According to the young woman’s letter, she’d landed in a bed of roses. She’d been raised by a couple who loved her with all their hearts and that she loved with hers. They had seen to her every need, and she’d wanted for nothing in their care. She was now happily married to a man she’d loved all her life. She lived in a comfortable home on her husband’s ranch and enjoyed the companionship of his two sisters, whom she regarded as her kin. She was writing her letter not because she felt her life incomplete, but because she’d like to put her curiosity to rest, and Bridget Mahoney was her last link to satisfying it. Did Bridget know who were her parents and if they were still alive? Did she know if she’d been born a sibling? Could she shed light on why she had been given up for adoption? Any details Bridget could give her about her birth, Samantha would most appreciate. Bridget was not to worry that she was telling tales out of school or that her information would be detrimental to anyone concerned. She must trust Samantha on that.
But could she? Bridget wondered. What sort of applecart would she upset if she imparted the information she knew? She’d discussed it with Mr. Mahoney, who’d said, as she’d known he would, “Do what you think best, darlin’.”
In the end, what she thought best was to respond truthfully to Samantha Gordon’s letter and let the apples fall where they would. Bridget was rather proud of her composition.
Dear Miss Gordon,
I am in receipt of your inquiry of September 13 and send hope that you and your family were spared mishap from the Galveston hurricane. You were born March 23, 1880, of parents Leon and Millicent Holloway. They lived on a wheat farm in Gainesville, Texas. I do not know if they are still alive. You were born with a twin brother. I do not know his name or if he is still living. For some reason, your mother refused to keep both of you and ordered your father to give one twin away. Unable to choose, Mr. Holloway turned his back to the table where you babies lay and pointed over his shoulder. On whoever the finger “landed,” that was the twin to be kept. His finger pointed to your brother. Your daddy then turned you over to me to take to my employer, Dr. Tolman, a fine physician in Marietta, Oklahoma Territory. Within days he had placed you with a childless couple he’d heard of in Fort Worth, Texas, the people who are now your parents. That’s all I know. I have often wondered about the little girl I nursed at my breast because her mother refused to feed her, and I can’t tell you how happy I am for your survival and happiness. May God bless you and your loved ones always.
Sincerely,
Bridget Mahoney
Yes, Bridget thought, a very good letter indeed. Straight and to the point and truthful. She’d refrained from passing judgment on the child’s mother. Let that be for her daughter to do.
Chapter Seventy-Five
On the morning of October twenty-seventh, Daniel received a call at the Triple S from Trevor Waverling directing him to take a train to Beaumont, Texas. The Hamill brothers were spudding in their well on Spindletop that day, and Daniel was to make sure the company’s equipment was working properly. “You have a feeling about this one, Mr. Waverling?” Daniel asked.
“I’ve got a feeling about this one,” his boss replied.
“And I have a feeling about the one at Windy Bluff,” Daniel said.
“Let’s hope we have a double winner.”
In sharing this information at the breakfast table, Samantha listened with some sorrow to the household changes the last of autumn would bring. Daniel’s frequent stays at the Triple S, and consequently Billie June’s, were at an end. Drilling was well underway at Windy Bluff and in the competent hands of a crusty old driller named Jarvis Putnam. The rig was up and all the machinery humming along in fine order. After his return from Beaumont, Daniel would assume his drafting duties at Waverling Tools. His boss had come up with an idea for a new sand pump he wanted Daniel to take to the drawing board.
Billie June was far enough along in her pregnancy to raise the question of whether she would be better off staying at the Triple S rather than to be alone in Daniel’s apartment while he was away for the day. The parents-to-be decided that husband and wife could not be separated, and so Billie June, too, would be leaving within the week. Millie May had qualified to study advance watercolor painting at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and would soon be off to begin the second leg of her lifelong dream to become a working artist. Nathan Holloway and Todd Baker had long since left the scene for their new assignments.
Sensing her pensive mood, Millie May asked, “When will Sloan be back, Samantha?”
