Warren #2
I choke on the water. How the hell did he guess that? “She’s my daughter, just like you’re my son,” I answer honestly. But I should have known it wouldn’t satisfy him.
“Sometimes she looks like you. Definitely sings all the time like you. But if you’re her real pa,” he insists with suspicion, “why does she have the same birthmark as Bastard Blackwood?”
My heart damn near stops in my chest at his quiet question. I shouldn’t be surprised he figured it out. He lived with the man for a while, although none of us knows for how long. Long enough that he’d come to recognize at some point the mark that Blackwood passed down to Emmaline.
“Let’s take a walk, son.” I shrug on my shirt and wait for him to follow me to the field out back.
Birds sing notes too cheerful for the conversation I’m about to have with him, but I think he needs to know it.
When we’re far enough out that the house is in the distance, I nod to a couple of old tree stumps. “Take your pick.”
He chooses one and waits for me to sit opposite of him.
“You’re a sharp boy.” I nod my respect to him. “When’d you notice it?”
Sullivan tries to shrug nonchalantly, but his shoulders are too tight to pull it off. “A couple years ago.”
“Why didn’t you say something then?”
Another awkward shrug. “Because I didn’t want to think about what it would mean if they both had matching marks.”
Well damn. That’s deep.
“I can tell you some things, but not all. Because it’s your momma’s story, and some things are only meant to be told again when the person is ready to tell it.” Steepling my fingers as I brace my elbows on my knees, I tell him a vague version of the circumstances I found Mara in that fateful day.
It’s not an easy story to share, even cutting out the worst parts, because he’s a smart kid and pays attention to the things I don’t say.
And it hurts him to listen. Sadness darkens his eyes, and his anger builds with a slow clenching of his jaw before traveling down tense arms to balled fists.
I know because I recognize it in myself.
“You doing all right?” I squeeze his shoulder, but it’s like a damn brick. “We can stop if it’s too much right now. I know it’s a lot.” Maybe it’s dredging up old memories of his own that he’d rather keep buried.
Sullivan hardens his face. “Keep going. I can take it.”
“Then a fire happened. Right about this same spot, actually. But it wasn’t an accident.
Blackwood set it so all the men would rush to put it out and the women would be all alone in the house.
He tied up Grandma and Aunt Dove, then took your Momma and Emmaline away from here.
Momma was scared, but she was smart and made sure to leave a trail for me to follow.
” I soften the next part. “And that brings us to the cabin in the woods. To a protective boy named Sullivan who refused to let anyone hold the baby he was trying to keep safe.”
“So he hurt Momma before she married you?” he says, wiping away some angry tears that slip out. “And he’s really Emma’s father?”
“He did. And no, that son of a bitch isn’t her father in any way that counts. Not for one damn second did he have any claim on her. She’s mine, just like you are.”
Sullivan scowls. “I just don’t like knowing he’s got the same mark.”
This kid was born to be a Shay. “You know,” I say carefully, “he doesn’t actually have it. Not anymore.”
“How’s that?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I cut it off of him?”
A slow smile covers Sullivan’s face. “No way.”
“Yes way. Right before he disappeared.” Disappeared into the bellies of Pop’s pigs, that is.
“How’d you kill him?” His shining blue and brown eyes focus sharply on me.
Oh boy. I cock an eyebrow and keep my face steady. “I said he disappeared. What makes you think I killed him?” He’d never believe me if I told him Mara helped.
Or maybe he would.
“Because I know you, Pa.” Sullivan rubs his sleeve over his eyes and pins me with a shrewd look.
“You’d never let anybody treat Momma and Emmaline like that.
Neither would Grandpa and Uncle Jed. All three of y’all were there, and none of you would just let him walk away from that.
Besides, if he was still alive, I think he’d have been back by now. ”
“Well, let’s just say he left for good and maybe had a little bit of help from us,” I concede.
Sheriff Palmer had been ready to send a rescue posse out after him when he never showed up for the tournament, but a torn telegram was found in his possessions when they searched his hotel room.
Something about him needing to go back East to visit his dying father.
Too bad the sender’s name was cut off. But if his father was anything like him, now they’re keeping each other company in hell.
Sullivan’s satisfaction drifts when he stares back at the house. “The Johnson boy’s the one who told her that her hand was ugly last week at school. That’s why she said that yesterday.”
“Oh, did he?” No one’s gonna tell my daughter that anything about her is ugly. Even if he is a damn kid. “How old is this Johnson boy?”
“He’s ten, but don’t worry,” Sullivan says when he sees the way I bristle.
“Ransom kicked him in the shin, and I gave him a shiner and a busted lip for it. Told him his eye wasn’t gonna look too pretty in the morning and that he better keep his mouth shut about her or I’d carry his teeth home in my pocket next time. ”
Damn. He never told me this had happened, and I had no idea my quiet son and young nephew would jump to resolving a situation like this.
Then again, Sullivan’s always been protective of Emmaline, and it looks like he’s teaching Ransom to do the same for his cousin.
“I’m proud of you, son. Proud of both you boys. You know that, right?”
Sullivan grins crookedly. “This is what it means to be a Shay. Right, Pa?”
One of the meanings. But I’ll teach him the rest when he’s older.
“Damn right, son. This is what it means to be a Shay.”