Accidental Family

by Lisa Bingham

  She’d changed from the frilly wrapper she’d worn this morning to a pale green gown—one that made her skin seem porcelain fine and her eyes even more blue. Her hair had been combed into a thick braid that hung down her back. Charles wished that she’d left it loose. He loved the way it had tumbled around her face and shoulders this morning.

  She came to a skidding halt in front of him.

  “Sumner knows.”

  “Ramsey knows.”

  They’d blurted their confessions at the same time.

  Charles laughed, shaking his head. “You first.”

  “Sumner’s pieced it together since the beginning.”

  “Jonah did the same.” Charles dug into the pocket of his coat and removed the ring Jonah had given him. “Have you seen this before?”

  Willow took the ring, regarding it from every angle. “No. Sorry. Whose is it?”

  “That’s what we have to find out. Ramsey said it was found clutched in Jenny’s hand.”

  “So maybe it belongs to the killer.”

  There was a snuffling noise from the basket by the fireplace and Willow handed the ring back to Charles, then rushed to scoop Eva from the basket. As she tucked the infant beneath her chin, the baby blinked at Charles with wide, blue eyes. Then she rooted around for a more comfortable spot and yawned, content to be held.

  “Sumner brought us a few types of baby bottles to try. She says the twins look healthy, but that our dish towel method probably won’t last for much longer.”

  “I think she’s right. Adam is already demanding his food faster than we can give it to him.”

  Charles set the ring on the table, then shrugged out of his hat and coat. “When did you feed them last?”

  “Only an hour or so ago. Sumner was still here, so we made short work of what milk was left.”

  Charles moved the buckets closer to the range. “I’ll leave the milk alone for now and just heat the water, then.”

  He placed the pail on the stove, then grabbed the buckets he’d forgotten to take with him. He dodged outside for a few minutes, packing them tight with snow and hurried back inside, setting them on the stove next to their mate.

  “There. That should be enough for washing and cooking. As soon as that snow is melted, I’ll get some more.”

  “Thank you, Charles.”

  He sniffed appreciatively. “Something smells good.”

  “With all the supplies the brides brought me, we have enough food for an army. I made a stew for our supper and baked some bread. I told the girls that I’d be happy to do some of the baking for the cook shack, but they wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Hearing Adam beginning to stir, Charles paused to squeeze Willow’s shoulder before moving to the basket.

  “I don’t think it’s a reflection on your abilities, Willow. They know you’re busy with the twins.”

  That seemed to mollify her somewhat.

  “It won’t be long before they’re sleeping a little less every day,” he added. “Soon, we’ll have our hands full.”

  “I suppose so.”

  The baby at his feet offered a snuffling cry, and Charles saw that Adam had inadvertently pulled the blanket over his face.

  “Hey, little man,” Charles murmured. “Can’t see what your mama is up to?”

  He scooped the baby up, marveling at the way the child nearly fit in one of his broad palms. He was still so tiny, even though Charles was sure that he was growing a little heavier each day.

  As soon as Adam was out of the basket he stretched—arms flung high, legs pushing against the blanket that still bound him. Then he settled into the crook of Charles’s arm, his forehead growing wrinkled and serious as he seemed to fix his gaze on Charles’s face.

  “There’s a fine fellow,” Charles murmured, stroking the boy’s cheek. The baby’s skin was so soft and velvety, Charles worried that the calluses on his finger might scratch him, but Adam leaned into the caress.

  “Come look what we did.”

  Willow motioned him back to the table. There, she unfolded a large piece of brown paper covered in penciled notations.

  “This is the list of men you and I were gathering,” she said.

  To Charles, the tally seemed even longer now that it had been written down.

  “We’re assuming that Jenny was killed by a man,” he offered.

  “I thought of that. But when I asked Sumner that same question, she said that the wounds would have required a lot of strength, so she figured it was unlikely a woman was responsible.”

  “Which means we’ve narrowed our suspect list by fifty some females. That leaves only two hundred males to go.”

  To his utter delight, Willow pulled a face. “Don’t be a doubting Thomas. We’ve only just begun.” She pointed to another list of names. “These are the men Sumner remembers being injured in the avalanche and staying in the Miner’s Hall those first few days.”

  Charles scanned the looping script. “So, we’ve got most of the crew from the train.”

  “Yes. Sumner and I crossed out Mr. Creakle and Mr. Smalls, who spent a few afternoons in the hall with us the first week. Their contact with Jenny was minimal, and frankly, we couldn’t see either one of them being our culprit.”

  Charles had to agree. Creakle was getting on in years and was plagued with rheumatism. As Ramsey’s right-hand man, he had a logical reason for having contact with the brides when they’d arrived. But he was so tongue-tied around them that Charles doubted he’d ever harm them. Willoughby Smalls was a gentle giant. An injury in the mine had crushed his throat, leaving him mute. Charles knew for a fact that the man doted on the women, even though he tended to blush beet red any time they were near.

  “This is the interesting bit that Sumner was able to give me.” Willow pointed to a line she’d drawn across the bottom of the paper. Above the line were times and dates.

