by Janet Dean
But then Henry had started talking about his dad and she couldn’t leave the livery fast enough. What must Nate think of her for living with the man, for subjecting her son to Max’s temper?
Then Nate had showed up at their door an hour ago with a brand-new Stetson; a gift for Henry that had thrilled her son.
No wonder Henry revered Nate. Nate never had a sharp word. Never made a threatening move. Never disappeared for weeks on end.
Oh, but he would.
Nate would climb down from that pedestal and leave town. If she didn’t prepare her son, Henry’s heart would be broken.
Beside her, Henry stood on the stool, wearing the new cowboy hat, pounding the potato masher into the creamy mound as Carly held the crock in place to ensure her energetic son didn’t knock the bowl off the counter.
“I’m getting the lumps, Mama.” Head bent, Henry attacked those potatoes with all of his strength, but his hand wobbled.
Carly leaned toward him, intending to ask if he’d like help. Just as a glob of potatoes shot into her face.
Her son’s eyes rounded in surprise, and then he crowed with laughter, his shoulders shaking with mirth.
“You little monkey. We’ll see how you like it.” She scooped two fingers into the bowl and dabbed mashed potatoes on his left cheek.
Henry swiped a finger across his face and stuck it in his mouth. “Mmm, good,” he said, leaning into Carly, laughing up at her. “Try ’em, Mama.”
Carly slid the potatoes off her cheek and tasted them. “Needs a little salt.”
Henry made a dive for the shaker, but Carly was faster. “I’ll do that.” A couple shakes, a dash of pepper, a quick stir and Carly pronounced the mashed potatoes perfect.
“Can I put the taters on the plates?”
As Henry plopped potatoes on the plates, leaving a trail on the counter, even a blob on the floor, Carly dished up the fried chicken and sliced beets, a vegetable Henry disliked. But an occasional taste wouldn’t hurt him.
She grabbed both plates, set them on the table and sashayed toward her son, singing, “All around the cobbler’s house, the monkey chased the people. And after them in double haste, Pop! goes the weasel.”
With a squeal of laughter, Henry raced around the kitchen with Carly chasing after him. Just as she reached him, he plopped onto his chair, grinning up at her.
“One day I will catch you, Henry Richards.”
“Next time I’ll be the monkey and catch you.”
“You can try,” she said with a smile, waggling her brows. “Are you hungry?”
At the mention of their second silly game, Henry giggled. “Yep, hungry enough to eat worms.”
“That’s hungry!”
“Are you hungry?” he asked, leaning toward her.
“Yes, hungry enough to eat spiders.”
He shivered, his eyes twinkling. “That’s hungry!”
Carly set Henry’s plate in front of him, then took her seat. “No hats at the table.”
“Do I have ta take it off?”
“Yes, you do. Want to say grace?”
With a nod, Henry removed his hat and hung it on his chair back, then folded his hands and bowed his head. “Hi, God. Thank You for the chicken and taters. Thank You for making Mama a good cook. Amen.”
Carly smiled at him. “One of these days you’ll thank God for the beets.”
“Beets are pretty,” he said, screwing up his face, “but taste icky. God didn’t make ’em wrong. I’ll like ’em when I’m big like Nate.”
“How do you know Nate likes beets?”
“’Cuz he’s a grown-up.”
Here was the opportunity to prepare Henry for Nate’s fall off that pedestal. “You know, Henry, grown-ups aren’t perfect. They can disappoint us. Make mistakes.”
“You don’t,” Henry said, then shoveled in a spoonful of mashed potatoes.
Carly bit back a sigh. If she tried to count the mistakes she’d made, she’d need all her fingers and toes several times over. “Yes, me, too.”
“Pa said I was a mistake.”
Carly’s beet-loaded fork clattered to her plate, splattering juice. A few droplets landed on her son’s face. “I’m sorry, sweetie, that was clumsy of me.”
Henry grinned. “You made a mess.”
“Yes.” Carly rose and scrubbed Henry’s cheek with her napkin, and then got the dishcloth and wiped the table.
