The Preacher’s Daughter

by Cheryl St. John

  At the word mother Ben clenched his jaw.

  “Ellianna was just a tiny little thing when I met her. No more than three or four.”

  “Where did you meet her?” Ben asked. “My…mother.”

  “In Florence at an Independence Day celebration. I thought she was a widow at first. Until I found out where she worked and learned she’d never been married.”

  Ben couldn’t imagine his mother at a celebration in town. He’d never known her to drag herself farther than the saloon or the outhouse.

  “I cared for your mother, Benjamin,” Wes said.

  Ben’s body tensed. “Why feed me this bullshit?”

  “Benjamin!” Lorabeth said from beside him and clenched his hand tightly. “Let the man talk.”

  He looked at her, at the encouragement and confidence in her eyes and took a deep breath. “Go on.”

  “Why would I lie to you? Why would I come find you at all if this wasn’t so? I was just as shocked as you when Suzanne came back from your place that day and told me her suspicions. I didn’t believe it until I saw you. After meeting you, I’m convinced I’m your father. I don’t want anything from you except a chance to talk.” His expression showed his earnestness. “Maybe a chance to know you.”

  With disbelief Ben asked, “And it took twenty-four years?”

  “Please. Let me explain.”

  The sick feeling in his belly right now couldn’t even compare to the nights of hunger and cold that had been his wretched life. Ben raked shaky fingers through his hair and surveyed the room without seeing anything except that filthy shack. He looked at Wes, and by this time his body was almost twitching with anger. “Tell me how that can fix all those years of me and my little brother and older sister goin’ to bed with a belly so hungry it hurt. Tell me how talkin’ can change Flynn and me havin’ no one except a scared sister who cared if we lived or died.”

  All his resentment poured out in the words he couldn’t stop now. “Flynn was so little. He should’ve had better. Some of the babies she had just—” Unable to sit any longer, he jumped to his feet and gestured. “Disappeared. Ellie knows what happened to them, but she won’t tell me.”

  He was shaking now.

  Lorabeth gasped. He couldn’t stop. He wanted this man to know exactly what his lack of concern had caused.

  “Ellie stole for us to eat. When our mother died, Flynn and I were sent to a foster home. We were starved and worked like animals. I nearly lost all my toes from sores and blisters.” He looked at his shoes as though the pain was in the present.

  Wes’s eyes filled with tears and they ran down his cheeks uninhibited.

  Suzanne sat with a stunned expression.

  Lorabeth looked up at him, and she was trembling. He couldn’t look at her any longer so he faced Wes.

  “So go ahead,” Ben ground out. “Explain all that so I can understand.”

  “I can’t,” Wes said in a ragged voice. “But, Ben, all those years aren’t my fault, either. I didn’t know about you. I can’t change what happened, but you have to understand that I’d have taken care of you if I’d known.”

  Ben looked at Wes and felt as though a chunk of his heart was hanging out raw and bleeding. “No one ever cared about us.”

  “I care now,” Wes said. “I cared about your mother, too, but she wouldn’t let me help her. I tried.”

  Ben waited for something more. Something to make a difference in how he felt.

  “I was twenty when I met her. I’d been riding herd with a drive and we shipped cows from there. She was working at the Junction Saloon in Florence. Just serving drinks and dancing, but she drank as many as she served. She was living in a room over one of the storefronts and she had a little girl. I started calling on her.

  “She always drank, even during the day and no matter the occasion. I tried to get her to leave the saloon and I offered to take her east when I went. She refused.

  “I asked her to marry me, but she just laughed. I suspected I wasn’t the only man keeping company with her. The drinking had such a hold on her that I got concerned for the girl. I suggested she give Ellianna to someone to care for until she was better able. That just made her furious. She told me to never come back.

  “I left on another drive and when I came back through this way, I couldn’t find her. Nobody knew where she’d gone.”

  Ben looked him over with a critical eye. What would it benefit Wes to tell a story with no basis? He didn’t have to expose himself as Ben’s father. If he was telling the truth and really had cared about his mother and Ellie, he wasn’t the selfish man Ben had imagined all those years. Ben would be forced to change his thinking.

