“You heard me. It’s important that I meet someone there.”
Sloan slowly lowered the newspaper. “Who?” he said.
“My mother.”
“Where’s Sam off to?” Neal asked. “One of the oil field crew saw her board a train when he went by the station to pick up some equipment from Waverling Tools.”
Sloan finished unbuckling the cinch straps of his saddle and turned away from Neal to lift it high over his horse’s head so that his father-in-law could not read his face. Avoiding a direct answer was not in his nature and easily detectable when he tried it. “Gone on a little trip,” he said, throwing the saddle over a beam constructed the length of the tack room for that purpose.
“She never said anything about a trip to her mother or me. Has she gone to Dallas or Houston to see one of the girls?”
“Nope,” Sloan said. He took a towel from a shelf and began to dry and clean his horse’s sweaty back. He was not a ranch owner who turned his horse over to someone else to groom and feed after a hard day’s work.
“Dammit, Sloan, don’t make me beg. Where to?”
Sloan paused with a hand on his horse’s withers. “Neal, not to be rude, but that’s none of your business.”
Neal said anxiously, “Has she gone to see a doctor?”
“No. I can assure you of that. She wanted to get away for a while. Now that’s all I can say.” Sloan continued with the grooming, running the towel around the horse’s mouth and over the poll.
“All you know or won’t say?” Neal persisted.
“Now don’t fence me in, Neal. I’m telling you like it is.”
“Samantha? Wanted to get away for a while?” Neal’s tone was incredulous. “That’s not like her. Are you two… having trouble? I’m only butting in because her mother and I are worried about her, Sloan. She’s not been herself lately. You’ve seen it. We just want to make sure she’s not sick, but if…” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well, every man and his wife have a little marital spat now and then.”
Sloan tossed the towel into a bin and took a brush to the horse’s flanks. “I can assure you that’s not the case either, Neal. Sam and I have never been better.”
Angrily, Neal grabbed the brush from Sloan’s hand. “Then for God’s sake, boy, I’m her father. Tell me what’s wrong with her and where she’s gone and for how long—please!”
Quietly, Sloan said, “Neal, you’re closer to me than needles on a cactus, but give me back that brush. I won’t tell you because I promised your daughter I wouldn’t.”
Slowly, embarrassment reddening his cheeks, Neal handed back the brush. “I’m sorry, son. I forgot myself. But… you can understand how I feel, can’t you?”
“Yes, Neal, I can. Go home now and be patient. She’ll be back soon and all will be well. I’m sure of it.”
Neal nodded, doubt in his eyes, and slumped out, hands in his jacket pockets. Sloan watched him go, not sure of the truth of the comfort he’d offered. Neal may have noticed that he did not extend an invitation to stay for a round of bourbon and a meal since they were without their womenfolk, but he couldn’t face being in Neal’s company tonight. His heart had jumped when his father-in-law had walked into the tack barn, questions burning in his gaze. Sloan was still not over the shock of Bridget Mahoney’s letter giving the facts of Samantha’s birth. He’d held his wife trembling in his arms, hate for the woman who’d brought her into the world scorching a hole in his belly. He couldn’t understand why Samantha wanted to confront her. Let the bitch fry in hell without ever knowing what a great daughter she’d birthed, he’d thought, but once Samantha had explained that she thought her mother’s rejection of her and Nathan had to do with Trevor Waverling, he understood.
“I have to know, Sloan. Trevor is here among us. He knows and cares about me. What did he do to make my mother give me away and treat Nathan like a stepchild?”
“And the answer will depend on whether you acknowledge him as your father? What about Neal? You know how he feels about losing you to your natural parents, especially to Trevor. He’s already got his back up against that man.”
“He’s not going to lose me. I will have to make him understand that. My parents are Neal and Estelle Gordon. They are the parents I love and that I will call Mother and Daddy for the rest of my life. But I’ll cross that creek when I come to it. Now I have to learn the full story of my birth.”
