by Kaki Warner
He liked the way she made him laugh, and how she kept him guessing, and how she held him accountable when he made mistakes—rather than dismissing him as not worth the effort to keep him in line, like he suspected Brady often did. He liked that she expected more from him than carefully practiced smiles and easy charm, and that she seemed to genuinely admire the man he usually kept hidden behind the laughing mask. She understood him as no other person ever had, yet she seemed to care for him anyway.
How could a man not be attracted to a woman like that?
And how could he not do whatever was necessary to keep her?
“I’m just trying to buy time, Daisy. That’s all. Just a little more time with you and Kate. But if you can’t give it, the money’s yours anyway. To help you start over wherever you want. No strings.” It was a lie, of course. Now that he’d decided he wanted her, there was no way he would give up on Daisy that easily.
But he couldn’t blame her for having doubts. He’d broken trust with his foolish remark about buying Kate. He hadn’t meant it, even when he’d said it. He knew Daisy was too devoted a mother to ever part from Kate. He’d just been angry and scared of losing them and had said the first thing that had come into his mind.
She touched the bills, then spread them out. “This is too much.”
“Stay. Please, Daisy. Don’t go yet.”
Instead of responding, she turned away from the bills scattered on the bed and walked to the window. For what seemed a long time, she stared out, arms crossed, back stiff, her small, perfect form framed by white-capped mountains and endless sky.
He sensed she was weighing his words, trying to find her trust again. He didn’t push her or try to force an answer. This decision had to be hers, and he would accept it, whatever it was. Probably.
But her silence was killing him.
Finally, she faced him. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either. She looked almost weary. Resigned. As if she had no expectation of this turning out well, but had no other choice except to give it a try. “I have to be in New Orleans by the end of May. I can give you two more weeks.”
Jack nodded, his relief so great he couldn’t even summon a smile.
Two weeks should be time enough.
DESPITE THE LINGERING TENSION BETWEEN THEM, JACK continued the riding lessons, much to Kate’s delight and Daisy’s dismay.
She was still angry with him, but found herself too weak-willed to maintain that anger for long. Every hour spent in his company diminished the hurt a little more, and each day further eroded her determination to stay aloof. She was pitiful.
Two more weeks. Why had she done that? So that Kate would become more attached to him, and she would become more hopeful? How many times must she be disappointed before she learned her lesson?
And yet, she stayed. And hoped. And the days slid by.
Each afternoon, as soon as Kate awoke from her nap, he would arrive to escort them to the barn. His timing was uncanny. Kate would start bouncing with excitement, waving her kitty and calling “horsy” as soon as she saw her father at the door. A half-hour lesson, then they would either check on the new foals, count the calves, pet the barn kitty, or take a walk.
No mention was made of marriage, or Elena, or Daisy’s looming departure. It was as if a truce had been called and nothing mattered before or beyond the hours they spent together ... almost as if they were a family.
An illusion. Daisy knew that. But she enjoyed it nonetheless.
Yet it troubled her that as time passed, she found herself thinking more about Jack and less about going with the troupe to Rome. She had the money she needed, so why didn’t she leave? She felt like she was betraying herself but wasn’t sure if it was because of her confused feelings for Jack or because the dream of training with Madame Scarlatti seemed more distant every day.
But she had given her word, so she had to stay. Or so she told herself.
At dinner a few days later, Brady announced that workers would be taking a wagon into Val Rosa to get supplies, and if anyone needed anything brought back, they were to give him a list by the end of the evening.
“Perhaps I should go with them,” Elena suggested. “It is time I returned to the abbey.”
Before the words were out, an uproar ensued. Even though everyone knew she would have to leave soon, no one was ready yet to let her go. Jessica and Brady insisted she stay a few days longer, since they would never see her again. Molly suggested she stay at least until all threat of the horse flu was past, and Hank nodded his agreement. Jack watched but said nothing, his expression giving no clue to his thoughts.
