Kaki Warner (8 page)

At least now he knew where to go next.

***

“How much longer we doing this?” Tom asked.

Lacy looked across the campfire at her brother, saw the worry and frustration in his stern face, and wondered if she had aged as much as he had over the last year. Probably more so. She felt a hundred. Some days it took everything she had to pull herself out of bed, when all she wanted to do was drift away and leave this pain behind. She figured that after this latest disappointment, tomorrow would be one of those days.

“This is the last time, Tom. I promise.”

“You said that before, yet here we are. Because of him.” His frown deepened as he watched Daniel Hobart kneel by the creek, using grit to scour the dinner plates and cooking utensils. “I don’t trust him.”

“You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

“He watches you.”

She was aware of that. She watched him, too. How could she not? He was a man of contradictions, Mr. Hobart. One side of his face uncommonly attractive, the other a checkerboard of puckered scars. A scowl that could send a man in retreat, but a smile that drew a woman closer. She sensed loss and heartache behind his melancholy eyes, yet saw no menace there. In another life, she might have called him friend. “He’s done nothing untoward.”

“Yet.”

Lacy sighed.

“I’m just watching out for you, sis.”

This has gone on long enough
. “I know, Tom, and I love you for it. But I’m a twenty-five-year-old woman. Past time I started watching out for myself.”

Tom poked at the fire.

“It’s been a year,” she reminded him. “Aren’t you and Harvey ready to go back to your own lives?”

His silence told her all she needed to know.

She suddenly realized how lonely the house would be without her brothers there to cook for, and argue with, and lean on when the grief was too much to bear. A momentary panic gripped her. But she countered it by focusing her mind on all the ways she could fill the empty days. Teach at the New Hope school—she had taught before she married Pete, and she could do it again. Take in sewing, join the church choir, cook meals for Doctor Halstead and those patients too ill to do for themselves. Despite her recent dependence on her brothers, she wasn’t helpless.

Sparks scattered as Tom tossed more wood onto the coals. The sudden flare of light highlighted the furrows in his brow and the worry lines around his deep-set eyes, and she saw again the toll the last year had taken on him. He needed to move on. And she needed to let him.

“The lumber mill won’t hold your jobs forever,” she reminded him.

He looked up with a crooked smile that made him look younger than his thirty years. “You kicking us out, sister? With Christmas coming? Pretty heartless, don’t you think?”

She laughed in spite of the tears pricking her eyes. “All right, you win. Stay until the first of the year, then off you go.”

His gaze met hers across the fire, his eyes reflecting the orange of the flames.

It’s time he has his own family. His own children to watch over.

“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll write to the mill as soon as we get home.” He paused, then added in a hopeful voice, “That mean we’re done here? We head home first thing in the morning?”

“I’d like to talk to Mr. Hobart, first.”

“Damn.”

“Just to be sure, Tom. This is the last time. I promise.”

“I hope so.”

Daniel Hobart was rinsing the last plate when she walked up. Once he got over his surprise—she had forgotten about his faulty hearing—he wiped his hands on his fleece-lined jacket and rose. “Can I help you with something, Mrs. Ellis?”

She was glad he had stopped by the barbershop. The stubble was gone and his hair had been trimmed. He smelled less horsey, too. “I’d like to talk to you, if I may.”

“Sure.” They stood in awkward silence for a moment, then, as if suddenly remembering his manners, he pulled a glove from his pocket, dusted off the top of a flat boulder, and motioned for her to sit.

She sat.

He stuffed the glove back into his pocket. Then both hands. “That was a tasty meal you fixed for us tonight, ma’am. Thank you.”

Those lovely manners again. Tom could take a lesson. “You’re welcome, Mr. Hobart. And thank you for the apples. They made a fine crisp.”

“They surely did.”

Another long silence. Propping his booted foot on a stump beside her rock, he rested his crossed forearms atop his knee so that his hands dangled on either side of his leg. He had surprisingly elegant hands for such a big man. And a remarkably sturdy leg.

“What did you want to talk to me about, ma’am?”

A nice voice, too. Low and unhurried, with the cadence of the South in the soft
r
’s and drawn-out syllables. A ferocious countenance and a gentle demeanor. Another contradiction.

