Firefly (33 page)

"When they found us, we were resting under an old oak tree by the side of the road.  Papa said Ted was guilty, so they hanged him from the tree right there."

Chapter Nineteen

The long lashes descended, closing her eyes to remembered sights, but that could not stop the flood of hot tears.  Nor could the tears halt the words.

"I begged and I screamed and I cried, not just trying to stop them but to cover up the sound of what they did.  I shut my eyes, but nothing drowned out the sounds.  And nothing stopped him.  My father killed my husband."

She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, then took the handkerchief Morgan offered her.  He said nothing.  There was nothing he could say.

Wilhelm Hollstrom was a monster beyond anything Morgan could have imagined.

Julie went on in a frozen, numb little voice.  "It was morning when we got back to the house.  Willy had been born during the night, and the doctor didn't expect either him or Mama to live."

"And of course your father blamed you," Morgan said stiffly, biting down the anger, the hatred, the nausea.  "Oh, God, Julie how could he? That's cold-blooded murder!"

"No, no.  He believed he was right.  He was protecting me.  And later on a man came to town who said Ted had stolen a horse from him, too.  Papa told me all about it."

"Then he lied."

"You don't know that.  You weren't there."

Yet he did know it, as surely as he knew the sun would come up in the east tomorrow, as surely as he knew Julie was entirely blameless.  Gentle, trusting, lonely Julie.  To think of her witnessing a man's death, a brutal, horrible, senseless--he failed to find sufficient words to describe her nightmare ordeal.  And in the grief and shock that followed, she had believed anything her sadistic father told her.

Morgan curbed his rage with effort, because he knew it would do Julie no good.

"I think it's time to clean up around here so you can get home," he said quietly.

"Not yet.  I'm not finished."

"Oh, yes, you are."  He moved his arm to get up, but Julie's hand went to his knee, innocently and yet insistently, and he was paralyzed.

"You said you felt better when you had told me about Amy," Julie reminded him.  "Please, give me the same chance."

He could not refuse her, not when her eyes as well as her voice pleaded with him.  Replacing his arm around her, he pulled her closer.  Very gently, he stroked those fine, loose hairs at her temple, smoothing them back with a rhythmic caress.  Nothing, he knew, could soothe her or ease the pain, but perhaps this gesture would mean something.

Julie sniffled and blew her nose on his handkerchief.

He listened, and he saw.  Her descriptions were brief, but her voice, the tense shivering of her body within the semi-circle of his arm, filled in the details.

It began with Katharine's slow recovery, compounding the guilt Wilhelm had already piled on his daughter.  And later, he claimed that her behavior had shamed and humiliated his family so much that they had to leave Indiana.

"I met Hans shortly after we settled in Minnesota.  He wanted to get married right away, but Mama needed me at home, and there was no room to take Hans in, too.  He had no job and all he knew was farming, so six years ago he set out for Arizona, where he said he would get rich and send for me.

"He hadn't been gone but a few months when I met Stephen.  He was a salesman, with dark hair, bright blue eyes..."

"A real smooth talker, too, I'll bet."

"Yes, he was," she added ruefully.

"You were young, Julie.  You had no one to tell you traveling salesmen have the morals of a jackrabbit."

"But decent men never so much as looked at me!" she exclaimed.  "Mama said I should try not to look so nice, that that was what attracted the wrong men.  I started wearing the spectacles then, but it didn't help."

Though he wanted to comfort her, Morgan realized there was nothing he could say until she had told him everything.  It was, after all, exactly what he had asked for.

"Mama couldn't take the cold winters in Minnesota, so we moved to Kansas City.  There I met a cavalry officer, Lt.  Andrew McWilliams, just like every girl dreams of.  Except that he already had a girl.  A wife, in fact, in St.  Louis."  Now a new element crept into her voice, a sarcasm, a bitterness turned inward.  She believed in her guilt, and that was the worst of it all.

"Julie, I'm sorry," he said quietly, disgusted at how lame the words sounded.

"Sorry?  Why?  It was my own fault for flaunting myself at him."

"You? Flaunt yourself?"  Morgan snorted a bitter laugh.  "Good God, Julie, you don't even know how to flaunt yourself.  Amy used to tease and flirt ten, no a hundred times more than you could ever do, and she was no more wicked than a newborn babe."

"But she didn't attract married soldiers and horse thieves and itinerant peddlers the way I did.  They were wicked, and I had to be wicked, too, if they wanted me."

Her head had been resting on his shoulder; now she let it slip and hang in shame, away from the steady caress of his fingers.

"Hans is the only one who treated me like a...like a good woman.  He respects me and he will make a good husband for me."

The lack of emotion in her statement told Morgan that she had memorized the words, words her father had probably taught her to make her believe in her guilt and shame.  Morgan did not believe any of it.

