Sweet Boundless (26 page)

“Especially at Christmas.” Alex Makepeace dumped the last of the tablecloths in a heap in the corner.

She looked from one to the other, then felt the tears spring to her eyes. At once Mr. Makepeace was beside her. “Shame on us, Joe. We’ve made her cry.”

Carina waved them off. “No, no. It’s . . . it’s only . . .” She suddenly laughed. “I’ve no idea at all what it is. Go away and let me cry in peace.” She swiped at the tears still coming even while she laughed.

Joe Turner took up his hat. “Happy Christmas, Mrs. Shepard.”

“Grazie, Joe Turner.” She sniffed. “And you.”

He headed for the door, but Alex Makepeace lingered, a look of gentle concern on his face. Carina looked up and waved a hand at him.

“It’s nothing.”

He didn’t answer. Instead he reached inside his vest and took out a small tissue-wrapped parcel. “I have something for you. A holiday trinket.”

She stared at the package in his palm, then looked into his face.

His expression was slightly amused. “Don’t worry; it won’t bite you.” With his free hand he flipped her palm upward and dropped the gift inside.

She unwrapped the paper to find an oval porcelain pin painted with grapes and leaves. He had listened well, Alex Makepeace. The grapes’ rich tones were all the hues of Papa’s vineyard, and she closed it into her palm and pressed it to her breast. “Thank you . . . Alex.”

His answer was suspended a moment; then he smiled broadly. “A merry Christmas, Carina.”

“Buon Natale.”

Alex stepped out into the below-freezing chill of the night. He could have gone through the kitchen to his room at Mae’s, but he needed the bracing air to bring him to his senses. A shadow moved, and he spun to find Joe Turner still lingering. Joe wore a quizzical expression, and Alex shrugged.

“Was I so obvious?”

Joe nodded.

Alex swore. “Never in all the years of my Christian baptism have I anticipated loving another man’s wife.”

“Don’t worry. Most of Crystal is more than half in love with Carina DiGratia Shepard.”

“Carina DiGratia . . . your shaft?”

“Oh yes.” Joe caught him by the arm and started them toward Mae’s front porch. “Of course, I proposed before she was married.”

“More proper that way.”

“But hardly more profitable.”

Alex stopped. “So give me the digs on this Quillan Shepard. Why on earth does he leave her like that? Alone in a place like this to . . . well, to . . .”

“Drive the rest of us a little crazy?”

“Not a little, I’m afraid.”

Joe Turner shook his head. “I can’t answer that. I only know he’s always been strange, though I mean not in a wicked way. He’d go hungry himself to see that someone in need was fed. Did pretty much that after the flood wiped out so many. But he doesn’t seem to see his own wife’s needs.” Joe looked up. “I mean he can’t really, or he wouldn’t leave her, would he?”

“He doesn’t seem dim in other ways.”

“Dim? Good heavens, he’s brilliant. Have him quote you anything sometime. He carries a library in his head.”

“Then maybe it’s her?” There was more hope in Alex’s voice than he intended.

Joe shook his head. “I don’t think so. Whatever the case, I’m afraid we must worship from afar.”

FOURTEEN

The bright side of hardship is that small things give pleasure which might otherwise be overlooked.

—Carina

RIDING JOCK, WITH JACK and Sam in tow, Quillan had gone first to Laramie, where he’d lived with them last. There he learned that they’d moved on. Some thought Rapid City, so he went there and found that they’d been sent on to Cedar Falls. The old caretaker was certain of that, and Quillan found him sharp enough to believe.

Cedar Falls, Iowa, seemed burgeoning and very forward thinking after the Rocky Mountain mining camps. Crystal called itself a city, but even Leadville was backward compared to the sedate white-fenced streets of Cedar Falls. It took asking twice to find the residence he wanted, located next to a squat stone church with a sizeable steeple.

Quillan dismounted before the solid frame house and led Jock and Jack to the neat trough beside the low gate. Sam, too, lapped at the water when Quillan broke the ice from its surface. The gate worked without a squeak, and he passed through and started up the walk. At the door, he paused. He’d invested enough time already to want this over quickly, but his stomach had clutched up, and he gave himself a moment, then knocked.

The door opened, and Quillan looked down on Reverend Shepard for the first time in his life. Had he grown, or had his foster father shrunk with age? Maybe both. He’d been eye to eye with him at fourteen when he left. Now there was a difference of inches as their eyes met and held.