Uneasy with him looming over her, she looked toward the creek, where tiny surface ripples caught the last of the day’s light. “My brother wants to go back to New Hope tomorrow. But if there is a compelling reason not to, I could convince him to continue looking.”

When he didn’t respond, she looked up to find his gaze fixed on her in an almost intrusive way. She was unused to such intense scrutiny, and found it a bit unnerving. Yet flattering. It had been a long time since a man had looked at her with such interest.

“I don’t have any answers for you, Mrs. Ellis. Wish I did.”

She let out a sigh. “I see. Will you go back with us then?”

Reaching down, he loosened a pebble lodged in the splintered top of the stump. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger for a moment, then flicked it into the water. “Think I’ll head west to the fort. See what they have to say.”

“We searched up there last year.”

He shrugged.

“But you have a reason to question them again,” she guessed. “Why?”

“It probably won’t amount to anything.”

“Tell me anyway. Please.”

Lowering his foot to the ground, he straightened and thrust his hands back into the pockets of his shearling jacket. “The storekeeper said there were a lot of wagons in town that day. Eight or ten strung along the creek.”

She nodded. “Pilgrims heading west. Many spoke a different language. German, I think. Or maybe Swiss. There was quite a crowd waiting by the door when he opened the store.”

“Did you see a cat? Big calico?”

A cat?
She frowned, picturing the scene in her mind as she had so many times over the last year. The cold, damp wind. The roughness of the burlap sack in her grip. Hannah tugging at her other hand, reaching toward a cat as it darted past. “Yes. When the door opened, it ran out toward the creek. Hannah wanted to stop and pet it, but I was in a hurry. A storm was coming, and Tom wanted to leave before it hit.” Had there been no storm, or had she stopped to let Hannah pet the cat, would it have made a difference?

“Anything else?”

She remembered customers crowding the doorway. Being jostled as they surged into the store. Finding the shelf with the canned beans. “I was trying to fill a sack with the supplies we needed, but I couldn’t with Hannah holding my hand. I told her to hold onto my skirt, instead.”

“Then what?”

Images flashed through her mind. Her heart began to pound. “I was looking for a tin of molasses, but it was hard to move around with so many people crowding the aisles. Then I saw it on a high shelf. I reached up to get it and . . . ” Her voice faltered. She realized she was twisting her hands together in her lap and forced herself to stop.

“And what?” he prodded.

“S-Someone bumped me. I dropped the sack and cans rolled across the floor. When I bent to pick them up, I saw . . . ” Her chest tightened. Tears clogged her throat.

“Saw what, Mrs. Ellis?”

Words burst out of her. “That Hannah was gone—I don’t even know when. I never even felt her let go of my skirt.” Deflated by her outburst, she sagged, tears spilling in hot streaks down her cheeks. “How could I not have known? How could I have just let her slip away?”

A big hand closed over hers, stopped the frantic twisting of her fingers. It felt warm and solid, a lifeline amid the tempest in her mind. “It wasn’t your fault, Mrs. Ellis. Kids wander. Don’t blame yourself for that.”

His kindness undid her, broke through the carefully constructed wall that held the anguish at bay. Gasping, she bent over, her fingers digging in to the hand that held hers, a part of her astonished by her outburst, but another part relieved to surrender to the grief she’d locked inside for so long.

***

Daniel stood frozen, her tears burning like hot brands on the cold skin of his hand. Each muffled sob was a kick to his chest. “Lacy,” he murmured, not sure what to do or say. The rawness of her pain awakened his own and triggered a rush of memories that brought an ache to his throat. “Please. Don’t cry.”

She began to rock.

His fingers still gripping hers, he hunkered beside her and rested his free hand on her bowed back. “I’ll find her, Lacy. I’ll find Hannah and bring her back to you. I swear it.”

She lifted her head. She looked shattered, her face a grimace of despair, her eyes savage in their pain. “How, Daniel?”

He had never expected to hear his name on her lips. The sound of it made his heart soar. “I’ll find a way.”

“But if she’s dead . . . ”

“She’s not.”

“What are you doing, Hobart?” a voice barked.

Looking over his shoulder, Daniel saw Tom Jackson stomping toward them.

“Get your hands off my sister!”

