The Great Alone (71 page)

“No!” Protectively she covered her stomach with her hands, a look of stunned horror on her face.

“Damn it! You do as I say!” Infuriated by her refusal, he hurled the glass at her. She dodged it and it hit the wall behind her head, shattering and spraying glass and liquor in all directions.

“No. No, I won’t!”

“Then, by God, I’ll beat it out of you!” In one long stride, he was within striking distance. She tried to elude the backhanded swing of his hand, but he managed to land a glancing blow to the side of her head. He’d put his strength into the swing, and the force of it sent her staggering against the cookstove.

He grabbed her by the arm so he could turn her around and hit her again. But as he pulled her around, he had a brief glimpse of a large iron skillet in her hands. The next thing he knew, pain exploded alongside his face and head. He reeled from it, his head ringing, white spots flashing before his eyes. As he tried to shake off the dazing effects of the blow, he saw Nadia bolt out the back door and staggered after her.

With a rhythmic swing of her hoe, Eva weeded between the rows in the vegetable garden behind her grandfather’s house. Her face was hidden by the long straw brim of her poke bonnet, shaped like a coal scuttle. Few thoughts crossed her mind when she worked with the soil. In the garden, she forgot all her cares and worries, and all the deep-seated rancor she’d accumulated in her relatively young life.

Somewhere down the street, a door slammed. She heard it slam a second time. The noise was almost immediately followed by a cry of alarm—a woman’s cry. Eva straightened, frowning as she turned to look in the direction of her sister’s house. It had sounded like Nadia’s voice. She wondered whether Gabe was beating her again, and unconsciously tightened her grip on the hoe’s wooden handle.

At first she didn’t see the woman running across the backyards of the abandoned houses between them, her view obstructed by the tunnel-like sides of her bonnet’s long brim. Then Nadia ran into her vision and cast a frightened look over her shoulder. Eva turned her head slightly and saw that Gabe Blackwood was chasing her sister. She had never known Nadia to run from him before. But she’d never been pregnant before, either, Eva remembered, and dropped the hoe to run to her sister’s aid.

“Help me, Eva,” she sobbed. “He wants to kill my baby.”

Aware how rapidly Gabe was closing, Eva grabbed her sister’s arm and pushed her toward the back door. “Quick. Into the house!”

She followed on Nadia’s heels. As she dashed through the opening, she heard the thud of his footstep on the first step. Nadia didn’t stop running once she was inside but continued on through the kitchen, heading toward the front of the house. Eva turned to shut and bar the door, but she didn’t get it closed in time. Gabe pushed on it from the outside while Eva strained, throwing all her weight against the door to keep him from opening it.

“Grandpa!” she yelled.

The sudden hard shove from Gabe was more than Eva could withstand. The door burst open, its force almost catapulting her backwards. Behind her Nadia screamed as Gabe came charging into the house, one side of his face all red and swollen. Eva quickly placed herself in his path.

“No! Leave her alone!” When she tried to stop him, he shrugged her aside as easily as he’d shoved open the door.

He charged by her into the front parlor after Nadia. Eva ran after him, reaching the doorway as he caught up with her sister. Nadia cried out in fear and struggled to break free of his hold. It was all happening too fast for her aged grandfather, who was only now pushing out of his chair.

“Here! What is this?” he demanded.

But Gabe took no notice of him as he slapped Nadia across the face. “You’ll never run from me again,” he growled and lifted his hand to hit her again.

Eva saw the blood that trickled from a corner of her sister’s mouth. “No!” she cried, but her feet seemed to be rooted to the floor.

Her grandfather grabbed Gabe from behind. With his height and weight, he couldn’t be so easily shrugged aside. Gabe was forced to release Nadia and turn to meet this new opposition. “Stay out of this, old man,” he warned as Wolf grappled with him, straining valiantly to match Gabe’s strength.

“You will not strike my granddaughter when she is in this house!” he shouted, his face reddening with the effort of the struggle.

“I’ll do as I damn please.”