Her son glanced at the empty seat where Max had sat. “If beet juice splashed on Pa, he’d be real mad.” Henry rested his elbow on the table and plopped his chin in his hand. “Why didn’t he like us?”
If only Carly knew the answer to that question. But she did know how things had been, how she’d walk on eggs, careful not to do or to say anything to cause trouble, living in a quiet house with no laughter, no singing. Not when Max was home.
Max’s death had freed her from his threats, freed her son from his bad example. Life was peaceful. Until Nate Sergeant arrived, threatening her livelihood and the walls that sheltered them. Threatening her son’s happiness.
“You’re a wonderful boy, Henry.” She groped for the right words to comfort her son. “You’re not a mistake. Your pa wasn’t good with praise.”
The flash of skepticism in Henry’s eyes knotted her stomach. Why had she whitewashed the truth?
His chin resting on his chest, Henry laid his hands in his lap, the meal forgotten. “Nate likes me,” he said with a sniff.
“Yes, he does.” No wonder Henry had put Nate on a pedestal. A kind word, a thoughtful gift, a small deed were huge to a boy starving for a man’s approval. Now Nate was teaching Henry to ride, the highlight of her son’s young life, increasing his regard.
Henry sighed. “I wish Nate was my pa.”
Carly’s pulse tripped. “Nate isn’t planning to live in Gnaw Bone. He’s here...visiting Anna. He might have to leave soon.”
“He’s gotta get the bad guys, Mama.” Henry sat straight, a smile on his face. “When he does, he’ll come back. Know why I know?”
“Why?” she whispered.
“God bringed him to us.”
“Why do you say that?”
“’Cuz I prayed for a new dad. Nate’s him.”
Henry’s words churned inside her. Not only had Carly failed to convince her son Nate wasn’t a man to count on, she had failed to realize how desperately Henry wanted a pa.
Every muscle in Carly’s body tightened, turning her stomach into a queasy, quivering mess. Matrimony was out of the question. No matter how much she tried to put Max Richards out of her mind and move on with her life, she couldn’t. She’d been married to a polecat and couldn’t get rid of his stench.
If one day she was ready for a new beginning and could find a man worthy of her son, a good man who loved God...
Her shoulders sagged. If that good man existed and knew the mistakes she’d made, he would not want her.
Hadn’t Pa taught her at every turn she wouldn’t be enough? Not for a truly good man?
* * *
Gnaw Bone Christian Church cast a morning shadow, the steeple’s silhouette pointing right at Nate like the finger of God. His steps lagged. He didn’t belong here, and wouldn’t consider stepping inside, if not for the opportunity to question Debby Pence and put faces with the names of her grandparents.
Anna tugged at Nate’s arm. “Mercy, you’re slower than cold molasses. Why, you’re barely keeping up with me.” Her brow puckered. “Are you feeling awkward about missing church?”
No point in trying to explain to Anna that God wouldn’t welcome him into His house, not with the hate Nate carried and the relentless need to settle the score with Shifty Stogsdill.
“What’s awkward is not wearing my gun.” Anna had insisted he leave his weapon at home. Without his firearm, he felt exposed. Vulnerable.
“God will be glad to see you. So will Carly and Henry,” Anna said, beaming at him like a ray of sunshine in August.
The prospect of facing the Almighty
in church had Nate’s heart pounding as wildly as if he’d stumbled into a showdown without a loaded gun.
And Carly... She knew, the same as he did, that his life didn’t mesh with the will of God.
“You’re going to enjoy the sermon. Pastor Koontz makes me take a hard look at myself.”
As if Anna had ever done a mean-spirited act in her life.
Nate took his sister’s arm and helped her climb the steps. Inside the sanctuary, he removed his hat, his mouth dry as gunpowder.
In a pew on the outside aisle midway back, Nate spotted Carly and Henry. Exactly where Anna headed, leaving him to trail behind. Folks craned their heads to watch their progress. Were they offended at a bounty hunter in their midst? Or merely wary of the outcome of the hearing?
Lawrence Sample stepped out of a pew. “Good to see you sporting that new haircut.”
