Her ma leaned closer and lowered her voice. “There’s a complication with the baby.”
Jo’s heart sank.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Garrett couldn’t clear his thoughts. Caleb had thought Mary Louise the only girl for him, but Garrett was certain he’d find another love. How did a fellow know if he’d found true love? Was it possible to find that love more than once in a lifetime?
He kept picturing the look on Jo’s face when Mary Louise had made her angry accusation. She’d appeared...defeated. And he’d done that to her. He’d taken the fire out of her heart with his distant ways. He’d talked himself into the marriage knowing it was wrong because he wanted her near.
He’d wrapped himself in ice as protection and had frozen her out in the process.
“Hey.” David rapped on his desk. “Are you listening?”
Garrett bolted upright. “No. Were you talking?”
His new deputy rolled his eyes. “You’ve been daydreaming all morning. What’s wrong with you?”
Everything. “Nothing.”
Garrett rubbed the back of his neck. He couldn’t get Jo off his mind. She must think him a first-rate loon after his antics the other morning. His feelings definitely felt like madness, but not like the madness of his father. His emotions were strong but not violent. More like forged steel than burning embers.
Not the black darkness he’d grown up with. He and Jo were friends before the marriage. He’d seen couples who acted almost as if they hated each other. Could you have love and romance with your best friend?
He’d never know unless he risked telling her the truth about his past.
David rapped on his desk again.
“What?” Garrett snapped.
“I’ve been following Tom Walby for days. He hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary. Are you certain he’s the culprit?”
Garrett checked his watch. “I called Tom in today. We’ll put the pressure on him. Give him a chance to do the right thing. If we don’t do something, there’ll be a mob after Mr. Stuart.”
The door swung open and Tom Walby stumbled inside looking as if he’d been dragged behind his horse instead of riding it. He collapsed onto the chair set before the desk and groaned.
Though his visitor was here sooner than expected, Garrett was relieved. He motioned for David. “Can you take notes while Tom talks?”
Understanding dawned on the younger man’s face and he quickly retrieved paper and pencil from his desk opposite Garrett’s.
Tom rubbed his face. “You know why I’m here?”
“I think so.” Garrett tented his hands and kicked back in his chair. “Why don’t you tell me what happened in your words.”
“I didn’t mean to do it.” Tom’s rough face screwed up in a grimace. “I was drunk.”
“Didn’t mean to do what? You’ll have to say the words outright.”
“I think I killed Mr. Hodges.”
“You think or you know?”
“I was drunk.” Tom repeated.
“Had you been drinking all day?”
“Most of it.” Tom squared his shoulders. “There was a good crowd that afternoon and I’d been winning at poker. Those cowboys were full of money and the railroad boys had gotten their paychecks. They were buying us all drinks. Then I started losing.” Tom grunted. “I don’t remember much after that.”
“Do you remember shooting the gun?”
“I don’t.” Tom swiped at his eyes. “When I woke up the next day, I had a shiner and my gun was short two bullets.”
David’s pencil frantically scratched across the page.
Garrett gave his deputy a moment to catch up before continuing. “You blacked out?”
“It’s happened before.”
“Why, Tom?” Garrett asked the question he’d always wanted to ask his own father. “The drink was bound to catch up with you. Why didn’t you ever quit?”
The other man hung his head. “I don’t know. I say I’m gonna quit. I make promises. To myself, to my wife. I go a day without drinking, sometimes more. Then, I don’t know, something happens and I talk myself into coming to town. It’s never going to be more than one. Never.”
Garrett fought against the pull of time, keeping his thoughts rigidly in the present. “What about the shivaree at my house? That was you, too, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Tom hung his head. “Mr. Stuart thought one of them cowboys was back in town. He was trying real hard to shift the blame. It was eating at me, you know? Because I knew Stuart didn’t do it. I thought if your place was messed up at the same time, you’d blame the cowboys.”
A low rumble of anger vibrated in Garrett’s chest. “Was that the only reason?”
“Jo, too,” Tom added sheepishly.
“You were sweet on her once, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t think she’d marry anyone. Ever. I guess I was mad when I found out the two of you were getting hitched. I married the missus just to show Jo someone else would have me. Jo was always too good for me anyway. Even in the eighth grade.”
Garrett watched as David’s eyes widened.
He’d been certain about the shooting, but the shivaree was only a hunch. “You’ve got a child now. You made a commitment. It’s time you made peace with that. No matter what your reasons for marrying, it’s your choice how you live your life each day. What you’re doing isn’t fair to any of you.”
The day of the wedding Tom had been skulking around the edges of the festivities. The damage he’d inflicted on the house had been vicious, personal.
Tom cleared his throat and he dabbed at his brow with a dingy red handkerchief. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“It’s not up to me.” Containing his anger, Garrett yanked the keys from his top drawer. “Your punishment is up to the judge. I’ll keep you in the jail here. With no witnesses, I’m not certain how it will go for you.”
“You’ll put in a good word for me, won’t you?”
