Chapter 1
A week after leaving Piney, Chloe stepped down from a stagecoach pulled by a mule team that had brought her from Deadwood, Dakota Territory, to Sidney, Nebraska. After that, she’d had to take another stage line from there to the stage station on the outskirts of Lincoln.
It had been a rough, difficult journey, but thankfully she hadn’t had to pay baggage fare since she’d brought only her small valise with her and it wasn’t even close to the twenty-five pound limit.
In addition to the stagecoach fare, she’d had to pay an outrageous dollar a meal, which consisted of bread, bacon and coffee, and occasionally some meat. She’d forgone those luxury meal items including butter and eggs, which would’ve only added to the costs.
If she’d been able to afford it, she would’ve bought fare on the Union Pacific Railroad to Lincoln and saved herself numerous uncomfortable hours sitting in the smaller, cramped stagecoach for the three-hundred-fifty mile journey eastward, but such was not the case.
Valise in hand, her muscles stiff and bruised from sitting so long in the cramped stagecoach along rough trails, she’d finally made her way to the orphanage on the outskirts of town.
It looked much the same as it had seven years ago, when she’d left her daughter at their doorstep.
It was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
She’d grown up in an orphanage too, always lonely, always the outsider, watching other children being adopted by families while she was always the one left behind. She’d never forget what the matron of the orphanage had said when she’d asked about that.
“Your family’s home burned down when you were five years old, Chloe,” Mistress Susan said, not unkindly.
“Many people looking for a child want a baby, one who has no memories of their past with a former family.” She paused.
“Now you’re nearly ten. And let’s not forget the fact that over the years you’ve grown quite rambunctious, unruly, and resistant to correction. ”
“Pish posh,” she muttered to herself. What child that age isn’t active and rambunctious? She could only hope and pray that her daughter had been adopted quickly, that she now lived with a wonderful, loving family.
“Only then will I have the tiniest bit of solace, Lord. I did the right thing, didn’t I?”
It had been the most difficult decision she’d ever made.
She’d tried to provide for her little girl, truly she had, but moving constantly, taking odd jobs here and there, not staying in any one place too long, always looking over her shoulder and afraid for her life and that of her daughter, she’d felt it was the only option to keep her baby safe.
“Stop thinking of the past,” she said out loud, struggling to push thoughts and images of the past behind her.
“Think of the future.” She prayed for strength.
For in You, O Lord, I hope. You will hear, O Lord my God.
For I said, ‘Hear me, lest they rejoice over me, lest, when my foot slips, they magnify themselves against me’.
She hoped God was listening, that He hadn’t turned His back from her forever because of her poor decisions.
“Please Lord, let me know that Eliza has grown up with a family, with siblings and parents who love her, and that she’s not alone like I was.”
As it turned out, things were worse than she’d imagined.
Upon arriving at the orphanage and informing the matron that she was Eliza Whitfield’s birth mother and asking about the status and welfare of her daughter, she’d learned, much to her dismay, that her daughter had been sent to an orphanage in Texas.
Chloe gasped. “But why?”
“In the hopes she would finally be adopted there, Madam,” the matron said. “But as you relinquished your daughter to our care all those years ago, I can’t tell you much more than that. Rules you see.”
Chloe didn’t miss the woman’s crossed arms nor the way she looked down her nose at her with a glint of arrogance in her eyes.
Chloe’s cheeks grew hot with shame but she couldn’t very well inform the matron that she’d only brought Eliza here because she was in dire straits after Everett’s imprisonment.
Nor did she confide to the matron that Everett hadn’t known she was with child when he was jailed.
Of course, Everett might have somehow learned of the baby’s existence.
While she didn’t think Everett would want anything to do with the child, he was mean and angry enough to use a child against her, which was among the several reasons why she’d never settled down in one place until she’d arrived in Piney, Dakota Territory.
She had to find Eliza and make sure she was safe.
“But why Texas?” she asked, despairing. Texas was the largest state in the country! How would she ever find her daughter there?
