Authors: Robin Lee Hatcher
An old and all too familiar story.
“Would you like to come in and set a spell? It’d be good to see a mite closer how the boy’s grown up.”
Tyson nodded, then motioned for Diana and Ned to join him. When they reached the stoop, Tyson introduced his wife. Ned tucked himself slightly behind Diana, as if suddenly unsure. Then the three of them followed the older woman inside.
The front parlor of the house was small and packed with aging furniture, leaving little room to move about. Knickknacks filled the mantle and table tops. The air was stuffy. A thick layer of dust covered every surface.
Mrs. Kennedy sat on a rocking chair and waved Ned closer. “Come here, boy, and let me have a look at you.” Her eyes moved up and down the length of him. “Do you remember me?”
Ned’s familiar bravado returned. “‘Course I do.”
“Little on the thin side, aren’t you?”
He shrugged.
The woman looked at Diana, seated on the small sofa. “Near broke my heart to have to take him to the orphanage after his ma died. I’ d’ve liked to keep him here with me, but I’ve got little enough to live on. And I’m no family to him.”
“I understand,” Diana replied.
Tyson, standing next to the sofa, placed a hand on her shoulder and lightly squeezed it.
Mrs. Kennedy’s gaze returned to Ned. “How is it you came to be with this fine gentleman and lady?”
“I fell off a crate.”
“Pardon me?”
Tyson smiled. “It’s somewhat of a convoluted tale.”
“Sounds like.”
Diana leaned forward. “Mrs. Kennedy, is there anything still here in your home that once belonged to Ned’s mother? Something you couldn’t entrust to a six-year-old’s care? Something that might help us discover any family?”
The woman’s face crinkled as she gave the question some thought. At last, her eyes widened. “Saints alive! There were some things. Several books. A couple of photographs. A few clothes and hair doodads. I put them all in a trunk and stored them in the attic when the orphanage didn’t ever come for them. Forgot all about it.”
With hope evident in his voice, Ned asked, “Is there a picture of my ma?”
“Not sure. I think so but it’s been a long time since I closed that trunk, and my heart was right sore at the time.” She rocked the chair forward and pushed herself up. “If you’ll follow me, Mr. Applegate, we’ll find that trunk and you can take it with you. Belongs to Ned, the trunk and whatever’s in it.”
During the drive home, Diana surreptitiously watched Ned, but she needn’t have been careful. The boy kept his gaze fastened on his knees the entire way home, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Anxiety, no doubt, over what he would find in that trunk.
She suffered her own bout of nerves. What if there was something in there that would cause Ned to leave their home, to go away, to be
taken
away? It made her wish they’d never gone looking for Mrs. Kennedy. Maybe they didn’t need answers about Ned’s family. Maybe they’d overreacted to Mr. Michaels’ questions outside the church.
Releasing a breath, she gave her head a slow shake before turning her eyes toward the houses that lined the street. No, they hadn’t overreacted. Hiding from the truth helped no one. Least of all Ned.
The carriage rolled to a stop in front of the Applegate home. Tyson stepped to the ground, then helped Diana do the same. After Ned hopped out, Tyson grabbed the trunk and carried it up the
walk, not waiting for one of the servants to do it for him. Diana followed behind while Ned ran ahead.
“Want the trunk in the parlor?” Tyson asked, glancing back at Diana.
“No. Take it up to Ned’s room.” Whatever they were about to discover, she preferred they discovered it away from the eyes of the servants.
He nodded.
Upchurch had the door open before they reached the front porch. He nodded to Tyson, but he wore the hint of a smile when he looked at Diana. “It seems your expedition was successful, Mrs. Applegate.”
“It would seem so, Upchurch.” Although she wasn’t convinced yet that it was cause to celebrate.
With some reluctance, she climbed the stairs and stepped through the doorway into Ned’s room. Ned’s room. Odd, wasn’t it, how quickly this small bedchamber with the white walls and simple decor had become this boy’s.
Tyson had set the trunk in the middle of the room. The battered-looking black chest had two brown leather straps holding the top closed, and Ned was undoing them, slowly but steadily. Diana held her breath as she waited. Was Ned doing the same? Was Tyson?