Against such strenuous entreaties, Elena eventually relented. “But only for a few more days,” she told them.
The ladies smiled in satisfaction. Brady asked Hank to pass the roast beef, and Jack resumed eating, regarding Elena from time to time with thoughtful eyes.
Daisy wondered what he was thinking. Or what he would have done if Elena had decided to leave despite the protests. Would he have gone with her? She wondered why just posing that question in her mind opened a hollow place in her heart.
The following afternoon the wagon returned from Val Rosa, bringing a packet of mail, a month’s worth of foodstuffs and supplies, and Jack’s sea trunk.
He made a grand production lugging it into the house, hinting that it contained all manner of curiosities from his travels, which he would reveal—“but only to the stout of heart”—in the big room after supper.
The children weren’t the only ones in a dither of excitement. Brady’s foreign travels were limited to England and Scotland. Neither Jessica nor Molly had been west of Santa Fe, and Hank had never seen an ocean. They were all curious to see oddities from other lands—especially Elena, since she would be spending the rest of her life on islands Jack had visited.
Supper was devoured in record time, then Jack herded them all toward the main room and the trunk that waited before the crackling fireplace.
“Gather around if you dare,” he said ominously.
Promising unimaginable shocks and thrills, he waited for the children to settle in a circle before the trunk and for the adults to take their seats. The hush of expectation settled over the audience. When the pop and snap of the fire were the only sounds in the room, he took one last look around, then with a flourish that would have made a carnival magician proud, flipped open the trunk. The lid cracked on the hearth, making the audience jump. The children surged forward.
“Stay away!” he warned loudly, sending them scurrying backward on their knees. He waited for them to settle again, then peered down into the round eyes staring back at him. “Inside are dangerous things—vile, frightening things that no child should view without first knowing the risks.” He dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. “Are you prepared, my lovelies, to take those risks?”
“Yes!” the children squealed, their high-pitched voices bouncing off the rafters.
“Me first!” Ben shouted.
“I’m oldest,” Charlie, Hank’s stepson, argued.
Reaching into the trunk, Jack whipped out a round thing decorated with dangling wisps of hair and knotted twine. “Then behold!” he boomed, holding it high. A moment of stunned silence. Then shrieks of horror—and not just from the children.
“Hellfire,” Ben shouted.
Daisy grabbed for Kate.
Jessica tried to hide Abigail’s eyes.
Elena clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Good God,” Brady choked out. “Is that a human head?”
Slipping out of his carnival role, Jack grinned, apparently oblivious to the shock he had caused. “Either that or a monkey. Hard to tell. Want to see it?”
“Christ, no!” Brady shrank back, hands upraised. “Keep that thing away from me.”
Charlie made a face. “What’s that smell?”
“Must be Welch,” Dougal muttered and left the room.
Charlie edged closer then jerked back. “It smells like feet.”
While Molly t
ried to pull her nephew away from the trunk, Hank absently patted Penny’s back as she crowded against his knee, her eyes as round as marbles in her ashen face. “How come it’s so small?” he asked.
“They shrink it. After they pop out the eyes, they peel the skin off the skull, then they sew the eyelids and mouth shut, pack it with sand, and cook it real slow. Takes about a week.”
“Madre de Dios,” Elena gasped.
Daisy swallowed back her supper, and Penny lost hers on Hank’s boots.
“Enough!” Jessica shot to her feet. “Children upstairs. Now! And, Jack, if I ever see that vile thing in my house again, I will make you rue the day. Children, come.” In an instantaneous headlong scramble to escape both the hideous head as well as Penny’s mess, children and women pounded up the staircase.
As the noise overhead receded, Jack sighed. “Hell.”
Hank laughed. “Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself, Jack. Let us do it.”
Jack looked ruefully at his brothers. “I’m in trouble again, aren’t I?”
Hank nodded. Brady was more vocal. “I can’t believe you’d show that thing to kids. They’ll be having nightmares for a month.”
