The Mirror (21 page)

Brandy was pregnant.

Shay tried not to think about it but Thora K. couldn't think of anything else. It was the one thing that seemed to lift her out of her mourning. It was only "fit" that Corbin should leave behind a child to take his place.

As Thora K.'s spirits revived, Shay grew more despondent. She struggled to remember any mention of a Strock child in the family. Shay and May Bell met often for secret walks. May Bell felt "real bad" about the penny.

"Do you ever wonder what became of your babies?" Shay asked her.

"Yeah. One of 'em was a girl. Catherine. Hope she gets out of there the first chance she gets."

Tim Pemberthy still worked the Brandy Wine. They hired him to stay on for a portion of the profits. There would be a town called Tungsten in the canyon. If it was named after the ore, there must be something in all the speculation. Others were mining it and the slope-roofed mill at the west edge of town that once milled silver from Caribou was being reoutfitted to process it. A company in Pennsylvania had offered to buy all the tungsten Tim could produce.

One day in August when she knew Tim to be in Boulder, Shay walked the path to the Brandy Wine, trying not to think of Corbin, wondering why she'd never bothered to make this trip before. She was looking for the wedding mirror.

Maybe Brandy survived whatever was happening when she'd seen her last.

The path led to a road and the road soon led to another path with a shed next to a hole in the side of a mountain.

The dark hole gaped like a threatening mouth in the sunlight and a narrow railroad track lapped out of it like a tongue. A metal wagon sat on the track just inside. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark and then walked in as deep as she dared. A claustrophobic panic forced her to back out . . . and the grim memory of what had happened to Corbin here. There would still be stains. The mirror was no longer at the mouth of the mine. Somebody had moved it.

Tim was afraid of it. Of course he wouldn't have left it there now that he was working the mine alone. But where would he have put it?

Corbin's baby moved like a heavy sigh inside her.
What are we going to do about you and about me, little one?

Shay didn't feel young anymore. She felt as if she'd passed from youth to old age without experiencing the life stages in between.

Even if she found the mirror, her conscience told her she shouldn't risk anything until the child was born. Even if the child was probably doomed anyway. Even if there was a live Shay Garrett to go back to. The thought of the long years ahead was more than she could bear.

A horse's high whinny startled her from her reflections.

Where the path to the cabin met the road, Hutchison Maddon stood in the shadow of pines, holding the reins of his horse.

"Hope you're not going to run away again," he said when she stopped suddenly at the sight of him.

Shay had the urge to do just that, but didn't move as he led his horse from the shadows.

"Just what is it about me that scares you so, Mrs. Strock?"

She tried to smile at her grandfather. "Oh . . . I'm just . . . crazy Brandy. Hadn't you heard?"

"Yeah, I heard." The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly. "And I'm one of the mad Maddons. You hear about that?"

"Dr. Seaton says you're wild."

"He oughta know."

Shay stepped around him to the path and he walked beside her, the horse following. She was so aware of him she could hardly breathe. "I . . . have to be getting home."

"I'll walk you there. Or are you going to run?"

"I'm not running. It's just that--"

"You know it's not right." He slapped the end of the reins idly against his leg. "Young, pretty thing like you looking so sad all the time."

"I don't feel very young and pretty right now."

He glanced down at the bulge that had been Brandy's waist and smiled. A full smile that transformed the hard cowboy into a vulnerable man.

She was hot from more than just walking in the sun and stopped to drink at the spring. When she'd replaced the wooden top and got clumsily to her feet, he was staring back at a large mountain jay on a limb above them. The man and the bird looked as if they were communicating with each other.

"What's he saying?"

Hutch blinked and looked down his nose at her. "He's like you. Won't talk to me."

"I'm talking to you."

But neither of them spoke until they reached the back door of the cabin. She hoped he didn't expect to come in and was relieved when he mounted his horse with a creaking of leather. He stilled the animal's eager prancing and leaned forward with his arm on the saddle horn. The hard cowboy was back. "I mean to have you, you know," he said under his breath.

"Yeah ... I know."

In September President McKinley was assassinated. Nederland was in an uproar. Apparently no one had voted for him because he was against the coining of free silver, which would have brought the silver mines back into production. But he was the President of the United States and no one could talk of anything else for a month. Even May Bell seemed shocked.

Shay was unmoved. Although the people around her were becoming all too real, President McKinley was only a dimly remembered name from history.

But Thora K. had the strangest reaction of all.

Shay came home from a walk to find the wedding mirror standing fiat against the wall behind the rocking chairs, the quilt tied tightly around it with enough rope to hog-tie an army. Thora K. explained that if Brandy thought something bad might happen to Mr. Roosevelt, she should untie the mirror, see what it was, and warn the new President.

Shay sank into a rocking chair and laughed until she cried.

One night in early December, her labor pains started. Thora K. ran to the Tylers' to send one of their boys across the valley for Doc Seaton and then rushed back to boil water.

Shay wasn't trained for childbirth without the help of anesthesia, had given it little thought until she knew Brandy was pregnant, and then forced her mind into a numbed state that refused to consider it at all.

That was no help to her now.

A broken arm from an accident on a swing, even the horrid illnesses from her transpositions in time hadn't prepared her for this. She passed from screaming consciousness to blessed nothingness and back again.

"This is going to be a long night," a sweating Dr. Seaton announced to Thora K. and Lydia Tyler, who stood ready to help him. "Looks like it'll be born buttocks first," he whispered, presumably so Shay wouldn't hear.

