Stay a Little Longer

by Dorothy Garlock

  Mason’s broad shoulders began to shake as the first tears fell from his downturned eyes. While Rachel recounted what had happened to Alice, to his beloved wife, he had kept his gaze fixed on their entwined hands, but now that she had finished he looked up at her, his face a mass of emotion.

  Rachel watched as a spark of recognition raced across Mason’s face. For an instant, he appeared to be having trouble believing what he had surmised, looking first to her, then to his hands, then briefly out the window before once again returning to her.

  “Charlotte…” he said, his voice faint. “Charlotte is Alice’s daughter. My daughter…”

  * * *

  Since the fateful day when he had been tossed skyward by an exploding German artillery shell, Mason had experienced several moments when he felt utterly helpless to control his own life. Lying in the room in the boardinghouse, reeling as he tried to absorb what Rachel had told him, he again felt buffeted by fate, unanchored to the life he knew. His heart raced and his breath seemed to catch in his throat. Even if his life had depended upon it, he knew that in that moment, he was utterly incapable of speech or movement, struck mute by the knowledge that his and Alice’s daughter was still alive.

  “Charlotte… Charlotte is my daughter,” he repeated.

  “She is.” Rachel nodded solemnly. “Even if her mother no longer had the will to live, Charlotte fought on… I think she gets that stubbornness from you. Even though it’s hard for her to share her birthday with the anniversary of her mother’s death, she just turned eight. She is your and Alice’s child.”

  “I should… I should have understood…”

  “Oh, Mason, I’m sorry,” she said as she squeezed his still shaking hands. “I thought that because of the way you had been calling her by her mother’s name while you were sick, somehow you might have understood that she was Alice’s daughter.”

  Even as Mason tried to make some sense of what Rachel was telling him, the faintest memory of seeing Alice enter the dilapidated cabin welled up in his disordered thoughts. With Charlotte’s blonde hair and striking eyes, both traits of her mother, it was easy for him to believe that he had made such a connection given the power of the illness that ravaged him, that he could have mistaken her for Alice.

  When he first awakened to find Charlotte sitting at the foot of his bed, Mason had been surprised to learn that he had called her Alice. In his embarrassment, he had apologized, but even then he recognized that she closely resembled his wife. While he didn’t remember Alice at such a young age, he could believe they would be the image of each other.

  “Does… does she know that I… I am her father?” Mason asked, suddenly worried.

  “No,” Rachel answered with a shake of her dark hair. “Just like the rest of us, she believes that her father is dead. All she knows of Mason Tucker is what she’s been told over the years.”

  “What about now? Now that you know, will you tell her?”

  Fixing him with a serious stare, Rachel said, “The only person to decide that is you.”

  Even as he nodded his head in agreement, Mason knew the decision would be difficult. That he had a daughter, a child who had no idea he existed, was daunting enough. To bring Charlotte into his life, at least the life he’d been living for the last seven years, seemed an impossible task. Questions raced around in his head.

  Would my being in Charlotte’s life make it better?

  What will she think of me once she’s learned the truth of what I’ve done?

  Can I just walk away… leave without telling her?

  Mason had no more than thought the last question when he came to the sudden realization that, with his and Alice’s absence from Charlotte’s life, someone had done his job for him.

  “The burden of caring for her has fallen on you, hasn’t it?” he asked Rachel.

  “Caring for Charlotte has been trying at times, but it has never been a burden,” she explained. “I’ve done what I can for her because I’m certain that that is what Alice would have wanted. There are days that are harder than others, but I’ve never regretted it. Besides, I don’t have to do it all alone. I have my mother and Uncle Otis to help.”

  “Your mother… how is she?”

  “Alice’s death nearly killed her. After all of the children she’d safely delivered over the many years, it was hard for her to accept that she failed to save her own daughter. Ever since that day, she hasn’t delivered a single child. Now her days are spent in her room at the end of the hall, staring out the window, so frightened that she never goes outside.”

