~
When Roy awoke again, he awoke in a different time, place, and condition. It was two days later, and he was no longer lying in a bloody pool in his yard. Rather, he was in a bed in the hospital at Fort Smith—and Evelyn was at his side.
As soon as he realized he was in a safe place with his wife, he tried to lift his head, open his mouth, and speak. But, alas, he couldn’t. His neck was heavily bandaged, his upper body was bound to the bed, and his throat was too sore and dry to speak.
“Oh, Roy! Thank God you are awake!” Evelyn cried from beside him. “But, please, stay still. You were shot in the neck and had to have a major operation to remove the bullet and repair the wound. The doctor had you bound to the bed so that you wouldn’t try to yank at your bandages if you woke up when no one was around.”
Roy was satisfied by Evelyn’s explanation. However, he desperately craved more information and even more desperately craved her tender touch. Luckily, he soon received both.
“One of our neighbors heard the shootout, and once it was through, he and two other men came around to help,” Evelyn went on, reaching out to take Roy’s hand in hers. “After they confirmed that the criminals who ambushed our house were dead, and that the children and I were all right, they rescued you and brought you to the hospital.”
Roy closed his eyes and nodded his head lightly.
Evelyn stood up and leaned over him, planting a warm kiss on his forehead. “Thank you, my husband,” she whispered sweetly. “You came to your senses and came back to our homestead, just in time. If you hadn’t arrived when you did, the children and I would be dead…Know that I harbor no ill feelings about your leaving for the interview, especially in light of the timeliness of your return.”
She kissed Roy on the forehead again, then stepped back from the bed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she added, “I need to go tell the doctor you’ve awakened. I believe that he—and someone else—will want to talk with you straightaway.” Evelyn walked out of the room, and Roy took a deep breath and tried to better appraise his surroundings and condition.
A few moments later, Evelyn returned, joined by a much older, well-dressed man. Roy squinted his eyes to regard the man, and was shocked when he realized who it was.
“Good morning, son,” Andrew Sullivan said, walking over to Roy’s bedside. “I believe you know who I am.”
Roy was very confused. He didn’t know whether the magistrate’s use of the word “son” was in a literal or polite sense. He stared blankly as Andrew continued.
“But please, allow me to apologize for not knowing who you were all these years,” the other man went on. “I never knew of your identity as my son until two days ago, when you showed up here.”
Andrew took a seat in the chair in which Evelyn had been seated earlier, and he leaned in toward Roy’s bed. “Thirty-odd years ago,” the magistrate continued, “I was forced to marry a woman I did not love. It was a marriage arranged by my family, and it brought them a good deal of money and procured me a job at a law firm…While working at that firm, however, I did one day meet a woman whom I adored, and I wished, more than anything, that she could be mine.
“But my fate was already sealed. I had a wife and two children. Still, that woman gave her heart to me, and we enjoyed a forbidden relationship for some time. But then, the relationship came to an end, and she left both me and the firm…Sadly, though, I never knew that she left with you in her womb. And I would have never known, if not for one thing.”
Andrew glanced up at Evelyn and smiled. “The other day, when you didn’t show up for your interview, I was a bit suspicious,” he added. “And, when I found out that there’d been a shootout at your homestead, and that you were here in the hospital, I was very concerned. So I came here to get more information—and that’s when I met your wife. At first, I was struck by her beauty. But then, I was struck by something else.”
Andrew reached out and took Evelyn’s hand. “The woman whom I fell in love with all those years ago at the law firm gave her heart to me,” he went on. “But I could not do the same for her, at least not in the traditional sense. So, instead, I gave her a very special gift—a symbol of my love. It was a one-of-a-kind ring I happened upon one day, a ring with a heart-shaped ruby in it—the ring your wife now wears.
“When I saw this ring on your wife’s finger, I knew without a doubt that it was the one I’d given your mother. And, after speaking with Evelyn for a bit, I gathered enough information to figure out who you were.
“Your wife confirmed my conclusions. However, she was reluctant to tell me much more. She seemed very frightened and worried. But once I assured her that, in my position as magistrate, I would see that she was protected if she opted to share more, she told me about my wife’s visit with you early this week. And, sadly, I was not at all surprised. I know my wife all too well, and had no trouble believing that such a scheme was well within her ability.
“So, if it gives you any peace of mind, rest assured that the woman who orchestrated the attack on your home is now behind bars awaiting trial. Indeed, it is a great embarrassment to me, yet it is nothing in light of all that you’ve endured.”
Roy felt the salty sting of tears rolling down his cheeks, and he closed his eyes to prevent more from pouring out. Evelyn walked over to his other side and comforted him as Andrew went on.
“Now, as for the position of sheriff,” Andrew noted, “I regret to tell you that it will be filled by another man. It seems you have a lot of recovering to do before you will be able to work again, and as you know, the law can wait for no man.”
Roy opened his eyes and nodded his head dejectedly.