  “I know it doesn’t change the past,” Wes said, “but I’m sorry for how you came into the world and were treated. She was sick. I’d never seen a person who was controlled by a need for alcohol. Scared me so much I quit drinkin’ myself.”

  Ben understood that. “Scares me so much I’m afraid to have my own kids for fear of bein’ like her.”

  “You’re nothing like her,” Lorabeth insisted. “You can’t even bear to see animals suffer, let alone children. You adore your nieces and nephews.”

  “Your childhood breaks my heart,” Wes said as though he hadn’t heard her. He sat head down, face in his hands. “If only I’d known.”

  Suzanne leaned toward her husband and placed her hand on his back. She rubbed it in a circle consolingly. “You had no way to know,” she told him.

  “I’m not the one who needs comforting,” Wes said with a break in his voice.

  Suzanne drew her hand back, but Wes caught it and held it. He raised his gaze to Ben’s. “If only I’d found you back then, I’d have taken you both and made a family for you.”

  Ben read a thousand useless regrets. And he believed him.

  Wes was a good man who’d had the misfortune to love a bad woman. Ben had no right blaming him for circumstances out of his control. He took a few steps away and stared at his reflection in the windowpane.

  Ellie had told Ben that he couldn’t live in the past, and she was right. Moving forward had worked for her. Lorabeth had told him he needed to forgive to be forgiven. “Really can’t think of a reason why you’d lie about this,” he said at last and turned back to the room. “Wouldn’t profit you.”

  “It’s the God’s honest truth,” Wes answered. After a minute he said, “Last year we moved from California to Kansas so I could work with the cattlemen. I’m an investor now. Suzanne and I have three children.”

  “I’ve seen ’em.” Ben paused and glanced from husband to wife and back. “Will you tell ’em about me?”

  “If it’s all right with you I will. It’s not because I hid you from them that they don’t know. It’s because I didn’t know. Those are two different things. You’d have been part of this family if I’d had a say.”

  “You’re not…ashamed of me?”

  Wes’s throat worked. “I could ask you the same question.”

  Ben thought it over a moment. He’d lived with shame his whole life, but a father who really cared about him wasn’t embarrassing, was he? He glanced at Lorabeth, and she smiled encouragement through glistening tears. He wasn’t ashamed of Wes.

  “Guess I upset your life by moving here. It will be all right if you don’t want to explain who I am to people,” Wes told him. “We should probably agree. I’m going to tell my children. But if you don’t want anyone else to know, then…maybe we can just be friends.”

  “I’m weary of hidin’ my past,” Ben told him. “I’m not ashamed, and I don’t want to make up a story.”

  “Good.” Wes looked relieved. “It’s gonna be awkward for a while. We don’t really know each other. But I want to know you. I don’t even know how you became a veterinarian.”

  “Ellie’s husband loaned me the money.”

  “The other Dr. Chaney?”

  “First decent man I ever met. His father is another.”

  Silence enveloped the room. />
  “I spent a lot of years hating,” Ben said, opening another vein. “Hating all the men who used her. Hating the man I believed was my father.”

  “That’s a lot of hate to let go,” Lorabeth said. “You must feel light as a feather.”

  Gazing into her eyes, Ben looked inside himself and discovered she was right. A burden he’d carried a lifetime had been eased because he’d learned the truth. He glanced at Wes. “I don’t think you need forgiveness, but I’m lettin’ go of the resentment.”

  “Thank you,” Wes answered.

  Suzanne left and returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea and served them. Their conversation eased into the easy give-and-take of people getting to know each other. Eventually Ben thanked Suzanne for tea and mentioned it was time for them to go.

  The Evanses followed them out the door and stood on their porch. Wes put his arm around his wife.

  Ben observed the gesture and realized he was happy for them. Grateful that Wes had found a good woman to be his wife. Waving, he guided Lorabeth to the buggy. She leaned and whispered in Ben’s ear.