“How was I to know? I grew up with older brothers, I’ve been stuck on a ship for the last three years, and I’ve only known I was a father for two weeks. What do I know about kids?”
“Enough to make one apparently.” Shaking off his boot, Hank pointed at the remains of Penny’s supper. “You going to clean that up?”
“She’s your kid.”
While they argued responsibility, Consuelo came in with a bucket and a rag, cleaned up the mess, including Hank’s boot, then left, muttering the whole time.
After the air settled, Hank leaned forward and peered into the open trunk. “Got anything else in there? Maybe something useful?”
Jack grinned. “I do. Something I think both of you will appreciate.”
Hank grinned over at Brady. “French postcards.”
“Let’s hope.”
After rummaging for a moment, Jack pulled out a flat four-inch-wide piece of wood with a dogleg bend in the center. “What do you think of this?” he asked, tossing it to Brady.
Brady studied it a moment. “It’s a stick.”
Hank took it and turned it in his hands, studying it from all angles. “Definitely a stick.” He looked up at Jack. “No French postcards then?”
“This is better.” Reclaiming the piece of wood, Jack gripped it at one end and popped his wrist in a throwing motion. “It’s called a boomerang and it’s the damnedest hunting stick you’ll ever see.”
“Hell,” Hank said.
Brady sighed. “I know. Postcards would have been nice.”
Even so, after Jack gave a lengthy demonstration in the yard the next morning, the boomerang soon proved to be a grand success.
Hank got the hang of it right away, but only after he made a careful study of the “physics of the thing”—whatever the hell that was. He was calculating the “loft to spin ratios” when his older brother finally lost patience and told him to just throw the goddamned thing. Brady had never been very good about waiting his turn.
Charlie did fairly well when his chance came, until his dog, Buddy, grabbed it and ran off. Once they got it back, Penny gave it a try, but soon decided it would make a fine stick horse for her doll, Miss Apple. Ben was less interested in throwing it than in using it to smash ants, and Kate just wanted to eat it. Abigail had no interest in it whatsoever, and the twins slept straight through.
In an attempt to buy himself back into the good graces of the ladies, Jack brought out some of the less controversial items in his trunk. Skirts made of long blades of grass, garlands of dried flowers, feather headdresses, a stuffed baby crocodile—not that well received—and several musical instruments from the wilds of Australia—a drone pipe, a bullroarer, and clap sticks—although Brady said the bullroarer didn’t sound like any bull he’d ever heard, and Charlie almost took Molly’s head off with it when he got it spinning around and around. Still, everybody seemed to enjoy looking over the items, and no one puked, and Daisy didn’t hit him a single time, so Jack figured it was a fine day all around.
Thirteen
THE DAYS GREW LONGER, THE SUN HOTTER. WHILE ELENA made preparations to leave, and the ranch workers looked ahead to spring roundup, and the cottonwoods unfurled new leaves, Jack continued the daily riding lessons and afternoon walks with Daisy and Kate. As their hikes ranged farther and became more strenuous, Daisy’s initial soreness gave way to renewed energy. But as her body strengthened, her will weakened, and thoughts of Jack haunted her nights.
She felt suspended in time, moving furiously, but going nowhere.
Several days after the “head” incident, Jack took them to the creek to see if it had risen still higher with the warmer weather and increased snowmelt. It had, and to the point that it was now overflowing the banks by several feet.
Slipping off the pouch of spare jackets and slickers they always brought along on their walks, Jack picked up a stick then knelt beside Kate. “Look, Katie-girl.” He tossed the stick into the rushing current. “See how the water swept the stick away?” Looping a protective arm around her narrow shoulders, he gave a gentle squeeze. “That could happen to you, little one. So you must never go into the water without your mama or me. Understand?”
“Titty too?”
“Kitty too.”
“Bad water.”
“Not bad. Just water. But when it’s moving fast, it’s not safe. Never, ever go into fast water. Promise?”
Kate nodded solemnly.