“But,” Andrew added with a smile, “while I am no longer looking to fill the position of sheriff, I am looking to fill the position of son—and it seems to me that you, my boy, are more than qualified for that position. So, if it suits you, from this day forward, I’d like to live life as your father and become more involved with you and your family.”
Roy’s teary eyes widened, and a bright smile flashed across his face. “I’ll take the job,” he said, forcing himself to speak. He looked at his father, then at Evelyn, and felt a contentment he’d never known before. At longest last, his life was complete.
THE END
16. THE TOMBSTONE Bride
Copyright © Hope Sinclair 2018
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and writer except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a contemporary work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
For queries, comments or feedback please use the following contact details:
hopesinclair.cleanandwholesomeromance.com
[email protected]
Facebook: @HopeSinclairAuthor
Mailing List: Sign Up
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
EPILOGUE
ONE
Lorraine Hayes held her sleeping son pressed tightly against her chest as she stepped into the cemetery. It was a bitter December morning in Baltimore, and a wispy white winter fog hung low over the rows of thin gray tombstones. It had snowed the day before and that fresh blanket of frost had frozen overnight, resulting in a thin husk of ice that rested on top of the narrow cobblestone path and rolling hills of dormant gray grass like a layer of glass.
The icy path felt slippery beneath the worn-through soles of Lorraine’s shabby leather shoes as she hobbled onward. Those shoes had needed replacing for some time now, but she simply hadn’t had the money since her husband passed.
There were many things that Lorraine had learned to do without in the three months sinc
e she had been widowed. The first thing to go was the coal—she had been forced to ration out the remaining pile that sat beside the furnace. She had tried to make it last, but winter had arrived early that year, and when the wind whistled through the thin walls of the house, it was harsh and merciless.
Once the coal was gone, Lorraine had been forced to ration the food. Her trips to the butcher became fewer and farther between. When she could no longer afford the fresh red cuts of beef to make hearty winter stew, she asked the butcher if she could buy the bare bones that had been stripped of their meat. She made a broth with the marrow, and while it didn’t fill the dull, hollow ache of hunger, it did keep Lorraine and her son warm as the winter nights grew colder.
But as the weeks dragged on, even the bone remnants and marrow became a luxury that the young widow couldn’t afford. She was trying to make the best of what little they had left: the preserves in the cellar and the stale bread the bakery sold for a couple of cents. But she feared that it was only a matter of time now before even these scant pickings ran out.
At least the cold winter air left Lorraine’s feet far too numb to feel the pain of walking practically barefoot over the cobblestone path, she decided as she trotted onward.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind, than she felt the sudden flustered rush of losing her footing on the icy path. The slick bottoms of her shoes slipped over the glassy frost, and she gasped, taking a sharp inhale of blisteringly cold air that burned as it filled her lungs.
On instinct, Lorraine’s grasp on the sleeping child cradled in her arms tightened as her feet shuffled beneath her. With another sharp inhale, she managed to regain her footing before falling backwards.
The struggle sent a roar of pain surging through her muscles that, despite causing her limbs to shake and throb, at least brought her a fraction of warmth.
She glanced down at the child in her arms, and was amazed to find him sound asleep, blissfully unaware of his surroundings and the near fall.
Brandon Hayes was only two years old, but those two years had given the boy a level of wisdom greater than that possessed by many adults. Though Brandon wasn’t yet old enough to speak in full sentences, he’d often utter words of encouragement or observation to his mother.
Just a few nights prior, for example, a terrible winter storm had settled over Baltimore, filling the house with a level of cold that Lorraine had never felt before, a level of cold that she hadn’t even thought possible. The coal had long run out, and in an act of utter desperation, she had been forced to burn one of her beloved books. Brandon had noticed the pain on his mother’s face as she pushed the book into the coal furnace, and his eyes had darkened with understanding.
After she had closed the furnace door and wiped a stray tear from her eye, Brandon had come to nestle himself in her lap. “I’m warm,” he had told her reassuringly, even as his tiny body quaked with shivers.
Brandon Hayes had wisdom and insight beyond his years, and though Lorraine was proud of her son, she was also saddened that, at such a young age, he was already burdened with the dire nature of their circumstances.
She feared what else the young boy had observed during his two short years of life. More specifically, Lorraine feared that the boy already understood what kind of man his father had been.
Lorraine felt another wave of warmth flood her veins. This time, it was the feeling of adoration and pride that warmed her as she studied the fragile babe cradled in her arms. His soft cheeks were blotchy pink from the cold, and his face was perfectly still and serene with sleep.
Her marriage to Matthew Hayes hadn’t been a happy one, but it had given her the greatest gift she had ever received: their son. And for that, it had all been worth it. For Brandon, she would do it all over again.
Lorraine carried her sweet babe through the cemetery until she reached the last row, where the tombstones were still new, unweathered, and white, and the earth was still soft and raw from recent interments.
She counted the tombstones as she passed. Matthew Alexander Hayes was number seventeen.
