Matthew: The Circle Eight (16 page)
Read Matthew: The Circle Eight Online
Authors: Emma Lang
Matt groaned and rolled over to lie on the bed beside her. The only sound in the room was their breathing and Hannah’s heart thumping madly.
“Your hair. I’d never seen it unbound before, wild and free. It did something to me.” His soft confession made her smile.
“Then I’ll leave it down every night.”
He rose and poured water into the basin, then used a soft rag to clean them both up. Hannah was boneless, completely drained of energy by two incredible rounds of lovemaking. By the time she crawled under the covers, she could hardly keep her eyes open. Matt lay beside her, spooning against her as had become his habit.
Hannah fell asleep almost immediately, more content than she’d ever been in her life.
The impending barbecue energized the ranch. Eva sent Javier and Lorenzo to the neighboring ranches with invitations. Within a few days, Eva told Hannah they expected at least seventy-five people to come.
It was an intimidating number, but Hannah was used to organizing meals for large groups at the boardinghouse. This was the biggest challenge she’d ever faced though. Fortunately she, Granny, and Eva worked together.
Hannah used all the scraps she could find to make a huge tablecloth while the boys put together a table from left over wood. Eva cleaned like a madwoman and Granny was put in charge of watching the three youngest Grahams. Together, the four of them made decorations out of whatever they could find.
Olivia was the only one not helping. She sulked most days, not bothering to talk to anyone. Hannah wanted to get her sister-in-law to talk, but didn’t have much success.
It was Friday, the day before the barbecue. The tables were built, the patchwork tablecloth ready. Granny was outside with Eva supervising the hanging of the girls’ decorations. The men were digging the pit and preparing the steer. Hannah worked on some mending to relax.
The time between dinner and supper was usually the quietest in the house. Hannah had a cup of coffee she sipped as she worked and hummed under her breath.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were in here.” Olivia stood at the entrance to the kitchen, nearly hidden in the shadows of the hallway.
“I’m just doing some mending. The room is big enough for both of us.” Hannah offered a smile.
“This whole ranch isn’t big enough for both of us.” Olivia walked toward the stove. “What is Eva planning for supper?”
“I don’t know. She’s outside helping the girls with the decorations.”
Olivia sighed and speared Hannah with an accusing glare. “This whole barbecue fiasco is your fault. You’ve turned everything upside down.”
“I don’t mean to.” Hannah set the mending down and gestured to the chair across from her. “Will you sit and talk to me?”
“No.”
Hannah threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know what I did to make you hate me so much, Olivia. But Matt and I are well and truly married. Your anger isn’t going to change that one bit.”
“He was supposed to marry Margaret. Did you know that?”
Olivia had mentioned it before, but Hannah had ignored her revelation for fear of learning something she didn’t want to hear.
“No, and it doesn’t matter. He married me.”
“Because your name was Hannah.” Olivia might not have wanted to talk, but the words gushed from her mouth now.
“I know that. I knew that from the second he proposed.” Hannah understood that the reason for her marriage was unconventional, but she had come to enjoy being married.
Olivia paced back and forth, her body fairly vibrating with energy. “You very nearly prostituted yourself for a husband.”
That one stung. “There are many reasons why folks get married. I had no prospects for a husband and he needed a wife.”
“No prospects? There isn’t anyone out here to marry.
You took the most eligible bachelor in the county.” Olivia’s voice had risen. “Margaret was my ticket out of here. We were going to travel together. Maybe even go to New York. You took that from me.”
Hannah’s mouth dropped open. “I did no such thing.”
“I had a beau once, sure I did. What girl didn’t besides you? After some bastard killed my parents and Benjy disappeared, he didn’t like my crying. My grief was too much for him.” Her words were running into each other. “He ran off with that awful bitch Mary Walker. Then Margaret decided I wasn’t good enough for her anymore. She expected us to fail without my parents. Last week was the first time she spoke to me in months.”
Olivia shook her head, staring off into what Hannah could only assume was a gaping maw of grief. “I lost everything.
Everything
.”
Everything
.”
Hannah’s heart ached for what the Grahams had suffered. She had hoped the new land would bring them the fresh start they needed. However, Stinson had made sure their fresh start was soured before it truly began.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia. So very sorry.” Hannah got to her feet and pulled her sister-in-law into a hug. At first Olivia was stiff and unyielding, but then she softened, shaking as she wept buckets of tears. Hannah just let her cry, wondering if the young woman had ever let herself grieve for what she’d lost. It likely had been bottled up inside her all this time.
After a few minutes, Olivia’s sobs began to fade. She pulled away, accepting the handkerchief Hannah offered. The moment stretched out, sliding into an awkward silence.
“Would you like some coffee?”
Olivia nodded and sat down in her chair at the table with a sigh. “I don’t like who I am anymore. I’m downright mean no matter how much I try to stop myself.”
Hannah poured the coffee, then set the steaming mug in front of the other woman. She sat down and waited, hoping like hell Olivia would continue talking to her.
“Grief makes us do things we normally wouldn’t.” She sipped her own coffee. “I don’t pretend to know how it feels to have gone through what you did but I can listen if you want to talk.”
Olivia wiped her eyes with a corner of the handkerchief. She narrowed her watery gaze. “I’ve been nothing but a bitch to you. Why are you being so nice?”
Hannah shrugged, unwilling to blame Olivia for her anger. It wasn’t truly directed at Hannah, but more at the world. “I take some blame for that, too.”
Olivia seemed to accept the peace offering and turned her attention back to her coffee. The silence was comfortable as they both sipped. Hannah felt relieved they were talking and being civil.
“I feel like Matt set this whole ranch on its ear when he lied about having a wife.” Olivia’s gaze rose to meet hers. “He’s spent so much time thinking about you, he forgot about us. Forgot about Mama and Pa, and about Benjy. I was angry with him and with God.”