  “After everything that’s happened…”

  “It’s much more than that.” Rachel sighed. “My mother worries for the sake of worrying, wringing her hands until they’re chafed and raw. It’s hard on everyone, but especially Charlotte. She’s always being told to be careful, not to run about so wildly, even though she’s no different from Alice or me at her age. Whenever Charlotte so much as skins her knee, my mother will work herself into hysterics and tries to protect her by locking the child in her room. Every year it gets worse. She’s never been able to accept that what happened to Alice was beyond her ability to control.”

  Mason knew that Eliza Watkins was just another victim of his disappearance, but her painful struggles tugged especially hard at his heart. He remembered the days he had courted Alice, when Eliza had struck him as a particularly independent woman. Outspoken as she was hardworking, brimming with confidence at her abilities as a midwife, as quick to laugh as she was to fight for those that she loved, it seemed impossible that she had been struck so low.

  “With my mother in her room,” Rachel continued, “Otis and I run things here at the boardinghouse.”

  “Good old Otis,” Mason said with a weak smile. “Is he still a drinker?”

  “Worse than before. Thank goodness he was sober enough to help get you back here the other night.”

  Another flare of worry raced across Mason’s mind upon learning that Otis Simmons knew of his return. Fearful that every tongue in Carlson would be wagging with news of his unexpected appearance, all fueled by a certain man’s love of liquor and the way a snoot full of whiskey could make a man blabber things he shouldn’t, Mason asked, “Will he manage to keep it quiet? The fewer people who know of my arrival, the better.”

  “Otis might be many things,” Rachel explained, “drunk, lazy, and quick of tongue among them, but he knows how to keep a secret. You don’t have to be anxious.”

  Momentarily relieved, Mason once again began to reflect upon all the many things that had happened during his absence. Never in his wildest imagination would he have thought that so much could have occurred. As his own life had forever been changed, so had others, many of them belonging to those he truly loved.

  Shock and surprise still tore at his heart at the fact that his beloved Alice was beyond his reach. For longer than he could remember, he’d comforted himself with the belief that he would, at the very least, be able to look upon her face one day, even if it were from a distance. That their love and union had left behind a child, a daughter so like her mother, filled him with both joy and trepidation.

  While I was gone, for better or worse, life went on without me.

  “I’m sorry for all the misery that I’ve caused, Rachel,” he muttered.

  “I won’t sit here and tell you that I haven’t felt my share of anger at you and all of the grief you’ve caused, Mason,” she said curtly. “That Alice’s love for you was greater than her desire to live still torments me. I know it’s not right to place all the blame on your shoulders, but because she couldn’t continue living, none of our lives will ever be the same. But now that you’ve returned, there are decisions that will have to be made.”

  Mason knew that what Rachel was telling him was right; now that his supposed death had been exposed, he would have many hard choices to make. He expected that she would want him to begin making them as soon as possible, particularly those that related to Charlotte and whether he
would take a role as the girl’s father, so he was somewhat surprised when she squeezed his hands, rose from where she sat on the bed, and made her way back toward the closed door.

  “You still need to get your rest,” she said simply. “You were as sick as I have ever seen a man, and that sort of illness isn’t just going to disappear. I’ll be back later with your dinner.” Just as Rachel was about to step out into the hall, she turned back to him with a tender look in her eyes. “Welcome home, Mason…”

  Chapter Seventeen

  IF THERE WAS ONE THING that bothered Jonathan Moseley, it was a secret being kept from him. Even as a child, a birthday gift or the most innocent of schoolyard mysteries would gnaw at his thoughts, make him dizzy, taunting him until he had figured it out. In adulthood, he had changed little, which was why he was pacing around his cramped room like a caged animal.