  “We came up with a timeline of Jenny’s movements from our point of view. Sumner is joining the brides in the Dovecote for dinner tonight, so she’s going to subtly get more information. But this is what we’ve pieced together so far.”

  Eva began to make soft grunting noises of distress, but somehow, Willow managed to rock back and forth and point at the chart at the same time.

  “We both remember seeing Jenny on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Neither of us recall her seeming particularly upset or ill.” She slid her finger to the next notation. “But Sumner remembers examining Jenny on January 3. She said Jenny wasn’t feeling well and seemed listless and weepy, so she told her to remain in bed for the next few days. But when she went to check on her later in the day, she couldn’t find her in the Dovecote.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “For Jenny, yes. She usually stayed in her room or walked near the tree line, where everyone could see her.” Willow shrugged. “Let’s face it, even with the move to the Dovecote, the constant presence of the Pinkertons has caused some of the brides to get a little...creative.”

  Charles allowed Adam to grasp his finger. “Meaning?”

  “Let’s just say that a few of the women are able to slip past their guards to do a little exploring.”

  Charles opened his mouth, then closed it again. Granted, Gideon Gault had stated that he was aware of Lydia Tomlinson sneaking away from time to time, but Charles wondered if he knew about the others.

  “But Jenny hadn’t done that before?”

  “Not that I know of. Like I said, she tended to stay in our room in the Dovecote.”

  Since Willow had shared a room with the girl in the dormitory, then Charles supposed she would have the best insight.

  “Although...” Willow’s brow furrowed.

  “Yes?”

  “Since the brides started working in the cook shack, and there were men injured in the second avalanche and when the tunnel collapse
d in the mine just before Christmas...” She shrugged. “We were all pretty busy in other areas of the camp. Who’s to say what she was doing when most of us were gone?”

  A shiver ran down Charles’s spine. He looked at the chart again. “So, what’s this?”

  There was a star next to “January 5, 9:00 a.m.”

  “That’s the last time either of us could remember seeing Jenny.”

  “But that’s over a week ago! You didn’t notice that she was gone that long?”

  Willow sadly shook her head. “Don’t you remember? We had three men injured when there was a fire in the machine shop. During that time, Iona, Lydia and I volunteered to help with the nursing duties at the infirmary every night so that Sumner could go home. When I came back to the Dovecote in the morning to sleep, and Jenny wasn’t there, I assumed she was spending her time elsewhere in the building so that I could get some rest.” Guilt tinged her gaze, making her eyes a cloudy blue. “I should have asked. I should have sought her out. But I didn’t.”

  It pained Charles to see Willow so upset over something that was not her fault, so he wrapped his free arm around her shoulder and drew her close.

  “You couldn’t have known, Willow.”

  “But I could have tried to find her to ask how she was feeling or...or something...”

  Unable to resist, Charles bent to place a kiss against her hair. “You can’t blame yourself. There were nearly fifty other women in the Dovecote, and none of them realized anything was wrong, either. It seems to me that Jenny wanted to slip away—and maybe she’d done it countless times before. If she was that determined, you couldn’t have stopped her.”

  Willow drew back slowly. “But where did she go?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  Chapter Nine

  Charles checked the door to the lean-to to ensure that the latch had snapped in place. Peering up at the moonless sky, he could see that the clouds had dropped low and snow was already beginning to fall. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be much wind with it, which would allow the temperatures to remain a little warmer than the night before.

  Grasping the pails he’d packed with snow, Charles headed toward the house, whistling softly under his breath.

  He couldn’t account for the sense of contentment that settled in his chest. Nothing had changed. He still had no job, no clear idea of his future, no comprehension of who could have harmed Jenny or threatened the children. But there was a sense of “rightness” to his present situation that he found inexplicable, yet reassuring. In the past, when he’d encountered such sensations, he’d felt as if the Lord had stepped in and taken the helm of his life in order to make a slight adjustment. After some time in the lean-to on his knees, Charles had decided that he would trust in his Creator and have faith. Perhaps one day he would know why God had offered him this challenge. Until then, he would do his best to protect those in his charge.

  Sniffing against the cold, he smiled to himself when he caught the delicious scents of dinner in the air—the savory tang of cooking meat, the comforting aroma of beans and an earthy warmth. Cornbread, perhaps? The girls in the cook shack couldn’t hold a candle to Willow, in his opinion. She’d shown Charles well enough that she could make a banquet out of only a few ingredients.

  His steps quickened as he rounded the corner of the house. But when he saw several dark shapes near the stoop, he came up short. Too late, he realized that he’d come outside without his rifle.

  How could he have been so careless? After everything Willow had told him in the last hour, he should be on his guard more than ever. But he’d been so sure he could feed the goat in just a few minutes, and gather the pails of snow for washing, he hadn’t thought much further than to grasp the buckets.

  One of the men rapped on the door.

  Quickly, Charles counted the figures, which were barely visible in the dark and the veil of snow.

  One on the stoop.

  One on the steps.

  Three near the road.