Reluctantly, Daniel did. Rising, he turned to face the approaching man, ready to put himself between brother and sister if necessary. This suffering woman didn’t need any more distress right now.

Swiping the tears away, Lacy straightened and looked wearily up at her brother. “It’s not what you think, Tom.”

“Oh, no? You—crying like you never do—and him with his hands all over you? What the hell am I supposed to think?”

Knowing this wasn’t the time for a confrontation, Daniel worked to keep his tone mild. “Your sister says you want to leave for New Hope tomorrow. If you hear what I have to say, you might change your mind.”

***

“A cat?” Jackson threw his hands up in disbelief. “You’re basing all this on a cat?”

“Hush, Tom. Let him finish.”

The sun had gone down, and the cold had driven the three of them back to the fire. Jackson had built it up to a crackling blaze, and now, bundled in coats and scarves, they huddled upwind of the smoke, Lacy Ellis sharing a log with her brother, Daniel sitting on a rock on her other side.

He was still rattled by that scene earlier at the creek. It tangled his thinking, made him wonder if his drive to continue the search for Hannah was based on a true conviction that she was still alive, or a desire to keep her mother beside him a little longer. He was smitten, for sure. And he didn’t know what to do about it.

“Go on, Daniel. Finish what you were saying.”

If her brother noticed Lacy’s use of Daniel’s given name, he made no comment. Daniel was relieved. The situation was awkward enough as it was.

Forcing his errant thoughts away from the woman beside him, Daniel picked up where he’d left off. “We know your daughter likes cats. And we know there was a cat in the store—a cat the proprietor said spends most of its time hunting frogs at the creek, the same creek where all the pilgrims’ wagons were parked.”

“Ours, too,” Tom Jackson reminded him.

“Did your wagon look much different from the others?”

“Not particularly.” As he spoke, Jackson absently reached down to scratch Roscoe’s ear, who had become his new best friend ever since they had started sharing supper plates. “There were a couple of big Conestogas from Pennsylvania, but most were canvas-topped farm wagons like ours.”

“And that morning you and Harvey were putting on the new wheel?”

“That’s right.”

“Could you see the store from where your wagon was parked?”

Jackson looked at his sister and shrugged.

“Not well,” Lacy answered. “And anyway, the wheel they were repairing was on the far side of the wagon.”

Daniel nodded as his idea began to take shape. “So you wouldn’t have seen Hannah if she had left the store and followed the cat to the creek where the wagons were lined up?”

“Well . . . no. Probably not.”

“Oh, God.” Lacy pressed a hand to her throat. “Do think that’s what happened, Daniel? That she went to the creek and fell in and—”

“No,” he cut in sharply. “I don’t believe that. Nor should you.”

“She couldn’t have fallen in,” her brother protested. “We checked the creek. Up and down. Besides, the water was shallow enough that we would have seen her if . . . ” His voice trailed off. “We would have seen her,” he finished lamely.

“If she didn’t fall in the creek,” Lacy said, “what do you think happened?”

Daniel went through it in his mind. It was only a hunch. But there was some logic to it, and it all fit neatly together. He looked at the anxious faces turned toward him and hoped he wasn’t setting them up for another bitter disappointment.

“I think when Hannah got separated from you in the store,” he began, “she wandered outside. Maybe she saw the cat and followed it to the creek, or went there looking for it. Either way, after a while, she probably got tired and cold, and seeing what she thought was the right wagon, she climbed in and went to sleep.”

They looked at him in silence, then Jackson shook his head. “People searched all along the creek. Called her name. She would have heard.”

“She’s a light sleeper then?”

“Just the opposite,” Lacy answered. “Once she fell asleep, you could pick her up without even waking her. You often remarked on it, remember, Tom?”

“But we checked the wagons. We would have seen her.”

“Even curled up under a blanket?” Lacy’s voice rose on a wobble. “What if it’s true, Tom? What if some other people have her and she’s waiting for us to come get her, just like Daniel said?”

“I don’t know, Sis. Seems far-fetched to me.” Jackson tossed a small branch onto the fire, then stared thoughtfully into the flames. “But for the sake of argument,” he said after a moment, “let’s say Hobart is right and Hannah fell asleep in a stranger’s wagon. Wouldn’t whoever owned it notice her and say something?”