Heaven Sent (43 page)

However, if reading those letters had
assisted her in understanding his and Becky’s anguishing loss, he
guessed the action, however underhanded it had been, had worked for
some good.

“
Conniving
bitch.”

Even in the feverish acme of his rage,
Aubrey knew that wasn’t so. He’d accused her of being manipulative
and treacherous, but he didn’t really believe it. Not Callie. She
had many faults, but disloyalty and deviousness weren’t among them.
Far from it. She was more apt to lambaste a person to his face than
to sneak around behind his back. She was more apt to demand than
try to manipulate. Not for her the behind-the-back tactics of a
Bilgewater.

Hell, if she’d been really devious,
she’d never have confessed her sin in the first place. Even in his
shock and anger, Aubrey had registered her honest contrition. She’d
been ashamed of whatever compulsion had prompted her to read those
letters.

It had startled him to know that it
had been Becky who’d initially found the letters and tried to read
them. If Callie were to be believed, Aubrey’s own daughter had
asked Callie to read the letters to her. Said they gave her
comfort. Made her feel better.

Aubrey’s heart squished
slightly.

He’d been awfully hard on her. Aubrey
couldn’t recall seeing Callie cry very often, but she’d cried when
he’d been berating her. Ripping her into bloody strips was more
like it. It had infuriated him when she’d tried to excuse her
behavior, because he hadn’t believed there to be any excuse for
it.

Maybe he’d been a little too hard on
her. After all, she’d been trying earnestly to help Becky overcome
the loss of her mother.

And she’d been writing letters to
Becky, posing as Anne, in heaven. In spite of himself and in spite
of the unhappy reality of Becky’s life that had prompted her to do
such a thing, Aubrey grinned into the darkness.

She was a clever little minx, and no
mistake. But he really couldn’t see Callie Prophet doing something
like answering Becky’s letters to heaven in an elaborate and crafty
scheme to worm her way into his house and heart. She simply wasn’t
that sort of person.

Hell’s bells, when she’d first come
here, she’d hated him and had made no bones about it.

And now she claimed to love
him.

By damn, when he thought
about that part of this whole fiasco, an unreasonable and totally
irrational feeling of pride crept over Aubrey. She loved
him
. Callie Prophet, who
was twenty-four years old and had probably been courted by dozens
of lovesick swain, loved him, Aubrey Lockhart.

And Aubrey would give his all if he
were called on to do so in a wager that Callie didn’t love him for
his money. Indeed, the only things she seemed to want to spend his
money on were items of use to Becky.

“
A birthday party,” he
muttered. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

By the time Aubrey’s brain finally
quit whirring and allowed him to sleep, he’d pretty much decided he
owed Callie an apology. True, she’d been wrong, but he’d been wrong
in attacking and condemning her so thoroughly. Two wrongs, as
Aubrey’s mother had tried bard to teach him when he was growing up,
did not make a right.

He’d talk to her first thing in the
morning. He told himself so as his eyes closed and sleep claimed
him.

By that time, though, it was very
late. Aubrey had spent a restless week fraught with worry over
Becky, sexual frustration resulting from his one liaison with
Callie, and suppressed excitement from keeping his engagement to
Callie a secret from Becky, who was going to be elated when she
heard the news.

The morning was creeping on toward
noon, therefore, when Aubrey was startled awake by his bedroom door
being flung open and by Becky flying into the room in tears. She
was waving a letter in her small hand and between her sobs, she
gasped out words that Aubrey didn’t understand at first.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Becky!
Good God, child, what’s wrong?”

“
It’s Callie!”

That’s what he thought she said, at
any rate, and his heart chilled. “Callie?”

“
Miss Prophet!”

Becky hurled herself at him. Even with
his body and brain still lagging behind his reflexes and struggling
to emerge from sleep, he caught her up in his arms. “Miss
Prophet?”

This was no good. He could do better
than repeat everything she said, He cleared the frog out of his
throat and tried again. “What about Miss Prophet, sweetie?” He
hugged Becky hard.

“
She’s
gone
!”

It was a more-or-less incoherent wail
of distress, but Aubrey caught the words, and his heart stuttered.
He shook his head, trying to clear it of sleep webs. “What do you
mean, she’s gone?”

Becky dropped the paper she’d been
holding, wrapped her arms around her father’s neck, and gave
herself up to heart-wrenching sobs. She didn’t answer him, and
Aubrey maneuvered one of his hands free and picked up the
paper.

He read the missive with growing
distress:

Dearest Becky,

I’m afraid it’s time for
me to go away, love. Please take care of your papa. He loves you
very, very much. I love you, too, but I find I can’t remain in your
home any longer. Please remember that I love you, Becky, and I will
miss you awfully. I’m leaving Monster to help you get
better.

Callie

“
Good God.” The paper
fluttered from Aubrey’s numb fingers, and he hugged his daughter
more tightly.

She’d gone. She’d left him. She’d left
Becky.

She’d left Monster, for God’s
sake.

What had possessed her to do such a
drastic thing?

“
Good God,” he repeated,
understanding all too well what had possessed her.

She’d believed him when he’d told her
she was a no-good cheat, is what had happened. She’d believed him
when he’d said those hateful things. She’d believed him.

This was all his fault. His daughter’s
broken heart—twice broken, now—could be laid at his own fumbling
feet. He’d all but driven Callie away, all but had her pilloried in
the public square and whipped at the cart’s tail.