  Two days earlier, he had been coming back to the boardinghouse from another mostly fruitless attempt to peddle his wares when he’d come across Rachel and her uncle practically carrying a destitute man back toward their home. Carefully, he’d kept his distance so as not to be seen, and watched as they hauled the stranger up the back stairs. Later, when he finally returned to his room, he came to understand that they had placed their new guest in the room next to his own.

  Who in the hell is he?

  From that moment, Jonathan had been tortured by the fact that he had little idea what was going on, even if it were right under his nose. People had been coming and going from the stranger’s room, but he was no closer to learning the man’s identity than he had been out on the street. Worst of all was that Rachel was so concerned. Once, he’d tried to speak to her at the head of the stairs, but she’d just barged by him as if he weren’t even there and had gone into the room.

  “Don’t make the mistake of ignoring me,” he mumbled to himself.

  With every passing hour, every tick of his pocket watch, Jonathan grew more restless. Every once in a while, he’d managed to hear the faint sound of voices, although he’d been unable to understand a word of what was being said, even after he’d pressed his ear against the wall. So great was his curiosity that he’d had trouble sleeping and hadn’t eaten much. After a while, he realized that his mistake was in waiting for the information to come to him; he would have to find out the truth himself.

  Heaven only helps those who help themselves!

  After leaving his room and taking a long look at the closed door behind which the stranger lay, Jonathan made his way down the stairs to where Otis Simmons lounged in a rocking chair. With his feet propped up on a precariously piled stack of pillows, a half-empty whiskey bottle tucked into the crook of an arm, and his large hands folded over his ample belly, he seemed as hard at work as usual. Even as Jonathan stood watching the oaf, the first deep rumbles of a snore began to echo from him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Jonathan shouted, giving the man a persistent shake.

  Otis came to with a start, his feet plunging from their resting place and his body jumping so high that he nearly sloshed a bit of his liquor free from the previous safety of the bottle. “What the hell’s the matter with you!” he bellowed in anger. “Don’t you know no better than to go ’bout wakin’ a fella when he’s in the middle of havin’ his afternoon nap?”

  “I’m sorry to have startled you,” Jonathan answered with feigned innocence, “but I thought you might want to have this.”

  From the breast pocket of his shirt, he produced the rent money that Otis had been badgering him about; he’d been fortunate enough to come across a widow in desperate need of mothballs; she had bought two boxes. That sale had been one of few made for weeks and he was glad to get it.

  “ ’Bout damn time,” Otis grumbled as he snatched the money from Jonathan’s hand and stuffed it into his own pocket. Without another word, he made ready to go back to sleep.

  Jonathan cleared his throat before Otis could close his eyes; after all, the reason he had come downstairs, had initiated conversation with the fat slob, wasn’t because he was dying to pay the money he owed, but rather to gain information. “I say, Mr. Simmons,” he began. “I was wondering if you knew anything about our new boarder.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout,” Otis answered gruffly.

  “Surely you know of whom I’m speaking,” Jonathan pressed, his interest more than a bit piqued by the other man’s initial denial. “The gentleman that was moved into the room next to mine… the strange man that you and Rachel placed there two days ago?”

  “He ain’t no boarder… just some sick fella that needs to get his feet back under him before he sets back out for wherever it was he was goin’. Where that is or, for that matter, who he is ain’t none of your business.”

  Jonathan couldn’t be certain, but he believed he detected the trace of a threat in Otis’s words. Just as when he was a boy out in the schoolyard, threatened physically by the older bullies for sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, the prospect of finding out about the stranger instantly became far more attractive.

  “You mean to say that you don’t know the man’s identity?”

  “Nope.” Otis shrugged.

  “And that fact sits well with you?” Jonathan asked incredulously. “A stranger living among us and you don’t know the slightest thing about him! Why, he could be a fugitive from the law, or a murderer or bank robber or swindler who’s looking to take unfair advantage of all of us!”

