Ashes and Memories (31 page)

For the next hour while she ran the printing press, Emma forced herself to concentrate on the stories she’d accumulated during her travels west with her father. She needed one that would capture the attention of an eastern editor and showcase her writing skills most effectively. But nothing could dispel the feeling of disquiet that had been waiting for her when she woke up this morning.

Daddy would call it journalistic instinct, and he would warn her not to ignore it. But ignore it she did. She had a paper to get out and real news to report. The posse had returned with two prisoners whom Reece evidently intended to hold for trial instead of executing. The way she heard it, he’d promised them leniency in return for information, and no matter his other faults, Reece was undeniably a man of his word.

The papers folded and ready, Emma pushed aside the foreboding in her soul and donned her coat. She tucked the papers under her arm and reluctantly left the warmth of the office.

As she walked the streets, she found to her relief that the town was beginning to stir, and the normalcy helped to dispel the anxiety in her heart. Wagons carrying miners to work rumbled past. Men and women walked along the sidewalks and shopkeepers opened their doors. The sound of hammering reached her from every corner of town.

Her first stop was the hotel. She ought to be able to sell a number of papers and look in on Ralphy at the same time. The other patients had been sent home and the lobby returned to its intended function.

Only Ralphy remained because he had no real home, no one to look after him. Emma had offered to care for him at her place, but right now Ralphy was living in the lap of luxury, occupying one of the hotel’s finest rooms, thanks to Reece’s generosity.

Emma’s throat tightened. She could see the good in Reece, but he was killing it day by day. She could not stay here and watch that happen.

As she’d expected, the dining room was filled with diners at this hour. She hardly made it through the door before she was bombarded by a shouting, jostling crowd, everyone eager to be the first to purchase a newspaper.

A lady in a plumed hat managed to stuff the first dime in her palm and tear a copy from her grip.

“But this is old news,” the woman declared. “You’re a newspaper reporter. Haven’t you heard what happened last night?”

“Why, no,” Emma stuttered, “and even if I had it takes hours to --”

“Mr. MacBride was robbed,” Elias Edwards said with more than a little satisfaction.

“Robbed? When? How --?”

“Why are you asking us?” someone asked in annoyance. “You’re the reporter.”

“Yes, but --”

“He was hurt real bad,” another voice asserted.

“Reece?” Her heart trembled and her blood ran cold.

“Stabbed in the chest three times.”

“I hear he was shot in the gut.”

“Reece?” she asked again past the fear lodged in her throat.

“... don’t hold out much hope....”

Emma dropped the bundle of papers and rushed back out into the brutal cold, her heart pounding with sick fear. Reece hurt? Reece near death? Driven by urgency, she ran up the street, unmindful of the men and women she passed along the way and the curious gazes they shot in her direction. Many of them spoke, but she couldn’t return the gesture, couldn’t think beyond the pounding need to get to him.

The saloon was always quiet this time of the morning, but an ominous dread greeted her as she pushed the front door open and stepped across the threshold. The empty bar room stared at her mutely, and she found it increasingly hard to breathe past the dread in her chest.

Maybe he wasn’t here. Maybe he’d been taken to the doctor. If he were shot or stabbed or if any of the other horrible things she’d heard were true, he must be at death’s door.

Her gaze settled on the open door to the office upstairs, and she moved slowly toward it, mounting the stairs as if she carried an intolerable weight, caught between wanting to know and fearing to find out. She needed to see that things weren’t as bad as she’d heard, but what if they were worse? What if he were dead?

Swallowing hard, Emma forced her morbid thoughts aside as she reached the top of the stairs and hesitated outside the door.

#####

He turned the desk up, setting it on its legs and pushing it into place, careful to position it exactly as it had been before. His papers and belongings lay scattered over the floor. He would replace every one of them in their turn as precisely as the desk.

The shock had worn off, and there was nothing left but silence, silence and a pain so powerful, so explosive he felt as if his skull would break apart from the pressure.