“Tell me about them.” Hannah needed to know more about the elder Grahams and the youngest child, the boy who’d vanished like a puff of smoke.
Olivia was quiet for a few minutes; then, to Hannah’s relief, she started talking.
“Benjamin was Matt’s shadow. He was the spitting image of him, too. Walked like him, swagger and all.” Olivia smiled. “Mama never worried about Benjy because wherever Matt was, he was always right behind him. Except for the day we were—”
The day the Grahams were killed and the barn burned. An unsolved murder in such a small town was bound to garner a lot of talk. Folks speculated it had been Indians, but there was no evidence of that. Others thought it was a couple of drifters or maybe Mexicans who were loyal to their country, trying to drive Texans off land that once belonged to them.
The oddest thing about the crime was the disappearance of the youngest sibling. There hadn’t been a sign of Benjamin, dead or alive, since the Grahams had died. Hannah had heard the search had gone on for days, fanning out for miles. There had been no tracks, no trace.
“What about your parents? What were they like?” Hannah didn’t want Olivia to bog down in her grief again.
“Pa loved Mama to distraction. Whatever she wanted, he made happen for her. They kissed and hugged a lot. He wasn’t wishy-washy though. He was big like Matt, worked hard for everything he had. When Pa came back from the war, he was quieter than he had been. I remember when I was little, his laugh used to vibrate through my chest it was so loud. He wasn’t like that anymore.” Olivia paused to stare off into the distance again. “Mama kept us all together while he and Matt fought in the war. She was stronger than both of them put together. She managed eight children and this ranch and did a right fine job of it, too. Eva was here, but she was more of a housekeeper and cook than a mother figure. It was only after Mama was gone that Eva stepped in to help the young’uns.”
Hannah digested all of the information, which answered quite a few questions she’d had. Matt was trying to be like his father, as most men would, but there was something else there she still hadn’t pinned down. Later, she would try to find out what was driving him so hard, and what secrets he was hiding. She might not have any success but she had to try.
“I wish I had known them.”
Olivia’s gaze probed Hannah’s until she finally nodded. “I think you mean that.”
“I do. I lost my parents when I was seven. I don’t remember much about them, just snatches of memories. Mama always smelled like roses and Papa like wood.” Hannah had a hole where a girl’s memories of a mother and father should have been. It didn’t necessarily make her sad, but it sure made her lonely.
“No brothers or sisters?”
Hannah shook her head. “Nobody but Granny.”
“She’s your father’s mother?” Olivia had begun to relax in earnest.
“No, my mother’s mother. She and my grandfather took me in, but he died shortly after that. Granny has had more tragedy in her life than I have. I think she had two sons who died as children, too.” Hannah stared into her coffee, realizing for the first time just how much her grandmother had been through.
“That why she opened the boardinghouse?”
“Yep. It was a big house and she had no money to speak of. I only did simple chores at first, but I grew up cleaning and cooking for large groups.” Hannah smiled at her sister-in-law. “All along I was in training to join the Graham clan.”
“I won’t say congratulations. Some days I wish them all away. They’re loud, pushy, greedy, and stomp on my last nerve.” Olivia’s gaze softened. “Then I think of life without all of them and know it doesn’t matter how crazy they make me. They’re my family.”
Hannah ached for that kind of family and wished until her teeth ached that she would be accepted as part of theirs. Good, bad and ugly, the Grahams were everything she’d ever wanted. Matt had given her the gift of a family when he’d proposed to her. Hannah was marrying them as much as she was marrying their brother.
“I haven’t made it very easy for you to join us.” Olivia ran her finger around the rim of the mug. “I was protecting me and mine, making sure no one would hurt us.”
“And now?” Hannah held her breath, hoping to hear Olivia was finally past her anger.
“Now I can see we have a lot more in common than I thought. I knew you disappeared out of school, but didn’t think anything of it.” Olivia shook her head. “You know how Catherine feels because she’s seven and she just lost her parents.”
Hannah hadn’t even recognized the truth right in front of her face. Olivia just put her finger on the very reason Hannah had found her place so easily with the two youngest Grahams. They reminded her of her own orphaned self thirteen years earlier. She was glad to be there for the girls, to brush their hair, mend their clothes, and even wash their sheets in the dead of night.
“Yes, I know how you all feel. It’s not an easy thing to lose one parent, much less two.” Hannah actually felt the connection between them blossoming. “I don’t want to replace anyone, or even drive your brother to distraction. I just want to be part of your family, be a wife to Matt, and maybe one day, a mother to his children.”
Olivia was silent for a few moments, then lifted her gaze to Hannah’s. Her eyes were so much like Matt’s, Hannah’s heart did a little hiccup. She really was falling in love with her husband.
“I think that’s a right fine idea.” This time when Olivia smiled, it was genuine.
Hannah got to her feet at the same time as her sister-in-law. They hugged briefly, then sat back down.
“Would you show me how to sew?” Olivia pointed at the pile of mending. “With so many folks in the house, that pile has grown as big as Catherine. I always refused to learn, telling Mama I’d marry a rich man and never have to mend a thing. Too bad the one man I wanted to marry found a girl without tears in her eyes.”
“Then he wasn’t the man for you. I never even had a beau, so I knew Matt was the one for me. Yours is out there somewhere. He just hasn’t found his way to the Circle Eight yet.” Hannah patted the chair next to her. “Come on over and I’ll teach you the basics.”
Hannah spent the next hour with Olivia, showing her how to use a needle and thread. It was the most relaxing, enjoyable time she’d spent with her sister-in-law. By the time the hour was over, Olivia was mending a ripped seam in one of Caleb’s shirts.
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