Breath of Dawn, The (36 page)

“You’re younger than Hannah, Markham,” the minister said. “In fact, I expected it would be Quinn who caught your interest.”

Did he see the effect his words had on his daughter?

“And yet you’ve recognized the purity of Hannah’s spirit,” the man continued. “That speaks to the character I saw in you, the trust I placed in you.” His gaze went soft as cream, landing on Hannah.

The man loved his daughter, but Markham wondered if he understood either of the women he’d fathered.

“Markham, I give you Hannah’s hand and my blessing. I call you son.”

His wife’s eyes closed as she lowered her face, gathered herself, and found a smile for her daughter. Hannah rushed into her arms. “Oh, Mama. It’s the best Christmas ever!”

A loud banging at the door interrupted them. Thomas moved to answer, pulling the door open with surprise. “Da.” The minister’s voice was clipped.

“Merry Christmas, son, Hannah, Gwen.”

Markham held himself stiffly. Seeing him, the old man’s face purpled. Markham returned the scowl. He’d expected no less from the man, but his fury was hot and immediate.

“What’s this?” Corlin Reilly gaped at his son, a storm on his brow. “You’d have this felon here and not your own girl? What’s wrong with you?”

“Not now, Da. As always, your timing is terrible.”

“My timing, is it? Do you know your daughter’s married? She’s having a babe.”

The room fell silent, all but the rushing in Markham’s ears. Hannah shriveled in her mother’s arms. Gwen’s face clouded and shone and clouded again.

Thomas drew himself up. “It does not surprise me that Quinn, named by you, married and conceived—if it was in that order—with neither my knowledge nor my blessing.”

It didn’t surprise, but it saddened the man. Markham saw it come over him like a heavy cloak, bowing his shoulders. Did he love his troublesome daughter, even after what she’d done?

“My . . . other daughter, my Hannah . . .” his voice rasped, “will also be married, and Markham has asked and received my blessing.”

Corlin’s eyes widened. “This . . . is God laughing at me. To blind my son with such piety he lies down with fools and liars.”

For that, the man would die.

“Watch your tongue, Da. You’ll not insult Markham in my home.”

“Markham, is it? Were you born with that name, man? Or is it yet another mask you pull over your true face?” Turning once again on his son, he dug the phone from his pocket. “Call Quinn. Tell her to come home. To bring this husband of hers for your
blessing
.”

Thomas stood rigidly, his spine a testament to resistance. “My daughter knows where to find me.”

“Aye.” Corlin cocked his head back. “But why would she?” He shoved his phone into his pocket, turned with one last glare, and left.

Standing in the yard while Bella sniffed out the most special spot to relieve herself, Erin almost jumped out of her skin when her phone rang. Her nerves had been live wires since calling Pops, but she exhaled with relief and delight when she saw who was calling. “Merry Christmas, RaeAnne.”

“And to you, Quinn. I couldn’t let the day go by without wishing you a great one. How’s that peach Morgan?”

Erin laughed. “I can’t wait to call him a peach.”

“You sound happy, even happier than last time.”

“Well, I’m in love. And we’re having a baby.”

“Oh . . . my . . .
goodness
,” RaeAnne screamed. “Congratulations! With my busy job and then John Carter’s taking him away all the time, we never really made that work, but I’m just as happy as can be for you.”

Maybe it was hearing RaeAnne’s voice or something in the words, but Erin suddenly imagined Vera, pregnant, with the love of her life walking out. No wonder the woman never said his name again. No wonder she hid the journal where it would be forgotten and stuffed the locket in a mousehole. That wasn’t crazy, it was just sad.

“Quinn?”

“I’m sorry, I . . .” She cleared the emotion from her voice. “RaeAnne, I’m wondering if we did the right thing, reading the journal, learning who your dad is. I’m not sure Vera wanted that.”