“I gotta be honest, Tom, I’m not feeling all that charitable toward you right now. You killed a man and you can’t even remember what happened. You took a life. For all I know, it was self-defense. Mr. Hodges was known to have a temper. But you’ve lost all your credibility and I can’t bring it back for you. Then you damaged my house. And on my wedding day, no less.”
Garrett walked Tom back to the jail and locked him inside, then returned to the front office.
David sat in the chair, stunned. “You said the only proof you had was flimsy.”
Garrett slid open his top desk drawer and fished out two bullets, then set them side by side on the dark blotter. “They look alike, don’t they?”
David studied the bullets, rolling them over the leather surface. “Yes.”
“This is the one that killed Mr. Hodges.” Garrett brandished the warped metal cylinder. “And the other is from Tom’s gun. I keep track of people who shoot first and aim later. Folks around here make their own bullets, and a lot of times you can tell who they belong to. Not always. But Tom’s got a distinctive mold.”
Garrett indicated three identical deep grooves on the side of each bullet.
David slumped in his chair. “Why did we need a confession?”
“Could have been a coincidence. No one saw anything. Tom doesn’t even remember what happened.” Garrett shrugged. “I didn’t want to leave it up to chance.”
“I still can’t believe he had a crush on Jo.” David frowned.
“You see what you expect to see. You don’t appreciate the person she’s become.”
“Hey,” Tom yelled from the rear of the jailhouse. “How about some lunch?”
David and Garrett exchanged a look.
“Next time, eat before you confess,” Garrett called back, then lean
ed forward in his chair. “We’ll set up something with the hotel for meals. It’ll be double shifts until the trial. They might want him up in Wichita. It’s murder, after all.”
David scrawled something in his notes. “That solves all the crimes in Cimarron Springs.”
“I got a telegram from Guthrie this morning.” Except Jo hadn’t delivered it. “They found the four cowboys who started the fire in the jailhouse. They’ve been arrested for cattle rustling.” Why had Beatrice delivered the message and not Jo? The question had been eating at him all morning. “Yep. Everything is wrapped up neat as a pin.” Garrett tucked the two bullets into his vest pocket.
He pictured Jo’s once-lively green eyes, now dull with regret. He’d been a coward, and he’d made a real mess of things. The lies he’d told wouldn’t clean up easy.
* * *
Jo rinsed her hands in a bowl and wiped them on a towel. After several tense hours, and though the baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, Mrs. Sundberg had delivered a healthy baby boy. Edith motioned for Jo and they stepped into the kitchen while the doc examined mother and infant. They took turns washing up in the sink.
Edith collapsed onto a chair. “I’m getting too old for this.”
Exhausted and inexplicably cranky, Jo snapped, “Then why didn’t you ask the doctor’s wife, Mrs. Johnsen, for help?”
Ever since Mary Louise had shouted her accusations, Jo had been irritable and out of sorts. The words had echoed hollowly inside her chest. She had naively thought she’d grow closer to her husband with time and nearness. Instead, they’d grown further apart.
She pictured their future together. Two people in the same home, sharing the same name, and yet thousands of miles apart—speaking to each other across a chasm of stilted civility. How long could she live like that? How long before she turned so brittle a strong wind would break her into a thousand pieces?
Her ma huffed. “I didn’t ask Mrs. Johnsen for assistance because she wasn’t available.”
Jo remained stubbornly silent. Garrett cared for her, she knew he did. She caught him looking at her when he didn’t think she was aware. He kept his distance, circling further and further away.
“I’m scared,” Jo whispered the admission, staring at her hands.
Her ma leaned forward. “Scared of what?”
“Of all this.” Jo waved a limp hand in the general direction of Mrs. Sundberg’s closed door. “What if that boy had died?” Jo choked back a sob. “Doesn’t it ever bother you?”
Edith blanched. She opened and closed her mouth a few times. “Of course it bothers me.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because it’s my Christian duty. Because I feel good knowing I can help. Because...” Her voice trailed off as Jo’s words finally sank in. “You really are afraid, aren’t you?”
Jo swallowed around the lump in her throat. She hated this, hated feeling vulnerable. Truth be told, she liked having people believe she wasn’t afraid of anything. She didn’t want to admit her weakness.
Hiding had only driven a wedge between her and her ma, and she hated the lie. The hiding. “If I’m ever going to have children of my own, I have to stop delivering babies.”
Emotions flitted across her ma’s face—disbelief, remorse and finally understanding. She knelt before Jo and cradled her face in her hands. “Oh, gracious. I’ve been blind, haven’t I? I never realized you were too young to understand.” She studied Jo’s defeated expression. “Is this why you never went courting? Is this why you married a man you hardly know?”
“Part of it.”
And because she’d never found someone she was interested in spending her life with—until Garrett.
Her ma clutched her hands. “I thought you didn’t want to be with me, that you were rejecting me. I’ve always been a little in awe of you.”
“Me?”
“You’re not afraid to speak your mind.”
“But you always say the right thing.”
“I say the correct things,” Edith spoke earnestly, “because that’s the easy way. You’re brave enough to say what you feel even when it pains you. Like now.” She stood and held out her hand for Jo. “This is why I do what I do.”