Then the reverend spoke. “Quillan. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

“You might have preferred it that way.”

The gray brows drew together with a deep
V
between them. He shook his head. “I prayed to see you, to speak with you someday.”

Quillan frowned. He wasn’t there because of any prayers this old man had muttered. He looked inside, behind the reverend. Though he’d never seen it, the house seemed much the same as the other. This one had a smell of age, of faint decay he didn’t remember. “Is she here?”

The shoulders sagged; the head nodded. “Your mother’s inside.”

“Not my mother.”

Reverend Shepard waved a hand. “Have it your way.” He turned and motioned Quillan inside.

Quillan told the dog to stay, but the reverend called him in as well. Quillan frowned when the dog slipped in against his order. But it was cold, and he could hardly blame him. The room was small and tidy. Quillan didn’t see Mrs. Shepard anywhere at hand. That was good. He needed a few minutes before he faced her, confronted her.

“May I get you some coffee? You’re a little past bread and milk.”

Quillan nodded. Coffee would be good. But why was it the reverend who offered it instead of her? The old man returned with two cups and they drank in silence. The burden of speech was his, Quillan knew. He was the one who had caused the separation and now ended it.

He stared at the coffee in his cup. The reverend must have a thousand questions, but Quillan’s were the ones that mattered. He may as well get to it. “My mother had a diary. It’s now in my possession.”

The reverend laid a hand on Sam’s head as the animal took his place beside the rocking chair. “I knew nothing of that.”

Quillan was pleased he hadn’t tried to argue mothers again. “She left it with the priest in Placer, who gave it to my wife.”

“Your . . .”

Quillan brushed aside his surprise, then swirled the coffee in his cup. “The events in the diary are different from what I was told.” He glanced up, fixed the old man with his stare. “Not so different in fact, maybe, as insinuation.”

The reverend shook his head. “Quillan . . .”

“Did you know the things she whispered to me? The ugly ways she poisoned me? The twisted words she used to form my nightmares?”

The reverend bit his lower lip. “What are you saying?”

“I thought not.” Quillan looked away. “I don’t remember you being cruel. Just ignorant.”

The reverend’s hand shook as he raised it, but the reprimand died on his lips.

Quillan almost stopped, the look on his foster father’s face almost pitiful enough to stop him. But not quite. “You always talked about helping those in need. But did you? Where was your Christian compassion for my mother? My father?”

As the reverend bowed his head, faint wisps of white hair were visible. “I’m only one man, Quillan. I can’t reach every soul.”

“Did you try?” Quillan hadn’t come here to hurt him. Her maybe, but not the reverend. Now he was so tight he couldn’t stop.

The veins stood up on the hands that folded and unfolded in the old man’s lap. “I spoke the truth to any who would hear it.”

“That would cover faith. What about hope and charity?”

“Is that why you’re here?” The reverend’s eyes were suddenly sharp. “To convict me of my failure?”

Quillan wanted to shout yes, to reach out and sweep the lamp and Bible from the table, to kick holes in the wall and pound his fists into the man before him. He wanted to shake him until his teeth rattled. And then he didn’t. What good would it do?

“I don’t know what brought me here. To learn why, I guess.”

“Why?”

Quillan nodded. “Yes, why.”

“Then come with me.” The reverend stood. Quillan noted the stoop of his back, the bend of arms no longer limber. Though it wasn’t the house he’d lived in, he guessed where they were going. To the room that had been sacrosanctly closed to him all the years of his youth. To the bedroom the reverend shared with his wife.

Reverend Shepard pushed the door open, and Quillan looked in. The woman on the bed couldn’t be Mrs. Shepard. The hair hung in thick white strings; the head rocked and trembled, and when she raised it, there was drool from the side of one sagging lip. But he recognized the eyes.

Their hateful depths even now sent pangs of fear and rage through him. She didn’t know him. But something inside her hated him still. She raised a clawlike hand and squawked, a prolonged guttural noise that set his teeth on edge. She was a shrunken husk filled with malevolence.

Then her hand fell and she began to cry, wrenching sobs and whimpers. Quillan felt himself grow limp, the anger that held him stiff seeping away as she curled into a ball and picked at the coverlet with hands more skeleton than flesh. It both horrified and compelled him.

