Logan bobbed his head in friendly agreement even as he registered the warning hidden in her words. Her allegiance lay with her brothers first and foremost. And though he hated to see any redeeming value in Zacharias Hamilton, Logan had to admit the man had done right by his sister. Perhaps one who wasn’t even related by blood, if the town suppositions and his own deductions were correct.
Winning Eva to his side was going to be an uphill battle. Exposing Hamilton’s perfidy might not be enough. But he had to take the chance. He’d sit here and let her sing more of Zacharias Hamilton’s praises, even if it made his stomach churn. She was too big an asset to forfeit this early in the game.
9
Evangeline stole a peek at the man sitting next to her. Something seemed different. The easiness between them had grown tight and uncomfortable. Yet nothing untoward showed on Logan’s face. He nodded at her, his features bland and polite.
Maybe that was the problem. The spark had been doused.
She’d probably rambled on too long about her brothers. She’d wanted Logan to understand how important they were to her, but it seemed all she’d accomplished was creating distance between them.
“I’m sorry. I’m boring you, aren’t I?” She smiled an apology.
Logan leaned backward, his eyes widening. “Boring me? Not at all.” He found her hand and cupped it between both of his. “Forgive me if I gave you the impression that I wasn’t interested. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
He rubbed his thumbs over the back of her hand, and delightful little shivers danced across her skin.
Logan shook his head, his gray eyes filling with regret. “I have a confession to make.” He peered at her, and her heart instantly softened like whipped cream on hot apple pie. “One that might make you decide I’m not worthy of your company.”
He tightened his grip on her hand as if worried she’d pull away. But she wasn’t like that. She didn’t turn away from a friend just because he might or might not have done something of which society did not approve. She didn’t give two figs for society’s approval. Closed-minded people with nothing better to do than sit in judgment of others would not be dictating her opinions. She decided those for herself.
He must have seen the truth in her face, for his eyes brightened a bit. “The method I used to gain the funds to invest in this property was not particularly . . . traditional. For the last several years, I’ve worked at a lumber camp to support my mother and myself, but when I decided to invest, I needed extra capital, so I . . . padded my income at the poker tables. It’s why you thought me uninterested just now. I’ve trained myself to conceal my reactions. Perhaps too well.” He met her eyes, waiting for her condemnation, no doubt.
While she wasn’t particularly thrilled that the man she found herself increasingly attracted to had chosen a less-than-honorable method to supplement his income, she wouldn’t paint him with a black brush just yet. Everyone could be reformed, after all.
Before she could say as much, though, he rushed on.
“I know it’s a despicable pastime.” The pressure on her hand increased again. “I only took it up out of desperation, and when it turned out I had a talent for it, well, I decided a short-term suspension of my more high-minded principles would be acceptable if it produced a long-term benefit to my family. In all honesty, though, I despise gambling. I’ve seen too many lives ruined by it.”
Well, that sounded encouraging. Evangeline’s spirits rebounded. He was half reformed already.
“My father was one of them. Several years ago, he was lured into deep play and lost everything. Unable to face what he’d done, he took his own life.”
“Logan.” His name leaked from her like a moan. Tears clouded her vision as an unbearable ache radiated through her chest.
She knew the pain of losing a parent, but her parents had died from illness. They hadn’t left her intentionally. What agony Logan must have endured to lose his father in such a sudden, violent way. She couldn’t imagine the devastation. The helplessness. The anger.
Evangeline touched his knee with her free hand, driven to comfort him somehow. “I’m so sorry.” The words were too small, too inadequate, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Nothing could make that situation better. Nothing but time and God’s grace.
Logan turned toward her, and for once, he made no effort to mask his feelings. Raw agony lined his face. “Every year, my mother slips further and further into melancholia, and I’m helpless to stop it.” Something fierce lit his eyes. “I’m not just investing in this land for financial gain, Eva. This investment serves a greater purpose. It’s a step toward justice and recompense against the man who cheated my father and destroyed our family. It’s all I have left to offer my mother, to free her from the dark place inside that is swallowing her up little by little every day.” His voice resonated with righteousness and an intensity that almost frightened her. Light flashed in his eyes for an instant before he dropped his gaze to his lap and softened his tone. “What must you think of me?”
She thought him incredibly courageous to share such a piece of his soul with her. What this man had endured! She tugged her hand free of his hold just far enough to clasp his hands in both of hers. “Justice is important, Logan. Too many suffer because people are afraid to take a stand or too consumed with their own problems to get involved. I admire you for wanting to make things right, but . . .”
No, she shouldn’t say it. He didn’t need her interference. He needed her compassion.
He raised his brows in challenge. “But?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Eva.” He gripped her fingers and shook her arms lightly. “Tell me.”
She nibbled her bottom lip.
“Eva?”
“What about your mother?” she blurted. “Don’t you think she needs you more than she needs vengeance?”
“It’s not vengeance, it’s justice.” His jaw clenched, and he pulled his hands away from hers.
Eva slumped. She knew she should have kept her mouth shut.