Shay was praying for death before morning when Brandy's baby was born.

They worked over her until noon and then relaxed enough to present her with a wrapped bundle.

"Brandy, I'd like you to meet your daughter." He looked haggard, as if he'd had the baby.

Shay turned Brandy's face to the wall.

"Look at her perfect head and little copper hairs," he coaxed. "Don't often see that well-shaped a head. Afraid all the damage was to the other end."

She couldn't keep herself from taking a look.

Brandy's newborn resembled Thora K. without any teeth at all.

"Have you thought of any names?"

"Yes." Shay came out of her exhaustion unwillingly. "Name her . . . Penny."

Doc Seaton returned the next day. "Sure you want to name her just Penny and not Penelope? You could call her Penny anyway."

"No. Just Penny," Shay answered dully.

"Now, see here, young woman. This mood of yours is no help to anyone, least of all yourself or the baby. You're lucky to have her. Probably the only one you'll ever have."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that this was a difficult birth and there's been damage done. I doubt you'll ever carry another child to term. Won't be wise for you to remarry, even though you're young yet. Best thing for you is to devote your life to Corbin's child. And be thankful the Lord saw fit to bless you with little Penny. Another pregnancy could be the death of you."

"Someday I will have twin boys named Remy and Dan, and a daughter named Rachael. They'll live to see gray hairs at least, and I'll live far too long. So don't try to scare me with your phony Lord business. I wonder if you men don't trump up all that religious stuff to keep women in line."

"Brandy Strock, I'll forgive you this twaddle you're talking because you've had a bad time here. I never credited those stories of John McCabe's daughter being mad, and I'll not start now. We'll talk about this when you're yourself."

After he'd left, Thora K. brought the baby from her cradle by the stove to nurse.

Shay snuggled them deeper into the covers, her heart aching with each pull at Brandy's breast.

I
mustn't love her. It'll hurt too much. Besides, she's Brandy's, not mine.
Brandy wasn't even around when you married Penny's father or conceived this baby. You did this yourself, Shay.

She buried her lips in the coppery down coating Penny's head.

Penny Strock developed pneumonia and died at the age of two weeks. She would be buried next to her father when the ground thawed in the spring.

Thora K. endured quietly except for long sighs and an occasional far-off look.

Shay took to standing before the mirror again.

The first day the canyon was passable, Sophie and Elton stormed into the cabin and insisted Shay and Thora K. spend the rest of the winter at the Gingerbread House.

They were too listless to resist.

Thora K. had her first all-over hot bath in a tub and was amazed when she didn't take cold.

Some of Brandy's girl friends dropped by, and any of Shay's awkwardness or lack of memory was chalked up to her state of double mourning.

Elton drove them about town in the buggy when the snow permitted.

He took her for rides on the trolley and to a theater for corny stage plays and an opera. She'd missed having a man around and enjoyed his company.

But both she and Thora K. were ready to go back to Nederland when the long winter ended.

Sophie reminded Shay too painfully of Rachael. Any roots anchoring her to Brandy's life were in the little mining town, not at the Gingerbread House.

And here where she'd buried Brandy's dead the air was clear, free of the stuffiness of the Gingerbread House and Sophie's questioning eye.

And so Shay entered her third year in Brandy's life. She took the quilt from the mirror rarely now, and when she did, it was without hope.

On Thora K.'s first day back to work at the Antlers, Shay brought a rocking chair out onto the porch and watched Nederland, feeling too bored to sew or read. She'd never been that fond of either anyway.

She heard the creak of wagon wheels, the jingle of harness and the snorting of horses before she turned her gaze from the meadow to see a buckboard moving up the hill toward her. Even with the hat covering the pale hair, she recognized the driver as one of the Maddon twins.

Something inside her knew which one he was.

20

"Good morning," Hutch Maddon said without smiling. He was on an eye level with her, sitting on the buckboard filled with a roll of wire and cloth sacks.

Shay didn't answer, just leaned forward to see the horses' hooves pawing Thora K.'s infant garden. The growing season was too short for a very successful garden up here anyway. It didn't matter. She leaned back.

"Ma'am, Mrs. Strock." He swept off his hat. Still no smile. "I'm inviting you to go for a ride on this wagon."

"Why?"

"Something I'd like to show you on this fine day."

"Go to hell," Shay said through Brandy's teeth. His eyebrows rose slightly. He stared at the horses' rumps and shook his head. "And I used to think I was a patient man."

Laying the reins across the seat, he set the brake and slipped off the buckboard.

As Hutch walked around the wagon Shay left the rocking chair. "What are you doing?"

He moved leisurely to the steps and looked up at her under his hat until he'd had his fill. "Inviting you for a ride, like I said."

"And I told you what you could do about it."

He came up the steps and she backed to the door.

"Hell, I feel like a bear stalking a canary bird," he said with disgust.

"Hutch, listen--" Before she could swing the door open and escape inside, he had her by the waist and before she could regain the breath to protest, she was sitting on the seat of the buckboard. Until now she'd thought he was slow-moving.

"I just want to show you something."

"I can't go anywhere without my bonnet. My nose'll sunburn."

Hutch plopped his own hat on her head and backed the team until he could turn it.

Where the wagon tracks met the road, he swung south away from town, left the road not far from the Brandy Wine and turned again onto a steep wagon path through pine trees.