Jake Walker's Wife (33 page)

There was no rancor in Jake's voice when he said, "Why'd you do it, Uncle?"

For a moment, Josh only sat there shaking his head.
Jake was about to add a line of explanation to his question when the uncle said, "Because I'm a coward." He looked up, stared deep into his nephew's eyes and added, "That day in the store, when you defended Francine? You were more man back then than I'll be on the day I die, which, if God is truly a merciful Being, won’t be long."

Josh heaved a deep sigh. "There's no righting the wrongs I've done you, W.C., but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me before I meet my Maker."

Before he met his Maker? Jake's eyes narrowed slightly.

"I know I should have confessed sooner, but now that I have, you're a free man again."

If Josh ever had any intention of coming clean on his own, would he have waited ten years to do it? Jake didn't think so. He had Joe Purdy to thank for his freedom, not Josh Atwood.

Not so long ago, a thought like that might have driven him to do something vengeful and violent. But Bess had changed
that about him just as surely as she'd changed his belief that he didn't deserve the love of a good woman.

When
Jake told her what life had been like in Josh Atwood's house, he'd could see in her dark, loving eyes that his suffering hurt her, too. Somehow, she'd sensed he hadn't told the story to engender pity, and in her gentle, puppy-to-the-root way, Bess helped him puzzle out
why
his uncle changed. Didn't matter that no one held Josh accountable for the disaster that caused a young mother to lose her fingers. Josh blamed himself. What
did
matter, Bess had insisted, was that
Jake
learned to forgive the man Josh became because of it. Forgiveness, she'd taught him, was far more beneficial to the giver than to the receiver.

"Did you hear your nephew threaten Horace Pickett?" the prosecutor had asked.

Now Jake understood the heavy sigh, the long hesitation that came before Josh said, "Yes, I heard the threat."

"And do you believe your nephew is capable of such violence?"

He'd avoided Jake's eyes, and frowning, Josh had said, "All men are capable of such violence."

His uncle's testimony had been carefully worded to cover his own tracks. And if Joe
Purdy hadn't stumbled onto proof that it had been Josh who'd killed the banker, Jake would still be on the run...or dangling from a rope....

He could almost hear Bess's sweet voice, whispering, "Nothing will be gained by holding a grudge
, except your own misery...."

"I could go
to Jesus easier, if I could take your forgiveness with me," Josh was saying.

"Go? What're you talkin' about?"

"I'm dying." Josh exhaled a long, shuddering sigh. "They say it's the cancer, that it's been eating at me for some time now."

Jake
frowned, swallowed. "There's nothing they can do? No medicine? No operation? No—“

“Wouldn’t accept any of that even if it were available.”
He shook his head. "I'm as good as dead, nephew."

Jake
didn’t have to think twice before saying, "There's nothing to forgive...Uncle Josh."

A moment of deafening stillness punctuated
his statement. During most of the conversation, Josh had been staring at a crack in the floor between his boots. Slowly, his chin lifted from his chest and his eyes filled with tears. "I've been praying for your forgiveness, son. I don't deserve it, but it does my heart good to know the Almighty has answered my prayer."

I'm not your son
, he wanted to say. But Jake held his tongue. What would be gained by lashing out at this shattered shell of a man? Even if he told Josh what he thought of him, those years Jake had spent running from the law would still be just as gone. He shrugged, acknowledging yet again that without those years, he never would have met Bess. If he looked at it that way, he owed Josh a debt of gratitude.

Enough precious time had been wasted.
Jake saw no point in sitting there jabbering when he could be on his way back to her. "Are they treating you well? Do you have everything you need?"

"Look in on your aunt now and then
. That's all I need."

Jake
nodded. That would be easy enough to promise. "She'll be taken care of," he said. "You have my word on it."

Josh went back to staring at the floor. "It's more than I deserve. Thank you, W.C."

"No thanks necessary." Not knowing what else to say, Jake banged on the big metal door.

"Will you be back?"

Jake shook his head. "Soon as I see to Aunt Polly, I'll be headin' east."

"For good?"

Nodding, he said, "For good."

Josh sighed, and as the guards stood him on his feet, the chains around his ankles clattered quietly. He looked deep into
Jake's eyes and extended his right hand.

Jake
squeezed it between his own.

"I hope life is good to you, son; nobody deserves it more."

He pictured Bess, the twins, Micah, Foggy Bottom.

“Pray for me, Josh.”

His uncle’s brow furrowed. “Pray for you?”

Life could be good...if
Bess had waited for him. “Pray it isn’t too late for me.”

***

It seemed to Jake he'd spent the better part of the past ten years in a saddle.
When you climb down out of this one
, he told himself
, you're not gonna set a horse again for a long, long time.

Soon after hearing that t
he charges against him were officially dropped, Jake booked passage for his aunt Polly. Joe’s new bride had insisted that he take the money she’d put up as bounty. With five hundred dollars, he could buy a little spread and take

care of her, just as he’d promised his uncle. Wouldn’t be easy, starting from scratch, especially if Bess hadn’t waited for him. But he liked Freeland and its people, and with time and prayer, he supposed he could learn to live with the fact that she’d moved on without him.

He wanted to get to Freeland as fast as Mamie’s hooves could carry him, but it seemed nature had other ideas: a dust storm in New Mexico, a flood in Oklahoma, lightning and torrential downpours in Arkansas. Mamie threw a shoe in Tennessee, and it had taken two days to trudge to the nearest town and find a blacksmith to replace it. In Kentucky, the horse had stepped into a mole hole, and nearly came up lame. "Why don't you just sell her?" a local vet had asked as Jake waited impatiently for her strained muscle to heal. Already, the hours had become days, increasing his yearning to see Bess. "'Cause she saved my hide more'n once," had been his terse answer, "and deserves the same from me."