The hinges squeaked their complaint as Ned pushed the lid upright. After a moment, he knelt down on the rug, reached inside, and withdrew something. A framed photograph.
“It’s my ma,” Ned said in a whisper.
Tears sprang to Diana’s eyes.
“I forgot how pretty she was.” Ned wiped his nose with his right forearm while holding up the frame with his left hand. “See?”
The young woman in the photograph had thick, dark hair swept back from her face and piled atop her head. A high velvet
collar encircled her throat. The bodice was light in color, decorated with lace and ribbons. She was turned to one side, not quite full profile, and she wore the hint of a smile.
“She was very pretty, Ned,” Diana answered.
“Wish I’d had this with me all the time, but I suppose it might’ve gotten lost, all the movin’ around I’ve done.”
Diana held out a hand. “May I?”
After a slight hesitation, Ned gave her the photo and frame. She walked to the tall chest of drawers and set it on the top. “There. Now you can see it first thing in the morning. All right?”
“Yeah. I like it up there.”
Tyson stepped closer to the trunk. “Let’s see what else is inside, shall we?”
Over the next few minutes, Ned withdrew one item after another, looked at it, inspected it, laid it out on the floor for Tyson and Diana to see too. There were two more photos, but without frames—one of Aileen holding Ned when he was a toddler of perhaps two years and another of her as a girl of about fourteen with a boy perhaps two years older, the two of them standing in front of a stone cottage. The young man bore a striking resemblance to Aileen. He had to be her brother.
Diana said, “I’ll get you frames so you can put them beside the other photograph, if you like.”
“But I don’t know who he is,” Ned answered, pointing at the photograph of his mother and the young man.
“He’s your family. We know that much. Probably your uncle. He looks like both you and your mother.”
“I guess. Still don’t know his name or nothin’.”
Next in the trunk were some clothes: two dresses, one black and one gray, complete with white cuffs and collar; two white aprons; one pair of black shoes; and one white cap. A parlor maid’s
wardrobe. Diana assumed the woman had been laid to rest wearing her best dress. Perhaps the one in the portrait on the dresser.
Finally, there were nearly a dozen books—all of them novels—lining the bottom of the trunk. Treasured items, Diana was certain, for a woman who had been poor. But for Aileen’s son, who hadn’t yet learned to read, they were of little interest.
“May I look at them?” Diana asked.
He shrugged. “If you want.”
She picked them up one at a time, looking at the covers and the spines, opening each one to see that Aileen had written her name on the inside covers. The young woman’s favorite author seemed to have been Henry James; there were four of his novels. There were two Mark Twain novels. Diana remembered Tyson favored Twain; perhaps Tyson might read to Ned from one of them. The remainder of the novels were by Lew Wallace, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Lewis Stevenson.
Aileen Macartan had been from the working class, most likely without much formal education, but she had not been illiterate.
Diana’s gaze lifted from the books to the photograph on the dresser.
I will make certain Ned learns to read
, she silently promised the woman.
I will teach him to treasure these books because you treasured them. And I will treasure him as if he were my own son. I promise
.
Late that evening, after the house had grown quiet, Tyson walked down the hall from his bedroom and knocked on Diana’s door.
“Yes?”
“It’s Tyson. May I come in?”
There was a pause, then, “Just a moment.”
He heard her moving around inside.
“All right. You may come in.”
He opened the door.
Diana was seated on the stool in front of the small vanity. Over a cream-colored nightgown she wore a soft green dressing gown. Her hair fell loose about her shoulders and down her back. The reason for his visit to her room was forgotten. All he could think was how beautiful she was and how much he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her and make love to her. Real love. Not with the selfishness of the past.
She rose from the stool. “What did you want, Tyson?”
He swallowed, hard, fighting the desire. If she saw what he felt, it might frighten her. It might destroy any trust she’d begun to feel with him. He couldn’t risk that.
He cleared his throat. “About Ned.”
“What about him?”
“I’ll need to hire someone to look into his mother’s family. We have her last name and we believe she had a brother. That’s a good start.”