He’d done it before, picked up the pieces and started over. He’d redefined himself, molded himself into someone who couldn’t suffer, couldn’t grieve, someone untouchable.

He’d learned to protect himself emotionally, mentally and physically. Yet each of his defenses had been undermined, and this last breach had rocked the very foundation of his well-ordered world.

The clock had been turned back, and suddenly he felt as if he stood before the ruins of Longwood again, and once again he found himself picking up the pieces of his shattered life. He remembered the pain of learning that he would never see the faces of the people he loved again, a pain so terrible, so incomprehensible his brain had refused to accept it.

No. He covered his ears against the roaring that nearly drove him to his knees. He would not allow the pain to seep into his bones like it had that day so long ago. He would not allow himself to experience that loss again. He had put it behind him.

Nothing had changed, nothing had happened, he told himself with a desperate determination. He would set everything right the only way he knew how. He would silence the voices in his head and the ache in his heart. He would forget and move on.

But not now, not yet. Now he would contemplate what had happened last night and figure out how it could have happened and then he would be able to make sure it never happened again.

He’d been preoccupied with Emma and Ralphy. He’d let himself care briefly, and that one moment of weakness had caused him to let down his guard just long enough. Otherwise he might have realized something wasn’t right the minute he’d stepped into this room last night.

 He reached for the open whiskey bottle on the sideboard, turning it up and drinking deeply, relishing the fire that spread through his aching body. Fatigue gnawed at him, but he ignored it with an effort. There were too many things that had to be done, and he would not leave them to someone else. Not this time.

He studied the debris at his feet, his gaze coming to rest on an old scarred pipe. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and could almost smell the aroma of pipe tobacco, so different from cigar smoke.

“
Train your mind
,” Grandfather would say, touching the end of his pipe to his temple. “
Be smarter than your opponent. Use violence as a last resort. Intelligence is what sets us apart from the animals
.”
 

Reece took another drink from the bottle in his hand.

Grandfather hadn’t understood how brutal life could be. Reece used his mind, and he was usually smarter than his enemies, but violence was the only thing some men understood. Sometimes revenge was the only way to set things right.

His revenge after the war had been rebuilding his world from ashes -- and forgetting. Sometimes you had to just forget in order to go on living. He had been so filled with rage, but there had been no one to punish, no object for his fury.

That was not the case this time. This time there was a target for his wrath -- Garrett. The anger roiled inside him as he thought of what Garrett had done to him. The helplessness, the humiliation burned like fire in his soul. He embraced the anger, allowed it to swell inside him, hoping it would crowd out the pain and horror of memory. He’d been given a second chance to set things right, and he would move heaven and earth if he had to in order to have his vengeance.

Placing the bottle back on the sideboard, Reece lifted his desk chair. He set it right and slid it under the desk, as if his very life depended upon positioning it just so. He’d overturned it as he’d fallen after Garrett hit him with the butt of his rifle. And now the pain exploded in his head as if he’d been struck again.

“Reece.”

The shock of hearing his name spoken so softly, so hesitantly drew him back to the present. Her voice sliced through him like a million tiny knives puncturing his skin. Closing his eyes tightly, he battled the weakness that suffused his being. He didn’t have to turn around to know who had spoken.

Emma.

She stood in the doorway behind him, he knew, her sweet beauty a stark contrast to the endless black hell of memory.

His soul cried out to her, to the comfort she could offer him. But how could he take hold of her comfort when he couldn’t even bear to look at her for fear she might read something in his eyes?

“What do you want?” He’d nearly run to her that morning, he
had
run to her, but he’d come to his senses in time to stop himself, and he knew he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t expect her to share his hell, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her knowing his shame.
 

“I just....”

She didn’t finish whatever she’d meant to say. If he turned and looked at her now, what would he see in those wide blue eyes of hers? Pity? Was it pity that had stolen her words?