It was good-going through West Virginia and Virginia
, and the extra month on the trail had given him more than enough time to figure out what he'd say when first he saw his sweet Bess again. When he rode into Freeland and spotted her going into the bank, Jake's heart pounded like a smithy's hammer as he tethered Mamie to the nearest hitching post. "Now, you behave yourself, girl," he said, patting the horse's rump, "and I promise to buy you a feedbag of oats when I'm through here...."

Won't Bess be surprised,
he thought
, when she finishes her business and sees me standin' here!
The minutes seemed like hours as he waited. Twice, he checked his pa's watch, wondering as he studied the so-familiar face what in tarnation could be taking her so long in there. And then, at last, her sure-footed boot steps clicked across the marble bank floor.

"Thank you, Mr. Abbott,"
he heard her say. "You have a nice day now."

As
the friendly banker walked her to the door and offered similar good wishes, Jake wondered what to do when at last she stepped into the sunshine. Should he yell “Surprise!”? No, he didn't want to startle her. Remove his hat? No, he wanted both hands free to gather her to him.

And then, there she was, smack-dab in front of him.

First sight of her, after all this time apart, set his pulse to pumping and his hands to trembling, and all the things he'd rehearsed over the many miles between Texas and Maryland were forgotten, blotted out by relief and joy...and love.

She'd been in her usual hurry to get from one place to the next, but when she saw him, Bess stopped walking so suddenly that her skirts swirled around her ankles. She looked up at him, dark eyes wide with questions. And anger?

"Jake," she whispered, "you...you came back."

If he didn't know better, he'd say she seemed disa
ppointed by the fact! He forced the ugly thought from his head, put both hands on her shoulders. "'Course I came back." It was all he could do to keep from grinding his lips against hers, right there in the bank doorway, in broad daylight. But the heated glare emanating from her dark eyes stopped him. "I said I would, didn't I?"

"You said you'd
try
...."

What’s it matter what I said?
he wondered.
It’s what I’m
about
to say…and what I hope you’ll answer…that matters now
.

He decided to ignore her fury
. She had a right to be angry, after so long without him. Jake moved to pull her into a hug…

…
but the bundle in her arms prevented it.

Why hadn't he noticed it before?

He was about to suggest she put the confounded thing down, give him a proper welcome home, when it moved, emitted a small whimper.

A...a baby?

The blood froze in his veins.

Recalling that Bess told him she'd assisted Doc in delivering infants, how she'd brought a few children into the world without his guidance, how she so often volunteered to care for a friend's child,
Jake's fear evaporated. His eyes bored into hers. "Who's young'un?"

In place of an answer, Bess pulled back the blanket that hid the baby's face. "Oh,
Jake," she sighed, "isn't she just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

If he counted them all up, he guessed he'd seen hundreds of
calves and foals. He knew how to birth 'em, knew what to feed 'em if the mamas wouldn't...or couldn't. But this was the closest he'd ever gotten to a human infant in all his days.

Tiny and pink, with fingers so small they reminded him of
catfish whiskers, the baby seemed more fragile than an autumn leaf, more delicate than a the ice that skims a wintry pond. For an instant, an exhilarating possibility crossed his mind: Dare he hope this was his child?

Then logic
reared its ugly head, forcing him to consider the alternative. The baby looked brand new. He did some quick arithmetic, and the sum of his mental ciphering added up to heartbreak. Baby that young couldn’t be his.

He slapped a hand to the back of his neck and shook his head.
What a fool he’d been, thinking she’d wait more than a year for him."Boy or girl?" he asked, mostly to get his mind off the awful facts.

"Girl
, and I've named her—“

He didn't want to hear what she'd named
some other man’s baby. "She's a beauty," Jake interrupted, "just like her mama."

"
Jake," she began, a hand on his forearm, "how long have you been back?"

He pretended to have an itch that needed scratching, so he could free himself of her grasp. "Just rode into town." He forced himself to look away from the baby, into Bess's face. Motherhood,
Jake decided, agreed with her. She was even lovelier than he remembered. Something about her had changed, for she glowed with serenity, seemed to be at peace with her new life.

"I wish you'd written...."

It wasn't an accusation. He could tell by the sweet light emanating from her eyes. So why did he feel he was being held accountable for some wrongdoing?

If only he could have stayed
in touch with her, instead of working toward his goal of clearing his name so he could come home and pick up where they’d left off. He’d
told
her to go on without him. But the notion that she had? And that she’d given herself to another man?

Jake
took a clumsy step backward. "I, uh, I have a few things.... I, ah, promised her I'd...ah, before I head out."

Her dark eyes narrowed. "Head out? But
Jake, you just got here. Pa and the twins would love to see you, welcome you back."

Pa and the twins?
he ranted inwardly.
What about you, Bess. Why haven’t
you
welcomed me home?

Exactly
how did he expect her to accomplish that, when she had a baby and a husband who no doubt waited for her at Foggy Bottom. Did the man share her room overlooking the corral? Or had he built her a house of her own?
Does she look at him the way she used to look at me?

"Everyone will be thrilled to see you,
Jake. As luck would have it, I've been cooking your favorite stew all day. Why don't you follow us back to Foggy Bottom and—“