Suddenly her grandfather’s mouth opened in a gasp of pain and shock. He clutched at his chest and turned his blue gaze on Eva in a wide-eyed plea. She didn’t know what was wrong. She hadn’t seen Gabe strike him. His legs seemed to give out as he slowly crumpled to the floor. Gabe stood over him, his expression registering surprise as well.

“Grandpa!” Seeing him lying motionless on the floor seemed to break the paralysis that had gripped her. Eva ran to where he lay and knelt beside him, impatiently loosening the bonnet ribbon and pushing it off her head. “Grandpa, what’s wrong?” She touched him, but he didn’t move.

Nadia crept up beside her, and Eva was vaguely conscious that his collapse seemed to have checked Gabe’s attack. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Eva gazed bewilderedly at her grandfather, unable to find a mark on him, although his lips were turning a funny shade of blue.

Nadia held her hand close to his nose and mouth. “H isn’t breathing.” Hurriedly she searched for the pulse in his neck, then turned her glance at Eva. “I think he’s dead.”

“No.” Eva pressed an ear to his chest and listened intently for the faintest sound, but Gabe chose that moment to walk away from the body, and the sound of his footsteps drowned out any other. Then he halted, and there was stillness once again in the room. But Eva could hear no heartbeat. Pain choked her throat. She straightened and gazed at her sister, tears welling in her eyes.

“Is he dead?” Gabe asked.

Stung by the indifference in his voice, Eva glared at him through her tears. “You killed him.” Her hoarse accusation seemed to ring through the room.

The one man who had been good to her, who had never cared how homely she was but loved her anyway—the one man who had sacrificed so much for her—was dead. There would be no others like him. A hatred for all men was now firmly embedded in her soul.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Gabe Blackwood dismissed the possibility that he was to blame for Wolf Tarakanov’s death. “I didn’t lay a hand on him. He was an old man. His heart probably just gave out on him.” In his hand, he held a silver egg that he’d taken from the curio cabinet on the wall. Its glass door stood ajar. He glanced at the other gilded eggs displayed in the case. “Did these belong to your grandfather?”

“Yes. He made them.” Eva rose angrily to her feet, resenting that he would handle any of her grandfather’s possessions.

“That’s right. He was a silversmith,” Gabe mused and glanced thoughtfully around the room, taking in the silver ikon of the Holy Virgin, the silver candleholders on the mantel, and the shiny silver samovar on a side table—a few of the countless items her grandfather’s hands had wrought for his own personal enjoyment and never offered for sale in his shop, items that Eva had faithfully kept polished and gleaming as a way of showing her love and devotion to her grandfather. “My God, there’s a fortune in this room.”

Her fear of him was forgotten as she stalked across the room and grabbed at the egg in his hand, but he pulled his hand back before she could snatch it from him. “It doesn’t belong to you. Put it back,” she ordered.

“Don’t be a fool. We have to get everything of value out of this house before anyone finds out your grandfather’s dead,” he snapped impatiently. “You know what happened when your father died. His creditors took everything and left you with nothing. Do you want that to happen again?”

Hesitating, Eva turned to look at all the things that had meant so much to him. “Grandpa would have wanted me and Nadia to have them,” she murmured.

“If you leave them here, it isn’t going to matter what he might have wanted, because there isn’t any law to see that you get them,” he reminded her. “Unless we get them out of here now, somebody else is going to take them.” He began grabbing the gilded eggs off the shelves of the curio cabinet and stuffing them into his pockets. “Don’t just stand there,” he snapped. “Get busy.”

“But … what about Grandpa?” She couldn’t argue with his logic. Yet what he suggested seemed so callous and greedy, especially when her grandfather’s body was still warm. She stared at his lifeless form, aware that her sister knelt beside it, her face shiny with tears.

“He’s dead,” Gabe replied coldly. “There’s nothing more you can do for him now.” He turned from the glass-encased curio cabinet, its shelves now bare and his pockets bulging with the eggs. His glance settled on the framed ikon. “We’ll need something to put all this in. Get some burlap bags or the casings off the pillows. We can’t waste time. Get busy, both of you!”