Her ma pushed open the door, revealing the new family. Mr. Sundberg perched on the edge of the bed beside his wife, the swaddled infant cradled between them. They both looked radiant, stunned and overjoyed all at the same time.
Doc Johnsen latched his leather satchel as his wife caught sight of them in the doorway.
Mrs. Sundberg followed her gaze, and her face lit with a smile. “Would you like to hold him?”
Jo accepted the tiny bundle and stared in wonder at the sleepy new life. She’d held plenty of babies in her life, but never with the sense of awe she felt now. Something shifted in her chest. A door opened in her heart, and she felt a burst of light rush into it.
The child was perfect, beautiful and helpless. Each tiny finger was capped with a perfectly formed nail, a shock of dark hair covered the baby’s head. That tug of emotion became an incessant pull. She wanted this. She wanted to be a mother.
For years she’d come up with excuses. Hidden herself away behind wide-brimmed leather hats and boys' clothes. She’d been afraid her whole life. Afraid of being weak. Afraid of wanting something she might never have.
The infant mewled, his tiny mouth working, and Jo reluctantly returned the swaddled bundle to Mrs. Sundberg. Her ma ushered out the bystanders and quietly closed the door behind her, giving the new family some privacy.
After exchanging a few words with the doc and his wife, Edith led her outside and held her hand. “I’m sorry, Jo. I should have paid more attention to your feelings and respected your wishes. I shouldn’t have called on you today. I’ve been mule-headed. I realize that now. I saw things the way I wanted them to be, not the way they really were. Working with you as a midwife kept us close. I thought once you became a woman, my job was over. I was afraid of being useless.”
“Like a hand break on a canoe?”
Her ma laughed. “Just like that.”
As much as Garrett had been running hot and cold, holding back his feelings, Jo had been just as guilty. She’d been guarding a part of herself because she was afraid of being weak. She was afraid of having more to lose than Garrett. In their relationship, she’d been balancing the scales, only giving as much as she thought she could get in return, terrified of showing weakness, of losing the upper hand.
One of them had to give.
Edith touched her shoulder. “We’re all afraid. Sometimes courage is merely the point when our need overcomes our fear.”
Jo considered her ma’s words. Unless one of them changed, she and Garrett would keep drifting apart. The day was still young enough for gathering some supplies for a picnic. It was time she gave him more than she received in return. No more balancing the scales of affection like a greedy banker.
She had to find her courage. And Jo knew just where to start.
“Ma,” Jo said, her voice ragged with emotion. “Your job will never be over. I’ll always be your daughter and I will always need your love and help.”
Edith pulled her into a sobbing hug, and Jo returned the fierce pressure.
Being vulnerable was tougher than feigning courage, but it sure felt a whole lot better.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Garrett snatched his saddle and tossed it over Blue’s back. He tightened the cinch and then led the horse into the clearing. Hoisting one foot into the stirrup, a sound caught his attention. He turned and discovered Jo meandering up the driveway, blissfully unaware of the panic she’d caused.
He tossed the reins over the hitch and stalked toward her. “Where have you been?”
Her eyes widened at his tone. “Mrs. Sundberg had her baby.”
Jo halted. “Why didn’t you ask Beatrice?”
A flush crept up his neck. “I was just heading back into town. In the future, let me know if you’ll be late.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he snapped back.
With the sudden release of tension, he fully absorbed her disheveled appearance and the dark smudges beneath her eyes. She appeared fragile, exhausted, and all his worries rushed back. “You scared me,” Garrett reluctantly admitted.
“I said I was sorry,” Jo grumbled. “What more do you want?”
“I’m sorry, too. Except I get mad when I’m scared.”
“You’ll fit right in with the McCoys,” Jo grunted. “Once, Abraham stepped on a nail and he got so mad, he threw a hammer at the wall.”
“And that didn’t scare you?”
“He didn’t throw it at me.”
Garrett’s heart continued pounding uncomfortably in his chest as he wrangled his emotions back in check. “Let’s start over again.”
“Agreed,” she replied, her voice thick with exhaustion. “How was your day?”
“Fine. I guess I should ask about the baby,” he added sheepishly.
“He’s doing well now.” Her lips trembled. “I didn’t know what would happen. The baby had the cord wrapped around his neck. But Ma managed to save him.”
Garrett wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she sank into his embrace. “I’m glad you were there for her.”
An air of melancholy surrounded her. She leaned against him, and he felt a swift, sharp relief at her show of trust.
“Actually, so am I.” She linked her arm around his waist. “And Ma and I had a good talk.”
Garrett let out a low whistle. “What about?”
“I’ll tell you, but not now.”
Hesitating, Garrett opened his mouth then changed his mind. “Fair enough.”
He didn’t understand the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship, and he respected Jo’s privacy. Yet she’d always been open and honest with him, more than he’d ever given in return. Emotion shimmered in her expressive emerald eyes, sparking a pang of yearning. He had no right to ask her for her secrets when he’d guarded his own so fiercely.
The Marshal's Ready-Made Family Page 20