  He hesitated. Turned back and looked at Wes. Her suggestion made Wes’s warning about this transition more clear. But he didn’t care what people thought. “Lorabeth and I would like you to come to our wedding next week.”

  The band played “Cockles and Mussels” for the fourth time, and when Ben raised his eyebrow, Ellie explained that Lillith kept requesting the comic song. He didn’t much care what they played, because he wasn’t listening half the time. He was processing what had taken place that day and thinking about what was yet to come.

  “I want you to meet the Evanses now,” he told his sister.

  Ellie had been astonished when she’d learned that Ben had asked them to the wedding. Her feelings about Wes Evans were confusing. He was nothing to her.

  Ben took hold of her arms. “It’s gonna be all right, Ellie.”

  She nodded, digesting the change slowly. She’d seen them at the ceremony earlier, but they hadn’t had an opportunity to meet until now. “I’m glad you’ve found him, Ben,” she said. “I really am. And I’m happy you—and him—and his family are working all this out so amicably.”

  “Are you embarrassed about this?” he asked.

  “No. We’re not explaining every detail to the wedding guests and all of Newton. Even if we did, Caleb wouldn’t care.”

  He leaned to kiss her cheek. Ellie watched her brother cross the room, seeing that skinny boy who was her champion, the boy who had been ready to die for her, who had killed a man to protect her. She was happy for him.

  Wes Evans was handsome and pleasant, resembling Benjamin in a startling way, down to the manner in which he spoke and the turn of his lips when he smiled. Suzanne was charming and pretty, complimenting Ellie on her fine-looking children.

  Fourteen-year-old Ginny and sixteen-year-old Booth had the same fair hair and blue eyes as Ben and their father. Twelve-year-old Clara was dark-haired and dark-eyed like her mother.

  Nate and Simon immediately took Booth into their company, and Nate produced a bag of marbles.

  “Is there enough light for them to do that outdoors?” Ellie asked.

  “Nate snagged a lantern on his way,” Ben answered.

  “You’re the same age as our niece, Lucy,” Ellie told Ginny.

  “I don’t know her,” the girl said.

  “She goes to school in Florence,” Ellie explained. “But I’m sure you two will have something to talk about.”

  “I’ll go introduce them,” Lorabeth said, taking Ginny’s hand.

  Suzanne and Clara left to find a hair ribbon Clara had dropped, leaving Ben and Ellie alone with Wes.

  “It’s probably gonna seem awkward for a while,” Wes said to Ellie.

  “Nothing will ever excuse my mother or what she did to us,” she said to him. “There are things you don’t know.” The touch of anger that surfaced surprised her. “Just the fact that you ever had anything to do with her makes it hard for me. I’m not an unforgiving person, but…”

  “We’re all trying our best with the situation we have,” he answered. “I can tell you’re a fine person. I’m glad your life turned out the way it did.”

  None of what had happened to them was this man’s fault, she reminded herself.

  “You’ve met Caleb already?” Ben asked Wes.

  “Oh, yeah. Booth manages to smash or cut something at least every other month. I’m sure you know about that with all your boys,” he said to Ellie.

  She agreed with a smile.

  “Well, let’s go find him,” Ben said and placed his hand on Wes’s shoulder as they walked away.

  Ellie was struck anew by how much Ben resembled the man. Their hair, the broad shoulders, and now the way they walked. She was happy for her brother, she truly was.

  And she tried not to feel hurt that he had found a father and a whole new family.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ben’s nervousness grew as the evening passed. It hadn’t helped that when Luke Swenson had offered Ben a beer and he’d refused, Deputy Doyle had jokingly remarked that Ben was keeping a clear head for the night ahead.

  Caleb had been standing among the small gathering of men. He’d given Ben a slap on the shoulder and led him away from the others. Next to Ellie, Caleb was the only one who even partially understood the strict standards Ben had set for himself and the reasons why. They stood side by side at the edge of the dance floor.

  “Don’t let ’em get to you,” Caleb said.