“You give a good cut,” he said, though he still felt shorn like a sheep.
“Want you to meet my wife, Bertie, and our daughter, Elnora Watkins, and her baby, Bonnie Sue.”
This must be the daughter who’d lost her husband in a logging accident and had moved in with the Samples. Nate smiled, then introduced Anna.
She leaned past him. “Mrs. Watkins, I’m recently widowed. Perhaps you could join me for tea one afternoon.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Hankins. I’d like that.”
Nate glanced at the drooling baby the young widow jiggled on her knee. Bonnie Sue grinned, revealing three tiny teeth, and reached out chubby arms.
To him.
Elnora Watkins’s eyes welled with tears. “You resemble her daddy,” she murmured in a raspy voice, as if speaking the words had cost her.
Inside his chest, something as strong as a noose tightened around Nate’s heart. He’d never be a daddy. Never know the touch of his baby’s small, chubby hands.
“I’m...I’m sorry about your loss, ma’am,” he said, then turned tail and strode up the aisle after Anna.
Henry scrambled out of the pew and raced to them, a welcoming grin on his face. “Wanna sit with us?”
Nate tousled the boy’s hair and looked for permission in his mother’s startled blue eyes. With a nod and a smile, Carly scooted down, leaving room for him and Anna.
At the pew, Henry grabbed Nate’s hand. “I wanna sit beside Nate.”
“That’s fine if you behave.” Carly met Nate’s gaze.
In her eyes he saw warmth, as if she was glad to see him. Probably what a good woman like Carly would feel about any backslider.
As Nate settled between Anna and Henry, he noticed the Stetson on the other side of Carly, taking up space in the pew.
“He’d sleep in it if I let him,” Carly whispered, shooting him a grin.
“My father gave me a hat like that when I was just a boy.”
She smiled, as though she understood the importance of the gift, then picked up the hymnal and leafed through it.
Nate searched the congregation for Debby Pence. He caught folks staring at them, whispering. No doubt surprised Carly would share a pew with the interlopers claiming her shop.
No more surprised than he was. Though he wasn’t misled into believing this was more than Christian kindness.
He put thoughts of Carly out of his mind and scanned the sanctuary. Debby Pence sat up ahead on the right between an older man and woman, surely her grandparents. He studied the couple’s features and filed the information in his brain, then turned his attention to Debby.
Her head was angled toward him, an unfocused, dreamy look in her eyes and a half smile on her lips. Was she thinking about Rory?
As far as Nate knew, Stogsdill had never used Rory as an alias. He was too smart to give Debby a name plastered on wanted posters. Before Nate left church today, he would lead the conversation around so he could learn Rory’s last name and when Debby had last seen him.
A robust man rose from the front pew, an open hymnal in one hand, his bald head gleaming. He welcomed visitors, his gaze leaping to Nate, apparently the only newcomer. “Turn to page thirty-one in your hymnals,” he said and nodded to the pianist.
Notes of “The Old Rugged Cross” filled the sanctuary, and the congregation joined in. Carly’s soft soprano mingled with his sister’s alto. Nate remained silent. Each additional hymn, each one familiar and as suffocating as a tightly bound gag, exposed how far he’d drifted from a life God could commend.
Pastor Koontz stepped to the podium and opened his Bible. “Good morning,” he said, looping the curled ends of his wire-rimmed glasses around his ears. “Our passage today comes from the book of Romans, Chapter Twelve.” Then he read, “‘If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.’”
All men? Shifty Stogsdill gave no more thought to taking a life than Nate did to killing a mosquito. His parents, Rachel, Walt—
Didn’t God care about these innocents?
Yet, not long ago, Nate had taken a second life. As his bullet had sunk into Max Richards’s chest, the sneer on Richard’s lips had given way to a surprised O. He’d stumbled back and toppled to the ground like a rotten tree in a windstorm.
As it had the first time, it had been either Richards or him. Still, Nate had blood on his hands.