“I’m sure she didn’t.” RaeAnne sobered. “But I’m in this too.” Emotion came thickly through the phone. “You know how many Christmases I spent wondering what my dad would have given me? I even made him presents in school. In case that was the year he’d show up.”

“Oh, RaeAnne.”

“My mother couldn’t keep him in real life, but where I was concerned, she kept him all to herself.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Maybe he didn’t want me. Or maybe he didn’t have the chance. But all these years later, I still want him. Or the possibility of him.” RaeAnne sniffled. “The truth is, not having him, not understanding what happened between them, is the real reason I don’t have
kids. I couldn’t see how to do it right when I didn’t understand what went so wrong.”

Erin closed her eyes, getting it so deeply it hurt. “We’ll do it, then. Just as soon as we can.”

“You’re situation’s still messy?”

“Close to a solution, I pray.”

“Me too, sugar. And, Quinn . . . ? I am
so
happy for you and Morgan. And the baby. Don’t let anything get in the way.”

“I won’t.” If she could help it.

Disconnecting, she continued to the stable, where Rick had guessed she’d find Noelle. With Bella curiously sniffing everything, she went inside. It smelled sweet with hay and looked as clean and orderly as Rick and Noelle’s, everything in its place, tended and tidy. She felt the wholesomeness and understood how people loved the rural life. Maybe it touched that old desire for a horse of her own, though now she also understood why her father didn’t want to take it on. If only he hadn’t left her afraid.

At one of the end stalls, Noelle ran her hand over a stately horse’s jet-black cheek, talking sweetly, as if she didn’t get enough horse time at home. In the last month, she’d started to show but still stood tall and slender, her hair a silky veil over her shoulders. It slid to the side when she turned her head and smiled. “Lots of excitement this morning.”

Erin smiled back. “I expected Morgan to be happy but hadn’t anticipated quite that enthusiasm.”

Noelle’s eyes warmed. “No one’s crazy for babies like Morgan. Oh!”

“What?”

“Put your hand here.”

Erin pressed her hand on Noelle’s sweater and felt a tiny flick. She drew in her breath. “Was that—”

“It was.” Noelle beamed. “Wait until you feel it from the inside.”

Still astonished by the test results, even though pregnancy happened all the time and was the normal course of things, she couldn’t help feeling that someone living inside her was too weird to think about. “I guess I’ll ease into the whole idea.”

“Hmm.” Noelle’s smile turned knowing. “Hold on to that dream.”

Laughing, she said, “Ludicrous, right?” Thinking of Morgan’s face as the gift sank in, she suspected few things would ever be humdrum. “It almost feels like my own life is just beginning, as though everything before was a strange dream, and now I’m awake.”

“And Morgan’s awake. But his was a nightmare. Thank you for healing him.”

“I only pointed the way. He and God did the work.”

M
organ leaned against the kitchen wall as Rick and his dad disconnected the old range and attempted to install the new. It didn’t require three, and he’d have been little use anyway. He allowed the experts in their fields to perform those tasks. And given the difficulty they were having, he saw no reason to change that policy.

“Have anything to offer?” Hank crooked his head toward him.

“No. Looks like you two have it covered.”

“His mind’s on one thing only,” Rick said.

“Pretty much.” Hours later, it was still sinking in. These two thought it preening, and sure there was a little, but every time he thought of Erin carrying life inside her, it nearly brought him to his knees. Livie was proof enough of that miracle.

It also exponentially increased the stakes. His meeting with the CEO of the Asian company Denise had selected for their next consult wasn’t scheduled for two days. But the guy was in New York the whole week. Maybe they could move it up. And then he’d see William sooner, and resolve Erin’s trouble sooner. He didn’t want his child experiencing her fear and uncertainty, didn’t want Erin bearing anything more than she had to.

Though it was Christmas, he called Denise and, sadly, reached her.

“Yes, Morgan.”

