Tall, Dark, and Texan (29 page)

Teagen handed Elmo the list addressed to him and began rummaging through the boxes stacked in one corner of the post. Some boxes waited for weeks to be picked up, and Elmo felt no need to organize them. Any newspaper mailed that was less than six months old was considered new. Folks usually untied the twine, read it, then rolled it back up. If they weren’t picked up promptly, the paper would be in shreds by the time they were claimed.

“McMurray?” Elmo yelled as if Teagen were half a mile away. “Can you read what Martha wants here? My sight tends to fade when the sun ain’t shining.”

Teagen took the note. Usually he or Sage printed the list, but Jessie had written in a clear hand. As Teagen read aloud, something nagged at his mind as if he was piecing together a puzzle, but he had no idea what the picture would be.

Elmo wandered off to collect the last few things, but Teagen continued to stare at the writing. Something familiar. A style he’d seen a hundred times. A script he’d read as often as he had his own bold writing.

He focused on Elmo’s name. The
e
had an extra curl at the top and a smooth slash into the
l
.

Teagen froze. It couldn’t be. Somehow the note had been written in Eli’s hand.

That couldn’t be. Eli was dead.

He walked out to his saddlebag and pulled the letter Jessie had brought from his friend that first day she arrived. The
e
and the
l
on Eli’s signature and the first two letters of Elmo’s name were exactly the same. One could have been laid over the other and copied.

Comparing other letters, he had no doubt that the same hand had written both. The same script had written him letters for years. He would have known Eli’s writing anywhere.

He grabbed the bag of supplies and headed home without bothering to say good-bye to Elmo.

At first he tried to tell himself that maybe Eli taught Jessie to write, but that didn’t make sense. He taught both his brothers to write, and their signatures were nothing like his. Mrs. Dickerson put up her students’ papers around her classroom, and no two of them had ever looked alike. Eli’s writing had always shown a flair. Teagen had assumed it was because his friend had been schooled for years longer than many of the children growing up in the West. Most folks he knew in Texas considered themselves educated if they’d made it four or five years in a school.

But Eli hadn’t written the grocery note. Jessie had. Her hand couldn’t look exactly the same. It couldn’t.

Halfway home, he came to the only conclusion that made sense. Jessie wrote both the letter from Eli she delivered and the list. He knew without checking that the writing would be the same on all Eli’s letters he kept stored in the office drawer.

She’d written them all.

She’d lied. He’d told her how he hated lies, and she’d lied again.

He dropped the supplies in the mud room and stormed into the kitchen an hour later. All three women turned around and stared, but he only spoke to his wife.

“Jessie!” he yelled. “We have to talk right now!”

She reached for a towel and said, “All right,” as if he’d asked nicely.

Sage stepped between them. “Lower your voice, Teagen. The girls are upstairs. You’re causing more racket than the storm.”

“I’ll yell if I want. What I have to say is between Jessie and me, so stay out of this, Sage. I’m warning you.”

To his surprise, his little sister didn’t move. “No,” she said. “I know you. When you get angry, we all get out of your way, but not this time. You’ll not bully Jessie.”

Martha raised a skillet. “I agree. For once, I’m stepping in. Teagen, calm down or get ready to hit the ground.” She raised the pan like a weapon.

Teagen had never been so frustrated. He had no intention of hurting Jessie, but he did plan to have it out once and for all about her lies, and no one, not even these two misguided crusaders, was going to interfere. “Get out of my way,” he growled.

To everyone’s surprise, Jessie stepped to his side. “Teagen,” she said with a smile, “calm down. If you want to talk, we need to go someplace where the girls won’t hear you yell.”

She took his hand and tugged him toward the cellar. “Martha says she can’t even hear gunshots down here, so maybe they won’t hear you shout.”

Teagen glared at his sister and the crazy housekeeper. “Lower the door,” he said as he started down the stairs. “What I got to say is between my wife and me. You two stay out.”

Martha wiggled the skillet. “If that girl comes out crying, there’ll be a dent in this pan and you’ll be eating burned gravy while your head heals.”

