and back. “Why didn’t you tell me all this from the start, Brady? Why did you lie to me and let me think my mind was damaged? We could have ended this farce weeks ago.”

  “I know, I know. But then I saw the way you looked at Molly and I—”

  “Stand up.”

  With a look of confusion, Brady did. As soon as he was upright, Hank drove his fist into the side of his face with enough force to send him toppling backward over the chair. “You should have told me.”

  “Christ.” Brady struggled to his feet, one hand on his cheek.

  “You—”

  Hank hit him again. This time the plank desk went over with him.

  “And you shouldn’t have threatened her,” Hank added.

  Brady sat against the wall, using his shirtsleeve to mop blood streaming from a split lip. “Any other points you care to make?”

  “Stay the hell out of my life.”

  “It’s because of me you still have a life,” Brady shot back. Rising stiffly, he righted the desk and chair.

  “You should have told me. Let me decide what to do about it. You shouldn’t have lied to me.”

  “And what would you have done, Hank?” Brady challenged. “Run her off. That’s what you’d have done.”

  Hank glared at him.

  “The truth is if she hadn’t lied to marry you, and we hadn’t lied to keep it from you, you’d be dead. Twice over. It’s that simple.”

  “It wasn’t your decision.”

  “I made it my decision. I wanted you to live.”

  “You wanted. When do we do what I want, Brady? When do I get to decide how to live my life?” Hank stalked across the room again, years of resentment and frustration churning inside him. “Christ, you let me think my mind was failing. That I was permanently damaged. How could you do that to me?” Of all the parts that made up who he was, the part Hank valued most was his intellect. That’s where his imagination dwelled, and all the ideas and inventions he thought up, and all the quiet observations that brought meaning to his life. Without it, he was just a big man with a strong back and a smile women liked.

  He stopped pacing and faced his brother. “How do I ever trust you again?”

  Something moved behind those sky blue eyes—regret, sadness, maybe even fear. “You can always trust me, Hank. Especially when your life is at stake.”

  Pressing the heel of his hand against his pounding temple, Hank sighed. “And the truth be damned.”

  “The truth, little brother, is that you’re alive with two good arms, and my wife’s got a helluva nurse watching over her. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only truth that matters.”

  “As far as you’re concerned. Jesus, do you ever listen to what you say?”

  Suddenly Hank didn’t want to talk anymore. He didn’t want to think or decide or fret about what to do. So weary every step was an effort, he turned toward the door.

  “Just stay out of it, Brady. Or I’ll keep hitting you until one of us can’t get up again. And it won’t be me.”

  “What are you going to do about Molly?” Brady called after him.

  Hank slammed the door without answering. He didn’t know what he was going to do about Molly. He didn’t know what to do about the shambles his life had become. He felt so confused and off balance he didn’t even know what he wanted anymore. But for some reason he wasn’t ready to walk away.

  Fifteen

  WHEN HANK ARRIVED AT THE SMALL HOUSE HE’D BUILT FOR those times when he stayed in Redemption to oversee the mines, he saw a horse and a small covered carriage waiting outside. Judging by the amount of fresh snow on the canvas top, it had been there awhile. After he tended his horse and left him eating oats in the small lean-to behind the house, he went inside to find Anna Strobel in his kitchen, stirring a pot on the stove.

  “Mr. Hank!” Anna rushed over to hug him, her plump arms barely reaching around his back, her wispy gray hair catching in the beard stubble under his chin. “Bless you, bless you!” she cried in the thick accent of some Central European country the name of which Hank could never remember. “You save my Hans.” Grabbing his right hand, she began covering his knuckles with kisses. “With this hands, you pull him from that black hole and give him back to me. I thank God for you.”

  As gently and firmly as he could, he set her away from him. “Is Molly here?”

  “Still at the church.” Pausing to dab at her watery blue eyes with the corner of her apron, she made a clucking noise. “She never rest, that one. All day, all night she work. Go.” She waved him toward the door. “Bring her home. I have nice sausage soup and strudel waiting. Make her rest. Go. Take my carriage.”

  Hank went.