The reverend went to the side of the bed and brought the blanket over her shoulders. “There, now.” He stroked her hair.

She slapped at him, but it was more defensive than angry, like a wounded animal that bites the hand which mends its hurt. Quillan staggered to the doorway and pushed through to the hall. Forcing deep breaths in and out of his lungs, he clenched his hands at his sides. He didn’t want to pity her. He wanted to blame her, to castigate her. He’d gone there to demand answers, but now . . . He felt the reverend behind him, heard the door softly close.

Quillan cleared his throat. “How long has she been like that?”

“Long.”

Quillan closed his eyes, feeling cheated, discouraged.

The reverend urged him forward with a nudge to his shoulder. “I didn’t want to believe it, of course. The early signs were . . .” He waved his hand. “Not consistent, unsure. She’d known grief, tragedy. The loss of our children was enough to cause instability even in a woman of faith.”

Quillan heard the challenge, knew the reverend was daring him to judge her faith. When he didn’t move from his spot, his foster father led the way back down the hall.

“By the time you left, I suspected more. A year or two later there was no denying it.”

Quillan followed him back to the front room and walked to the window, there resting his sleeve against the frame. “What is it?”

“Some form of insanity.” He caught his chin between thumb and fingers. “They know so little, really.”

“Why isn’t she locked up?”

The reverend didn’t answer.

Quillan turned, and the expression he saw on the man’s face cut through the bitterness he’d carried into that room. “I’m sorry.”

With a sigh, Reverend Shepard sank into a faded horsehair chair. “I am, too. Sometimes I’m tempted to question God’s providence.”

Quillan eyed him a long moment. “Do you? Question it?”

“In my weak moments.”

Quillan swallowed that. The Reverend Shepard himself doubted God. All those sermons, all those words, and underneath his own doubts, his own questions.

“Tell me about your wife. Is she pretty?”

Quillan looked back out the window at the neat and orderly street, cleared of snow that clumped along the sides like old wax. He pictured Carina’s delicate form and features, her hair that rippled like a shining black lake, her skin like custard, smooth and warm. “Yes.”

“Good?”

A viselike tightening in his chest. “Yes.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Not long.” Quillan watched a carriage roll by.

“When you’ve been married long, you’ll know why I don’t have her locked away.”

Quillan turned from the window, and sat across from his foster father. He stared at the old man’s knees. The hand of the clock on the mantel ticked around a quarter face as they sat in silence. He felt cheated. He’d gone to some trouble to find them, to blame them, to accuse. How could he accuse a broken old man and a woman who’d lost her mind?

Quillan threaded his fingers into his hair and leaned his head back against the chair. “I came to confront her, to make her tell me why she’d lied about my parents. I wanted to make her squirm, to hurt her, to pay her back.”

Reverend Shepard lit the lamp and replaced the chimney. “And now?”

Quillan dropped his hands to rest on his thighs. “It wouldn’t do much good, would it?”

“It never does.”

Quillan wanted to ask him why he hadn’t defended him, why he’d taken her word, her side every time. Why he’d left him to her if he suspected, even wondered if there were problems. Why he’d valued the souls of strangers over the one he’d taken into his own home. But as with the other, what good would it do?

Reverend Shepard put the match on the glass plate. “I don’t know much about your mother. I rarely saw her, or Wolf either. They kept to their place on the mountain, living in sin.”

“They were married. By Father Charboneau.”

The reverend raised his brows, then nodded. “I’m glad for that.”

“Removes some of my stain.” Quillan saw it hit home.

“Oh, Quillan. I often thought of you as my own.”

“Only I wasn’t quite.”

He sighed. “Mrs. Shepard didn’t want it. She agreed it was our Christian duty to raise you, but she didn’t want to adopt. Her grief was too great.”

Quillan said nothing.

“I brought her to that godforsaken camp with no sanitation, no medical facilities. Yet when our children died, she never blamed me.”

“She laid it to my account.” Quillan spoke low. He couldn’t tell if the reverend heard or not.

“I’ve never doubted my call. I’ve led countless souls to heaven. I’ve gone where the Lord has sent me and served as faithfully as I could.” The reverend stood and walked to the fireplace. He held one hand to the warmth. “I’ve borne hardship and sorrow and supported others through theirs. I’ve been a voice in the wilderness, and a light in the darkness. I’ve fought the good fight.”