Sage didn’t say a word, but he got the feeling she felt the same as she slammed the door, almost hitting his head.

He stumbled down the last few steps and moved to a spot where he could stand without hitting a beam. The place was cool and damp and silent. Even as a kid he’d never liked it here, but he was surprised at how organized Martha kept everything.

Jessie sat on a barrel and waited.

He pointed his finger and said the first thought that came into his mind. “You should be afraid.”

“Of you?” She watched him with tenderness. “I know about your temper, Teagen. No matter the volume, I could never be afraid of you.”

He wished he didn’t know the truth. He wished he could go back to the way it was this morning. But she’d shattered all that. She’d lied. And this wasn’t some small lie about nonexistent relatives. This was big. This was about his best friend.

He pulled the letter and the grocery list from his pocket and handed them to her.

Jessie’s gaze changed from trusting to questioning.

“You said you’d never lie to me again.” He surprised himself by not yelling, but his words still seemed to cut her deeply. “Did you write both these?”

She didn’t look away. “I did.”

“You wrote all of Eli’s letters?” He wished he could turn away and not have to look at her as pain filled her face. “Every one?”

“You’ve figured out that I did. I see no point in denying it.”

“Did Eli even know of them . . . or of me and Texas? Did he say he wanted to come here? Did he send you with his last breath?” Teagen didn’t have many people in his life, and all he thought he knew of one had simply vanished.

“He saw the first few letters, but he never read them.” She tilted her head. “I never saw him interested in corresponding with anyone. As for Texas, I’m not sure he knew or cared where it was.”

“And this friendship I had with him all these years. My one friend, the one person I thought I could be totally honest with . . . but it was all a lie.”

A single tear ran down her face. “Not all. I was there, Teagen. I was your friend.”

Anger boiled in his blood. “And then when Eli died, you signed his name to use me. You knew I wouldn’t say no to his last request, so you lied again.”

“Yes.”

“To use me?”

“No,” she answered. “To be with you.”

Teagen slammed his fist against the post between them, sending dust showering from the rafters above. He hated being deceived. For the first time in his life he’d opened himself to someone, and she’d twisted any truth he thought he knew. It had all been a lie. His friendship with Eli, his belief that someone understood him. She’d come here looking for a way out of her trouble, and he’d believed it all. Even when he’d discovered the first lie, he’d been willing to forgive, to understand. But not this time. It was too much. A lie that covered a lifetime was simply too much to forgive.

He slammed his fist against the wood again, not caring that his knuckles bled. Jars of canned fruit clattered off the shelf behind him.

Sage opened the trapdoor. “Teagen!” she shouted as she made it down three steps before she saw Jessie sitting quietly on the barrel. “Oh, I thought you might be hurting her.”

She noticed his hand. “But I see you’re just hurting yourself.” She looked at him as if her big brother had just turned into the village idiot. “Want to tell me why you’re looking like you might kill someone, Teagen?”

“No. Get out.” He paced like a trapped wolf. “I have nothing to say to you or anyone, including my lying wife.” He would have stormed out of the cellar if she hadn’t been blocking the way.

Sage folded her arms. “Have you gone mad? Correction, even madder than usual? I’m not leaving until you tell me why you’re making such a ridiculous claim. If you’ve got rabies, I might as well shoot you now before you bite someone.”

Silence hung in the air for a few minutes before Jessie broke the standoff between the McMurrays. “Teagen just found out I wrote all the letters he thought were from Eli.”

“All of them?” Sage’s eyes widened. “For all those years? The post that came as regular as the seasons was from you?”

Jessie nodded. “For over ten years. I found the book order from Whispering Mountain among a stack of forgotten mail when I first started working at the store. I sent the next stack of books and every order since.”

Sage sat on the steps as if a great drama drew her like a big city stage show. “And you never mentioned you were a woman to Teagen?”