Matthew’s gravestone was still just as white as the dusting of snow that surrounded it, every bit as pristine as it had been when he was buried there, three months ago to the day. The raw earth over his grave had hardened with passing time and winter, and when spring came Lorraine imagined that the rectangle plot where her husband had been put to rest would eventually be blanketed with grass.
As if suddenly aware that they had arrived, Brandon’s eyes blinked open and he squinted to find his mother’s face against the white winter sky.
“We’ve come to say goodbye to your father,” she whispered to the groggy child, and his eyes filled with comprehension. She bent down toward the ground and, paying no mind to the torn skirt of the shabby dress she wore, Lorraine stooped onto her knees and propped Brandon up in her lap, so the little boy could face his father’s grave.
She watched as he stretched an inquisitive hand toward the stone, his tiny fingers tracing where his father’s name had been engraved, and even though Brandon was far too young to read the letters, he seemed to find meaning in them nonetheless.
Matthew had been a Second Lieutenant in the Union Army, and even though he had died many years after the war had ended, his gravestone was marked with his ranking and infantry, same as the countless men who had lost their lives in battle. Lorraine felt this was fair, even if her husband hadn’t died in battle, she considered his death to ultimately be a casualty of the war.
After all, it had been the war that caused the night terrors that haunted Matthew and kept him awake at night. It had been the war that had poisoned his soul and driven him to find relief at the bottom of a bottle. It had been the war that drove him to drink, that drove him to become the monster that Lorraine had come to fear.
His battle scars weren’t physical, they were emotional. And the truth was, Matthew’s soul had perished long before his body was been found lodged beneath the wharf at the watery edge of Baltimore.
The coroner, a former soldier who had served in Matthew’s Company, had taken sympathy on the once-revered Lieutenant. He had ignored the empty bottle that had been on Matthew’s person when he was found under the docks, ignored the stench of whiskey and sick that was soaked through the dead man’s clothing when he was brought to the morgue.
On paper, Matthew’s official cause of death was determined to be consumption. But Lorraine knew the coroner’s diagnosis wasn’t true. Her husband had never been sick, had never so much as coughed.
She understood that the coroner’s report was meant to be an act of mercy, a way to honor the man that Matthew had been, and to give Brandon something to be proud of as he grew older and wondered about his father.
But as Lorraine watched the dark storm of understanding spread across her son’s astute face, she knew that it was already too late for Brandon. He would remember exactly what type of man his father had been.
“Say goodbye, Brandon,” Lorraine said, swallowing the well of tears that had formed in the back of her throat. “After today, we’re not going to be visiting him again for a very long time.”
TWO
Lorraine and Brandon left Baltimore the very next morning. They were awake before the sun had risen, and the sky was still inky black as they made their way toward the rail station by foot. Lorraine navigated the slick icy streets in her shabby shoes, holding Brandon tight against her hip with one arm and carrying a single carpetbag in the other.
That lone, limp carpetbag now contained all of their worldly possessions, all that they were taking with them as they left Baltimore behind to follow the promise of a new life and a fresh start. It wasn’t much, but Lorraine had never been the sort of woman who found comfort or security in material possessions. Perhaps that was because she had never had many possessions to find comfort or security in, in the first place.
Though they were the first passengers to step onto the train station platform, Lorraine and Brandon were among the last to
board, a status determined by the pair of third-class tickets Lorraine clasped protectively in her palm as if their lives depended on them. In many ways she supposed, their lives did depend on those tickets.
They stood on the platform waiting, shivering, holding onto each other with an unspoken sense of cautious excitement. By the time the sun had climbed up in the distance and painted the sky a milky white, the platform was full of passengers. The brief moments of early morning solitude that Lorraine and Brandon had enjoyed were replaced with the bustling chaos of the crowd, and the silence was filled with noisy chatter.
The train whistle screeched and Brandon’s tiny hands rushed to cover his ears. The giant doors of the train cars rolled open, and first class passengers were ushered diplomatically onboard, followed by the second-class passengers.
When third-class passengers were finally allowed to board, Lorraine hugged Brandon and the carpetbag tight and pushed her way through the crowd. She felt the resistance of arms and elbows and hands pushing her back, but she continued forward until she had stepped into the railcar and claimed a seat for herself and Brandon on a narrow wooden bench at the very back of the car.
The rows of wooden benches in front of them filled slowly with other passengers, and it wasn’t until every passenger was seated and the car door was pulled shut that Lorraine allowed herself to release the tense breath that she had been holding in her lungs.
The third class was primarily comprised of immigrants—some so new to America that they hadn’t yet mastered English, and many possessing only the clothes they wore on their backs when they had arrived.
Lorraine felt a certain kinship with these people. Much like her, they were heading west with the hope to forge a better life for themselves, to find prosperity so that their children would no longer know the pain of being cold and hungry and helpless.
New Beginnings Spring 20 Book Box Set Page 69