“That’s my girl.” He rose, picked up the pouch, and taking Kate’s hand in his, led her along the bank toward a huge boulder. As they drew closer, Daisy could see markings etched into the stone ... symbols, names, dates, initials.
“This is a message rock,” Jack explained. “People have been carving on it for hundreds of years. There’s even a marking left by a Spanish soldier that goes back to the fifteen hundreds. Look, Kate.” He bent and ran his fingers over a crude rendering of a deer. “An Indian put this here a long time ago. And these are names of pilgrims passing through. Want me to carve your name here?”
“Titty too?”
“Kitty’s too.” He glanced at Daisy. “And Mama’s, if she wants.”
Feeling suddenly that in agreeing she might be sending a message she didn’t want to give, Daisy tried to laugh it off. “You’d be carving for days.”
But he was already digging through the rocks for a piece of flint. “Your initials, then. I’ll do all our initials.”
It took him a while and the results were crude, but knowing her initials would be there for all time gave Daisy an eerie feeling, as if she were permanently attached to this place and this family by a few simple markings on a rock.
They continued their hike up through a stand of tall pines, following a clear trickle of icy water that wound down from deeper in the canyon. Their footfalls barely sounded against the thick carpet of pine needles, and here and there, patches of snow still clung in the shadows on the north sides of big boulders and under tangled blowdowns of toppled trees. Seeing that Kate was growing weary, Jack picked her up and let her doze against his chest as they followed a faint path that climbed steadily upward.
Hearing an odd noise coming from Jack, Daisy looked over at him. He seemed lost in thought, pleasant thoughts, judging by the smile tugging at his lips.
“What was that?” she asked.
He glanced at her over Kate’s head. “What was what?”
“That sound. Are you well?”
He flashed a sheepish grin. “I was humming a tune.”
“That was a tune?”
“What’d you think it was?”
“Tunes normally have more than one note.”
He chuckled. “In my head, they do. It just doesn’t always come out that way. You don’t recognize it? You used to sing it at the Silver Spur.”
So he’d noticed
her singing, after all. Daisy smiled, pleased and a little sad. Most of her songs had been for him, whether he knew it or not, and even though it no longer mattered, she was gratified he’d taken note.
“I liked your singing.”
“Did you? You never said.”
“It was a bad time for me,” he admitted without looking at her. “But even when I was so drunk I could hardly think or form a thought, I heard your voice. It was like the bell of a buoy sounding in the darkness, pulling me back.”
“Back from what?”
He shrugged. “My own destruction, I suppose. Hell, you probably saved my life.” Abruptly he stopped and faced her, forcing her to stop beside him. The laughter was gone from his eyes, replaced by an intensity that seemed to add substance to the still, pine-scented air.
“Marry me, Daisy.”
She felt something twist in her chest. “For saving your life?”
“For that, and Kate, and the good times we shared. And there were good times, Daisy. I remember that. And laughing. And reaching for you in the night when holding you was the only thing that kept me from giving up.”
“No.” Desperate to put distance between them, she turned away. Why now? After she’d worked so hard to pull herself back together, why was she letting him tear her apart again?
His hand grabbed her arm. “Why not?”
She pulled free. “I am not your savior, Jack. Besides, you’re in love with another woman, remember?” How many times did she have to remind him of that?
He didn’t deny it. She didn’t expect him to. It was too late for that anyway.
She started up the path again. They didn’t speak again until they reached a high, open plateau that overlooked the valley. It was a beautiful view, stretching from a large flat-topped formation at one end of the valley to the cluster of ranch buildings at the other. From this distance, the flooded creek looked like a shiny brown ribbon laced through the trunks of the budding trees, and the cattle dotting the grassy flats seemed no bigger than drops of dark paint on a stark green canvas.
Warm from their uphill trek, Daisy removed her shawl and spread it on a soft spot in the shade of a boulder. Then motioning for Jack to hand down Kate, she settled her daughter on the shawl and gently rubbed her back until she drifted to sleep again.