“And I was with her. For years. I’ve only worked in the logging camps for the past three. She lives with my aunt, and I make regular visits. But my presence doesn’t seem to help. She spends long hours in her room, sewing or reading or just lying in bed. We only see each other at meals, and even then, she rarely engages me in conversation.” He paused. Swallowed. “I think she sees my father when she looks at me.”
He ran a hand over his face. “She was the one who found him. In the barn. After.” He sighed, and the sound was so mournful, it broke Evangeline’s heart. “I was out gallivanting like usual. Didn’t even hear the shot. By the time I came home for supper, she had washed away the blood and covered my father’s body with her best tablecloth. She sent me to fetch the undertaker. Wouldn’t let me see more than the good side of his face so I’d know it was really him. I’ve tried to imagine what it must have been like for her. . . .” He shook his head then bent forward, planting his elbows on his thighs and burying his face in his hands.
Evangeline rubbed his back, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “Don’t torture yourself, Logan. She spared you that burden intentionally. Out of love. A mother protecting her son.”
His shoulders quavered, but he sucked in a breath and turned his attention to the sky in a bid for control. “She lost everything that day. Her husband. Her home. Her future. Now she lives off the charity of her sister in a house that doesn’t belong to her, with a weight on her that grows heavier by the day. She never smiles. Never laughs. And nothing I do helps.”
And that was the crux of the matter. Evangeline leaned her head against his shoulder. Flashes of the train wreck passed through her mind. She didn’t recall many details. She’d been too young, and Zach had kept her away from Hamilton as best he could, but she remembered how helpless she’d felt, how bereft, how she’d blamed herself. After all, if it hadn’t been for her and her stupid eyes, Hamilton would have
found a home with a family long before the train derailed.
Fortunately, she’d had good memories to cling to and new brothers to care for her. Smiles and laughter eventually returned, thanks to a little divine intervention, and the world became a place of beauty and hope once again. Unfortunately, Logan’s poor mother seemed stuck in the dark, chained by the past, unable to move forward.
Logan surged to his feet, leaving Evangeline awkwardly attempting to catch her balance. “My mother deserves recompense,” he declared. “She deserves justice. Maybe then she can find peace.”
“Peace doesn’t come from outside a person,” Evangeline murmured softly. “You can’t give it to her, Logan. She has to find it within.”
He didn’t turn, just stood stiff and straight with his back facing her, so she didn’t know if he’d heard her or not. But she couldn’t leave the rest unsaid.
“There is only One who can provide peace. He’s knocking on her heart even now, but it’s up to her to answer.”
Silence. Tense, charged silence. But he hadn’t stormed off. Hadn’t snapped at her to mind her own business. Hadn’t demanded she get off his property. Things could be worse.
“I had another brother,” she said, shocking herself with the admission as she rose to stand behind Logan.
She never spoke of Hamilton. At least not to anyone outside of Zach and Seth. They’d trained her to leave the past behind when they created their new family. It had been a necessity. However, they were all adults now. No one could separate them. And the time felt right. The situation felt right.
“He and I were close,” she said, the words stiff at first. “Inseparable, really, after Mama and Papa died. He had such a kind nature and always seemed to know exactly what to say to make a person feel better. Everyone loved him. I loved him.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “He died when the orphan train we were riding ran off the rails. I was only four, but I remember the devastation of that loss. Remember blaming myself. I should have done something different. Been something different. A girl with matching eyes who didn’t scare potential families away. Then he wouldn’t have died.”
“Eva, that’s not tru—” Logan started to turn, but she stopped him with a hand to his back, pressing him around again. She didn’t think she could keep the tears at bay if he looked at her.
“Zach and Seth helped me through the worst of my grief with their patience, their protection, and sometimes even their swats on my behind when I needed to be jarred back into the land of the living. Yet that’s not what opened my heart to joy again. God did that.”
“How?” Logan’s voice rasped like gravel against glass.
Evangeline smiled. “He sent me a flower.”
Logan twisted toward her, and this time she didn’t stop him. Furrows etched his brow so deeply that she could’ve planted potatoes in the ridges. “A . . . flower?”
“I know it sounds silly to an adult, but to a five-year-old girl, it was a miracle. And my heart still believes it was a gift from God planted specifically for me to find.”
His head tilted at a skeptical angle, but he held his tongue, waiting for her to continue.
“We were living in a storage shed out behind the livery where Zach had found work as a stable hand,” she recounted, her gaze drifting back to the creek. “I used to sit and watch the horses in the paddock and make mud pies near the trough. I never spoke to anyone, scared that someone might take me away from my brothers, and anytime someone entered the corral, I’d scamper back to the shed and close myself inside. Until the day a young boy came to collect the horse his father had bought him for his birthday.
“The boy’s hair was the same color as Ha—as my brother’s. The one who died. He was about the same height. He smiled and laughed and clapped his hands as he watched the livery owner put the horse through its paces. He was so happy, so full of life. Everything my brother had been. Everything I had been before the train wreck.
“Suddenly, I wanted that life again. I didn’t like being sad all the time, being scared. I wanted to laugh, to clap, to dance around in a circle like that boy at the paddock. But I’d forgotten how. I felt heavy inside. Dark.”
