Mittman, Stephanie (26 page)

"I
guess I'm mad at me," she admitted. "And you're handy."

He
took her chin in his hand and raised her head until it was impossible not to
look him in those cool gray eyes. The late morning sun glinted off his dark
blond hair,
reminding her of their bath in the warm water hole.

"Don't
you never be mad at yourself, Mary Grace O'Reilly. I can't believe in your
whole life you ever did nothin' that you couldn't be proud of. Givin' away your
baby wasn't your doin', and lovin' a man ain't no sin."

She
pulled her eyes away from his. "Loving that one was," she said
quietly.

He
was silent for a minute and then, just as softly as she had spoken, he told
her, "I can't guess at what you mean. You're gonna have to tell me, Miss
O'Reilly."

She
missed the sound of Sweet Mary on his lips. It was her own fault, just like
everything else in her life. She just kept getting what she deserved. From the
first day she'd rolled up the waistband of her plaid uniform and her father had
caught sight of her knees, she'd been learning about the price of sin. She'd
had trouble sitting down for three full days after he'd taken his strap to her
bottom.

And
every misstep since, great or small, had cost her. And now Sloan was asking her
about the most costly mistake of all.

"It
isn't easy," she started. "There isn't a soul on the face of this
earth who knows this story except my baby's father and my parish priest."

His
hand touched her shoulder so gently she had to look down to see that it was him
and not the baby. "If you're telling the truth about your fall, and I
believe you are, there ain't a soul in this world who knows anything about you,
and if you want, you can leave it that way."

It
was true. If she pretended it never happened, no one would be any the wiser. If
she pretended. But then there would have been no baby. And to deny the child
would hurt infinitely more than the humiliation.

"I
had a baby," she said, feeling the warm little body
she carried
behind her and finding courage there. "I was unmarried, and the father of
the baby wouldn't marry me."

"Wouldn't
your father force him? What about all those brothers?"

"No
one knew who the father was. Except me. And Father Kenney. He was the one who
convinced me that it was my sin to bear and to bear it alone if I really loved
the father and the church."

"But
why? Why didn't he go to the man and force him to give the child his name? And
the father himself? Why would he let his flesh and blood be given away?"

"He'd
have had to give up everything he believed in, everything he'd worked for,
bring dishonor and disgrace on his family, his church. And what would it have
helped?"

"What
would it have helped?" Sloan said, barely controlling his voice.
"You. It woulda helped you."

"I
thought I was doing the right thing, the pious thing, the holy thing...."

His
eyes were searching her face, trying to read what she wasn't saying. Behind his
questioning gaze was a tenderness she felt she didn't deserve. Not after all
the mistakes she'd made.

"How
could you have thought it was the right thing? Givin' a child no dad?"
There was no accusation in his voice, only confusion and a genuine desire to
understand.

"Because
it could have hurt so many other people, and the baby wasn't born yet, and he
was just something growing inside me that I couldn't even feel yet,
and..."

"And
when you could?"

It
was the question she'd asked herself a hundred times, a million times, in the
last thirteen years. When
the baby was real, why hadn't she been brave enough to shout the truth from the
rooftops?

"By
then it was too late."

"How
old did you say you were?" he asked.

"Fifteen
when he was born. Almost fifteen and a half." She remembered a time when
she was so young that ages were measured in half years, quarter years, almost
years. Seven and a half. Nine and three quarters. Almost fourteen. That was
when it had ended. After she'd turned fifteen.

"There's
something you ain't telling me, Sweet Mary, and that's all right. Now ain't the
time." He swept his hand across the landscape. "And this ain't the
place."

"Sloan,"
she said, putting her hand on his forearm and taking a deep breath, "I'm
sorry. I wish things had been different."

"Don't
see as how they could be any more changed for you than they already are, Mary
Grace. Maybe you'd be best off just puttin' your lessons behind you and moving
on."

"Until
you, I hadn't been with a man since that time. I haven't been to church, nor
back home. I meant to keep it that way for the rest of my life."

"And
now?"

"Now
everything is mixed up. Even the ground I walk on has shifted. I don't know
anymore where the mines are hidden."

"The
mines?"

"Landmines.
I don't know where it's safe. I had my future mapped out to avoid any more pain
or hurt. I knew what I was supposed to do, and I was reconciled to following
the rules."

"Reconciled
ain't no way to live, Sweet Mary. It's only how you mark time till you
die."

"Maybe
I have died. Did I? Is any of this real? The
Tates, Ben, you?" She reached out
and touched him gently on the cheek as if checking to make sure he still
existed. "It's like I've been in a dream since I landed in the
river...."

"Well,"
he said, looking past her. "It just turned into a nightmare."

"What?"
she asked.

He
took several steps to the right, dragging Mary Grace with him.

"Oh
my God," she whispered. "They're here, aren't they?"

"Down
below," he answered. "About an hour, I'd say. We've got about an
hour."

***

They
trod silently, Mary Grace following in Sloan's footsteps beneath the blessed
shade of the tall trees that covered the mountains they now crawled over. The
pines concealed them and kept them cool as they searched for a place to hide.
Several times Sloan turned around and asked her with his eyes if she was all
right. There was fear in his eyes as he looked at her and Ben, and she knew he
wasn't afraid for himself.

After
what seemed like hours, Sloan signaled for her to stop and wait, and she and
Ben huddled against the trunk of a tree and prayed. She watched him limp
cautiously toward a little cabin, his knife in his hand, ready for anything.
The smell of smoke lingered in the air, and fresh wash hung on a line, almost
horizontal in the strong breeze. The outhouse door stood ajar, fumes rising
from it and fouling the air.