  Ben searched for Lorabeth in the crowd.

  “She’s your wife now, and making love to your wife is a good thing. Nothing like what you saw as a boy, Ben. Nothing like it.”

  “I know.” At that second, Flynn’s fiddle screeched, sounding like a young girl’s screams, and his heart pounded faster. “In my head, I know it.”

  “The way she feels about you is all over her face,” his brother-in-law told him. “Just love her back.”

  Ben studied the crowd and found her.

  Lorabeth was the most beautiful woman Ben had ever laid eyes upon. In her ivory pearl-studded dress, she took his breath away. Her father had performed the ceremony and they’d taken their vows only hours ago. They’d been deluged with guests and gifts and cake ever since. When he looked at her across the social hall, he still couldn’t believe she was his wife.

  She made her way around clusters of guests until she reached him. “Dance with me again,” she said, her eyes glowing, her cheeks pink with excitement.

  He took her hand and followed her onto the dance floor, into the midst of friends and family who flowed aside and made a place for the bride and groom.

  Apparently Flynn had noticed the crowd parting, and immediately the music changed to a slower more appropriately romantic tune. Ben took her in his arms.

  “Are you happy?” he asked as they swayed to the music.

  “Isn’t mine the happiest face here?” she answered with a question of her own.

  He had to agree. She was absolutely glowing. He didn’t want to do anything to disappoint her. Not today. Not tonight. Not ever.

  He’d made those vows and made them solemnly. This pure and innocent woman had chosen him, and it was his duty to honor her.

  Just love her back. Was he capable of the kind of love she deserved?

  He’d started out wanting to protect her, but now he was involved. His head was involved, his body…his heart. He wasn’t feelin’ much like a protector. Hurting her would kill him.

  “Caleb and Denzil have loaded all the gifts into the back of your buggy,” Ellie told them a few minutes later. “You can pull it into your carriage house until you have time tomorrow or the next day to unload it.”

  “Sure,” Ben replied.

  His sister gave him a smile. “It’s a custom for the bride and groom to leave early.”

  Ben glanced at Lorabeth. “You’re right. We should go.”

  Ellie laid a hand on the sleeve of his bla
ck coat. “Don’t be surprised if some of your friends pay you a late-night visit.”

  Ben had never participated, but he’d heard the young people talking about the pranks they played on newlyweds. “You didn’t give ’em a key to my house or anything, did you?”

  Ellie looked insulted and slapped his arm. “Of course not.”

  “Just makin’ sure.”

  He and Lorabeth exchanged a look and she gave him an uncertain smile. He’d put off leaving as long as he could. With a backward glance at his sister, he found their coats.

  Whispers and catcalls followed them to the door, so he hurried her along. Once they were in the buggy, she took his hand. Her fingers were cold. They both knew what was on the other’s mind, but they hadn’t discussed it. He wouldn’t have known the first thing to say.

  “We got lovely gifts,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “I especially like the clock from your—from the Evanses.”

  She was every bit as nervous as he, of course. More so, because she was the woman, the one admonished to submit to her husband.

  “I’d never deliberately hurt you, Lorabeth. You believe that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. You didn’t need to tell me.”

  He stopped alongside the back porch. “I’ll stoke the stove before I put up the horse, so you can have warm water.”

  Once he had a fire going, he pumped a kettle of water and set it on a burner. “You have some time now while I handle chores.”

  She nodded.

  Ben wiped down the animal, got him a bucket of water, then stood in the carriage house watching the bay twitch its ears and munch oats.

  He had no idea how long it would take Lorabeth to prepare for bed. He was probably doing things all wrong and should have gone upstairs with her.

  Minutes later he climbed the stairs and entered the bedroom to discover his thoughts were right. She was standing in the circle of golden light created by the lamp on her dresser, still wearing the gown she’d worn all day.

  “My dress buttons up the back,” she told him.

  So it did. He crossed the room and she turned her back to him. Several buttons at the top were undone and several at the bottom, but the center of the row remained fastened.