“By the first of next week,” she said. “I’ll know when I see a dust cloud on the horizon.”
The terrain was now dry and dusty. As the vagaries of Mother Nature would have it, not a spatter of rain had touched the ground since the middle of September, when the storm blew off to wreak its destruction farther north along the Red River, where the La Paloma herd was pastured. A flu epidemic had sent all but a few of the ranch crew to the hospital in Gainesville, and Sloan had gone with Neal by horseback to round up and drive his surviving cattle across the river to be transferred by railcars to market. Neal was contemplating selling La Paloma. For some reason, he’d taken against the place and would look for prospective buyers while in the area. Billie June pressed Samantha’s arm commiseratively. “We’re sorry to leave you lonesome.”
“Well, at least there’s one streak of sunlight in this gloomy cloud,” Samantha said. “Monday, the Bell system will be laying a telephone line to Las Tres Lomas. At least now I will be in touch with my father as well as my mother.”
My father… my mother. Samantha was glad she’d said nothing to Sloan of the letter she’d written to Bridget Mahoney near the middle of September. It had not been returned to her, but it had not been answered, either. Sloan would have worried at the resurrection of her curiosity. Hadn’t she all the family she needed? They were soon to be an aunt and uncle. There would be a baby in the family. Weren’t they all number enough for her? By the time Sloan had pulled out with her father, she’d already accepted that the last slim path that might lead to answers about her birth had disappeared.
Samantha spent the first part of the next week helping Billie June and Millie May pack. The sisters would go by train to Dallas together on Thursday, the first day of November, before Millie May traveled on to Houston. To make a going-away party of it, they’d drive into Fort Worth a day early to be with Estelle, have lunch together the next day, then Samantha would drop her sisters-in-law off at the station on her way home. During luncheon at the Worth, Estelle begged her daughter to stay another night. “You look tired, darling. You could use a good night’s sleep and your mother’s loving care.”
Samantha considered it, but she expected Sloan home today or tomorrow, and duty called back at the ranch. There was a calf that would take a bottle only from her, and she must pop over to Las Tres Lomas to check on how things were going there. Waving the sisters off from the depot, their handkerchiefs flapping in farewell from the train window, Samantha almost decided not to go by the post office. She was tired, uncommonly so, she allowed, and did not look forward to the drain of driving a horse and wagon through city traffic. At Las Tres Lomas, she would ask Silbia to check her mailbox when she made a run into town later in the day to collect her father’s correspondence. He would want it on his desk and current when he arrived. But just as she made the decision to turn toward home, Samantha changed her mind. Today the Sears and Roebuck catalog would likely arrive, and she was eager to see what items were offered for Christmas and write an order while there was still time.
A half hour later, the first emotion to break through her shock was relief that she had decided to collect the mail, for in her box was a letter postmarked California and bearing the return address of Bridget Mahoney. If she’d not come to the post office today, the letter in her hand would have been intercepted by her father.
“Nathan, you have a telephone call from a relative of yours named Leon Holloway. He’s calling collect,” Miss Beardsley
said. Her frown and emphasis on collect voiced her disapproval of employees expecting company money to pay for personal expenses.
Nathan felt a hitch of apprehension. Leon would never call here except for an emergency. “That’s my stepfather. Put him through and deduct the charges from my paycheck,” he said.
Leon began with apologies for disturbing Nathan at his place of work and for foisting the charges off on him, but Nathan cut him off. “Not to worry about that,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s your brother Randolph. He’s in trouble at Columbia.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“He’s… fallen into a bad habit, I’m afraid. He’s… hanging out in opium dens. Hasn’t been to his classes for over a month. We received a letter from his school yesterday notifying us of his absences and that he’s lost his scholarship. Also, a girl he’s met wrote to tell us that maybe we ought to come get him before he gets too far gone. Want me to read the letter to you? I don’t want to run up your long-distance bill.”
“Read it,” Nathan instructed.