It
was a miner's cabin. With any luck, Sloan had said, the occupant would be out
somewhere hoping to strike it rich. He peered in the little window, so sooty
that from where she stood Mary Grace couldn't see
through it at all. Then he went
around to the door and knocked.

Finally,
he motioned to Mary Grace to come ahead, and she followed him into the dim
cabin, the baby doing some sort of dance in his sling behind her.

A
loaf of bread sat on the table. Her mouth watered. Sloan cut them each a chunk
with his knife, and her hand trembled as she raised it to her mouth. Never had
bread tasted so good.

With
a heel of the bread in each hand, Ben was lifted out of the pouch behind Mary
Grace and set on the floor. He happily stuffed his mouth with first one fist
and then the other. Mary Grace worked her way around one side of the cabin,
gathering food and delighting in the small niceties of life: a bar of soap, a
straight razor, a shaving brush.

A
part of her registered the crudeness of the shack, the sparce furnishings, and
yet, amazingly, she looked around the cabin and only one word came to mind.

Civilization.
Oh, they hadn't made it to a town yet, but here someone lived like a human
being, not an animal. He drank water from a cup, not a canteen; he slept in a
bed, not on the ground. He wasn't afraid to light a fire when he was cold, and
he had a change of clothes and a door on his john, even if it was outdoors.

Around
her, Sloan searched in drawers, under the bed, and in the corners of the little
house. He cheered at finding some bullets, bemoaned the lack of weapons. Then
he slumped down on the narrow cot dejectedly, refusing the bread Mary Grace
offered him.

"I'm
sorry," he said simply after a while. "I dragged you to hell and
back, and you're no safer than when I found you."

"Of
course we're safer," she said. "We're with you." He shook his
head and touched her nose, tracing
lines between her freckles. His hand
wandered over her cheeks and rubbed her bottom lip. "We'll have to split
up," he told her. "I'll divert them while you take Ben and try to get
to town."

He
was offering himself as bait. Not only couldn't she face the possibility that
he would get hurt, she didn't believe for a minute it would work.

"I
figure I can get 'em to follow me and keep 'em busy long enough for you
to..."

It
was insane. He didn't even have a goddamn weapon. And she wasn't going to let
him get himself killed on her account. Regardless of how she felt about him—and
she refused to even think about that, especially now—she was not about to
willingly incur any more guilt. She had enough on her plate already.

"Well,
figure again. You can't use yourself as bait for Mason Tate. He'll kill you.
For God's sake, you stole his nephew."

"We
got one thing to consider, Miss O'Reilly, and that's Ben's safety." They
both looked at the child, rolling around on the floor, the bread still wadded
in his mouth, one hand playing with his toes, a constant stream of gurgling
coming from his lips.

"No,"
she argued. Even if he was doing it strictly for Ben, there had to be another
way. A way with less dire consequences. A way that at least offered them some
hope of getting all three of them out alive. She could only think of one.
"There isn't just Ben's safety to consider. If I was to run, and Mason
Tate found me, he and his brothers would rape and murder me." Sloan opened
his mouth, but she continued. "They would. You know it. But if I stay here
with Ben..."

"But
your way they won't even have to go looking for you. You'll be waiting for them
and once they get their hands on you and my son there's no telling what
they'll do. And
I'd rather be dead than let them touch you or take Ben and have him grow up to
be just like them."

"Well,
if we use your plan, they'll no doubt catch up to you and kill you. So, you're
dead, which doesn't seem to worry you much, and Ben and I are back with the
Tates. Only now, of course, he's Horace again, and if they let me live, I'm
their moll, or whatever they call the bad guy's woman. I can't leave Ben—I mean
Horace—so I am forced into a life of crime, as is the baby, who grows up to be
the spitting image of his uncles, in looks and in deed."

"Don't
you think he favors me, at all?" Sloan asked, picking up the baby and
holding him beside his face. There was not a feature they had in common, except
in their number—two eyes, one nose, one mouth. Sloan's blond hair contrasted
with the baby's dark down, and even though they were both smiling at her
expectantly, they couldn't have looked less alike.

But
if she were to tell him, tell him she thought that not only didn't the baby
look like him, but in her opinion, probably didn't have any relation to him,
what good would it do? She didn't really believe that would convince him to
abandon them and save his own life. And even if it did, at what cost? Being
Ben's father seemed to mean so much to him. And if she were being totally
honest with herself... Oh hell, this was no time for honesty.

"He
favors you some," she hedged. "Although the eyes are definitely
Emily's. Still, with you dead, Ben's future is forever linked to the Tates.
He'll either be an outlaw or dead."

"You
sure can paint a picture that's an undertaker's dream, Miss O'Reilly. I just
know you've got a plan of your own. What're you waitin' for?" He busied
himself
checking what else the cabin had to offer, with more than an occasional look
out the dirty window or through the open door.

It
was a long shot, but what choice did they have? Here they were, holed up in a
cabin with no weapons against three men, each with his own agenda and no
conscience to appeal to. If only Sloan would agree, they had a chance, albeit a
small one, to come out of this alive.

"OK,"
she said. "You tie up Ben and me and leave us in this cabin. Then you take
off on foot for Jerome. When Ben's uncles get here, I say you left us and took
off on a horse after Ben got bitten and you didn't want to hang around keeping
him still. I keep them here as long as I can, and then I go back with them to
their place."

"So
far I don't see how this is any improvement over my plan. You jump in a puddle
and crack yer skull, or you jump in the ocean and drown. Either way, you wind
up wet and worse." He was rooting through a stack of cans in a corner of
the cabin. "You just prefer they all have ya on the bed instead of the
ground?"