He’d begged to go with her. He was afraid for her to go alone because of what she might find. She’d refused adamantly, and there was no bucking Samantha once her mind was made up. She had to do this by herself, she said, and she would be fine. Besides, he couldn’t go off and leave the ranch. To hell with the ranch, he’d argued. She was all that mattered. She was his life. She’d caressed his cheek. “I know,” she’d said. “That’s why I’ll come back to you safely.” She’d left this morning and would return by the late train. It was January seventh. He had twelve more hours to suffer before she was in his arms again.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Neal did not ride back to Las Tres Lomas to his fire and nightly bourbon and supper. He set off for the train station in Fort Worth. The T&P people kept a record of tickets sold and destinations of passengers who had boarded that day. He would spend the night with Estelle and take her back to the ranch with him tomorrow. He wanted her with him to await their daughter’s return if what he suspected and long feared had come to pass. He had seen a look in Sloan’s eyes when he’d yelled For God’s sake, boy, I’m her father! But the station record would confirm or deny his fears.
“Yes, Mr. Gordon, it looks like we sold three tickets to Gainesville today.”
“Have you been at the window all day?”
“Just came on, but Marvin was here. You need to speak with him? He hasn’t left yet.”
Neal let out a breath of relief. “Yes, please.”
Marvin said, “Yes, Mr. Gordon, your daughter boarded the early morning train for Gainesville,” the ticket seller told him. “Going to visit relatives there, is she?”
Neal went weak in his legs. “You could say that,” he said.
White-faced, Millicent handed the telegram to Leon, then fell heavily into the nearest chair in the foyer. “I don’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it. How could she do this to us?”
Leon read the telegram: MOTHER/DADDY. STOP. JUST MARRIED. STOP. NOW MRS. JOSEPH HAYMAKER. STOP. HOME SOON. STOP. LOVE, LILY. STOP.
“Who is Joseph Haymaker?” Millicent asked, staring at Leon with the empty sight of a blind person aware of an intruder in the room.
“Her history teacher at the academy,” Leon said. With great effort, he quelled an odd compulsion to laugh. “We met him at the parents’ reception when we enrolled Lily. Seemed like a nice fellow.”
Millicent focused her blank gaze upon him. “A history teacher… at the academy. Oh, Leon—” She sprang up, clutching the telegram to her chest as if coaxing air into her lungs. “My daughter married a history teacher?”
“Don’t shriek, Millicent,” Leon said. “It’s bad for your vocal cords.”
Millicent crushed the telegram and shook it in Leon’s face. “How dare she go against our hopes and dreams for her happiness? How could she go against all we’ve sacrificed to guarantee her a good future?”
“Uh, well, apparently Lily had her own ideas about her happiness and future,” Leon said, deciding not to correct the our and we. “Let’s be happy for her, Millicent.”
Rage flared, oddly heightening his wife’s beauty. “Never, never, never!” she screamed. “How can I be happy for her? That girl has betrayed me—us! Both our children have betrayed us!” She dropped back into the chair, beginning to cry. She jerked a square of lace-edged lawn from the pocket of her dress and stabbed it to her eyes. “Look at all the work we put into raising them so that they could have what we never did. You worked hard to make the farm pay, and…” Millicent’s voice faded on a wave of incredulity “… our daughter went and mar
ried a history teacher who’ll never have a penny to his name.” She lowered her face into the inadequate receptacle of her heartbreak and began to cry.
Sadly, Leon looked down at the bowed head of his wife, sobbing brokenly into her patch of handkerchief. Poor Millicent. She’d bet on the wrong horses in her stable and now the race was over, and she was left with nothing but the stubs of her losing tickets. Now was not the time to remind her that there were other races their son and daughter might yet win, just not to the fanfare she’d counted on.
He reached down and pulled her up into his arms. “Ah, Millie girl,” he said, “now will you sell this house and come live with me back at the farm?”
“Might as well,” she sniffed into his shoulder. “I have no use for the place anymore.”
Samantha reached Gainesville midday. She stopped first in the Harvey House Hotel where she and Mildred had stayed in April of last year, a lifetime ago. The clerk recognized her. “Miss Gordon, isn’t it?” he said.
