Titans (44 page)

T
he shock at seeing the return address had stunned the breath from her, and a man at his mailbox glanced over at her. “Are you all right, ma'am? May I assist you to a bench?”

Samantha turned to speak to him, but the weight of the Sears and Roebuck catalog and the rest of her correspondence proved too much for the strength of her suddenly weak arms and cascaded to the floor. “
Oh!
” she gasped.

“Here, let me help you,” the man said, bending down to scoop up the mail. “Maybe you'd better sit down. If you don't mind my saying so, you're as white as these envelopes.”

The man's face spun as he placed the restored correspondence into Samantha's arms. Several quick blinks cleared her vision. “Thank you, but I'm perfectly fine,” she said.

Once outside, she realized that she was not fine and sank onto a bench rather than risk the climb to the seat of her wagon. The wind had picked up, and late-afternoon shadows were gathering. Darkness would fall before she arrived at the ranch if she did not get underway soon, and she'd promised Sloan not to be out after sundown. She craved to rip open the letter right there and then, but a bench on the post office lawn was no place to be enlightened of the truth it might contain. She would wait until she got back to the Triple S, where only the walls of the house stood witness to her reaction.

The walls of the empty great room at first heard no outcry and could testify to no sign of emotion from the mistress of the house. Samantha sat motionless in her chair before the fireplace, the letter open in her still hand, the only intrusion into the silence the swish of the pendulum in the stately grandfather clock. Several minutes passed before she could grasp the disclosures in Bridget Mahoney's reply. The facts rolled slowly into her brain like a fragmentation bomb and exploded in order of revelation. Millicent Holloway was her mother… Nathan Holloway was her brother, a twin… and Trevor Waverling was her father…

Samantha let out a cry.

“Señora, what is the matter?”

The gentle voice had come from Consuela, the Singletons' ancient cook. She had caught Samantha with a balled fist pressed to her mouth.

“Have you seen a ghost, señora, a
fantasma
?”

Samantha turned her fraught stare to her. She realized that she had left her chair and wandered away from fire and lamplight into the dusky shadows of the room. “What? Yes, yes, I have, Consuela.”

The woman made the sign of the cross. “God protect you,” she said in Spanish. “Señora, you are the color of milk.” She reached for Samantha's hand, her touch light and cool against her skin. “Let me get you something. A little brandy, no?”

“Yes, that would be good,” Samantha said, dazed, and allowed the small woman to lead her back to her seat.

“A little food on a tray, as well. No?”

“Yes, that, too,” Samantha said to appease her, but she accepted the brandy gratefully. When Consuela had soundlessly disappeared, Samantha reread the letter. She must approach their revelations as she would a science project, as if they were under a microscope, to draw a hypothesis from the facts. Samantha saw no reason to doubt the veracity of Bridget Mahoney's statements. She would begin with the most wonderful disclosure of all: Nathan Holloway, that fine and honorable young man, was her brother… a twin, no less, and she was—the wonder of it!—a
sister
! Nathan had never given a single indication that he had knowledge of their relationship, so from their friendly but impartial dealings and the midwife's description of their separation, Samantha could deduce the Holloways had kept that information from him. The cruelty of it was astounding.

Was Trevor Waverling aware that Samantha Gordon Singleton was his daughter? Nathan had said he'd not known Trevor Waverling existed until last March when his father suddenly appeared on his birthday at the Holloway farm swearing he'd been unaware of his son's birth until a few years before. If Trevor Waverling had made himself known to his son, did it not make sense he would have revealed himself to his daughter?

Yet…

Samantha drank deeply of the brandy and tried to recall the times they'd met, every detail she could remember. She had noticed his strange interest in her at the paleontology lecture back in April, and each time since, she'd been reminded of his comment:
The color of your hair reminds me stunningly of someone I used to know.
Had he a sense that Samantha Gordon was of Millicent Holloway's blood?

Samantha had been in his presence only on three occasions beyond their first meeting. She recalled the afternoon she'd sat with Nathan in Trevor Waverling's office while waiting for the report on her camera. They'd been speaking of the coincidence of their same birth date, now fully understood, when Trevor startled them by asking questions of her adoption. Why would he be interested? The second time they'd met had been at Las Tres Lomas, where Samantha had been aware of Trevor Waverling's discreet but intense scrutiny. Her father had noticed it and seethed.

And finally, their last encounter had been at Billie June and Daniel's marriage reception, Daniel shocked but ecstatic that his employer had accepted his invitation. He had hardly been able to believe it.
I invited him, never dreaming he'd attend,
he'd said.
You'd expect Trevor Waverling to have more highfalutin engagements on his calendar than the wedding reception of an employee who hasn't been on the payroll long.

Billie June had gazed up at him dewy-eyed, and said,
He came because he knows how important you are to the company, Daniel. I keep telling you.