  “If he is, he’s gonna be in for one hell of a surprise when he finds we ain’t got enough to afford a pot to piss in.” Otis guffawed, his belly jiggling as if it were a roiling sea. “Put it out of your head and go back to sellin’ your trinkets, Moseley. I ain’t no detective from one of them pulp magazines, but even a guy like me can plainly see that that fella upstairs is ’bout as dangerous to us as a cat that done got caught in a whirlwind!” With that, Otis took a long draw on his whiskey, rearranged his pillows, closed his eyes, and gave the clear indication that any further conversation would be unwise.

  Not wanting to push his luck too far, Jonathan made his way to the courtyard at the rear of the building. He’d held the slim hope that he would once again come across Rachel as she hung laundry on the line, giving him the opportunity to resume his courtship, but the courtyard was empty save for that brat of a spoiled child, Charlotte, and her mangy dog.

  Jonathan was about to go back inside, to retreat to his room where he would once again plot his eventual breaching of Rachel’s defenses, when a sudden inspiration struck him. Surely, inducing Charlotte to tell me what I want to know would be a simple matter… Where Otis had been reticent, he assumed that the little girl would offer little resistance; she was a fish on the end of his line that just needed to be reeled in.

  “Charlotte?” he called as sweetly as he could manage. “Charlotte, might I have a word with you, my dear?”

  For a moment, Jonathan worried that the girl would run. She looked at him, surprise showing on her face at his having spoken to her, and then over her shoulder toward the alley and escape, but eventually she came closer, with the mutt at her side.

  “How are you this fine day?” he asked gently, trying to be as nice as he could but knowing that it sounded forced. Being kind to children certainly wasn’t something that came naturally to him; their dull-wittedness drove him half out of his mind and trying to understand their rambling prattle was nearly enough to make him pull his remaining hair out.

  “All right, I guess,” she mumbled, kicking absently at a pebble at her feet.

  “Say, Charlotte, I was wondering if you knew anything about the stranger who is staying in the room next to mine.”

  “He’s not a stranger.”

  “You know who he is?” Jonathan asked delightedly. “You know his name?”

  “Nope,” Charlotte answered with a shake of her curly hair, “but he’s no stranger. I took care of him in the woods… well, Jasper and I did, anyways. He’s as nice as can be.”

  “But…
you don’t even know his name?”

  “Only Rachel does,” the girl explained innocently. “But she told me that I wasn’t allowed to ask what it was, all on account of his not feelin’ well. She wouldn’t let me ask no questions, but that’s all right with Jasper and me. Even if we don’t know what to call him, we like him just the same.”

  Jonathan didn’t hear much after Charlotte mentioned Rachel’s name; his mind was stuck on the fact that his beloved had somehow grown close to the stranger, had been taken into his confidence and learned his name. He began to see the man as a rival, another suitor for Rachel’s affections, and, even worse for his dreams, she seemed to be falling for his attempt; she was nothing but a fly to be caught in the man’s spiderweb of lies!

  And that is something that will not do!

  “Your uncle said that the man was sick,” Jonathan pressed. “Is that why Rachel is spending so much time in his room?”

  “She’s the one tendin’ to him, but I’m sure I could do it,” Charlotte pouted. “I was doin’ just fine out in the woods.”

  “I’m sure you were, dear.”

  Certain that he could learn nothing further, Jonathan sent Charlotte back to her playing, and she was only to happy to oblige. When she ran away, Jasper hung back, staring at Jonathan with the hackles on the back of his neck raised, unblinking eyes boring holes into the man for a moment, before he too headed off for more entertaining exploits.

  Jonathan knew that something, some sort of secret, was being kept from him, and that was a state of affairs that simply would not do. Clearly, Otis had been reluctant to say much, but from what he had gathered from Charlotte, he finally had something to piece together. Rachel was complicit! Beginning with the way she doted upon the sick man and ending with the preventive way she had kept her niece from asking questions—all pointed to the fact that there was a reason to hide the truth.