Sisters (33 page)

“Sophie, I…”

“But even though
we’re not supposed to be, Emile and I are related, aren’t
we? Through you. Lieutenant Talbot wasn’t my father, was he,
Paul? Even though he and my mother were married when I was born, he
wasn’t my father, was he?

Paul shook his head. “No,”
he whispered.

“You’re my
father, aren’t you, Paul?”

He nodded wordlessly and
reached out to her, but she ignored his gesture. “I remember as
a child at Fort Martin hearing things, hints that you’d loved
my mother.” He nodded again, and she puzzled a moment over what
she saw in his eyes. Behind the pain and sadness, wasn’t there
a glint of fear? But why fear? What was there for him to be fearful
of?

She let her anger propel
her past the question. “And I found a letter, Paul, a letter
from my mother to Helen. After all these years, she had found her,
wanted to see her. But Julia said no, said Helen should turn to you
for help in understanding why. I thought at first it was because
you’re like you are, easy to talk to, a comforting person to be
around. But it was because of this, wasn’t it?” She
picked up the picture of Emile Bellavance from where Paul had laid it
on the table. “She didn’t want to tell Helen the truth,
of course, but to convince her to stop digging in the past. And maybe
she even wanted to warn you to hide this picture. With Helen attuned
to the past, you wouldn’t have wanted her looking at it. She
might have started asking why I so resembled Emile.” Sophie
paused for a moment, then added, “But Julia couldn’t have
been warning you to hide the picture, could she? She probably doesn’t
even know what I look like.”

“My mother hid the
picture, Sophie,” Paul said. “She put it away behind the
Landseer stag years and years ago. She did it not long after my
father died. The stag was hers. She brought out with her from St.
Louis.” He turned and walked to a window. “Your mother
knows what you look like,” he said, looking out. “I’m
sure she’s followed your career closely. Don’t be so
bitter about her. Don’t blame her.”

“Why shouldn’t
I? Why shouldn’t I finally blame her for something? She left
me, deserted me when I was a child, and now I find she would have let
me go forever without knowing who my father really was. Didn’t
she owe me that at least?”

“Sophie, I—“

“And why, Paul? I
just don’t understand why it had to remain a secret all these
years. Did you think it would shock me too much to learn I was
conceived out of wedlock? You know better. You know how my life has
been. I’m not caught up in that kind of hypocrisy. I’ve
spent my life facing it down.”

It was a moment before he
answered. “It was the habit of deception, I suppose. It went on
so long, so many years with no one knowing, it got harder and harder
to break out of the lie. And more and more people became involved in
my life. How could I have told Anna May and the children?

“They didn’t
have to know. Couldn’t you have just told me?”

“Paul…”
It was James speaking. He had been silent until now. “Paul,
does this explain why you weren’t able to deliver my message to
Rodman and Huber?”

Sophie looked at James in
confusion. What was he talking about?

“That’s what I
came over here this morning to see Paul about, Sophie. It just didn’t
make sense that Rodman and Huber, Huber especially, would do the
things they did to you after I’d warned them off. I began to
wonder if they’d ever got my message. Paul admitted this
morning they hadn’t. Said he hadn’t been able to deliver
it. That’s as far as we’d got when we heard the noise
upstairs. We heard the glass shatter when the widow broke the
picture, and we both ran upstairs.”

James turned to Paul. “What
I’m wondering now is if you chose not to deliver my message,
thinking that Huber and Rodman would distract Sophie, keep her from
looking into what Helen’s concerns had been.” He glanced
over at Sophie. “I didn’t know Helen had found your
mother, Sophie, but I’d wager Paul did, especially if your
mother suggested Helen talk to him.”

“Is that right,
Paul?” James asked, turning back. “Is that what happened?
Did Helen come talk to you? What a shock it must have been, finding
out she’d located Julia. But then when she died, the secret was
safe again.”

“Until I came along,”
Sophie said. “You probably thought I wanted it myself, that I
was lying when I said it was for Esther.”