He didn’t apologize for interrupting anything that might not be happening, just said, “Any chance we can move my meeting with Mr. Funaki to sometime tomorrow? I’d like to handle some things in New York as soon as possible.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Before his mother’s stove was installed, she called back. He would meet Mr. Funaki over dinner tomorrow night. Reservations were made. She had sent him all pertinent details. He said, “You know you’re the greatest, right?”

“You know it too. Merry Christmas.”

Laughing softly, he checked the information she sent shortly after. His morning flight might give him enough time to meet with William first. He didn’t expect clear sailing, but he’d breathe easier when all this was behind them.

“You’re talking to him tomorrow?” Erin said with a hitch in her diaphragm when Morgan explained his change of plans. She appreciated his motivation but regretted his losing time with his family. They’d scarcely finished Christmas dinner, and she knew his sisters wanted the next few days to reconnect.

She bit her lip. “Should I go with you?”

Morgan tipped his head. “You can if you want. But it might be better to let me present the situation first. Let William take a look at it all before we involve you.”

“I am involved, Morgan. It’s you who shouldn’t be.”

He smiled. “I’ll be there on business already. Talking with William will simply get the ball rolling.” The words came too lightly.

She narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you saying?”

Realizing she wasn’t fooled, he drew a slow breath. “Worst-case scenario, when he contacts the FBI, they could issue a warrant for your arrest. As an officer of the law, William would be obligated to produce you.”

Her mouth fell slack. “Seriously?”

“I said worst case. If you’re not there, it’s a nonissue.”

She slumped against the piano in the music room, where last night she’d felt radiant with joy. Suddenly, missing family time seemed small.

“I don’t think that will happen. William is highly respected and feared. If the feds can get what they want without having to engage him in court, it would be the better part of valor.”

“What will he do?”

“I don’t know exactly. I need to give him the Cayman account information, and he’ll use it to your benefit.”

Respected and feared or not, how much could he do? She took a pad and paper from the bookshelf drawer, wrote the account number, passwords, everything.

He raised his brows. “You memorized it?”

“Anything else would have been careless.” She tucked the hair behind her ear. “The money was God’s. I didn’t want anyone finding it before I made it right.”

“You’re a marvel.”

“Well, go keep your marvel out of jail.”

“Yeah.” He took her hands and kissed her. “I’m a bit of a marvel myself.”

Learning Quinn was married and expecting obliterated the beauty Hannah had briefly revealed. She’d become a whining shrew even her mother tolerated with difficulty. Thomas had walled himself off in his study to prepare a sermon he hoped would still the waters of the storm that could arise. Markham had no intention of weathering it. He didn’t need their acceptance. All he needed he could get from the old man—access to Quinn.
Take it. Take him. Break him.

He shook his head, surprised to hear the voice outside Quinn’s house where it first insinuated. Maybe a half-life on the drug. Didn’t they claim it caused flashbacks? Or had the voice come before he broke the glass? That seemed the order when he thought back, though it didn’t matter.

“Markham?” A sweetness entered Hannah’s tone when she said his name.

She was trying. Part of him understood there was simply too much bitterness, a critical mass that became undissolvable by even floods of tears.

“What are you doing?”

He said, “I have to go out.”

“Why?”

He forced the irritation out of his response. “Have I asked you to explain every move you make?”

“No.” She shrank in. “I’m sorry.”

As though sorry mattered. “I won’t be long.”
Take him. Break him. Make him pay.

It was almost a serenade as he drove, when he parked, and while he closed in on his quarry. Why had he hated hunting? There was no exhilaration to compare—when it wasn’t dumb animals, but a deserving prey.

What had he done to earn the old man’s vitriol? Nothing. He’d spoken no harsh word, taken not one cent from the skinflint’s fist. The old rebel had formed an opinion from his own wasted soul—and Quinn’s whispers no doubt. How close they were, the outcasts, misfits, miscreants.
Break them. Break them both.

He shook the voice away. What he did now must be his choice, no one else telling him what to do. No orders. Never again. Sweet silence seeped in and with it a clarity of purpose on this cold, clear day.