Surprised, Samantha smiled. “You remember me?”
“I never forget the name of a pretty woman.”
“It’s Mrs. Singleton now,” she said.
“Lucky fellow, Mr. Singleton. Welcome back to the Harvey House, Mrs. Singleton. Will you be wanting a room?”
“Only some information and a cup of coffee in your restaurant—my form of Dutch courage. Do you know the address of the Holloway family?”
Warmed by the coffee and armed with the information from the desk clerk, Samantha set off for the Holloway residence. The morning was cold but sunny and clear, the wind calm. She was dressed warmly for the walk, and it gave her a chance to go over in her mind what she would say when she met Millicent Holloway. Mrs. Holloway? I am Samantha Singleton, formerly Samantha Gordon. Our paths crossed once, but we had no idea who the other was. I am your daughter. You are my mother.
Beyond that simple introduction, Samantha could not guess the direction their discourse would take. She had come for only one purpose—to learn the details associated with her birth and abandonment. She had absolutely no wish to become a part of the life of the woman who had refused nourishment to her baby girl. Samantha would make that clear. She had a mother, one who had always fulfilled her every maternal need. So, Mrs. Holloway, if you will simply answer the questions I’ve come to ask, I will be on my way.
The walk to the park was pleasant. Avoiding mud puddles from the recent snow was easy. The sun sparkled. The day was dry. Birds that had remained for the winter chirped from the branches of bare trees. She found the house easily enough and noticed a small park across the way that offered a bench upon which to sit and catch her breath, steel her will, and steady her nerves for the truth she’d come to hear. Meanwhile, she would study the house for a sign of life within, perhaps catch a glimpse of a woman with reddish-gold hair.
A man came out the front door with a newspaper tucked under his arm. He paused a moment, squinting up at the sky, assessing the day’s potential, then took a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and hooked the earpieces in place. Samantha watched him walk with a familiar gait across the street toward the park. He wore a cloth cap, denim jacket, and overalls. He was so engrossed in scanning the headlines that he was almost at the bench before he saw that it was occupied. He stopped, startled.
“Hello, Mr. Holloway,” Samantha said.
The man’s eyes widened in shocked recognition. He whipped off his cap. “Miss Gordon! What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to meet my mother—again,” she said.
Chapter Eighty
Leon did not move for several blinks behind his eyeglasses before he availed himself of the space Samantha moved over to offer. He put his cap back on and laid the newspaper beside him. “That so?” he said. “How did you find her?”
Samantha had liked him the day she’d met him, and Nathan loved and trusted him. She’d go by Nathan’s judgment any day. Samantha opened her purse and took out Bridget Mahoney’s letter. “This is how.”
After reading the letter, Leon handed it back. “It’s as it happened, sure enough, I’m ashamed to say,” he said.
“Fill out the rest of the picture,” Samantha said. “Why did my mother not want my twin brother and me?”
Leon rubbed his knee. “It had to do with the man who got her pregnant with you. I am not your father, Samantha.”
“I know that. Trevor Waverling is my father and Nathan Holloway is my twin. Neither one knows I’m aware of those facts. Never mind how I know.”
Leon’s eyebrow shot up above the rim of his glasses. “So you know most of the truth already.”
“Not the part I need to know.”
“All right, then, here it is. Millicent despises your father—your real father,” Leon corrected. “She claims he raped her. I don’t believe that myself, not even doin’ my best to give her the benefit of the argument. He rejected her. That’s more like it. Knowin’ your mother like I do, you should believe that, too. He was her first love, and she gave him her all—heart, body, and soul—and he walked off and left it all behind.”
“When my father… rejected her, did he know she was pregnant?”
“I’ll go to my end believin’ he didn’t. He’s admitted to us that he knew of Nathan before he showed up to claim him, but that was years later. I’d bet my last pair of overalls he didn’t know about you. Until now, that is. You might as well know that, too.”
