Chapter 1 #2
Pain hit again, and Sara felt more of her life draining away with each new onslaught. She must destroy Jack’s letters, those few letters that begged her to return, the envelopes of money he’d sent. He had never known about the child, and she never wanted him to know.
Her eyes closed, and she saw him again in her mind, in her heart.
Jack had begged her to come back ten years ago.
He had said he had joined the army and was now a respected major.
He had said nothing about the stealing. He could never admit doing anything wrong, but she knew he was trying to tell her he was through with that.
She had been tempted. Dear God, how she had been tempted, and then she read the story in the Boston paper about a court-martial in Kansas and how a Major Randall had testified against another officer accused of payroll robberies.
Most of the money had never been found. And she had known, deep in her heart, that it had been Jack who was responsible, not the other man.
She should have contacted army authorities, but then that would have meant revealing her own lies, allowing Shea to know her father was a thief.
Still, she had hung on to that clipping.
And the money he’d sent. She’d never spend a penny of it.
Stolen money. Blood money. She wore an albatross of guilt about that other man.
That clipping … in the box with the letters.
The pain was fading now, drowning in a sea of fog. Hurry, Shea. Hurry.
Oh, Jack, if only …
Shea couldn’t find the box right away. It was well hidden under a number of hatboxes, and she had to go through each one to find what her mother apparently wanted—a lovely carved wooden box with a lock.
She wondered where the key might be. She went through her mother’s desk, looking for one. Wouldn’t her mother want the key as well?
Almost frantic with worry, she gave up. The key must be either in her mother’s possession or at the millinery shop below.
Just as she was leaving the house, a neighbor stopped to ask questions, and it took Shea several moments to get away.
She couldn’t find a rental carriage and started to run, urgency eating at her.
She held the box as if it were a treasure as she ran up the steps of the hospital.
The nurse on the second floor looked away from her when she approached. Feeling a sting of apprehension, she hurried to the room her mother shared with three others.
The doctor was looking down, his face bleak. He saw her and shook his head. Shea rushed toward the bed, fear rushing through her. Her mother’s face was pale, unnatural. Shea leaned down and touched her lips; the cheek was cool. Still. Lifeless.
“I’m sorry, Shea,” the doctor said.
Shea looked at him uncomprehendingly. Her mother had been fine five days ago. How could this have happened? She looked at the doctor through glazed eyes. She wanted to blame him, but she couldn’t. Her mother had resisted Shea’s entreaties too long.
Shea knelt next to the bed. She grabbed her mother’s hands, trying to get some sign of life. “You can’t,” she whispered. “You can’t go.”
Shea willed her to open her eyes, willed warmth back into those hands. All Shea had was her mother.
She felt pain gather behind her eyes, a tightness that threatened to squeeze life from her. “Don’t leave me like this,” she whispered as tears started to trickle down her cheeks.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there before Dr. Sanson pulled her to her feet, the old, often irritable doctor trying awkwardly to give comfort.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Shea said brokenly. Dully, she looked at the box that had fallen to the floor. It had held importance to her mother, and that was strange. Shea had thought they shared everything.
But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except the loss and loneliness she felt. In that state of numbness that protected one from grief too strong to bear, she thought of what must be done. A funeral. Friends to notify. Decisions about the shop.
She leaned down and picked up the box. She would examine it later. Alone.
She watched as the doctor pulled a sheet over her mother. A tear snaked down her cheek, and she brushed it away. Sara Randall had always been strong. Shea could be no less.
Rafe Tyler hesitated outside the walls of the Ohio Penitentiary.
The prison-supplied clothes were ill-fitting on his tall, lanky form, and on a hot summer day the wool was uncomfortable and scratchy.
But then anything was preferable to the stripes he’d been wearing for so long.
Three thousand, six hundred, and fifty-two days, to be exact.
He’d counted each one of those days in hell.
Ten years gone from his life. Stolen. Just as his honor had been stolen.
He yearned for a cotton shirt, for trousers that fit, for a pair of boots instead of the little more than cardboard shoes he wore now.