As retribution coursed through him like quicksilver in his veins, Markham crept up behind the old man hunkered on the shore between his small house and the Fall River. A fishing pole hung idly in the half-frozen flow, as Corlin hollered into his phone. “Quinn, darlin’, your father’s a horse’s rump and your mother never grew a backbone. If you don’t speak sense to your sister, she’ll marry that rotted soul. And mark my words, he’ll be acting the maggot and her too simple to see.”

Cold fire turned the silver to steel as Markham slowly bent and gripped a rock.

“I’ve tried, lass. You know I have. On your grandmother’s
sainted soul, I’ve tried. They have less an ear for me than you.” As the old man listened to Quinn on the phone, Markham raised the rock.

“Aye, well, the devil takes his due. You’re well away from here, my girl. And maybe you should stay. But know I love you with all my heart.” He dabbed a tear. “Aye, lass. Aye.”

As Corlin closed the phone and held it loosely in his palm, Markham tightened his muscles and struck.

Wishing badly that Morgan was there to discuss it, Erin pocketed her phone and looked across the kitchen at Celia.

“Something wrong?”

“Yes, and I don’t know what to do.”

Celia listened, head cocked, while her daughters worked around them in a synchrony of kitchen chores. They all heard as she explained her grandfather’s request, but they seemed to realize it was Celia’s opinion she sought. Erin spread her hands. “I want to help, but I’m the last person Hannah would listen to. She truly hates me.”

Surprisingly, Celia didn’t offer a typical rebuttal, like “Surely not.” She said, “Frustrating, but you can’t walk through closed doors. From what you’ve said, Hannah locked this one a long time ago.”

Erin looked at Morgan’s sisters. Although they worked quietly—amazing given their normal volume—there were looks and murmurs and genial interplay she’d never had with Hannah. And what about her parents? If Morgan was right, and they built a world around Hannah’s limitations, where did that leave an eager, precocious child?

She began to suspect they not only hadn’t planned the interruption of their myth, they hadn’t wanted her rocking Hannah’s boat. Why else would every argument have gone Hannah’s way, even when it had to be obvious she’d been at fault? She remembered times when her grandparents pointed out inequities and were brushed aside or silenced. After Grandma Pearl went to heaven, Pops kept up the fight, fueling the war.

“My father gave his blessing on their marriage,” she told Celia,
feeling hurt and bewildered. “Even now.” How could she penetrate a myopia that saw no further than his own mindset?

“Erin, to recognize Markham’s guilt, he’d have to see his own. How much easier to believe God’s miracle got blocked by unbelief than to admit he was wrong.”

“But the court proved it.”

“A worldly institution that sometimes gets it wrong. Jesus was tried and convicted and put to death as a criminal.”

“Markham probably thinks it’s one and the same.” She sighed. “I hate feeling helpless.”

Seeing her distress, Celia said, “If you’ll forgive me another maxim, when water can’t flow one way, it finds another.”

In the bacon-and-onion-scented kitchen, she thought about that. She could do nothing for Hannah, but knowing Markham and her sister were with her parents, preparing to wed, there was someone she could help. “Celia, could Livie stay with you if I left for a couple days?”

“Yes, of course, but I thought you couldn’t do anything.”

“I can’t help my sister. But there’s a friend who needs something in Juniper Falls, and I may not get another chance.” Morgan had left for New York not an hour before, but she had the prepaid Visa cards he’d given her. “If I get this coordinated, could someone give me a ride to the airport?”

Celia looked troubled but nodded. “I’m sure someone could.”

Erin went into the music room and phoned RaeAnne. “I’m buying you a plane ticket. Get ready to meet me in Denver.”

Morgan tried calling Erin to say he’d landed and was on his way to meet William. There was no reason to talk to her. He simply wanted to reassure her one more time. Or maybe he only wanted to hear her voice. When she didn’t answer, he called Noelle.