The Hopechest Bride (10 page)

“Yes,” Martha said, turning away from the window. “What if she develops appendicitis? What if she runs out of food? What if…what if? Our minds can do terrible things to us, can't they?”

“Well, mine hadn't thought of appendicitis—until now. Thanks so much, Martha,” Meredith said with a rueful smile, pulling out a green crewneck sweater with red reindeer running across the chest. “Ah, Joe found the right box. Come here, Martha, and look at
this. I made it myself. Every child wore this for at least one Christmas.”

Martha took the sweater, the better to admire it. “Meredith, one of these reindeer only has three legs.”

Meredith smiled, her face aglow with memories—memories too long hidden from her. “I
did
say I made it myself. It was one of my first efforts, and I actually improved with practice. But Joe says this one is special, just because of the three-legged reindeer, and the kids seemed to agree with him. Michael named him. Hopscotch. Isn't that a silly name? But Michael loved that sweater. He…” Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip, turned her head away from her friend.

Martha put an arm around Meredith's shoulder. “Sometimes the memories hurt, don't they? I'm sorry.”

Meredith nodded her head, closed her eyes tight. “He was such a sweet boy. We still miss him, all of us, although Drake was hit hardest of all. His twin, you understand, plus he was there when Michael was run over. So young. Michael was only eleven when he died. So many dreams yet to live. Oh, Martha, you're right. This hurts. Remembering hurts.”

“Should I ask someone to put the box back in the basement?” Martha asked, folding up the sweater, tracing a hand over Hopscotch, her own tender heart touched.

“No, not yet,” Meredith said, sitting down on the couch and pulling the box toward her. “I gave a lot
of the children's clothing away, to Hopechest, but I always hung on to some things, some special things. It would seem like I'm going to have too many grandchildren to be able to distribute these old clothes fairly. Besides, each child has already taken his or her own special favorites, a tradition I began before I…before I left.”

She bent low over the box, carefully lifting layer after layer of clothing until she found what she was looking for. “Here we go, Martha,” she said, pulling out handmade striped mittens, a matching scarf and beret. The stripes were bright: red, yellow, blue, green.

“You did say the coat you bought Tatania today was red, didn't you? Poor child, shivering in her sweater and just a thin rain poncho, all her clothes lost in the fire that took her mother. I love little girls in cheery, bright red coats. That's what made me think of this set I crocheted so many years ago. I think these will match perfectly.”

Martha accepted the items, her eyes stinging with tears. “They're beautiful, Meredith. Are you sure—”

“Positive,” she answered, closing the box again, leaving the reindeer sweater on the couch beside her. “And Hopscotch, too. Of course, the sweater is only a loan, but none of my grandchildren are big enough yet to wear it, so I'd really like Tatania to have the honor this Christmas.”

Now Martha's tears escaped, and she wiped at them without embarrassment. “Meredith, I knew. From the
moment I first met you, I knew. You're special. You've always been special. And I'm honored to call you my friend.”

 

“Rain's stopped,” Josh said, standing at the mouth of the cave. “If no more storms roll in, we'll probably be able to get out of here tomorrow morning as soon as it's light.”

Emily looked down at her fork, filled with canned ravioli. They'd had ravioli for dinner last night, lunch today, and again for dinner. How she rued the loss of her food bag, and Inez's fried chicken. She'd pay serious money for roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy. For that alone, she should be happy that the rain had stopped. Even happier that they'd be able to leave here tomorrow.

Her to the Hacienda de Alegria, Josh to the Rollins Ranch, or the rodeo circuit, or wherever he'd head next.

They'd both be free of each other, of this enforced cohabitation that had been anything but easy.

Free to go on their way…with nothing said, nothing resolved…and with him still believing she'd left his brother…her still knowing that she'd been the cause of Toby's violent death.

“That's nice,” she said, then lifted the fork to her mouth, the ravioli tasting like sawdust.

Could she do this? Should she do this? Just wait for the rain to stop, and then go home, let him ride away?

He was so like Toby, and yet so different. Where Toby had inspired her friendship, Josh affected her in a much more elemental way.

She'd see his face in her dreams for years to come. She'd hear his voice, recognize his walk, come alert at the special mixture of smells—of horse, of leather, of his shaving cream—that had this unwanted ability to rouse her, make her want, make her need.

