Authors: Jae
"But why?" Nattie asked. She lifted her head from
Amy's shoulder and rubbed her eyes.
"Because this," Luke tugged at her shirt, "is
who I am. There is no other life for me."
Nattie sniffled. "No, I mean, why lie to us? Why did
you let us believe that you're a man and our father?"
"I never wanted to deceive you. I thought I was doing
what was best for you."
"Best for us?" Nattie's voice sounded like the squeaking
of chalk over a blackboard. "How can all the lies be what's best for
us?"
"In the beginning, you were too little to understand
and to keep my secret. If you had blurted it out to the wrong person..."
Luke pressed her lips together until they formed a razor-sharp line.
Again, Mama threaded her fingers through Luke's. It was a
familiar gesture, one that Amy had witnessed a thousand times over the years,
but now it looked different. Nothing would ever be the same again. "You
need to be careful not to give Luke away," Mama said. "If the wrong
person learns Luke's secret, we will all be in danger. The ranch could be
burned down or Luke killed over this."
Amy's stomach turned to stone. The panicked squeals of the
horses in the burning barn echoed in her ears, and she imagined Mama kneeling
in the ashes, crying, clutching Luke's dead body. She dug her short nails into
her palms and forced away the image.
"We couldn't risk our lives, our safety on the
discretion of a child," Mama said.
"We haven't been blabber-mouthed children for many
years." Nattie's eyes flashed like knives. "You could have trusted
us."
"This was never about trust," Luke said. "I
trust you with my life, otherwise I wouldn't tell you now."
"Why are you telling us now?" Nattie asked.
From across the room, Luke's gaze met Amy's. "Because
I'm through ducking my head in shame for who I am."
Like I do.
Amy hung her head. The message was
intended for her. When she noticed what she was doing, she forced her chin up.
She looked from Luke to Mama and back again. Everything she had believed in,
everything she thought was true now proved to be a lie, but one thing was still
clear without a doubt: her parents loved each other, and they wanted her to see
how proud they were of their love.
"I always tried to teach you by example, but in this
one thing, I failed." Luke's voice rose barely above a whisper. "I
hid out of fear. But that's the thing about keeping secrets. The longer you
keep quiet, the harder it becomes to tell the truth." Silver-gray eyes met
Amy's. It was like looking in a mirror.
Amy swallowed and looked away.
Silence filled the parlor.
What now?
Could their
family survive this? Were they still a family?
"If Papa isn't... if he..." Nattie paused and
tugged on her hair with both fists. "...she isn't our papa, then where do
we..." She gestured at Amy, then pressed her palm to her own chest.
"Who's our father, then?"
Amy's stomach twisted itself into knots. For some reason,
that thought hadn't yet entered her mind, but Nattie was right, of course. A
woman couldn't father children, no matter how long she'd lived as a man.
"A father is the person who's there to pick you up and
make it all better when you fall and skin your knees and who's watching over
you for three nights in a row when you're sick," Mama said, eyes alive
with passion.
True. Luke had done all of that many times. One of Amy's
earliest memories was sitting in front of Luke in the saddle, strong arms
keeping her safe. Her throat burned with tears. How could that all be an
illusion?
"That doesn't answer my question, Mama," Nattie
said. "Don't we have a right to know?"
Mama rasped her teeth along her bottom lip. Her fingers
tightened around Luke's until Amy could no longer tell which fingers belonged
to whom. Mama looked at her. "He was a dashing young man I knew in
Boston."
"Did you love him?" Nattie asked.
"I thought so at the time." Mama stared off into
the distance as if she could see the past. "But I had no idea what love
really was. I wasn't as mature as the two of you. My father and brothers
ignored or bullied me all my life, so I was starved for attention. Rafe gave it
to me."
Rafe. So that was her father's name. Not Luke. "What
happened to him?" Amy asked.
Luke wrapped her arm around Mama and drew her against her
body.
"He wasn't ready to be a father," Mama said.
He didn't want us.
The thought cut like steel.
But
Luke did.
"If he wasn't ready to be a father, why did you have
me?" Nattie asked.