  “Is there something I can help you with?” Charles’s voice emerged too forceful, but he didn’t bother to school it. For all that the camp knew, Charles and Willow were newly reunited and living together under the same roof. That should denote a honeymoon, of sorts. Any miner worth his salt would have known not to come calling unless it was an emergency.

  “Charles?”

  Willow’s voice came from the opposite side of the door.

  Good girl. She’d kept it closed.

  “I’ll be inside in a minute, dearling!” Charles called out. “No need to fret.”

  He closed the distance to the house and set the buckets in the snow. Then he stood with his feet slightly braced, his arms at his sides.

  Luckily, the door remained shut. Even so, it didn’t completely dispel the tension that seeped into his body. Charles could feel his heartbeat quicken and the muscles of his spine and legs tighten. Old emotions—emotions that he hadn’t felt since he was a boy—quickened his breathing.

  Fight or flight.

  A part of him acknowledged that he was probably overreacting. But that fact didn’t seem to calm him. Embers of distrust and suspicion from his days at the foundling home flared in his gut. For a moment, he was that scrawny kid trying to survive on the streets of Aberdeen, enduring the taunts and epithets being thrown his way, sensing a possible threat from a mile away. He’d been wily enough to protect himself then, and he was more than able to protect his family now.

  The man on the stoop must have noted Charles’s stance, because he quickly held up his hands. “Whoa, there! We didn’t mean to startle you!”

  From inside the house, Willow stepped to the window. The curtains parted and a beam of lamplight slid onto the snow.

  The man on the stoop quickly stepped into the light, dragging his hat from his head so that his features were clearly visible.

  Not a miner.

  But Charles recognized his face.

  “I’m Rosco Beamon. I was first porter on the train.” He gestured to the gangly fellow on the step below him. “This is Clancy Midgely, our stoker.”

  Midgely couldn’t have been much more than nineteen.

  “And this is Bobby Callahan, second porter, Noah Offenbach, our conductor, and Ed Niederhauser, our engineer.”

  The men touched their hands to their hats. Since the contingent seemed alarmed by Charles’s challenging posture, he forced himself to relax.

  “Gentlemen. What brings you here?”

  Beamon still held his hands up in a calming gesture.

  “We were on our way back from evening Devotional, and we just wanted to pay our respects.” He slowly descended the steps, Clancy behind him. “See, we feel kinda responsible for the women being stranded here. If we’d come through that pass a little slower...not blown our whistle...checked the slopes a little better...maybe that avalanche wouldn’t have happened.”

  Charles willed his fists to unclench and his posture to ease. He wasn’t sure if it was the timeline that Willow had shown him or the appearance of the rattle, but he’d obviously overreacted.

  “Anyhow,” Beamon continued, “we heard about the babies and how you and the missus renewed your vows and...we just wanted to give y’all a gift.”

  Maybe the rattle hadn’t been the ominous gesture that Willow and Charles had supposed.

  Even though it had been obtained by rifling through Jenny’s belongings?

  Beamon eased toward Charles as if he were a bear about to charge. Then he held out a drawstring bag.

  “It’s not much. The company store didn’t have much in the way of baby items.” He laughed nervously. “Heck, it didn’t have anything at all along those lines, this bein’ Bachelor Bottoms an’ all.” He stopped, cleared his throat uncomfortably, then added, “Anyhow, we took up a collection among us instead. We thought you could tuck it
away in case the kiddies need somethin’ when they started school...or somethin’...”

  What muscles had remained on alert in Charles’s frame finally relaxed. “That’s very kind of you, gentlemen. I don’t know if I should accept, seeing as how—”

  “Don’t say no,” Callahan—the second porter?—interjected hurriedly. “We’re all fathers. Well, all of us but Clancy. So’s we know how expensive the little tykes can be.”

  The other railway employees gave a round of weak laughter.

  “Like I said,” Beamon offered. “We feel awful that it was our train that put these women in the fix they’re in. We’re just glad that at least one family has had a happy ending.”

  In Charles’s mind, he and Willow were still at the beginnings of their relationship. Nevertheless, that wasn’t something he intended to admit to anyone, so he thanked the railway crew again, shaking each man’s hand in turn. Then he watched them disappear down the road in the direction of the row houses to the north.

  The drawstring bag felt heavy in his palm, even though he could distinguish only a few coins inside. As the men disappeared into the gloom and the falling snow, shame tugged at his shoulders. With everything that had happened, he’d been so quick to think ill of them. He’d allowed the old anger and distrust—emotions that he thought he’d abandoned years ago—to surface long before common sense.

  He couldn’t go back to being that person again.

  He had to be careful.

  Deliberate.

  Controlled.

  He couldn’t allow his worries over Willow and the children to cause his character to regress to what it had once been. He had to guard against solving his problems with harsh words and his fists, or lashing out at people for the slightest provocation.

  Please, Lord, help me.

  Help me to be the man I need to be.

  “Charles?”

  He turned to find Willow peeking at him through a barely opened door.

  “What was all that about?”

  His breath emerged in a swift gust. “A group of railway employees stopped by for a visit. They brought a gift for the babies.”