Was Trevor Waverling's interest untoward as her father suspected? Samantha had not recognized it as such. Rather, during the short occasions they'd shared company, she'd found Trevor Waverling charming but bracingly friendly, courteous but not overly attentive. Yet there had been Billie June's remark in the discussion following her and Sloan's wedding.
I do declare I thought I caught a glimpse of Daniel's boss
in a back pew.
And Nathan had said that his father had read her note of condolence over and over.

Was it possible that Trevor Waverling had discovered who she was and chosen to keep quiet about it? Could Samantha's conjectures be based on mistaken impressions? But more important was the question of how she felt about the fact that Trevor Waverling was her father.

Samantha rose from her chair to warm her hands before the fire. What did it matter in the long run? If her real father knew she was his daughter and kept the information his secret, he had his reasons, and if he didn't know her identity, then what would be the point of revealing the truth to him now? She'd learned what she'd longed to know. The questions of her birth had been answered. What advantage would come from disclosing the revelations of Mrs. Mahoney's letter to anyone concerned? Samantha did not wish even to put a thought again to the reaction of her adoptive parents. She had no desire to know her real mother or her stepsiblings. Bridget Mahoney's letter clearly implied that if she had not nursed her, Millicent Holloway might have allowed her to die. Nathan, Samantha would love from afar. She would make a point of becoming an everlasting friend. He need never learn the reason for the birth date they shared in common or of the fact they'd been born of the same set of parents. He'd never hear of his friend's relationship to their half sister, whose death Samantha mourned as deeply as he, or of her legitimate claim to the same grandmother who walked the earth only thirty miles away she'd likely never meet.

Samantha slipped the letter into her skirt pocket. Its disclosures would remain her secret, even from Sloan. He would prefer she let go of what might have been. They were happy as they were. Their family unit was complete. Nothing was gained at the loss of something of equal value, Sloan would say, quoting his father, and in this instance that wisdom most assuredly applied.

Emotionally drained, Samantha sat down again and laid her head back against the ridge of the chair, and it was there that Consuela, bearing in a supper tray, found her later with tears washing down her face.

N
ew York City was ankle deep in snow when Nathan finally located his half brother three days after his arrival. He had weighed the information Leon had given him and decided to try his luck on his first day in the city with Randolph's girlfriend, who was employed as a waitress in a café on the fringes of the Columbia University campus. “Leticia Draper don't work here no more,” he was told by her churlish employer when Nathan walked in on his squabble with a college student over an unpaid bill. When Nathan inquired if he knew where he might find her, the café owner looked at him askance and asked if he looked like a goddamn address book. Accepting that as an answer of no, Nathan left but was chased after by another waitress hurriedly pulling on the coat she'd grabbed to run after him.

“What do you want with Leticia?” she demanded, drawing her coat tight.

Nathan told her of the letter she'd sent his parents.

“So you're Randolph's brother?”

“I am,” Nathan said without explaining the exact relationship. “You know Randolph?”

“Yeah. Leticia lost her job over him.”

“Why?”

“The boss is an ugly bastard to work for. He caught her giving food to your brother when he couldn't pay. Leticia went home to her folks after the boss fired her. They live on a farm outside Albany, but I don't know where it's located.” The girl began to hop on one foot then the other, hugging herself against the cold.

Nathan held out his gloved hand. “I'm mighty grateful to you, miss. You'd better go inside before you get too cold and your boss fires you.”

She gave him a weak smile and shook his hand. “You're nicer than your brother. Frankly, no offense, but I don't know what Leticia sees in him.”

“I'll ask,” Nathan said, offering a grin.

It was too late to take a train to Albany, and he might avoid the trip altogether if Randolph's roommate could help him, so to make the most of the rest of his first full day in New York City, Nathan had hailed a horse-drawn cab to drive him ten blocks to Morningside Heights, an area in upper Manhattan where Columbia University was located. Dropped off at John Jay dormitory, Nathan felt immediately drenched in the august atmosphere of the place. He looked around at the majestic, ivy-draped campus, now shrouded in snow and mist, the book-laden students rushing to class and the professors in their flapping black robes, and he wondered how his brother could have blown it. This was Randolph's element for sure. He had the brass and intelligence to fit in here despite his shame of having no pedigree to boast of. Or at least that was what his family had thought.

“Randolph? Haven't seen him in a week,” his roommate informed him hurriedly, his distracted air suggesting he didn't care. It was Friday, and Nathan had interrupted him as he was packing to leave for the weekend, probably to catch one of the vehicles pulled up outside to take students to the train station.

“I understand he's frequenting opium dens. You have an idea which one?”

The roommate, a slim young man with a lofty air—the perfect bookend for Randolph, Nathan judged—gave him the same look as the owner of the café.
Do I, the son of so-and-so, look like I know the location of opium dens?
The roommate hoisted his suitcase. “Sorry, no. Now if you'll excuse me, I've a train to catch to my parents' place in Connecticut.”

