“I’m not joking, John,” Charlotte replied with a seriousness she hoped he would find impossible to ignore. No longer was she willing to play along with the charade. “Once that baby arrives, Sarah is going to need a lot more help than you’re currently giving her. Groceries and firewood are no substitute for having someone there to help. Alan is doing better, but we both know he won’t be enough, and that’s if he doesn’t go back to his drunken ways, which is a possibility I don’t even want to imagine.”
“There’s no need to worry. I’ll make sure they get whatever they need.”
“But what if Sarah needs a doctor or a woman to stay and help her care for a sick or difficult baby?” Charlotte pressed, a sliver of anger sliding into her voice. “I’ve done as you asked. I’ve been willing to be her teacher, but I don’t know if I’m up to the task of being her mother.”
“No one has asked you to do that,” he said gruffly.
“That doesn’t change the fact that she might need one.”
“These are all bridges that we’ll cross when we get to ’em,” John said dismissively. “There’re folks in town who I know can keep quiet if I need ’em to go out and check on Sarah and the baby.”
“Then what happens when winter comes?” she argued, refusing to accept John’s easily given answers. “I know that the weather here in January isn’t like the winters we have back in Minnesota, but it must get cold at night, too cold for a newborn to be expected to live in a ramshackle cabin on the edge of your property. Surely you don’t intend for the Becks to live there forever?”
“We’ll take care of it.”
“Tell me the truth, John,” she demanded, the dam blocking her frustration with a situation she had never fully understood finally breaking and her pent-up emotions finally running free. “Why are you doing all of this for them? Be honest with me: who are the Becks to you?”
For a long while, the only sounds in the truck’s cab came from the savage storm; though they had not been on the road long, the weather appeared to have significantly worsened. The rain began to hammer them relentlessly, smashing into the truck as if it were hell-bent on breaking its way inside. Charlotte thought John was remaining silent because he was otherwise concerned with keeping them on the road, his jaw set hard and his knuckles white on the steering wheel. When he finally spoke, he surprised her.
“The last time you asked me ’bout Sarah and them, I told you that my life holds its fair share of regrets,” he said.
“You did.”
“Maybe someday, when you’re as old as me, you’ll understand that you can encounter a situation, something that can remind you of times past, moments you’d like to forget but can’t, no matter how hard you try.” John took a deep breath, pausing as he maneuvered the truck around a bend and the ranch came into view in front of them. Charlotte looked out and was instantly reminded of the day they had raced back to confront the fire, another time that had filled her with dread and foreboding. “You wish you could change things,” he finally added, “but the past is the past for a goddamn reason.”
“John?” she bravely asked. “Does your past have to do with Sarah?”
“There was a girl I knew back ’fore you would have been born, I reckon. A girl I loved. She was the sweetest thing you could ever set eyes on. Smart, funny, full of life. I was gonna make her mine, marry her, you know, but then…”
Try as she might, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to push John Grant for the answers she so desperately wanted. She knew that the only way to get him to talk was to force the issue; that was a course of action that seemed particularly cruel, especially since she already knew the answer from Owen: John had gotten Caroline Wallace pregnant and she had left Sawyer forever.
“Does Amelia know?” she asked.
“About Sarah? No… I haven’t told her a thing. She was round back then, watchin’ as I fell in love. If she knew I was keepin’ them out at the cabin, she’d understand in a second why I was doin’ it.”
“So what are you going to do after the baby is born?”
“If I was bein’ honest,” he said, looking at her in such a way that she knew he was, “I don’t rightly know.”
The truck followed the path that wound through the horse corrals toward the main house. Their headlights cut through the gloom of the storm, but the going was awfully slow. Just as they were about to pass the horse barn where Charlotte and Owen had been together the night before, she was startled to see Owen rushing from the doors and frantically waving his arms for them to stop. John tromped down on the brakes and the truck skidded to a halt in the growing mud.
“What’s happenin’ here?” John asked.
Charlotte got out of the truck, shielding her head from the rain, although it showed her no mercy, instantly soaking her blouse.
“What’s wrong?” She shouted to be heard.
“Come into the barn right now! Both of you!” Owen yelled back. “Hurry!”
Neither John nor Charlotte hesitated, following Owen as he ran into the barn. The meager light of the thunderstorm was enough to poorly illuminate the building’s interior, but Charlotte could see no sign of anything the matter.
She was just about to ask Owen another question when he did something that made her blood run cold as ice; the man whom she loved, the man who had captured her heart, drove his fist into John Grant’s jaw with all the strength he could muster, his face screwed up in a mask of rage. The sound of the blow was as startling as a crack of thunder. John never saw the punch coming; he dropped at his attacker’s feet as solidly as if he were a bag of feed. Charlotte could only stare.
Chapter Twenty-five
OWEN STOOD OVER John Grant, his fist throbbing, a sharp ache from where it had struck the older rancher’s jaw. His heart thundered even louder than the storm just outside the barn door. Unknown to him, his shoulders shook slightly, the tremors running down the length of his arms, he was so enraged, staring holes through the man whom he believed to be his father. Though Owen had come to Oklahoma for the purpose of making John Grant pay for what he had done to his mother, this was the first moment when his rage threatened to consume him and he struggled to resist it.