"That still doesn't explain why you're so afraid of me.  Do you think I'm one of those wicked men?"

What a stupid, stupid question!  Of course she does!
 he told himself angrily. 
You were the town drunk, you threw up in her flowers, you didn't mind letting her see you half naked, and more than once you managed to kiss her.  Why wouldn't she think you wicked?

 But she didn't answer him right away.  Slowly, she got to her feet and walked away from him, twisting the handkerchief around her fingers.  Her hair had come loose, the long braid swinging down the middle of her back with each step.

Did she dare confess to him what she felt? He seemed more inclined to pity her than hate her.  If she revealed her feelings, he might maintain his present opinion, or he might change his mind and think her wanton and shameless.  She had, after all, let him kiss her, and this afternoon, she had permitted him to lock the door and hold her almost intimately on the sofa for a very long time.  Hadn't Mama always said no decent woman let a man touch her?

"Julie, you are not wicked."  When she didn't turn around and he wasn't sure she had heard him, Morgan stood and walked a step or two toward her.  "Men like to make conquests of innocent girls like you, and if you had no one to teach you how to handle them, it is hardly your fault if sometimes there was a little trouble.  And you can't take the blame for everything else, either."

As though they had minds of their own, his fingers reached for her, clasping her thin shoulders to turn her around, then drawing her closer.

"How can I explain away the mistakes of half a lifetime in just a few minutes?" Morgan whispered.  "How can I make you see that you were never to blame? Your father pushed your mother to the ground and it was the fall that brought on her labor, not your actions.  Even in his anger at what you were doing, no decent man would have done that to his wife.  And your mother has been lying to you all this time."

He had thought carefully about telling her; it was not something he let slip because of his emotional reaction to her story.  She needed to hear the truth, just as she had needed to tell the truth.  There was no reason to hide anything any more.

Julie said nothing, though he felt her stiffen slightly in his arms.  He held her exactly as he had held her before, but somehow the feeling was different, stronger, deeper, warmer inside him.  He had to let her go, for more reasons than one.

Leaving one arm loosely around her waist, he guided her back to the sofa and gently pushed her down, though he did not join her.  Nearness to her was doing strange things to him that he was in no condition to deal with now.  Her problems had to come first; he would handle his own later.

"I don't think your mother was ever very sick," he began, feeling his way across uncharted ground.  "Maybe it took her a little longer to recover from Willy's birth than normal, but I'm quite sure she recovered fully."

She searched for the handkerchief she had dropped earlier.  Morgan picked it up and handed it to her, then thrust his hands into his pockets.

"I don't understand," Julie replied.  "I saw her, I watched her every day.  She could hardly walk, and you know how terrible her headaches were."

"No, I don't.  I only know what she
told
me.  And you've seen how much better she is now.  Do you think a concoction of sugar and vinegar and a little bit of whisky is enough to make that dramatic a change in her health if she were really sick?"

She seemed to believe him, or at least if she had any serious doubts about his claims, she hid them well.

"I haven't the faintest idea why she'd want to put on such a monstrous act for nine years, Julie, but she has, and for some reason now she's trying to cast off the role.  She apparently played it quite well; she had your father completely fooled.  She said he hadn't touched her since Willy was born."

"But he was afraid another baby would kill her.  I knew that."

"It was an excuse.  She's perfectly capable, even at her age, of having another baby, and nine years ago she was no different.  But I don't care about her; I care about you.  I can't stand seeing you hurt the way you do all the time.  And I think too much of you to let you go through the rest of your life thinking you were to blame for something that had nothing to do with you."

It was all very logical and made perfect sense.  His charges had the ring of truth.

"Oh, it's all so confusing!" she cried suddenly, startling them both.  "And why would Mama lie to me?  If I didn't cause Willy's birth and she wasn't really ill, then why did I…No, it isn't true.  It can't be."

She was thinking aloud, not speaking to him, Morgan realized, and he felt more uncomfortable than when she had poured out her pain to him.  He could comfort her, but he could not think for her. 

"They hate me," she said quietly, coming to a clear revelation.  "If I am innocent and they hate me, then they are monsters and I am no better, for I am their child."

"No, that's wrong!" Morgan insisted, but he had the feeling she never heard him.  He could stand her acquiescence no longer, yet he felt powerless against the cruelty that had been done to her.  And if he told her the one thing that might make a difference, she would only class him with the other bastards who had used her.

"Stop it!" he ordered.  "For God's sake, how can you give in to it so easily?   What will it take for you to see the truth?  Your mother is a vain, lazy, petty woman who cares for nothing but herself.  Not even you.  It didn't enter her mind that she might be hurting you when she played the invalid.  She only cared about keeping a husband whom she hates out of her bed.  I told you before that it was your father's temper and his violence that brought on Katharine's labor,
not
anything you did.  I'm a doctor, Julie; don't you believe me?"

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