“‘Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’”
Nate glanced at Henry leaning against his mother, his eyes closed, exposing his soft vulnerable nape. The top of the boy’s head barely reached Nate’s elbow. With her arm wrapped around her son, Carly listened attentively to the pastor’s words, the two of them the picture of innocence.
His gut tightened. If he waited on God to avenge Stogsdill, how many others would die?
Carly glanced over at him then, a pucker between her brows, as if she knew the inner workings of his mind and disapproved.
“‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him drink. For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head,’” the preacher said, his gaze roaming the congregation, then resting on Nate.
Nate ran a finger under his collar, suddenly too tight, the room too hot. Someone coughed. In the stillness of the sanctuary, the harsh sound careened through him like a bullet.
Too many bullets. Too many he cared about murdered.
Heaping coals weren’t sufficient. Heaping coals didn’t bring back the dead.
“‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good,’” the pastor read.
Any man fool enough to expect Stogsdill to be overcome by good had no concept of the man’s true nature. Stogsdill would shoot first and ask questions later.
Why had he come? He didn’t belong here.
At the final song, the call to forgiveness, Nate rose with the others then tried to slip from the pew.
“What’s wrong?” Anna whispered.
“I need some air.”
In the aisle, he glanced at Carly and found her gaze upon him, a question in her eyes. Did she believe he was going forward to ask for forgiveness? To make himself right with God?
He would do no such thing.
Instead he’d walk out the back, Scripture grating on his conscience, abrasive as a coarse metal file against flesh and bone.
He didn’t have it in him to wait on God to exact justice. He would see that Stogsdill paid for his crimes.
Eyes straight ahead, Nate fled through the double doors at the back. As much as he wanted to escape the churchyard, he’d wait on Anna. But his plan to question Debby Pence would have to wait.
As parishioners exited the church, Nate crouched and fiddled with the hub of the back wheel facing the street.
“Why did you leave?”
Nate lurched to his feet and faced his sister. “I don’t belong in church. You heard that sermon.”
“We’re all sinners.”
“Most of these folks don’t feel compelled to hunt killers,” he said, helping her into the buggy.
“Nate, give tha
t up. Start over.”
“No.” He gulped air, tamping down his impatience as he clambered up beside her. “No matter what the preacher said, I have to get Stogsdill.”
“That won’t bring back our parents or Rachel.” Anna laid a palm on his hand gripping the reins. “There’s another choice.”
Nate opened his mouth to speak.
“I know what you’re going to say. But, what kind of life is chasing after outlaws, never having a family? Stop fooling yourself. I can see you’re not happy, that you hate what you do.”
“Perhaps, but once I bring Stogsdill to justice, this world will be a little safer.”
“I can’t help but wonder if catching Stogsdill’s just an excuse to not have to look at my injury day after day and remember what happened.”
A lump formed in his throat. He stared at the road ahead, away from those gray, perceptive eyes. “That’s not true.”
“So why can’t you look at me when you say it?”
Every time he saw the hitch in Anna’s gait, Nate was reminded of how he’d failed his sister. He’d failed Rachel, too. If he settled down, how many more would he fail?
“Answer me.”
He groaned and turned the horse toward the livery. “If not for me, you wouldn’t be lame.”
“It was an accident. You tripped in the street, like any small boy. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Look what you lost.”
“Look what I gained.”
“Like what?” he all but bellowed.
“My lameness has taught me to depend on God, not on myself. To slow down and savor each moment of each day.”
“There are easier ways to learn that lesson.”
“Perhaps, but saving your life was worth any sacrifice. Even as a small boy, you were my champion. You’re still looking out for me.” Her voice caught. “Don’t you know I’d do it again in a heartbeat?”
Every cold crevice inside him filled with the warmth of his sister’s amazing mercy and love. “If only I could change that day.”
She tossed him a saucy grin. “If you’re determined to take responsibility, I’d say giving up bounty hunting is a fair trade.”
“I’d do anything for you. Anything but that.”
“I lost Walt. I can’t bear to lose you. Give it up, Nate, if not for me, for yourself.” She thumped him on the knee. “You’ll never find happiness until you make peace with God.”