Silence stretched through the parlor, interrupted by Mama's
ragged breathing.
Mama leaned against Luke's shoulder and looked at her.
Luke nodded. "They deserve the truth. We can't hold
anything back now."
There was more? Amy's insides trembled. Her knees felt as if
they would collapse under the burden of yet another revelation.
"Rafe is not your father, Nattie, just Amy's."
Nattie stiffened against Amy's side. Her breathing stopped.
"What? We're not real sisters? Not even that is true?"
"You are sisters. You just had different fathers."
"Who was mine?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me!"
Mama's mouth tore open in a silent sob. Tears ran down her
face faster than Luke could brush them away. "I don't know, sweetie, I
really don't."
Amy clutched Nattie tighter. "You don't know? But,
Mama, how can you not know?" A thought slammed into Amy, robbing her of
breath. "You weren't... violated, were you?" She sucked in air, but
none of it seemed to reach her lungs.
"No, not like you think." Mama laid a trembling
hand across her eyes. "When I met Luke, I was working in a brothel."
Amy's knees buckled. She sank onto the divan and dragged
Nattie with her. "A brothel?" Mama, forever the embodiment of love
and goodness for Amy, had worked in a brothel? Had sold her body to strangers?
Nattie pressed her forehead to her knees and groaned. A
steady stream of "no, no, no" fell from her lips.
"She had no other choice." Luke no longer looked
down in shame. Shoulders squared, she stared at them. "She had no family,
no friends, no money. No one offered work to an unwed woman with a child. It
was either the brothel or letting you, Amy, starve to death."
She did it because of me.
Guilt added to the
queasiness in Amy's stomach. Images flashed through her, memories she had all
but forgotten. Faces of young women. The tinny plunking of a piano. Rough
laughter and cigarette smoke drifting upstairs. Had she lived with Mama in the
brothel?
"It was a very bad time in my life, and I'm not proud
of it," Mama said, her voice a whisper. "But still, a few good things
came from it. You, Nattie. And I met Luke." Her tears stopped flowing.
A myriad of thoughts buzzed through Amy's mind. "You
met..." She stopped and licked dry lips. "...in a brothel?"
"It's not like you think," Mama said. She brushed
her fingers across Luke's shirt. "Luke was never anything but the perfect
gentleman."
Nattie lifted her head off her knees. She straightened and
clutched her stomach. "And Papa..." Her gaze flitted to Luke, then
away. "Luke decided to disguise herself as a man so that you could pass
yourself off as a married couple?"
"No, Nattie. I lived as a man long before I ever met
your mother. She married me without knowing I was a woman."
"When did you find out? How?" Countless questions
tumbled through Amy's mind.
"On the way to Oregon, Luke was shot, and I treated the
wound."
A vague image rose from the haze of Amy's memory: her papa
huddled under a blanket in a wagon, face bruised and pasty, and Mama crouching
next to him, just as pale. She tried to remember what had come before that.
Nothing.
Just a few hazy memories of Mama, Tess, and a busy town full
of oxen and horses. She couldn't remember her life before Luke had joined the
family.
"And after finding out, you still stayed?" Nattie
asked. "I don't understand."
Amy did.
Mama is like me. And Papa... Luke is too.
"Maybe one day, when you fall in love, you will, Nattie."
Mama's thumb caressed Luke's knuckles. "I married Luke to give my
daughters the best life possible, but I stayed with her because I love her. You
can't just walk away from the person you love." Mama looked at Amy.
Was this another message for her? Did Mama think she was in
love with Rika?
Am I?
She kneaded the back of her neck, where a knot of
tension sent painful flares to her temples. Her whole life had crumbled, and
she had no idea how to crawl from beneath the ruins.
A
MY
LINGERED IN the doorway.
On the other side of the room, Nattie sat, bent over
something on her desk. When she shifted, Amy saw that Nattie wasn't reading a
book or studying a document. Nattie was staring into a handheld mirror.
What is she seeing?
Amy wondered.
Nattie saw her in the mirror and flinched. Slowly, she
turned around.