Samantha’s heartbeat held. “What do you mean?”
“He came here one Saturday last July and arranged to meet with me, unbeknown to Millicent. He was full of speculations about you and your birth that he wanted me to confirm as truth. I didn’t. I promised my wife I’d never tell a soul that Nathan had been born a twin—”
“But she had to keep one of us because it was known she was pregnant,” Samantha interrupted, fury warming her cheeks. “Otherwise, Nathan would have been given away, too.”
“That’s what Trevor Waverling figured out based on facts and observations regarding you.”
“What sort of facts and observations?”
Leon related them as best he remembered. There was the rare color of Samantha’s hair, the coincidences of her and Nathan’s birth dates, the similarity of her features and gestures to Trevor’s mother. Somehow he’d discovered the name of the doctor he thought had delivered her. Actually, as Samantha now knew, it was Bridget Mahoney who’d had the honor, but Dr. Tolman arranged her adoption. Leon said that later he learned that Trevor Waverling had made a trip across the Red River to Marietta in the Oklahoma Territory and called at Dr. Tolman’s office. There he spoke to a midwife who’d told him that a young woman of Samantha’s description had been by to inquire about her birth family. Trevor had told the woman that he might be the girl’s father. She didn’t have an address to give him but remembered that the young lady lived in Fort Worth. The midwife had been quite proud that she might have helped to reunite the handsome man from Dallas, Texas, with the pretty girl from Fort Worth.
“I learned all that from the midwife’s husband,” Leon explained. “He ferries across the river every Wednesday for a game of checkers.” He peered at Samantha over his reading glasses. “ ’Course I never imparted that information to my wife.” Leon paused a moment to cross and recross his legs. “I’m afraid I can’t bring myself around to likin’ Trevor Waverling, but that’s just resentment talkin’. He’ll always have a part of my wife that’ll never belong to me, and now he has the boy I raised, but I can sympathize with him. Can’t think of nothin’ worse than lovin’ a child from a distance you cannot acknowledge.”
Samantha took a deep breath to relieve the painful pressure under her ribs. “So my father is guilty of nothing but a questionable accusation?” she said.
“That’s how I see it from here. He’s tried to make it up to Nathan.”
“He cares for him,” Samantha said, eyes straining to remain dry. “It’s evident that Nathan cares for him, too.”
“As it was meant to
be, sure enough.” Leon removed his glasses and reached into his overalls’ back pocket to withdraw a large handkerchief, its first unfolding of the day. It had been ironed, Samantha noticed irrelevantly. By his wife’s hand? She hoped so. The man who’d put up with Millicent Holloway and obviously loved her all these years deserved at least that much mindfulness from the woman. Leon applied the cloth to the lens. “Your other father came to see me, too. You ought to know that as well.”
Samantha coughed from the force of the shock. “My adoptive father, Neal Gordon? When?”
“During harvest, back in June. There he was at the fence one day, almost the spot where you’d stopped, this tough Texas rancher sittin’ on his horse. I knew immediately who he was and why he’d come, even ’fore he’d given his name. I recognized it from when you came in answer to the ad, same as I recognized, or at least suspected, right then that you were Millicent’s daughter.”
Goosebumps rose on Samantha’s flesh. “You didn’t!”
“I shore did, missy. Think back on it, and you’ll see. Anyway, returnin’ to your pa. He said he’d come to see if the farm was still for sale, but I knew different. He’d come to check out us Holloways—the people who’d let strangers take their baby girl.” The polishing of his glasses completed, Leon rehooked the earpieces. “I’m thinkin’ he had a reason for comin’ to look us over?”
“Yes… yes, he did,” Samantha admitted, a lump forming in her throat. “He had plenty reason. I was the young woman from Fort Worth who questioned the midwife about her birth family. I… had reached a point when I wanted to know where I came from, who my people were. I… began a sort of secret investigation, and my father found out about it. The hurt of it just about broke his heart. The trip he made to see you… I guess he’d decided to let me go if… you met with his approval, no matter the cost to him and my mother.”