For Eva, every item had some special significance or precious memory attached to it. She couldn’t bear the thought of any of them falling into the hands of a stranger whose only interest would be in their monetary value. That possibility, more than Gabe’s urgings, pushed her across the room to her sister.

“Come, Nadia.” She avoided looking at her grandfather as she took Nadia by the shoulders and encouraged her to stand up. “You’ve got to help us gather everything up.”

Reluctantly, Nadia let herself be led into the kitchen. They emptied the sacks of flour and potatoes and took them to Gabe in the parlor. Then the three of them, working separately, went through every room in the house collecting everything of value, and a few things of sentimental importance, into the cloth sacks. When they had finished, they combined the items and filled two sacks.

Gabe hefted one onto his shoulder and lifted the other in his hand. “Both of you stay here. I’ll go out the back way and stash all this at my house. Then I’ll go into town and get Simms the undertaker so he can get your grandfather laid out.” He took a step toward the kitchen.

“Stop at St. Michael’s and ask the Father to come,” Eva said.

“I will.” He paused at the kitchen doorway. “I’m not sure how long this will take me. Don’t worry if I’m not back right away.”

The sound of the door closing behind him seemed to signal the closure of another chapter in Eva’s life. She turned to her grandfather and encountered the sightless stare of his blue eyes. There had been so much commotion, everything happening so fast, that she hadn’t had time to think, only to react. Now the full impact of his death and all it portended for her future was finally sinking in.

She sank to her knees beside his body and wept softly as she gently closed his eyes. No more would she spend her evenings in this parlor listening to his stories of the old days. No more would she hear him tell about Zachar, Raven, and old Tasha—about Larissa and Caleb Stone, or about Baranov and his half-breed daughter Anna, and High Chamberlain Rezanov. No more would she live in this house that had been filled with so much warmth and love, and been more of a home to her than that of her parents.

“Do you think we should put his good suit on him?” Nadia wondered.

Eva agreed, deciding it was better to do something than to dwell on what was going to happen to her. Together they dressed him in the suit he always wore to church and laid him out straight on the floor, folding his hands across his chest. After that there was nothing left to do but sit and wait for Gabe to return.

The time passed slowly, and Eva spent most of it in silence, unwilling to share her deep sense of grief. She had lost so much more than her sister. As she idly stared at Nadia, she noticed the way her sister held her stomach, as if cradling and consoling the infant inside. The sight started Eva thinking about the sequence of events and Gabe’s threat of violence that had precipitated her grandfather’s demise. Gabe was to blame for her grandfather’s death as surely as if he’d killed him with his bare hands. She felt the hatred building inside her again.

“Where is he?” She pushed impatiently out of the chair, suddenly conscious of the darkness that invaded the house as dusk robbed the sky of its light. “He should be back by now.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been able to find the undertaker.”

“Simms would be home for supper by now.” Eva lit the oil lamp and put the glass chimney back in place, then adjusted the wick so the smoke from the flame wouldn’t soot the glass.

Something about Gabe’s absence didn’t feel right to her. Considering all the grief he’d caused, she wondered why she had let him be the one to notify Simms, the local blacksmith and part-time mortician. Gabe hadn’t liked her grandfather—or her, either, for that matter. He despised anything that was Indian in origin. So why had he been so anxious to help? she wondered.

“What if he’s still at your house?” she said to Nadia. “What if he’s never left there?”

“He wouldn’t do that—unless …” Her sister paused, frowning thoughtfully.

“Unless what?”

“Unless he was drinking.” She chewed on the inside of her lower lip. “There was still some liquor left in the jug on the kitchen table.”

“Come. We’re going over there.” Eva took her shawl off the wall hook and draped it around her shoulders.

But the house was dark and silent when they walked in the back door. As Eva waited for Nadia to light the kitchen lamp, she stepped on a piece of glass. It crunched beneath the hard sole of her shoe. As the wick flame flared brightly, Eva saw more pieces of broken glass on the floor.