It would never work. Not between the two of them. Even if he was all Toby had been, yet so much more. Even if there had been no Toby, and they'd just met, connected, admitted to the electricity that leapt between them with just a look.

They came from two different worlds, she and Josh. Emily knew herself to be a plant that needed deep roots, even if she did like to feel independent. Josh had no roots, none at all. He went where the wind blew him, where the circuit took him.

Emily couldn't live like that.

What was she thinking? Of course she could never live like that! He hadn't asked her, had he? So why was she even thinking about such a thing? Why was she suddenly so disappointed that the rain had stopped?

“Josh,” she said at last, as he returned to the meager fire and picked up his own plate. “I think we need to talk.”

J
osh put down his plate, not exactly hungry anyway. “Talk?” he repeated, looking at Emily. Her beautiful face looked white and pinched in the campfire, her burnished curls making a soft halo about her head, turning her look fragile. Vulnerable. “Not if you don't want to, Emily,” he heard himself say, unable to believe he actually was about to let the woman off the hook.

What was wrong with him?

Big blue eyes, that was what was wrong with him. That air—more than an air—of innocence. That was what was wrong with him. He'd gone soft, just as his brother, Toby, had gone soft, almost eager to cut this
girl some slack, give her every benefit of the doubt, believe her excuses, maybe even her lies.

“Well, no, I don't want to,” Emily said, putting down her own plate, laying it to one side as she sat forward, her clasped hands on her knees. “This isn't a matter of
wanting
to, it's a question of whether or not I can live with myself if I don't talk to you.”

“About Toby,” Josh said, staring at the tips of his boots as he stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Okay. I'll start, because I did want to tell you about him. Tell you about the Toby I know…knew.”

“That would be nice,” Emily said, her voice small, coming to him seemingly from very far away. “He told me you'd pretty much raised him. Is that true?”

Josh wanted to pace, but he stayed where he was, memories bubbling to the surface of his brain, fleeting snapshots of a younger, smiling Toby flashing before his eyes.

“Yeah, that's true enough, I suppose. Mom died when I was ten years old—Toby was only about six. We had our dad, but drink also had our dad.” He lifted his head, looked over at Emily. “He was a good man at heart, but Mom's death, well, it took most of that heart out of him. He'd drink, lose his job, promise to do better. We lost our house, then moved from town to town, from cheaper apartment to cheaper apartment, running out on our rent because Dad had drunk his paycheck. But he was sorry. He was always so, so very sorry. So were we.”

“You loved him,” Emily said, nodding her head.

Josh rubbed at his forehead. “Loved him? I suppose so. But we'd lost our mother, just like he'd lost his wife. And then we lost our father, too, to the bottle.”

“I don't want to interrupt, Josh, but I think I sort of know what happened, not from experience, as I was too young to remember my own circumstances except for what I was told, but because I've seen this sort of thing. We have this place near my home, Hopechest Ranch, where a lot of us in the family volunteer time. A place for troubled children, abandoned children. I've never ceased to be amazed at the maturity of those children who'd lived with an alcoholic parent. They become little parents themselves, taking care of the other children in the family, acting as parent to their own mom or dad. They lose their childhood, and it's sad to see.”

Josh felt his jaw tightening. “Toby didn't lose his childhood. I made sure of that.”

Emily's sympathetic look set his teeth even more on edge. “Yes, I'll bet you did. Parent to the parent, parent to the sibling. Making the meals, cleaning the house, hunting down the parent at local bars, trying to bring that parent home before the whole paycheck was gone. All that responsibility, and no time for your own childhood.”

“I did what I did, and I'd do it again,” Josh told her, willing himself to be calm. This wasn't about him, it was about Toby. “And we made it, damn it. Dad died, but not until after Toby had graduated from
the local community college and had been accepted at the police academy.” He felt a smile tease at the corners of his mouth, surprising him. “He wanted to help people, Toby said. To him, being a policeman meant helping people. He actually believed he could make a difference.”

“Toby did make a difference, Josh,” Emily said, poking a long, thin stick into the small fire. “He saved my life.”

Josh looked at her, really, really looked at her. “Tell me about it,” he said at last. “I need to hear what happened. Not the police report version. What
really
happened.”

