“May I help—”
“No, thank you, Reverend.”
He was such a stumblebum that if he helped, there were bound to be some pies that didn’t make it. She brought the pies to the door just as Kate opened it. Hattie shoved the pies at Kate and whispered, “Set these down quick and meet me at the door again.”
Kate’s eyes grew wide when she saw the Reverend, and she snatched the pies to set them on the closest table. She skedaddled back to receive the next two from Hattie.
The Reverend started getting down from the wagon. “Are you sure I can’t—” He caught his sleeve on the brake handle.
“Kate and I are doing just fine, Reverend,” Hattie said, though Kate was beginning to look winded. Hattie handed Kate the next two.
He tried to tug free. “But we could get it done faster if I—”
“Almost done.”
His predicament was a blessing.
Hattie grabbed more pies as he twisted and tugged.
“I seem to be caught—”
“Be there in a minute.” Hattie shoved the pies at Kate and turned.
The Reverend had managed to free himself and was stepping off the wagon to get that final pie.
Hattie beat him to it and delivered the last pie safe and sound, though Kate looked ruffled.
~*~
Nate dashed to the back of the town buildings and then slipped up the alley between the general store and the telegraph office. The sheriff’s office was across the street. The businesses were just opening and there were only a few people around. He waited for the barber standing in his doorway to greet a customer and for a woman who led her child into the general store. A couple of women walked along the boardwalk and disappear into another building.
Breck—he’s still the sheriff, isn’t he?
When Nate lived here, the man had complained that he was getting old and had talked about giving up his badge. But Breck had been saying that for years. Surely, he cared too much about this town to quit.
Now.
Someone came out of the sheriff’s office.
Nate stopped short.
Zachariah.
Nate’s heart pounded at the sight of tall, dark-haired, know-it-all Zachariah. He’d put on a few years and added some bulk, but he still had that patch of rippled, maroon-stained skin right smack on his face, that ever-present reminder to Nate of what his sister had looked like after she’d burned to death.
Nate threw himself back in the alley and leaned against a building until he caught his breath. A few moments later, Nate peered around the corner.
Zachariah had settled on the bench in front of the sheriff’s office.
Go home. Go to work. Go anywhere but here.
Zachariah perched his feet up on the horse rail and got more comfortable—as comfortable as he had the day Nate had set out to kill him—but had instead set fire to the building Lillian was in.
A fire for a fire.
Death of Zachariah’s woman for the death of Nate’s sister.
Nate threw his hands over his face. He stumbled into the rough brick wall.
Control. He couldn’t lose control for Hattie’s sake. He’d have to wait for Zachariah to leave before he could talk to Sheriff Breck.
Zachariah still hadn’t budged.
Nate punched the brick. Don’t you have somewhere else to be? The answer came back with a flash of sunlight on silver.
The sheriff’s badge glowed on Zachariah’s vest.
11
Hattie and the Reverend sat at a table covered with a red checkered tablecloth by a window draped with matching curtains. They sipped on their glasses of cool sarsaparilla. The Reverend’s gaze locked onto the window and hers fastened onto old Malachi and his English wife, Rosie. Rosie had him wearing suits and ties and top hats nothing like the old cowhide duds he’d worn before he’d married her.
“How many times do I have to tell you to take off your hat when you’re sitting at the table?” Rosie harped in her English accent. “Don’t anything sink into that gray noggin of yours?”
“Yes, my sweet blossom.” He plucked off his hat and put it in his lap. “I forgot.”
“And get your elbows off the table. A gentleman don’t eat like that.”
“Yes, honeysuckle. I’m sorry.” Even after seven years of marriage, Malachi, an old hermit who’d struck gold, still adored his fancy English mail-order bride.
Privately, Hattie always thought Rosie wanted to make an Arabian stallion out of a mule. But at least Malachi and Rosie were talking to one another. Even after seven years of knowing him, not only did Hattie and the Reverend not talk, but she only knew him as the Reverend.
Men. Why were the ones who mattered such strangers? Or like Nate, who’d hurt her? Her chest felt heavy as if she’d swallowed a lump of lead. There were two men whose absence in her life had left her wounded.
Nate—and her father.
The Reverend was still looking out the window but at least not spilling or causing confusion. How did he feel about her? Did he even find her attractive? Everyone said that the way he tripped and fumbled around her was a sure sign he was taken by her, but he did that around everybody. And there were times when his clumsiness seemed a bit—unusually coordinated.
He was tall and slim and if he didn’t slouch, maybe he wouldn’t look so lanky. He had a straight nose, a square jaw, and a thick crop of dark brown hair, which might look comely if he parted it on the side instead of in the middle.
She’d known him for seven years but hardly knew him at all.
How many siblings did he have? What was his favorite food, his favorite color?
Nate had had just the one sister, and his favorite food was steak and mashed potatoes with creamed corn and apple pie for dessert. His favorite color was yellow. He’d told her that one day when he’d brought her a dozen yellow roses. “They’re so pretty, Nate,” she’d said. “Pretty, yes,” he’d answered. “But nothing’s as beautiful as you are.”