Evangeline turned and focused her attention on Logan. “That’s when I saw the flower.” She smiled at the precious memory. “A bright yellow sunflower. Growing straight out of the crack where the side of the shed met the hard-packed ground. The only color in the entire area. So many horses and men trampled the ground around the livery and corral that not even grass grew there. Just dirt. And mud. And weathered wood. Brown and gray everywhere. Except for that flower. A flower that hadn’t been there earlier in the day.”
Logan’s mouth curved upward in a slightly patronizing way. Not that she blamed him. This was the memory of a child, after all. Yet her heart knew the truth of what happened that day.
“Looking back, logic tells me that flower was probably a quick-growing weed that I hadn’t noticed because it hadn’t bloomed until later in the day. But it doesn’t really matter how it came to be there, because in the depths of my five-year-old soul, I knew that God had put it there for me to find at that precise moment. As soon as my eyes locked on that flower, warmth spread through my heart like a fire lit in a room that had sat cold for too long. God saw me. He cared about me. And he was showing me how to leave the darkness behind and enjoy beauty once again.”
Evangeline looked down at her shoes, her throat suddenly thick and her voice quivering. “I know I probably sound like a fanciful child, but the impact of that day still lives within me.” Gathering her courage, she lifted her chin until she met Logan’s eyes. His kind, thankfully nonjudgmental eyes. “If God can make a fleece wet when there is no dew on the ground, and replenish a widow’s store of oil until it fills every jar her neighbors bring, and if he can make the sun stand still in the sky, who am I to doubt that he can make a flower bloom to show a grieving child how to live again?”
Slowly she lifted her hand and cupped Logan’s cheek. His eyes widened a bit in surprise, but he didn’t pull away. “He can do that for your mother, too. I’ll pray that he does. I’ll pray for you, as well, Logan, that you won’t lay burdens on yourself that only God is meant to carry.”
10
Two days later, Eva’s words still lingered in Logan’s mind as he sat atop Shamgar and stared at the white clapboard church at the edge of town. A score of wagons stood in the yard, along with drowsy horses at the hitching rails beneath the trees. An occasional tail flicked, shooing away a fly. Singing drifted through the open windows, and he swore he could pick out Eva’s soprano. He grinned as he shifted in the saddle. Purely a fanciful notion. From this distance, all the sound blended together. Yet every once in a while, someone hit a high note that rang above the rest, and he imagined it was her. No doubt she sang with the same vigor at church that she did while working her chores at home.
Eva was so open with her opinions, with her faith. She exuded confidence. That was why her declaration to pray for his mother, for him, had struck such a deep chord. Some well-intentioned folks might make a similar pledge, then get busy with their own lives and forget. Not Eva. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he felt certain she actually prayed for him and his mother on a regular basis. Her genuine, compassionate nature wouldn’t allow anything less.
Logan shook his head. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had promised to pray for him. Or the last time he had promised to pray for another. Truth be told, he hadn’t prayed much at all since his father’s death. Oh, he asked God to grant him justice on a fairly regular basis, but after his conversation with Eva, he’d actually prayed for the well-being of his mother for the first time in . . . well, he couldn’t remember how long.
Shame had hit him hard when Eva made that promise. Shame and guilt. He wired money to his aunt every month to pay for his mother’s expenses, even though Mama refused to touch his ill-gotten gains, as she referred to money won at the card tables. It didn’t matter that most of what he sent came from his logging pay.
Because he gambled, she judged all his money as tainted. Aunt Bess had a much more practical bent, thankfully, but that didn’t absolve him of his other failings. He hadn’t prayed for his mother. Hadn’t asked God to relieve her grief or help her find forgiveness for the husband who had left her and the son who had done much the same. Evangeline had hit too close to the truth with that observation.
It was as if she could see directly into his soul. Unnerving, yet he craved more of that connection. He’d spent so many years hiding his true self from others that no one knew him. Not even his mother. It made a man solitary. Lonely. Hard. But Eva saw past the mask to the man beneath. Even the bits of darkness he’d allowed her to glimpse hadn’t scared her off. It made the prospect of pursuing her for more than information mighty tempting.
That was why he was here. Staring at the church. Longing to join in the worship, to join her, to become the better version of himself her words had challenged him to be.
Yet he worried about what would happen when Eva’s brother saw him. Would Hamilton realize who he was? Logan couldn’t afford to jeopardize his plan. He hadn’t intended to meet his nemesis face-to-face until Hamilton agreed to meet him at the poker table.
A prospect that was turning out to be more of a challenge than Logan had anticipated. Arnold Dunn’s impression seemed to be correct: Hamilton had hung up his cards. Logan had ridden over to Ben Franklin after Eva’s visit, determined to find out where Zacharias Hamilton plied his swindling trade, yet no one at the Seven Ponies Saloon recalled ever playing him. The one fellow he’d found who even recognized Hamilton’s name only knew him from the sorghum syrup he bought from them every fall.
Then yesterday Logan had made the longer trek down to Cooper, only to encounter the same results. No one at any of the saloons in town recalled playing poker with a man named Zacharias Hamilton. So either he played under a false name, or he really had given up the game. A turn of events that made luring him into a high-stakes revenge match more difficult than Logan had initially projected.