At the letter’s conclusion, Leon said, “Your mother is frantic. I didn’t know what to do but call to ask if… maybe you could… go to New York City and bring him home.”
“I’m on my way soon as I make arrangements here,” Nathan said. “Do you have any information that will give me an idea where to start looking for him?”
Nathan wrote as Leon recited Randolph’s dormitory address and the names of his roommate, his counselor, the girl from whom they’d received the letter, and the café where she worked. Nathan assured Leon it was enough to go on to track down his brother.
“I suspected something was wrong when he kept asking his mother for more and more money,” Leon said. “She’s given him all she can. She has to think of Lily. If he’s become addicted to dope and has no more money to buy it, God knows what will happen to him.” Nathan heard Leon’s voice sag, weighed down by disappointment and sorrow. “I’m sorry we have to impose on you like this, Nathan. With Thanksgiving coming, I’m sure you had other things in mind but to go gallivanting off to the opium dens of New York City.”
“It’s no imposition. Tell Mother I’ll have Randolph home in plenty of time to help her pluck the turkey.” Not that Randolph had ever plucked a turkey in his life. That had always been big brother’s job, Nathan thought, feeling a strange lack of shock at Leon’s revelations as he went to inform his father of the turn of events that would require a trip to New York City.
Trevor heard him out without saying a word. When Nathan finished, he said, “What shall I tell Charlotte?”
“The truth,” Nathan said. “She’ll understand.”
Trevor sighed. “She’ll be so disappointed that you won’t be taking her to the Chrysanthemum Ball, but of course you must go.” He unlocked a desk drawer to withdraw a small break-top revolver with a snub barrel and handed it to Nathan. “That’s easy to carry concealed,” he said, “and you’ll need some money.”
“No sir, I can manage, but I’ll take along the pistol,” Nathan said, slipping it into his coat pocket.
“I insist,” Trevor said, pushing a packet of bills across his desk. “Take the money for my sake and make sure you stay safe. I want to hear from you when you arrive and when you leave to return home. Promise?”
“I promise,” Nathan said. “Todd and I were going to pay a visit to the Windy Bluff site tomorrow, and Daniel is down in Beaumont. Who will you send in my place?”
“Me,” Trevor said. “Now you better get going. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll get back and the less time your grandmother and I and Charlotte will miss you.”
Nathan acknowledged the comment with a little salute of the packet in his hand. “Tell Charlotte I’ll make it up to her and thanks for the extra cash.”
“What are dads for?”
Indeed, if not to love their children, Trevor thought as his office door closed, a soft sound but carrying the loud echo of the loneliness already pinching his heart. So Millicent’s fair-haired son, the one she’d bypassed Nathan for, the son she’d placed all her high hopes on, had become a dope addict, had he? As Nathan’s father, he could say it served her right, but as a father he hadn’t the heart. For a parent, there were no more painful hurts than disappointment in a child unless it was a parent’s disappointment in himself. He’d failed Rebecca. He would not fail Nathan or Samantha, but the question of how to best serve that determination kept him awake at nights. Was he failing his children in not revealing his near certainty that they were brother and sister? Nathan could go to Leon for confirmation. His stepfather would not keep the truth from him. Or was it better to keep silent about their kinship and allow their lives to play out unknown to the other? Which course was best for them? The right course was not always the wisest. Trevor gazed out his window at the Trinity River now flowing peacefully and felt a wave of resentment at its indifference to the life it had claimed. But with rivers, as with some people, there was always the implicit warning that grief could come to those who stepped too close to its banks. Would he be taking that risk tomorrow when he took Nathan’s place and stepped foot into his daughter’s domain?
Chapter Seventy-Six
The shock at seeing the return address had stunned the breath from her, and a man at his mailbox glanced over at her. “Are you all right, ma’am? May I assist you to a bench?”
Samantha turned to speak to him, but the weight of the Sears and Roebuck catalog and the rest of her correspondence proved too much for the strength of her suddenly weak arms and cascaded to the floor. “Oh!” she gasped.