“I didn’t think
they would hurt you!” Paul shouted it almost, turning abruptly
from the window. “I didn’t think they’d hurt you,”
he repeated more softly. “I thought … prairie gophers
through the window, pranks to frighten you a little. That’s
what I thought they’d do. And then on Sunday I saw you after
they’d set that circus freak on you at the park, and they had
injured you. I set out to find them, but they weren’t in town,
not anywhere. I figure now they were holed up on a ranch somewhere,
making plans for the next day at Wilson’s. But I didn’t
know that then. And I didn’t know you’d go out there
again and they’d try to kill you.”

He shook his head and began
to pace. “When I found that out, I went out after ‘em
again, but there was no sign of them, not until I saw Rodman at the
opera house. I still can’t figure out where Huber is.” He
stopped pacing and looked at Sophie. “You must believe me. I’d
never do anything I thought would bring you harm.”

Now she remembered the fear
she’d seen in his eyes. “And did you feel the same about
Helen?”

A new emotion flashed
across his face, but it was gone before she could identify it. “What
do you mean?” he asked.

“Someone was with
Helen before she died. A man. And they argued, and she fell. Or maybe
she was pushed. Her death was so convenient for you, so helpful in
terms of keeping your secret about Julia, about me. Was it you, Paul?
Did you and Helen quarrel? Did you try to get the letter from Julia
away from her? Did she fall in the struggle?”

Paul shook his head once,
then twice. His shoulders sagged.

“How did you know
there was a man with Helen?” James asked her.

“Esther and Sally.
They heard a man quarreling with her before she fell. Esther thought
it was you.”

“Me?”

Sophie nodded. “I
told her you were… someplace else. And that people had seen
you, so you couldn’t have… argued with Helen.”

James looked stricken, but
Sophie had no time for him now. She turned to Paul. “And where
were you that day, Paul?” As she spoke, she was struck by the
oddity of her question. Not that it was illogical. It followed quite
naturally from everything that had gone before. But how strange that
she should be asking it of this man—and he was her father! The
situation called for love and reconciliation, and instead there was
suspicion and distrust.

When Paul spoke, it was as
though he had read her thoughts. “This is wrong, Sophie, all
wrong. It shouldn’t be like this. I… I love you, Sophie.
Ah, why is that so hard to get out when I’ve wanted to say it
so many years? I’ve always loved you, Sophie, and I’ve
been so proud of you, of everything you’ve accomplished. I
would never deliberately hurt you, don’t you understand? That’s
the main reason I didn’t want you to know. I was afraid the
truth would hurt you.” He shut his eyes and took a deep breath.
“I see why you might think … But I couldn’t harm
Helen just to keep you know knowing I was your father. Because her
death would cause you even more sorrow than knowledge would. If I
were forced to choose between the two, I’d have to let you
know, don’t you see? Because what concerns me most is your
happiness. I would do whatever least threatens your happiness.”

She could quite literally
feel his affection and concern. And she believed him. She looked deep
into his eyes and knew with every atom of her being that he spoke the
truth. “Oh, Paul.” She reached out, but the gesture was
cut short when a figure appeared in the doorway. It was the doctor.

“He hasn’t
long.” They all turned to look at him. “Someone should be
with him—someone besides the burse. He doesn’t need
sniveling women now.”

“I’ll go,”
Sophie said. “I want to.” Realizing her sex had made her
suspect, she deliberately looked full in the doctor’s face as
she moved past him and started upstairs.

James caught her before she
had gone very far. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. I want
to go and see Esther.”

“Don’t talk
about it, James. Don’t make her think all those thoughts again.
Let it be over.”

“That’s what I
intend. But I want to spend some time with her, just be with her and
talk about anything she wants.”

Sophie nodded, watching him
go, then went upstairs. In the bedroom, she took he nurse’s
chair beside the bed, picked up Joe’s hand, and watched the
shallow and uneven breathing.

Paul came in after a few
minutes, but he didn’t speak to her beyond a bare greeting nor
she to him. There was an awkwardness between them now, and difficult
as it would be for them to talk in any room, it was more so in this
setting. This was Joe’s time, his place, his last place but for
the grave, Sophie thought.