Emily continued to poke at the fire, her head bowed. “Yes. It's time, isn't it? I'd like to start at the beginning, if that's all right with you.”

Josh listened to the sound of the howling wind outside the cave. “Start anywhere you want, Emily. I don't think we're going anywhere for a while. Just as long as you tell me about Toby.”

Emily nodded her head, laid down the stick, carefully, as if it were made of crystal. “It all really starts months earlier, with my mother's twin sister, and with her plan to kill me.”

Josh remained silent as Emily told him about Patsy Portman. She'd already told him about the planned “accident,” of how the switch had been made so many years ago. Now she told him of those next nearly ten years, of how it had been to live in the
same house with a woman who looked like her mother, yet, to Emily, couldn't be her mother.

She didn't whine, tell her story as if asking for his pity, but only accentuated the fact that she'd always had questions, reservations about this woman who acted so differently than the loving mother she'd known.

“I had dreams, nightmares really, and they got worse over the years, never better. I began to remember more, question more. One day I spoke with one of our longtime kitchen employees, Nora Hickman, asking her if she saw what I saw.” She paused, looked up at Josh. “Three days later, Nora was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run.”

“Patsy?”

Emily shook her head. “Only indirectly. She wasn't driving the car, although she did pay for Nora to have some sort of fatal accident that couldn't be traced to her. She left the method itself to Silas Pike.”

Josh's hands drew up into fists. “The man who murdered Toby.”

“Yes. But nobody had yet identified the driver, or realized why Nora was killed. I certainly hadn't, although I wondered why Nora had died. If I'd believed the woman in our house wasn't really Meredith—if I'd truly
believed
that—I probably would have remembered more of the details of my conversation with Nora and put two and two together. But all I had were my doubts, my fears. Besides, how could I tell my father that I thought his wife wasn't his wife—
that maybe his wife was a murderer? Dad wouldn't have believed me. Nobody would believe me. Why should they? Lord knows nobody believed me all those years, all those nearly ten years.”

“Because you didn't believe it yourself,” Josh said. “It's difficult to believe the worst of your parent, believe it deep in your heart, even when the evidence is right there in front of you.”

Emily's shoulders, that had been nearly hunched as she spoke, visibly relaxed, lowered. “You understand,” she said, smiling at him, tears in her eyes. “I didn't think anyone would understand.”

Josh's smile was rueful. “Hey, my dad was a fall-down drunk, but I'd challenge anyone who ever looked down on him, said anything bad about him to my face. So you keep on keeping on, part of you knowing the worst, another part of you refusing to believe that same truth. You didn't
know
that Patsy was impersonating your mother. You just knew that your mother didn't seem…right. So if Nora died, and your mother had something to do with it…?”

“I couldn't face that, not at the time,” Emily ended for him. “But then Silas Pike was in my room, in the dark, and I could see the outline of the knife he held in his hand. I had been out with some friends and I came into an empty house and was just heading to bed. I saw him from my doorway.”

“God,” Josh said quietly, shaking his head. “That's when you ran?”

“I had no other choice. Mom—Patsy—was already
hinting to everyone that I was unbalanced. And now I was seeing outlines of murderers skulking around in my bedroom at midnight? I had to run. I had to figure out how to approach Dad, the family—make them believe what I believed. I had to go somewhere alone, to think, to sort everything out.”

“And you landed in Keyhole,” Josh said, sighing. “What's that line from
Casablanca?
‘Of all the gin joints in all the world, why'd she have to walk into mine?' Something like that. But you walked into that small café in Keyhole, and into Toby's life. Our lives.”

“Lying,” she added, when he didn't say the words. “I came into Toby's life, lying, telling him I'd lost my fiancé in a car wreck, and had come to Wyoming to forget, to try to rebuild my life.” She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her face as she looked at Josh. “If I hadn't lied…if I'd told him the truth? If I'd told him that I was afraid, that a killer might be on my tail…?”

Josh did stand up now and begin to pace. He couldn't sit still any longer. “You had your reasons for keeping silent. I can see that now.” He stopped pacing, turned to look down at her. “That night. Tell me about that night.”