Jessie shook her head. “I signed all Eli’s correspondence. Then, when the letters became more than just orders, I didn’t know how to tell Teagen. He thought he was writing Eli, and I saw no harm in continuing. I never thought there was even a tiny chance that we would meet.”

“So you lied.” Teagen snapped. “With every letter, you lied.”

Sage stared at her brother. “Let me get this straight. You’re mad because Jessie turns out to be this best friend you’ve had for as long as I can remember.” She raised her voice. “Your wife is your best friend.” She threw her hands in the air. “I’m hammering the trap door closed, Teagen. You’ve obviously gone nuts.”

She stormed out and slammed the door. In the silence after the echo, they both heard the latch being shoved closed.

“I guess we’re down here for a while. When Sage gets mad, she tends to stay that way.”

Jessie just watched him.

Teagen forced his breathing to calm. If Sage had been a man, he swore he would have beaten her senseless for being so right. He turned to Jessie. “I hate being lied to. I won’t stand for it.”

She nodded. “I know.”

He realized she did. She knew all about him. She knew his dreams and fears and thoughts since he’d been little more than a kid. For years he’d written everything about his life in letters to not Eli but her.

It was a moment before he looked down and noticed she’d moved to his side and was wiping the blood from his hand with a dish towel. As far back as he could remember, men stepped aside in the face of his anger, but not his Jess.

“You knew I wouldn’t hurt you?”

“Of course I did,” she answered.

“Apparently, you know me better than my sister or Martha.”

“Teagen, my greatest fear, before I saw you, was that you would not be the wonderful, caring man I knew from your letters. I came here because I knew if you were half that man, I’d be safe with you.”

“But I don’t know you,” he realized. “I don’t know you at all.”

He sat on the step and fought the need to pull her close. “Tell me about you, Jessie, and don’t lie. Don’t leave out a single detail if you want me to ever believe you again.”

She closed her eyes. “There’s not much to tell.”

Teagen waited, then ordered, “I want it all, including what Eli was like. I thought I knew the man. Since I was wrong, at least let me see who he really was.”

She hesitated so long, he feared she wouldn’t speak, then she whispered, “I used to hide in the store at night when I was thirteen, because I had nowhere else to go. My parents were good people, but their illness took all we had, and I found myself on the streets. Eli was in his late thirties and drunk most of the time even then. He’d taken a profitable store and run it to the ground by the time I met him.

When he found me, he offered me room and board if I’d clean the place up and run things so he could go out in the evenings. After I learned all he knew, he pretty much stayed gone at night and slept most days. The rest of the time, he read.”

She leaned against Teagen’s shoulder and continued, “The store began to make a profit. When I was almost eighteen, Eli knew I’d find other work eventually, so he told me he wanted to marry me. He was sick by then, pasty white and weak from drink. He said I could have the store after he died if I stayed. He told me he didn’t want a wife, just someone to work. His greatest fear seemed to be that he’d lose the store and have to go back to his mother’s house. He told me once that he’d live on the streets first, but I don’t know if he meant it. He said a lot of things he didn’t mean.”

Teagen listened and tried not to notice how warm her body was against his.

“We married, and I worked hard to make the store the best around. All seemed fine; I had a home and books to read. We’d eat a meal together now and then with our books on the table. I never remember talking to him about much of anything but the store.”

She straightened and said in a voice so low he barely heard, “Then one night he came in early and saw me taking a bath. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me and went to his room. I was too embarrassed to even mention it. I thought he’d forgotten about me, but a few weeks later, he climbed the stairs.”

She stopped.

Teagen wasn’t sure he wanted to hear more, but he knew he had to. He’d asked for this. “Go on.”

Jessie looked up at him with a sadness that twisted his heart. “He pulled the covers off my cot and shoved my gown to my waist. Then he climbed on top of me and hurt me. When he finished, he staggered to his feet, buttoned his trousers, and called me a whore. The next morning he left more money than usual in the cash box. I don’t know if it was because he was drunk or if he felt sorry for what he’d done. I took the cash and hid it under my bed. I don’t know if he meant it for me, but in a strange way it seemed a way to get back at him.