And she’d written Becky a letter. The
impact of that struck Aubrey finally, and he wondered if she’d
penned a missive for him, too. Suddenly, the compulsion to search
for it assailed him and, holding Becky firmly in his arms, he swung
his feet over the side of the bed. He needed to find Callie’s
letter to him. Surely, she’d written him a letter, too. She had to
have written to him. She couldn’t have hared out of his life
without leaving so much as a note behind.

He wouldn’t let her leave, anyway, if
it came to that. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get dressed and look
into this matter.”

“
She’s gone,” Becky
whimpered. She’d exhausted herself with crying and clung to Aubrey
like a limpet, hiccupping and gasping and giving the occasional
coughing sob.

“
We’ll get her back,” Aubrey
told her with more brightness and confidence than he felt. “We’ll
find her, sweetheart.”

Becky pulled her face away from his
shoulder and looked him in the eye. It hurt Aubrey to see pain and
misery reflected in her puffy red eyes, still streaming with tears.
“You promise?” she asked in a shaky voice.

“
I promise.”

And he’d be damned if he’d break a
promise to Becky.

He found Callie’s letter to him in the
first place he looked. His heart hurt as he read the
words:

Dear Aubrey,

I’m so sorry. I can’t tell
you how sorry I am to have violated your trust. I was wrong, it was
a bad thing I did, and I pray that someday you’ll find it in your
heart to forgive me. Please try to find another nanny for Becky.
It’s not my place to advise you, but I think a young woman with
lots of energy would be best. You probably don’t believe me, but I
love you and Becky with all my heart. God bless you
both.

Callie

*****

Callie hurt everywhere. She wondered
if she was in the throes of a particularly bad dream.

Steel-shod hooves loomed out of the
shadows of her brain, and she flinched. The flinch aggravated the
assorted aches and pains in her body, and she groaned.

“
She’s coming around,
Doctor.”

The voice came to her through the fog
shrouding the countryside. What did it mean? Callie couldn’t figure
it out, and she hurt too much to devote a lot of thought to
it.

“
Good. I’d hoped she would.
That’s a good sign, although she’s not going to be out of the woods
for a while.”

A muffled sob filtered through the mud
in Callie’s head. Now why was someone crying?

She realized it had been one of her
own sobs she’d heard and was surprised. Callie almost never cried
in front of people. Then she heard another sob, and knew it wasn’t
her own.

Good heavens, why was everyone crying?
It seemed very strange to her.

“
Oh, Dr. Marshall,
please,
please
save her.”

Lord on high, that was Alta! At least
. . . Callie strained to think, but her head hurt too much. She was
pretty sure that had been Alta’s voice, but Alta never sounded like
that, as though she were terrified and alarmed and sad.

“
Don’t spare the treatment,
Doc. I’ll pay whatever it’ll cost.”

George! That was George! For heaven’s
sake. Callie couldn’t figure this out. What was he offering to pay
for?

“
And we’ll help, Dr.
Marshall.”

And that had been Florence! Mercy,
what on earth was going on here? Callie couldn’t remember the last
time she’d heard all of her siblings sounding so upset about
anything.

Oh, yes. She remembered now. When
their father died was the last time. The thought of her father
dying made her want to weep, but she hurt too much to spare energy
for more tears.

“
I’ll do everything I can,”
came Dr. Marshall’s voice out of the void. “What about Mr.
Lockhart? Has someone been in touch with him?”

Callie’s brain
screamed
No!
but
her mouth wouldn’t work. Silence settled on the room after the
doctor’s question.

At last Alta spoke. “I, uh, don’t
know. Something funny’s going on there, Dr. Marshall. Callie had
her suitcase with her. She appeared to be walking to
town.”

“
I don’t know what’s going
on,” said George, sounding a trifle more hearty. Actually, he
sounded rather belligerent. “I’ll go there and find out what
happened, you can bet on it. He shouldn’t have allowed her to walk
to town in that fog. What was the man thinking?”

No
,
Callie’s brain pleaded.
It wasn’t his
fault I left like
that.
She realized she’d probably been precipitate in
her departure, although it hadn’t felt like it at the time.
Actually, she couldn’t remember the particulars, but she was sure
she’d had a good reason for not telling Aubrey about her
departure.

“
Please don’t make trouble,
George.”

That was Florence, the peacemaker of
the Prophet clan.

Florence wanted everyone to get along.
Always. No matter

what.

“
Well, but we really must
tell him. For all we know, he gave Callie leave to do something,
and she was taking a little holiday. Or something.” Alta didn’t
sound sure of herself.

“
You’re going to have to
leave the room now, folks. I need to examine her further. The
concussion’s a bad one, and I’m not sure if there will be permanent
problems resulting from it. I also need to check for other
injuries, and I don’t care to have an audience.”

Thank God. If Callie had to be
examined by a doctor, she didn’t want her brother and sisters
peering on.

“
After I assess her
condition in more detail, I’ll see what I can do to ease her
pain.”

“
Is she in pain?”

Callie could tell Alta was crying when
she asked the question. She’d like to have answered her. She was in
horrible pain. She’d never been in such pain. She couldn’t get her
muscles, nerves, and brain to cooperate, however, so she remained
silent.

“
I don’t know,” Dr. Marshall
said, sounding worried.

Callie didn’t like to hear the doctor
sound worried.

“
How can you tell?” asked
George. •

“
I can’t. If there’s nerve
damage, she might not feel anything. If—if the blow to her brain
was severe enough, she might remain in a coma.”

“
No!” It was a chorus of
three.

The hooves came out of the fog at her
once more, and she flinched again.

A horse. She vaguely recalled
something about fog. And a horse. And screaming.

Yes. There had been screaming. She’d
screamed. And the horse had screamed. How funny. A horse
screaming.