She sighed at the ache brought by the memory. Why was she always lonely for the men who’d made her heart feel as if it’d been carved out and stomped on? There’d been another man in her life besides Nate, and he’d hurt her just as badly.
Her pa.
It had been difficult growing up without a father. There was nobody to provide for her and her ma. Her ma scrubbed away at more than just the dirt on the clothes she’d washed for a living. She and Hattie took turns.
~*~
“Ma,” Hattie said as she dipped some stranger’s dirty long johns into a steaming washtub. Though her hands were red, she’d gotten used to the heat. “Where’s my pa?”
Her mother, rag tied around her head, was hanging a shirt on the clothesline but stopped. “He’s dead.” She tossed the shirt back at Hattie. “Now you’d best scrub that collar better than that.”
Hattie finished the long johns and took up the poorly-washed shirt. “How’d he die?”
Her ma huffed. “Civil War took him.” She folded the long johns over the line and pinned them.
“What’d he look like?”
“What you think he looked like? He had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth just like every other man. Now stop talking and start scrubbing. We got to get these clothes back to the saloon by tomorrow morning.”
There was always a pile of laundry waiting for the washtub and a deadline to do it in that cut short their conversations about her pa. But no matter how many clothes they washed, the pile never got smaller. Her ma would send Hattie off to bed, but Hattie would watch her from the window, still working by the light of a kerosene lamp in the night chill with bed sheets billowing like ghosts from her past. Hattie’s eyes would mist, wishing she had a pa to make her life feel safer and her ma’s life easier. She even prayed he’d somehow survived the war and that he’d come back for them.
She got half her miracle.
~*~
Zachariah’s the sheriff now?
Nate pounded the building’s side until the gr
itty brick bruised his fists and scuffed his knuckles. He sagged against the wall. The man he wanted to avoid was the man he needed to talk to. How could he protect Hattie from the Reverend when he couldn’t talk to the sheriff?
A man unscrupulous enough to hide behind a pulpit was the type of man deceitful enough to hide a dangerous secret. And with the skills to back up whatever that secret was…
Think. He needed more time to come up with something to help Hattie. But too much time meant missing the stagecoach and the day he was due back at work. A position as vice president of the most prestigious bank in Boston wasn’t a job a man wanted to lose. He looked at the red brick before him, hit it again, and then leaned his forehead on his fist. Hattie had always been there when he’d needed her. For the first time in her life, she needed him even if she didn’t know it. Nate would extend his stay by notifying his employer he’d been delayed. All he had to do was slip around the corner and into the door of the very building he’d been striking.
Zachariah lifted his feet off the horse rail and went inside the sheriff’s office.
Nate drew a breath and walked out of the alley. Just before he rounded the corner into the telegraph office, a child shot out of the general store.
“Molly,” a woman shouted from inside the store.
Before the child could get too far, Nate scooped her up. “Hold on there.” She was a little thing in a crisply ironed dress with black hair and pretty blue eyes. Before he could put the child down, her mother came rushing out of the store after her.
“Mol—” The mother came to a dead standstill the moment she saw Nate.
He froze as though he’d seen an apparition.
Lillian, the woman he’d trapped in the burning building, gaped at him. She was petite, black-haired, and pale with fear.
He couldn’t stammer a word, knowing he’d been the devil to her.
“Y-You’re back,” she stammered.
Even if she knew nothing about his attempt to kill her, he’d given her reason to fear when he’d tried to force her to marry him. This place was cursed with reminders of what kind of man he’d been.
“Lillian, I…” He wanted to quell her fear, to plead his apology.
Her eyes were wide as she looked at him holding her child.
Terror was in Lillian’s eyes. The terror of seeing a raging beast who’d tried to use her as the club with which to bludgeon Zachariah.
His monster was merely slumbering within and tied with a very thin rope. The only peace offering he could tender was to put the child down. “Go to your mother.”
Lillian reached out and pulled the little girl away from Nate. She pushed the child behind her and stood like a mother rabbit between her kit and a mountain lion. Her bravery made him even more ashamed.
“I see you’re married.” It was a feeble attempt to put her at ease and acknowledge her condition: foremost alive but furthermore rounded with another child well on the way. “I assume to Zachariah?”
“You assume correctly. He’s the sheriff now.” That statement wasn’t so much an update of her husband’s occupation as it was a warning.
“You have my congratulations. Good day—Mrs. Keane.” He turned to escape from her and the memories she stirred.
Zachariah stepped out of the sheriff’s office.
Nate nearly ran into the telegraph office. He’d been wrong about fate finally befriending him. Seeing Lillian…and Zachariah…had the sheriff seen Nate talking to her? A confrontation with Zachariah would be too much to handle. Fate, please give me that much.
“Nate? Is that you?”
A friendly voice from the past.
Nate drew a deep breath.
“Well hang me if it isn’t.” Clayton shot out from behind a pine desk and slapped Nate’s shoulder. Seven years and having to rebuild his business had turned Clayton’s brown hair to gray. “Good to see you again, Nate.”
Nate shook hands with the man whose business he’d burned down. Judging by the excitement in his voice, Clayton had never figured it out. “What have you been up to? What are you doing back in town?”
“I need to send a wire.” It was all Nate could manage.