They stared at each other.
"Are you all right?" Amy asked, still clutching
the doorframe.
"No."
Amy took a step forward, into Nattie's room, and reached out
a hand, then drew it back. What was there to say or do? Nothing could change
that their family lay in shambles.
"Do you think this is why we were never really
close?" Nattie's voice sounded sluggish, as if something inside of her was
numb and frozen. "Because we're only half sisters? Do you think we're so
different because I'm like my father?"
The agony on Nattie's face made Amy's eyes burn. She walked
across the room. "Are we so different?" She no longer knew. Finding
out Luke's secret had united them and brought them closer than they had been in
years. "We both love horses and the ranch, and we want to be more than
just some man's wife."
"If we have so much in common, then how come we've
never spent much time together?" Nattie white-knuckled the mirror she
still held. "Why do you never really talk to me?"
"We talk all the time," Amy said.
"Not about the important things. You never share your
thoughts or feelings."
Amy lifted her hands.
Why is this suddenly about me?
But
the pain on Nattie's face kept her from harshly denying it. She glanced down at
the mirror on Nattie's lap as if it would show her glimpses into Nattie's heart
and soul.
When a pain-filled gaze met hers, she understood.
It's
not about me. It's about her and where she fits into our family.
"That
has nothing to do with you. You're my sister, and I love you."
"Why, then?"
"I guess I never grew out of the habit of seeing you as
my annoying little sister who kept me from riding out to the range with
Papa."
Nattie lifted her chin. "I'm not a little girl
anymore."
"No, you sure aren't." Sometimes, Nattie was more
of an adult than she was. But in the last few years, Amy had learned to keep
her growing attraction to women to herself, and in the process, she had shut
out Nattie not just from that part of her life, but completely. "I'm
sorry. I should have talked to you more, asked your opinion on things, and
shared my thoughts. It's just that..."
"What?"
Amy pressed her lips together so tightly that she felt the
blood drain from them. She didn't want to lie, but neither could she tell
Nattie the truth. "I'm not ready to talk about it." She wasn't sure
if she'd ever be.
Head tilted, Nattie stared up at her. Her eyes were dark and
her wet lashes clumped together. "I don't want to lose you too."
With one long step, Amy reached her and pulled her into a
fierce embrace. "You won't."
* * *
When Luke's breathing told Nora that Luke had finally fallen
into a restless sleep, she slipped from beneath the tangle of Luke's limbs and
got out of bed. Without lighting a lamp, she tiptoed down the hall and opened
the first door. "Nattie?"
No answer.
Nora stepped farther into the room.
A sliver of moonlight showed her that Nattie's bed was
empty.
Her stomach churned. Had Nattie run away?
Oh, Lord, please...
She peeked into Amy's room.
That bed, too, was empty.
Without taking the time to dress, Nora hurried down the
stairs.
The door was open, confirming Nora's fears.
She reached for the screen door but stopped when she saw two
people sitting on the veranda's top step. They sat in the darkness without a
lantern, but Nora thought she could make out Nattie's familiar shape and a
taller one next to her.
"Whatever he's done, it can't be as bad as how my old
man treated me. Luke's not like that. He'd never hurt you."
Nora recognized Phin's deep voice. His trust in Luke
loosened the bands of panic that had tightened around her chest.
"No, but... oh, Phin, you have no idea." Nattie's
voice was choked with tears.
"Tell me what happened," Phin said.
Nora's tightened her grip on the screen door when she
realized Luke's life was in someone else's hands. Would Nattie reveal Luke's
secret?
Nattie sighed. "I'm not sure I understand it
myself."
"What can I do to help?"
"There's nothing you can do." Nattie's voice was
muffled as if she was burying her face against Phin's shoulder. "But you
being here, sitting with me, makes me feel better."
Nora tried to tiptoe back, but as she shifted her weight,
the creaking of a board underneath gave her away.
"Boss? Is that you?" Phin stood.
"No, it's me." Nora stepped onto the veranda, her
gaze instantly trying to discern Nattie's expression in the darkness.