Nathan stepped aside. “Sure,” he said.

The next day, after an abnormally long train ride because of numerous stops and an avalanche of snow that had to be cleared from the track, Nathan made it to Albany, New York, then began the trudge over muddy streets to inquire from shop owners if they knew the whereabouts of the Draper farm. Eventually, in late afternoon, Nathan's cab drew up before a run-down farmhouse with a sagging roof and snow-blown front porch piled with wood and squalid castoffs from the house. An assortment of dogs lying about like rugs stirred themselves to bark at Nathan's approach but were too gripped by the cold to threaten him further. To his relief, Leticia answered his knock, every detail about her unsurprising given her living conditions and the illiterate letter Leon had read to him over the telephone. She was splinter thin, bedraggled, and plain as a broom, clearly enraptured with Randolph, who, it was painfully obvious to Nathan, had taken her for a ride. She told him to look on Mott and Pell Streets in Chinatown and said shyly as he bade her good-bye to return to the cab, “Tell Randy I love him.”

He would, Nathan assured her, not that it would mean a cold bean to his brother.

Late the next afternoon, Nathan found him in the third hot, dank, and foul-smelling den he plowed through, a basement in a Chinese-run laundry tightly sealed to prevent the escape of telltale fumes and to keep drafts away from the lamps that vaporized the opium drug. He'd expected the distilled poppy extract to have a sickly sweet smell like incense, but in every gloomy “joint,” so he'd learned the grubby holes were called, he was assailed by a thick brown smoke like burning tar. He discovered Randolph sleeping off the effects of his binge among other opium smokers lying about in grimy beds attached to the walls like bunks in a slave ship. Beside them were tables spread with the paraphernalia of the opium smoker. At the sound of Nathan's voice, Randolph opened his drug-glazed eyes.

“Oh, God,” he moaned.

“No, just your brother, come to take you home,” Nathan said.

Leon said, “Millicent, I'm going to advertise for a job that calls for overalls. It's the only kind of work I know.”

“I will die from embarrassment if you do,” Millicent said.

“Better than starvation.”

Millicent wrung her hands. “What will our friends think?”

“What will
your
friends think? Mine will think I've finally gone and done the sensible thing. Listen to reason, Millicent. I'm guessing you're nearly broke. To live in the way we do, to pay for Lily's schooling and Randolph's treatment, I've got to go to work.”

“Nathan said he'd pay for Randolph's treatment.”

Leon stared at his wife. Sometimes he couldn't understand why he still loved and needed her, but he felt those feelings growing thin. “Listen to yourself,” he said in disgust. “You say that as if it's no consequence to Nathan, the son you ignored and cast aside, to pay to fix up the son you'd counted on to ‘be in a position to help us.' Isn't that what you said? Well”—Leon rejected that fallacy with a backward wave of his hand—“some
position
he's in!”

Millicent clamped her hands over her ears. “Don't say that. He'll be a new person when he gets out of that place in Dallas.”

“So say you,” Leon said, his lips twisting scornfully, “but
I
say I'm not countin' on Randolph for anything. I'm puttin' that ad in the paper, and
we're
going to pay to jack our son into shape, startin' by sellin' that silly-looking surrey of yours.”

His
JOB WANTED
ad was answered by letter five days into the New Year, 1901. On his park bench, Leon reread it in disbelief, then with tears in his eyes. He had been reading about the new agribusiness conglomerates springing up in the East and wasn't sure he approved of them, but they were the answer to many a down-on-his-luck farmer willing to sell his place to a group of businessmen seeking to buy up vast croplands in order to control farm prices, food processing, and seed production. Leon had received an offer for employment from just such a corporation. It seemed that it had bought a once-upon-a-time wheat farm five miles from Gainesville from the Standard Oil Company. The land had been drilled unsuccessfully for petroleum, and the corporation wished to restore it to wheat production. Was Leon interested in overseeing its revival and serving as land manager of the property? A house was on the premises for his use. The letter included a contact name and address by which to send a telegram if he was interested.

Leon pocketed the letter lest the prankish wind snatch it from his cold fingers before he could reach the Western Union office on Main. Afterward, Leon stopped in for a celebratory soda at the drugstore next door, lips smiling around the straw. Then he walked to the house he occupied with his wife, mindless of the blowing snow that blinded his way. Sometimes, he thought, a man couldn't do better than to wind up where he started.

Millicent was peeling potatoes at the kitchen counter when he blew in the back door. They'd had to let their cook go along with the maid. “You look happy,” she said, the observation sounding resentful. “What has you smiling?”

“I've got a job,” he said.

Her face hardened. “Oh. Doing what?”

“Managin' a wheat farm.”

“You'd stoop to growing someone else's wheat?”

“Haven't I always?”

Millicent fell silent, peeling the potatoes with vigorous strokes. “Where then?”

“Back at our old farm. Standard Oil came up empty. I'm goin' home.”