Anna May came in after
awhile, sat for a half-hour or so, then came to Sophie’s side.
“Would you like some lunch?” she whispered. “I’d
be happy to stay here while you eat.”

Sophie wondered if Paul had
told her. Looking up, she didn’t think so. Anna May wasn’t
likely to accept with no visible effect the news that she, Sophie,
was Paul’s daughter. “No, I’m not hungry,”
Sophie said. “You please go ahead,” and Anna May and Paul
left the room.

Keeping hold of Joe’s
hand, Sophie laid her head on the bed beside his shoulder. She was so
tired, bone-tired, tired as she was in her dreams when he had to run
and run until she found the end, the object drawing her on. But the
comparison wasn’t quite right, she realized, for the exhaustion
she felt now wasn’t in her body, but in her spirit. Nor was the
tiredness the kind that comes at the end of the quest, when
everything is finally resolved for better or worse. What she felt was
a frustrated weariness. Paul was her father, and that explained some
things; but there was so much unanswered. It was as though she had
found the last piece of a puzzle, and the shape was right, it fit the
empty space, but somehow when it was put in place, it didn’t
complete the picture.

She started a mental list
of all her unanswered questions, and the first item, of course, was
Helen. What had happened to Helen? She tried to set aside her
intuitive feelings that her sister had met with violence and
concentrate on things concrete and certain. There had been a man with
Helen. Before she died, there had been a man with her. Who had it
been?

Sophie heard the door
behind her open and shut, and she turned to look. It opened and shut
again, and she saw that the breeze coming in the window was doing it.
She remembered the first time she’d been in the room with Joe
and the door had opened a crack. It had been the Widow Bellavance.
No, her grandmother. How hard that was to accept, that she was
related to the Widow Bellavance just as she had been to Deer Woman.
And this grandmother had tried to kill her. She’d thought
Sophie was her dead husband, Emile, but what did that explain? Why
did she hate Emile? Why had she hidden his picture.

And then there was the
thing she had never understood. Oh, she could offer a string of words
of explanation, but they were unrelated to anything in her head. Why
had her mother left her and Helen? She had more understanding now of
the events leading up to Julia’s flight. Just a few months’
pregnant with Paul’s child, marrying the lieutenant, then
bearing Paul’s child, herself, Sophie. Then, a year later,
another daughter, Helen, child of Lieutenant Talbot. And not long
after, Talbot was killed. But why had Julia run away? Why hadn’t
she married Paul then? He’d still been single. Indeed, why
hadn’t she married him when she first discovered she was
carrying his child?

Joe stirred. Sophie lifted
her head, watched him carefully for a moment before she laid her head
back down. She gathered his hand close to hear face, and suddenly her
memory carried her back to her earlier years. She was small, no more
than three or four, and she had loved it so much when Joe was around.
The weeks he was at Fort Martin were the happiest for her, and she’d
trail around after him, protesting loudly when she was separated from
him to lie down for an afternoon rest. To assuage her, he had taken
to lying down with her. She should make him promise not to leave if
she fell asleep, to waken her if he had to go somewhere. And for
insurance, she would slip a finger into his belt loop, so he couldn’t
get up undetected. But when she would awaken after a long nap, he
wouldn’t be there. She would inevitably find he had slipped
away.

Lying with her head on the
bed beside his shoulder, she slept now. And when she wakened, she
still had his hand in her own. But she knew she was alone. Without
checking his breathing, she knew. Joe was gone. He had slipped away
from her, this time forever. And she held on to his hand and wept.

The women came. Within the
hour, they were there, bringing food and comfort. The front parlor
filled with their murmurs, the house with the smells of their
cooking. Amy Travers, Lydia Swerdlow, Alice Lassawell all came in
together. Cleantha Kempton came with an old, old woman on her arm,
whom he introduced as Mother Davis. The crone up a hand on Sophie’s
shoulder and fixed her with a watery eye. “It’s not to
cry, dearie. Your granddaddy got his dyin’ done.”

Anna May approached,
carrying a folding chair under her arm. “Why don’t you
come outside, Sophie? Out by the roses. It’s so stuffy in
here.”

Sophie looked around
doubtfully, thinking it would be rude to leave.