“More guilt. Another mistake.” Emily shrugged, twisting her hands in her lap. “But first I have to back up a few months. Pike had found me in Keyhole, back in the spring. I came home from the café and he was there…in my house, waiting. I called Toby—” She
remembered the day vividly, would never forget it. “I got away before he could hurt me and I ran…again. I went north to Montana, and I was there when Rand, my brother, summoned me to Mississippi. He'd found out—doesn't matter how—that my mother was living there, a victim of amnesia.

“That should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. Mom…well, Mom wasn't ready yet to go back to California, back to her own life. I should have stayed with Rand until Mom was ready to go home, or with my cousin Liza—anyone at all—but I didn't. I went back to Montana, to my life—such as it was. But I—I couldn't stop thinking of Toby. Finally, I felt I owed it to him to go back to Keyhole, to explain myself to him, to say a proper goodbye.”

“Because you knew he loved you.”

Emily bit her bottom lip, nodded her head. “Yes, because I knew he loved me. I had to tell him that I loved him, too, but that I wasn't
in
love with him,” she agreed quietly. Then she looked up at Josh, her eyes pleading with him to understand. “I thought I was safe! I never would have gone back if I didn't think it was safe to do so—never! I wouldn't have put Toby in danger.”

“I believe you.”

“Wh-what?” Emily blinked back tears as she looked up at Josh, that film of tears softening his features, making him look more like his younger brother. “You believe me?”

“I'm not a total jerk, Emily. I believe you.”

“But—but I was so
arrogant!
I never disguised myself, never believed anyone could have followed me, and yet Silas Pike mentioned my hair when he broke into my motel cottage that night. He said…he said people remembered my long hair. I should have cut it, dyed it—something.” She shook her head, so that her hair fell forward over her face, hiding her features. “Mistakes. I made so many mistakes, and those mistakes cost your brother his life. Oh, God, Toby, I'm
so
sorry!”

Josh crossed in front of the fire and went down on his haunches in front of Emily, so that they were face-to-face when she finally lifted her head once more. He reached out with both hands, smoothing her hair away from her tear-wet cheeks. “He knows, Emily,” he said quietly. “He knows.”

Emily's sob caught in her throat and she drooped forward, laying her cheek on Josh's shoulder, holding on to him as she cried. Bitter tears, yet cleansing tears, tears Josh wished he could shed himself, because then maybe he'd feel better, less guilty himself.

“That night, Emily,” he urged her when her sobs had subsided into the occasional sniffle. “What happened? The police report I read was only preliminary, written before they were able to interview you.”

Emily sat back, leaving him feeling suddenly abandoned as she slid her arms away from his shoulders, settled them in her lap once more. “I'd taken a cottage at a motel on the outskirts of Keyhole. Toby… We'd made plans to see each other the next day, but
he came that night. I couldn't tell him everything that night, it…just seemed too soon. Besides, he was on duty, so there really wasn't time. We visited…and then he left.”

Josh frowned. “So how did Pike manage to get into your cottage?”

“My stupidity again. I opened the door to him, thinking he was Toby, coming back. Who else could it be, but Toby? I didn't think. I just didn't
think.
”

She picked up the long hem of her flannel shirt, wiped at her streaming tears like a child scrubbing her face. “He burst through the door as I opened it,” she said, closing her eyes, making a face. “God, he was so
ugly,
so frightening. He seemed to fill the whole room. And then there was this gun…and all I could see was the gun. It looked like a cannon, a cannon pointing straight at me. He wanted me to turn around, so that he could shoot me in the back, but I wouldn't do that. I refused. And then…and then I sort of dived behind the couch, because I couldn't just stand there and let him shoot me. And then the door opened, and I heard Toby call my name. There were gunshots, two of them. I didn't know what happened, I couldn't see anything. I just cowered there, until I heard a moan. Toby's moan.”

“And Pike?”

“He was gone. The door was wide open, and he was gone. Only Toby was there, lying on the floor, this…this…” Her hands fluttered, resettled in her lap. “This
blood
everywhere. I knelt down beside him and
he smiled up at me. ‘I forgot my hat,' he said. ‘I forgot my hat…'”

Emily pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes seeing another scene, not the inside of the cave, not Josh, sitting so close in front of her. “He'd somehow hit the Alert button on his uniform, so officers had to be on their way—but I knew they wouldn't arrive for at least fifteen minutes, not all the way from town to the motel.”