“Sure. I can do that for you.”
Nate wrote out the request for his employer to extend his absence.
Clayton went behind the desk and tapped it out.
The door creaked opened.
One big leather boot planted itself inside, and another followed just as firmly.
“Howdy, Clayton.” Zachariah added in a flat voice, “Howdy, Nate.”
12
Red mist flooded Nate’s brain at the patch of rippled scarlet skin on Zachariah’s face, at the reminder of Sally’s gruesome death by burning. He clutched his head and turned away.
“Mind if I talk to Nate?” Zachariah asked Clayton. “In private.”
“Sure, Zachariah,” Clayton said. “Of course.” He left.
Zachariah turned to Nate and studied him before speaking. “Will I have any problems with you and Lillian?”
Nate’s head buzzed as he focused on a knot in a plank of the pine floor that looked like a bullet hole. He locked his arms across his chest to get a hold of his rage. “No, you’ll not have any trouble.”
“Will I have problems with you and Hattie?”
Nate could taste the sullied water of resentment gurgling at the back of his throat. He wanted to spit it out at Zachariah but instead lifted his gaze to the badge gleaming off Zachariah’s vest. He was talking to the town sheriff. “No, you’ll not have problems between Hattie and me. But you will have problems with someone else.”
“And who might that someone else be?”
Hope trumped common sense. “The Reverend. He’s not as virtuous as everyone seems to think he is.”
“Then what exactly might he be?”
“A crack shot. A deadeye.”
Zachariah went quiet. Would he take after the former sheriff by investigating even a crazy accusation?
Zachariah put his hands on his hips, over the guns on his holster. “How long you going to be in town, Nate?”
How could Nate have expected any help from Zachariah? “Not long.”
“What’re you here for?”
Being in the same room as Zachariah was like drowning. Since Nate needed to stay in Ramsden longer, he offered an excuse. “I’m here to visit my parents.”
“Your parents?”
Nate’s face heated at the inflection in Zachariah’s voice. Nate wanted to spit back that he had a mother, and even though his other parent preferred Zachariah over Nate, Marcus was still his father. Nate tried not to show the rage, but if he didn’t look Zachariah straight in the scarred face, the man would know he was lying. The sight of the wrinkled patch of scarlet that covered Zachariah’s face from cheekbone to chin sickened Nate. “Yes, Zachariah, my parents.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“About your pa.”
Nate clamped his mouth shut on the insults that would have otherwise poured out of him. “What about my pa, Zachariah?” He wanted to mock Zachariah’s provincialism, poke fun at his stupidity, bring him down low. Suffocating. Being within sight of the man’s scar was holding him underwater. Did Zachariah suspect Nate had set the telegraph office on fire to kill Lillian? Nate wanted to leave and raised his voice, demanding an answer. “What about my pa?”
Zachariah hesitated, and then he told Nate what was wrong.
~*~
The glasses of sarsaparilla in front of Hattie and the Reverend were as empty as their conversation had been. She’d stared so long at the red and white checks on the curtains that they’d all blended into red.
The Reverend sat, prim and proper, looking out the window overlooking the dusty road. His chin nudged forward as something snagged his attention. “That man looks like he’s in a hurry,” he said.
With something to chat about, she followed his gaze.
Nate was on horseback, already movi
ng fast out of town. And the man he was in a hurry to get away from was standing on the boardwalk.
Zachariah.
Hattie came to her feet. Why wasn’t Nate gone yet? She had to talk to Zachariah. “Would you excuse me, Reverend?”
With the exception of tripping on a nail head that stuck out a quarter inch and almost bumping into two other customers when he’d come in, the Reverend had done pretty well. But when he stood to excuse her from the table, his belt buckle caught the tabletop and their glasses tumbled down. Catching her glass with both his hands and using his knee to stop his glass from rolling off the table put his long, lanky limbs in an interesting position. There was something suspicious in his lightning-fast reflexes. But the way he precariously balanced on one jittery foot and the way his eyes crossed trying to see through eyeglasses that fell crooked across his nose made him look so ridiculous that she dismissed that nudging notion.
He could have used some help, and it was uncharitable of her, but she was in such a hurry to talk to Zachariah that she left the Reverend to his own devices to solve his predicament.
“What’s going on?” She met Zachariah on the walk in front of the telegraph office. “Did you and Nate have words?”
Zachariah hooked his thumbs in his belt as he continued looking down the street. “We had ourselves a little conversation.”
“Well, is Nate leaving? He sure took off in a hurry. Do you think he’s gone for good?” Was she disappointed?
Zachariah didn’t comment.
Hattie spotted Lillian in the doorway to the sheriff’s office. “Is Lillian all right?” Lillian and Nate had a history, and with Lillian being so close to birthing…
“She’s fine,” Zachariah said. “I had her and little Molly wait in my office. I’m on my way to check up on her now.”
“So if everything’s fine, why do you look worried?”
He answered her question with one of his own. “How did Nate find out about you and the Reverend?”
What? Why did everyone in town think they were on the verge of getting married? “I told Nate that the Reverend was my beau so he’d leave me alone.”
Divided Heart Page 6