He didn’t want her to see him like this -- vulnerable, battered, out of control. She might understand, and he didn’t want her understanding, no matter how much he might need it. He would not lean on her or anyone else.

“
Self-sufficiency should be a man’s goal
,” his father had told him. “
Make sure you never need anyone
.”
 

But he had needed, he had needed so desperately to see his grandfather’s face, to feel the warmth of his mother’s arms, to hear the music of Sarah’s piano. He’d needed it with a terrible desperation, depended upon it.

His father was right. Dependence on anyone -- anything -- could destroy a man. It had nearly destroyed him once. He would not risk it again.

“Go home,” he said, his voice as cold as stone even to his own ears.

“I heard about....”

He stood and faced her, unable to resist any longer. “Come for a story?” he asked, knowing he was being unfair but unable to prevent himself from using anger as a shield. The concern in her gaze touched an aching need deep within him, a bottomless pit of hunger and sorrow, and a pain so black and hopeless he feared it would devour him if he ever took it out and looked at it.

She stood just inside the door wringing her hands, her expression a mask of compassion and horror. Her face seemed paler than usual, drawn, and he realized how he must look.

“I want to help,” she said.

“I don’t need help.” He turned away, unable to look at her. Right now he was terrified of Emma Parker, terrified of the sympathy in her eyes, the caring in her voice. Terrified of the voice inside him that urged him to accept her help, to open his battered soul to her. Nowhere else had he felt the warmth he’d found in her arms, and he craved it.

He was trapped, trapped in his own home. Trapped in his own private hell, yearning for something he could not claim.

He went to stare out the window, gazing at nothing, his vision blurred by the rage and fear and fatigue inside him. He could hear her behind him, stepping into the room, her footsteps light on the carpeted floor. She was not going to give up easily this time, he realized, and he was in no frame of mind to spar with her. Why couldn’t she just leave him alone?

She bent, reaching for something on the floor. It didn’t matter what. He didn’t want her disturbing anything. He would rearrange everything exactly as he wanted it, including himself, exactly as it had been before the robbery -- the attack. It hadn’t been a robbery, he reminded himself. It had been a personal attack on him, an attempt to humiliate him.

Then he saw the object of her attention -- his mother’s portrait. Moving quickly, he reached out, his hand closing over her wrist. She gasped in shock as he drew her roughly away so that she stood before him, the rage in his eyes intended to sear her soul.

“Don’t touch anything,” he ground out. “I told you I don’t need help.”

With that he released her and turned away, walking to the far wall and straightening an oil painting that had been knocked askew. Why didn’t he force her to leave? He could throw her bodily from the room or say things so hurtful she would want to get away from him. What pathetic part of him still dared to hope that somehow she could save him when he knew he would never reach out to her?

“What happened last night?” Her voice trembled slightly, her tone one of concern.

When he looked into her eyes, he saw tenderness and fear. He could tell by the nervous tension in her body that she wanted to reach out to him. And he prayed to God she would not.

“Isn’t that obvious?” he asked caustically enough to keep her at a distance.

Emma took a deep breath, visibly steadying herself, and Reece knew she was preparing for battle.

“No,” she replied. “No, it isn’t obvious.”

“I was attacked and robbed by Garrett and his men,” he said matter-of-factly, hoping his announcement would satisfy her damned curiosity.

He was avoiding the personal items in the middle of the floor, Emma realized as he knelt to pick up a broken water pitcher and tossed it into the trash can beside his desk.

She wanted to cry for the man who knelt on the floor sifting through his papers and belongings and trying so desperately to hold himself together. She didn’t know what had happened to him last night, but she knew it went beyond robbery. If it were only that, he’d be angry and indignant, not injured and fragile as he was now. Right now he seemed as if he were made of glass, as if the slightest glance or word or touch might cause him to shatter.

He was hurt, on the outside as well as the inside. The black, swollen left eye was the least of the damage wrought on his body. He’d received a cut below his mouth and one over his swollen eye. And every time he knelt to pick something up or stretched to reach something, he winced.