The Hardest Part (Brookside #2)

Prologue

I n all his twenty-two years, he’d never seen a more beautiful girl.

An enchanting vision, sunlight warmed her sable hair as she washed clothes in the river, crouched at its bank. Caught up in her task as she was, the girl didn’t notice him. Good thing too, since he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

A day’s ride out of Fort John, having come to the end of the great plains, they stopped the wagons to rest for the night here—what remained of them, anyway. There were thirty in their traveling party when they left Missouri and civilization behind, full of dreams for a new and prosperous future in the unclaimed West all those weeks ago. They’d lost six of them already.

One wagon turned back.

The river claimed two.

And three to a deed most foul.

He shuddered to think of it, closing his eyes to squelch the burning rush of saline.

Camped just east of the steep foothills ascending into the Rocky Mountains, the most arduous leg of the journey to California lay before them. So, after sixty-seven days of pure hell, and a good hundred more of them to go, this ravishing creature washing clothes in the river was a most welcome sight indeed.

“Levi?”

He turned to peek over his shoulder. Boots caked in dust, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow, Elijah Brooks approached him.

“Supper’s near ready.” A hand landed on his shoulder. “What you lookin’ at?”

Levi tipped his chin toward the water’s edge. “Who is she?”

“One of Josiah Walker’s girls, I reckon.”

“And who in the hell is Josiah Walker?”

“Mountain man who knows the trail. He’s to be our guide now.” They’d lost the one they’d hired on in Independence to the dreaded cholera. “Jacoby met with him yesterday. Promised to take us as far as Fort Bridger.”

How’d he not know that? One too many whiskeys with Archer last night, he’d wager. The trading post having been the closest semblance to the world Levi knew before they ferried across the Missouri River, he drained one glass after another. The spirits numbed his grief for a time and he slept without the images of bloodied corpses haunting his dreams.

“I see.”

“You thinking of bedding her, good brother?”

Elijah might not be his brother by blood, though he would have been by law had Caleb and Amelia not met their tragic fate, but he was kin nonetheless. Like their parents and grandparents before them, they’d been a part of each other’s lives for as long as Levi could remember. All of them gone now, both he and Elijah were left with no choice other than to see this through and care for their younger siblings.

“Does she look like a whore to you, Eli?”

“No, but if I didn’t assume her to be Walker’s daughter, I’d swear she was a—”

Levi stopped him before he could say anything more. He didn’t care to hear it. “She’s beautiful. The kind of girl you take to wife before she warms your bed, not after.”

“You have need of a wife, Levi Gantry,” he said, mirth rising from his throat.

As if he didn’t. Left with a six-year-old sister to raise, Elijah’s plight was much greater than his. Young Elizabeth required the tender touch only a woman could provide, whereas, at nearly sixteen, his twin sisters were considered women grown.

It’s not that Levi didn’t intend to marry and start a family of his own someday. He hoped to find a suitable wife when they reached California and had dreams of fertile pastures, a large house, and many children to fill it with.

“As do you, brother.”

With a solemn nod, Elijah squeezed his shoulder. “Come now. You know how Victoria and Mary Alice don’t like to be kept waiting.”

Jacob Gantry closed his great-grandfather’s journal, the fragile pages brittle and yellowed with age. His vision blurred, eyes weary from hours spent deciphering the faded ink, he rubbed at them. Call him a historian, a chronicler, an archivist, to him preserving the origins of Brookside, and its history, was an important task, and a role he enthusiastically took on.

Weaving together the rich tapestry of their stories he’d found documented in leather-bound journals, long-forgotten letters tucked inside dusty, old trunks in cobweb-laced attics, and timeworn cemetery gravestones, future generations would always understand who they were and how they came to be so favored. The blood, sweat, and tears of those who came before them.

The abundance.

The absolute love.

The purest joy.

Jake’s greatest fear was that with the ever-changing world outside their gates, they could lose favor, their culture, traditions, and their land. The community everyone worked so hard to build for nearly two hundred years. But with full knowledge and understanding of their past, his generation and those who came after them would do everything in their power to protect what they shared here. And that’s why his work was so important.

Smiling to himself, his fingertips traced over the worn leather cover of Levi Gantry’s journal. Fortunately for Jake, writing things down was commonplace then. It made his job easier. So many stories. Detailed and vibrant, the past came alive on the pages.

He loved all the Brookside stories and treasured every last one, but there were two he held especially dear to his heart, though one had yet to be written.

The story of Levi, the bluebird, and the butterfly.

And the greatest love story of all.

His own.