He longed for a lot of things. A night looking at stars.
He hadn’t seen stars in ten years. His tiny cell hadn’t had a window, and the convicts were locked up long before evening.
Convict. Even if he didn’t wear that damning brand, he knew the stench of convict radiated from him. Outside the walls he still found himself shuffling like one; his voice, like that of so many other prisoners, sounded hoarse from disuse.
His marked hand went into his pocket. Abner was there. Abner who helped save his sanity. His finger rubbed the small, contented mouse who liked the wool far better than he did.
Rafe watched as people looked at him warily while they passed him on the street. Some looked through him, as if he didn’t exist. He felt a muscle move slightly in his cheek. Ten years locked away, and now …
Rafe tried to think of something else, of things small and large he hadn’t permitted himself to think about during the past years.
A horse, by God. How he longed to be in a saddle again, to feel control. To go where he wanted.
And a woman. A woman of dubious virtue and no pretensions. Christ, but he needed that physical release. After Allison’s betrayal, though, he wanted nothing more from females than a few minutes of physical pleasure with their bodies. He knew damned well he would never trust one again.
But those desires paled in comparison with his longing for revenge. For retribution. For justice, if there was such a thing.
He knew he should feel something more uplifting. Happiness at his release. Relief. But he didn’t. Every human feeling had been systematically ripped from him during the past ten years. Pride. Dignity. Everything except hate.
Three years into his sentence, Rafe had been stunned when Clint Edwards had appeared one day. Clint had just heard, he’d said, and knew there wasn’t a damn word of truth in the charges.
It had been difficult to comprehend that someone believed him at last, that some human soul gave a tinker’s damn. He had seized Clint’s offer of help like a drowning man seizing a rope. He had quickly banished his reservations about involving Clint and his brother Ben in his quest for vengeance.
Clint had been a corporal under him during the second year of the war, and Ben a wet-behind-the-ears private.
At Vicksburg, Rafe had saved both of their lives.
Ben was shot in an open position, and Clint had crawled out to help him.
Rafe had disobeyed orders and followed Clint, had given him cover as he dragged his brother back.
Rafe had been shot as he turned back to his own lines.
Clint and Ben thought they owed him, and Rafe would use anyone to accomplish his aim.
Honor was a commodity he couldn’t afford.
It had been burned away with the branding iron.
Another passerby walked down the street, crossing when he saw Rafe standing in front of the prison.
He knew he had changed, that his face had changed.
Hate was an ugly emotion, and it left ugly trails.
Bitter lines etched out from his eyes now, and a sprinkling of gray mixed with his sandy hair.
The once-vivid green of his eyes had dulled; they no longer showed any emotion at all.
He had learned that in the first year of prison: Never let a guard know what you’re thinking.
He’d learned other things: how long a man could exist in the punishment box, a pitch-black cell with no furniture, not even a slop pail.
Later, when he’d been transferred into a cell that was three-and-a-half feet wide, seven feet long, seven feet high, he’d learned how many bricks comprised the walls, how many iron strips barred the gate.
For ten years his home had been that cell, with the cot attached to the wall, a night bucket, a spittoon.
He’d learned to endure, but he’d never learned to accept.
Where was Ben? he wondered, wanting to get away from here, from these walls, from the stench of caged men.
He gazed up at the sky. It appeared different from outside.
He had stopped looking upward since his first weeks in prison; it hurt too damn much.
He couldn’t think of open spaces or he would go crazy, and he couldn’t do that.
Not and finish what had been started, what he had been planning for years.
Only those plans and hatred sustained him through the endless days and sleepless nights.
An hour went by. Something must have held up Ben. The warden had given Rafe ten dollars, but where could he go with ten dollars? Even without the brand on his hand, everyone in Columbus would recognize the prison-issue clothes. No job here. Probably no job anywhere with that damned hand.
He’d saved some money before his court-martial, money he’d planned to use to build a future with Allison. But he had authorized its transfer to Clint to investigate Randall’s past and to seed the beginning of their plans.