“Here, let me help you,” the man said, bending down to scoop up the mail. “Maybe you’d better sit down. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re as white as these envelopes.”
The man’s face spun as he placed the restored correspondence into Samantha’s arms. Several quick blinks cleared her vision. “Thank you, but I’m perfectly fine,” she said.
Once outside, she realized that she was not fine and sank onto a bench rather than risk the climb to the seat of her wagon. The wind had picked up, and late-afternoon shadows were gathering. Darkness would fall before she arrived at the ranch if she did not get underway soon, and she’d promised Sloan not to be out after sundown. She craved to rip open the letter right there and then, but a bench on the post office lawn was no place to be enlightened of the truth it might contain. She would wait until she got back to the Triple S, where only the walls of the house stood witness to her reaction.
The walls of the empty great room at first heard no outcry and could testify to no sign of emotion from the mistress of the house. Samantha sat motionless in her chair before the fireplace, the letter open in her still hand, the only intrusion into the silence the swish of the pendulum in the stately grandfather clock. Several minutes passed before she could grasp the disclosures in Bridget Mahoney’s reply. The facts rolled slowly into her brain like a fragmentation bomb and exploded in order of revelation. Millicent Holloway was her mother… Nathan Holloway was her brother, a twin… and Trevor Waverling was her father…
Samantha let out a cry.
“Señora, what is the matter?”
The gentle voice had come from Consuela, the Singletons’ ancient cook. She had caught Samantha with a balled fist pressed to her mouth.
“Have you seen a ghost, señora, a fantasma?”
Samantha turned her fraught stare to her. She realized that she had left her chair and wandered away from fire and lamplight into the dusky shadows of the room. “What? Yes, yes, I have, Consuela.”
The woman made the sign of the cross. “God protect you,” she said in Spanish. “Señora, you are the color of milk.” She reached for Samantha’s hand, her touch light and cool against her skin. “Let me get you something. A little brandy, no?”
“Yes, that would be good,” Samantha said, dazed, and allowed the small woman to lead her back to her seat.
“A little food on a tray, as well. No?”
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“Yes, that, too,” Samantha said to appease her, but she accepted the brandy gratefully. When Consuela had soundlessly disappeared, Samantha reread the letter. She must approach their revelations as she would a science project, as if they were under a microscope, to draw a hypothesis from the facts. Samantha saw no reason to doubt the veracity of Bridget Mahoney’s statements. She would begin with the most wonderful disclosure of all: Nathan Holloway, that fine and honorable young man, was her brother… a twin, no less, and she was—the wonder of it!—a sister! Nathan had never given a single indication that he had knowledge of their relationship, so from their friendly but impartial dealings and the midwife’s description of their separation, Samantha could deduce the Holloways had kept that information from him. The cruelty of it was astounding.
Was Trevor Waverling aware that Samantha Gordon Singleton was his daughter? Nathan had said he’d not known Trevor Waverling existed until last March when his father suddenly appeared on his birthday at the Holloway farm swearing he’d been unaware of his son’s birth until a few years before. If Trevor Waverling had made himself known to his son, did it not make sense he would have revealed himself to his daughter?
Yet…
Samantha drank deeply of the brandy and tried to recall the times they’d met, every detail she could remember. She had noticed his strange interest in her at the paleontology lecture back in April, and each time since, she’d been reminded of his comment: The color of your hair reminds me stunningly of someone I used to know. Had he a sense that Samantha Gordon was of Millicent Holloway’s blood?
Samantha had been in his presence only on three occasions beyond their first meeting. She recalled the afternoon she’d sat with Nathan in Trevor Waverling’s office while waiting for the report on her camera. They’d been speaking of the coincidence of their same birth date, now fully understood, when Trevor startled them by asking questions of her adoption. Why would he be interested? The second time they’d met had been at Las Tres Lomas, where Samantha had been aware of Trevor Waverling’s discreet but intense scrutiny. Her father had noticed it and seethed.