  As he tied Anna’s horse to the rail outside the church fence, he wondered what he would say to Molly, or if she would even talk to him after that scene two days ago. Jessica called him the calm one, the steady one. But around Molly he found himself slipping into an unfamiliar role. He felt reckless, illogical, distracted. He teased, he laughed, he felt more involved and less an observer than he ever had. Just watching her walk into the room made him smile. Maybe that’s why her betrayal hurt so much. All his life he’d been “the big one,” “the one with the beard,” “the second brother.” But when Molly had smiled at him, those almost-green eyes crinkling at the corners and that tiny scar on her top lip curving in a crescent, he had felt like the most important man in the room.

  He pushed open the tall arched door of the church. Unlike the other times he’d been by, tonight the church was quiet. Over the past two days, he’d made several trips, delivering injured men. He’d paused in the doorway to watch Molly work with Doc at the surgery table set up on the altar, or move from pew to pew, bringing a calm assurance to frightened men.

  Had she touched him that way? Brushed his hair back from his brow? Looked down at him with that same sad, gentle smile? Or was it all just part of the role she played?

  But now, as he stood in the doorway at the back of the church, he didn’t see her, and that sent a jolt of alarm through him, which showed him how confused his feelings for her were.

  The room was dim and quiet. The smell of blood and sickness wasn’t as strong as it had been before, and there were fewer injured men stretched in the pews. A few women he recognized from around town moved quietly down the aisle or sat vigil at a man’s side. Doc slouched in the pastor’s chair up front, dozing. But no Molly.

  He started down the center aisle.

  “I hope you came to take her home.”

  He turned to find Martha Burnett angling toward him from a side pew. Without her face paint and with her blond curls hidden under a headscarf, she looked worn and weary. But despite the tired slump of her shoulders and the hard knowledge behind her blue eyes, she looked prettier than he’d ever seen her.

  “She’s had a bad time of it, Hank. I don’t think the poor woman has slept two hours in the last two days.” She motioned toward a small door to the right of the altar. “She’s out back.”

  Hank nodded and crossed to the door.

  The moon was hidden behind low clouds, but enough light spilled through the tall arched windows for him to see her standing in snow past her hems, her face lifted to the night sky. She wore no coat and her hands were clenched at her sides. She was breathing hard, and even in the dim light, he could see she was shaking.

  He walked toward her, his boots crunching in the snow, furious with himself for still caring enough to make sure she was all right. “Molly?”

  She turned. Her eyes looked as empty as the glass eyes of a china doll.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, stopping beside her.

  She blinked at him for a moment as if she didn’t understand the question, then looked down at her clenched hands. With careful deliberation, she straightened her fingers, then said, “Screaming.”
Her voice was so soft he had to bend to catch it. “You just can’t hear it.”

  He took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders, then stood there, unsure what to do. She seemed brittle and broken, not the high-spirited, stubborn woman he’d come to know, and he was half afraid to touch her. “Well,” he said after a pause. “Let’s get you home.”

  “Home.” She made a soft, choking sound that might have been the beginnings of a laugh. Or a sob. “Where would that be, I wonder?” She made that sound again, then clapped her hand over her mouth and stumbled several steps before she suddenly bent double and retched into the snow.

  Grabbing her before she tipped forward, Hank held her shoulders while her body shuddered with heaves, but nothing substantial came out. He remembered what Brady had said about her vomiting after doctoring someone. He wondered how many times she had done this over the last two days and if she’d eaten anything during all that time. After a moment, she straightened. But when she tried to step forward again, her legs buckled. Hank caught her before she hit the ground. Swinging her up into his arms, he carried her around to the carriage out front. He settled her on the seat then climbed up beside her.

  They rode in silence. When they had reached the house, he lifted her down and, over her weak protests, carried her up the porch steps to where Anna Strobel held open the door.

  “I have a bath ready,” Anna said, following Hank down the hall toward the water closet. “Good and hot.” As Hank set Molly onto the stool by the tub, Anna gently pushed him aside. “You go. Eat. I will tend the poor angel.”

  Hank retreated to the doorway, then stood watching as Anna untied Molly’s stained apron and began loosening the row of buttons down the front of her shirt.

  Molly just sat there, her face expressionless.

  A glint of metal caught the lamplight, and Hank saw a tiny brass button on the floor. One of Molly’s buttons that he’d torn loose two days earlier. The memory of what he’d done left a bad taste in his mouth, and he looked away to find Molly watching him. That feeling of connection shot through him, bringing with it a surge of emotion that shocked him.