The matron lifted her chin and pressed her lips together before explaining, her eyes never leaving Chloe’s. “You see, Missus Whitfield, she had grown quite unmanageable over the years. At six years old, Eliza has been returned twice from prospective parents considering adoption—”
“Returned?” Chloe interrupted, disbelieving and angry. “Why?” Who in heaven’s name would consider adoption and then return a child as if she were nothing more than a valise or a piece of clothing?
“She was returned the first time when she was three for unceasing temper tantrums,” the matron informed her.
“The next time was just last year, just after she turned five years of age, for being constantly disobedient and disagreeable to the middle-aged couple who took her in. That lasted less than a month—”
“So neither were formal adoptions?”
“No,” the matron replied. “We’ve learned over time to give both child and prospective parents time to get to know one another, to adapt to each other. While most children do transition nicely, there are some occasions when they don’t. Eliza has been one such case.”
A myriad of emotion swept through Chloe.
Anger, sorrow, and pity all warred with one another inside her, along with the emotions accompanied by her own failures as a wife and mother.
Uppermost in her mind was shame, that she’d not had the wherewithal to care for her baby.
She’d allowed fear to guide her life then and even now.
She finally found her voice. “Where in Texas was she sent?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Missus Whitfield.”
“She’s my daughter!” Chloe interrupted, heart pounding. “I—”
“All I can tell you is that she was sent to an orphanage in Texas. There are fewer orphanages in remote areas, which we hoped would give Eliza a better chance at adoption, away from larger cities and … and to be blunt, the expectations of more, uh, established and well-to-do families in a city environment.”
Of course Chloe had more questions, but the woman suggested she visit the town’s minister, the Reverend Horas Dunby, and gave her directions to his parish.
Chloe left the orphanage, her spirits low and guilt once again laying a heavy shroud on her shoulders.
What if she couldn’t find her daughter? She refused to accept that. She just had to!
She found the church to the west of the orphanage, perhaps a half mile away and sitting on a small hill on the north edge of town, a huge oak towering beside it.
The church was lovely; a wood framed and whitewashed clapboard structure with a gabled roof, and a small steeple and belfry in the front, topped with a cross and housing a small bell.
A short distance from the rear of the church stood a small cemetery surrounded by iron fencing.
She approached the small, covered front entryway just as the door opened and a preacher emerged.
He wore black trousers, a jacket, and a black tab-collared shirt with a white clerical collar neck tab tucked inside.
She paused in front of the covered porch as he exited, his back turned to her as he closed the door. As he turned, he saw her and froze.
“Oh hello, may I help you young lady?”
She swallowed, her heart pattering with nervousness as she nodded. “I believe so, yes. My name is Chloe Whitfield.” Liar! She pressed on. “I just came from the orphanage and the matron there said I should come and talk to you.”
“Oh?” He gave that a moment of thought and then turned around and reached for the door. “Come on in,” he invited.
He entered the structure, leaving the door open. Chloe’s nerves were getting the best of her as were a myriad of questions. Chances were the reverend didn’t have the answers she sought. Or he did and would refuse to give them. What if he condemned her? What if he—
The reverend poked his head back out the door. “Come along inside, Miss Whitfield,” he said. “You’ll be safe here.”
She didn’t correct the manner in which he addressed her.
Oh goodness, how long had it been since she’d been in a church?
She felt humbled and afraid. What if God was angry with her for what she had done, for the lies she had told all these years?
She’d even lied to the preacher, giving him her false last name.
You’re doing it for Eliza! She reminded herself that over and over.
She hesitantly followed the reverend into a typical country church, a one-room structure with wooden pews, a simple wood pulpit, and a table behind covered with a white cloth and bearing a simple wooden cross.
Three windows lined either side of the church, letting in sunshine and casting soft rays of light filled with dancing dust motes.
The pine floorboards creaked here and there as she followed the reverend down the aisle between the pews.
He took a seat in the first pew and gestured for her to do the same.