Her eyes grew misty. “What if we find his family and they want to take him away?”
“It would be their right.”
“I know.” She walked to the open window. A night breeze lifted strands of her hair.
“We have to try, Diana. It’s the right thing to do.”
“I know,” she repeated softly.
He longed to go to her, to hold her, to comfort her. Instead he reached for the door.
“We might have had a son. You and I.”
He froze, his hand on the doorknob, and glanced over his shoulder.
“I was pregnant when you left me.”
Shock made him forget to breathe.
She turned to look at him. “I lost the baby.”
“Diana, I … I never knew.”
“Of course you didn’t know. How could you know? You weren’t there with me, were you? You didn’t write to me.”
Her words cut with the precision of a scalpel.
“I wanted your baby, Tyson. I still loved you then, and I loved that baby we made together. But I guess he didn’t want me either.”
“Diana, don’t say—”
“Why shouldn’t I say it? It’s the truth.”
He saw it then, more clearly than before. He saw the depth of the hurt he’d caused her, and he hated himself for it. A baby. Perhaps a son. And he’d never known. She’d had to face the loss alone.
And now she’s afraid she’ll lose Ned. Because of me
.
He shortened the distance between them, drawing close but not close enough to touch her. He didn’t trust himself that much. If he got too close, he would take her into his arms, and he sensed that would be a mistake.
“Diana, I may not know much about such things, but I know you didn’t lose the baby because he didn’t want you.”
Her shoulders rose and fell on a shuddered breath.
“And you were never at fault for the things I did or didn’t do either. You were an innocent victim of my anger at my father, my resentment toward the life he wanted for me, my complete selfishness. I’ve said I’m sorry, but I know words don’t mean much in a situation like ours. Especially when the hurt goes as deep as yours. Especially with the loss you’ve known. I would undo it all if I could. I would wish you married to a man you could respect and love and trust. A man who never would hurt you as I have.”
There seemed to be a question in her eyes as she looked at him. He waited for her to ask it, but she remained silent.
“But I can’t undo it. Not any of it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t change the past.”
“I know,” she whispered.
He reached out, still wanting to touch her, then lowered his arm again. “We could change our future. If we both try, we could make it better.”
“Could we?”
“Yes. If we want to. If we both want to.”
“I suppose we could.” She turned toward the window again. “If we wanted to.”
He opened his mouth, but instinct warned him she’d heard all she could handle for now. He swallowed more words of apology, more attempts to make amends, another try to plead his case, to beg her forgiveness. Finally, he said, “Good night, Diana.”
“Good night, Tyson.”
Strangely enough, her simple farewell made him hopeful as he left her room.
September 1897
Tyson sat in a pew and stared at the magnificent stained-glass window at the far end of the sanctuary. Something stirred inside of him. Something that had been stirring inside of him for a long while.
He’d left behind the last of his friends and acquaintances and had been traveling alone through Europe for many weeks. And wherever he’d found a cathedral, he’d stopped and spent time sitting in shadowy silence, waiting for something, though he knew not what.
Empty. He was so empty. And useless. He was thirty years old but had accomplished nothing of any merit. For the past four years, he’d wandered aimlessly from country to country. Why? Nothing
he saw satisfied him anymore. No one he met amused him anymore. He was empty. He was lost at sea, a ship without a rudder.
Pressing his forehead against the back of the pew in front of him, he whispered, “God, help me.”
But he had no reason to believe God would hear and answer his prayer.
As the days of June rushed into July, heat blanketed the river valley, baking the foothills of the Boise Front beneath a relentless sun, turning the hillsides a toasted shade of brown. Like the temperature, the campaign for the Senate heated up as well. Tyson, usually with Diana by his side, made several appearances and gave several speeches each week, traveling to towns around the southern part of the state. Articles appeared in newspapers about Tyson Applegate and his beautiful wife. Most of them were fair to the write-in candidate, and all of the reporters seemed enamored with Diana.
Tyson couldn’t blame them. He was completely besotted with her himself, and he tried in countless ways, large and small, to show her that he loved her and that she could trust him.