When he had risen that morning, his sole thought had been of his night with Charlotte. Happiness gripped him so tightly that he never wanted it to let him go. All he had desired was to hold her in his arms, kiss her, and make her promise that what they had would last forever. After he finished the morning chores, he’d hurried to find her.
But when he had, he’d watched as she’d left the main house with John Grant and gotten in the truck and driven away. It was a sight he’d seen many times before but had never asked her about; at first, he had supposed that Grant was showing her around, acclimating her to her new home, but then he kept seeing them together, again and again. Still, he never asked Charlotte for an explanation; if there was something untoward about it, she would have told him, he was sure. But on this day, for a reason he could not explain or even fully understand, he decided that his ignorance was no longer enough and that he needed answers. He determined to follow them.
Once the truck was out of sight, Owen had saddled up Cinnamon and set out after them. The weather had been threatening, growing worse with each passing second, but he hadn’t given a damn if he got caught in a downpour. The truck was much faster than his horse, even without a head start, so he’d had to be content to follow along behind, hurrying in the direction they’d been headed. He pushed Cinnamon hard.
Where were they going?
He’d known he was taking a risk, both with John and with Charlotte, but he hadn’t wavered in his resolve. If he was found out, he’d simply say that he was out on a ride, stretching his beloved horse’s legs. He would have hated to lie to Charlotte. In the end, he needn’t have worried; he’d never seen a soul.
Soon, Owen had climbed a low rise and found a cabin he’d not known was located on the ranch property. It wasn’t much, decrepit and shoddy looking, with smoke driftin
g from its dented stack. John Grant’s truck sat outside. Owen had tied Cinnamon to a felled tree trunk, made his way to a spot where he felt confident he couldn’t be seen, and waited. Long minutes passed, but he saw no sign of them. They had to be inside.
Owen’s curiosity had eventually gotten the better of him. Painstakingly, he had inched his way down to the cabin. With every rock that clicked off his boots, louder to his ears than the thunder that pounded in the distance, he expected to be found out, but no one came out of the cabin’s door. With sweat streaming down his face, he made it to the cracked window. When he looked inside, his heart had wanted to leap from his chest.
Charlotte sat at a table opposite a young girl. To Owen’s eyes, she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, little more than a child. But her age was not what sickened him; it was her obviously pregnant belly. He’d looked away quickly, the sight too much for him to bear. All he could see was his mother, made to suffer and lose all that she had, simply because she was unmarried and with child. Charlotte was there because of John Grant, because he had brought her there. The pregnant girl was obviously connected to him as well.
Desperately, Owen had fought against the urge to kick in the front door and demand answers, but his love for Charlotte made him pause; she might never forgive him for it. There was also no doubt that such an entrance would terrify the girl, and that was something he would not do. In the end, he’d decided that he would be better off hurrying back to the ranch and waiting for them to return.
Furiously pushing Cinnamon, Owen had beaten the rain and settled into the horse barn, steeling himself for what needed to be done. When he had finally seen the truck’s headlights, he’d waved them down and lured them into the barn. It was then he had begun to take his revenge.
And this is only the beginning…
To Charlotte’s eyes, time seemed to stand still. Outside, the raging storm paused. The blustery wind died as if it ran on electricity, its current snapped shut. Even a fork of lightning froze in the sky as if it were nothing more than a child’s drawing, its forks twisting here and there, up and ultimately down, but never striking, never producing its telltale thunder.
Inside the barn, the same held true. No one moved, no one breathed, the very dust motes hanging in the air like snowflakes. Owen remained perched over John, the furious rage never leaving his twisted face, his fists never unclenching. Everything around Charlotte was pregnant with violence.
“You worthless son of a bitch!” Owen bellowed, his brutality finally breaking the spell that held Charlotte’s world temporarily still. His voice echoed, rolling as if it were thunder. “You’re going to pay for all that you’ve done! I’ll make you pay!”
“Owen!” Charlotte shouted, tears springing to her eyes. “Don’t do this, Owen!”
“I saw you, Charlotte!” He turned toward her, irate, barely resembling the man who had held her in that very barn only the night before. “I saw where he took you, who he took you to see!” His attention returned to John, who was sitting upright, one hand rubbing his aching jaw, suddenly looking much older than his years. “Wasn’t ruining one pregnant girl’s life enough for you? Why would you destroy another? Answer me, damn you!”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout,” John murmured.
“The hell you don’t!” Owen shouted. Viciously, he kicked John square in the chest with his booted foot, driving the man flat onto his back, forcing the air out from his lungs. Owen was over him, dropping his weight down onto the man’s chest, a fist raised and ready to be thrown.
But before Owen could punch John as he lay defenseless beneath him, Charlotte rushed across the distance between them and grabbed him by the arm, struggling to hold him. “No, Owen! This isn’t right!”
“What’s right is that he pay for what he’s done! For what he did to Caroline Wallace! For what he did to my mother!”
Owen’s words roused John from the cobwebs blanketing his head. He had been dazed, teetering on the verge of losing consciousness, but the mention of Caroline’s name appeared to stir something in him, like embers in a dying fire, and he began to struggle, blood smearing the corners of his mouth.
“What… what did you…?” he asked. “Whose name… did you say?”
“Caroline Wallace, you bastard!” Owen raged, renewing his desire to beat John to death, nearly pulling his hand free from Charlotte’s grasp. “The woman you got pregnant and chased away because you were too much of a damn coward to take responsibility for what you’d done! The woman whose life you ruined, who died alone!”
“But I… but I didn’t… but I loved her…” John stammered.
Throughout their exchange, Charlotte kept trying to force Owen off John. He fought against her every second, far stronger than she, but his attention was much more focused on his opponent than on her. She strained hard, desperate to keep Owen from doing something she felt certain he would come to regret, and, through constant struggle, she finally managed to topple them both to the floor.
“Get off me!” he shouted.
“This is not the way to do this!” she insisted, “This isn’t what your mother would have wanted!”
“Don’t tell me what she would have—”
“Stop! Just… just stop!” John suddenly shouted, the authority in his shaken voice enough to silence the bickering between Charlotte and Owen; outside, a peal of thunder served as punctuation for his demand. “Just stop for a minute,” he repeated, but now his voice had lost all of its strength, a balloon that suddenly found itself without any air.
For a moment, everything returned to the instant just after Owen had struck John and the world had gone still. No one moved or made a sound. But unlike what had come before, when she had wondered at the frozen world, Charlotte knew that it would regain its natural state, and that was what scared her.
“You’re… you said that… Caroline Wallace is your mother…?” John managed to ask, stumbling over the words.
“She was,” Owen spat. “She was my mother.”
“And Hannah is your sister… your twin sister…” John said, finally putting together all of the pieces as the strength of the storm intensified.
“And you are our bastard of a father!”
“No,” John said, his eyes finding Owen for the first time since he and Charlotte had entered the barn; what could be seen there was best described as pity mixed with sadness. “No, I am not.”
“Liar!”
“Listen to me, Owen,” John protested. “As… difficult as it is for me to hear… that you and Hannah are Caroline’s children, it is not because I ain’t man enough to accept responsibility. I have been many things in my time on this here earth, even a coward like you’re cussin’ me, but a liar I have never been. You need to listen good to what I’m sayin’ to you. I’m tellin’ you the truth.”
“My mother had a letter with your name on it when she died! I read it! It said that you were the love she never forgot, that she could never have!”
“And she was right,” John agreed, “but the reason we couldn’t be together wasn’t ’cause of my choice, but ’cause of hers.”
Charlotte was floored with disbelief. She found herself captured by John’s words, rapt with attention and desperate to know more. But there was no pleasure in knowing that she was right, that there was much more to Caroline Wallace’s story than Owen had ever been willing to accept. It was hard not to believe John, but it was clear that Owen would not be easy to convince.
“I don’t believe you!”
“I loved your mother more than anything in this world.” For an instant, John’s eyes searched Charlotte’s and she remembered the things he had told her in the truck. “There was nothing I wanted more than to make her my wife, to father her children, to spend every day and night content by her side, makin’ our way in this world.”
“You’re lying!” Owen said, angrily shaking his head. “You’re trying to trick me, to protect yourself!”
“Goddamn i
t, Owen! Listen to me!” John thundered, asserting himself and demanding that he be heard. “Your mother was the finest woman I’ve ever met and she weren’t the sort that would be happy knowin’ any son of hers wasn’t willin’ to listen to a man explainin’ himself! At least give her that respect!”
Owen was silenced for a moment, uncertain of how he was supposed to react. Charlotte could see that he was thinking it over, trying to make it work in his head, to make it fit against all of the hate he had been carrying for so long.
“If you loved her like you say you did,” Owen said, losing much of his fury, “if you wanted a family with her so badly, tell me why she left here and died alone.”
“I… I wish I were your father, Owen… I wish to God…” His voice trailed off.
“Tell him,” Charlotte said, the first words that had been spoken between them since they had entered the barn.
John sighed deeply, nodding. “The first time I set eyes on Caroline Wallace, I knew I wanted her to be my wife more than I wanted to draw my next breath. She had other suitors, men who had a hell of a lot more to offer than I ever did, but somehow she saw through my rough exterior for the man I was inside, and gave me her heart. When she made her choice, the other fellas was surely disappointed, but they understood and let us be. But there was one man who never let it go.
“Carter Herrick… he was a bastard even when we was boys, not far from our daddies’ knees. He never could ’cept losin’, even when it come to marbles or some other such, so it shouldn’t been no surprise that he wouldn’t come to grips with losin’ a woman he thought belonged to him. In his own way, he loved Caroline, too. Lookin’ back on it now, we weren’t nothin’ but kids, all of us, even Carter, older than Sarah and ’bout the same age as the two of you. But that ain’t no excuse for what happened.
“One night when Caroline was headin’ home from this here ranch, walkin’ when she shouldn’t never have been allowed to be alone, she was attacked by a fella come out of the side of the road. He dragged her…” John faltered, his voice thick with emotion. “Dragged her… into the bushes… and raped her…”
Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] Page 23
