“How are you feeling?” Hannah asked her, brushing aside her matted hair to feel her forehead.
“Not feverish, if that’s what you mean,” Cassandra rasped.
“No, that’s not what I mean. Well, not just that,” Hannah replied, folding her hands in her lap.
Cassandra opened her mouth to answer, but no words came to her. She shook her head helplessly as tears threatened to spill again.
“Shh, it’s okay, I know. I know, honey. I’m so sorry,” Hannah said, taking the tray from Cassandra and setting it aside. She wrapped Cassandra in her arms and held her as she cried. The two remained that way for some time after Cassandra’s tears ran out.
Hannah’s heart ached for her. She wanted to help, but she was completely at a loss for what to say or do. She suspected that nothing she could say or do could help. She couldn’t imagine what she would do if something were to happen to her James.
She gave Cassandra a brief squeeze before making her way across the room to retrieve the brush from the dressing table. She settled herself once more on the bed and began to work through the matted tangles of Cassandra’s hair. Cassandra made no objection.
“He wouldn’t like seeing you like this,” she said absently. Cassandra stiffened. She wasn’t sure why her cousin’s words filled her with so much anger, but they did. She struggled to tamp down her rage. Hannah meant well, she knew that. She was determined not to take her anger out on her.
She needn’t have worried. The anger abandoned her as quickly as it had come. She felt hollow in its absence. She swallowed against the lump in her throat and stared blankly ahead.
Neither woman spoke again as Hannah continued to work at the tangles. When she had finally worked them all out she wove Cassandra’s hair into a tight braid that reached more than halfway down her back.
After a long moment Hannah stood and made her way to the door. She paused in the doorway.
“I’ll leave the soup,” she said. “Call if you need me.”
Cassandra nodded numbly. She did not turn her gaze from the wall as Hannah shut the door. After a few minutes she moved woodenly to retrieve the tray. She took up the spoon and forced herself to eat everything in the bowl, along with a large slice of bread that Hannah had set out beside the soup. Each bite was tasteless to her, and the food sat in the pit of her stomach like a stone.
But the baby needed nourishment.
Chapter 2
Jacob removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow as he made his way back to his home from where he had been mining. He gazed upward for a moment before placing his hat back on his head. There was not a cloud in the azure sky and the sun beat down on sand, scrub brush, and miner alike. Moses, the old burro he used as a pack animal, plodded complacently at his side.
He hadn’t found much today, but that was no matter. Most days he did fairly well, so he wasn’t overly concerned about one bad day. The town of You Bet, California, had been good to him, in terms of gold at least.
When he arrived home he splashed his face clean with water from Moses’s trough. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. It was about time he had a shave, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Once he had tended to Moses he trudged inside, dropped his gear on the floor just inside the front door, and made himself some beans. He ate them without enjoyment. When he was finished he sat looking down at his plate for a long moment before standing and making his way toward his bed.
He paused to pick up a tintype of a young woman from the table. Her dark hair was piled on the top of her head and the serious set of her mouth in the picture belied the smile that had so often graced her features during life.
It had been just over two years since he had lost her. She had died in childbirth, and their infant daughter had lived only a matter of hours. He had told himself that he would visit their stones today, but he had found reasons not to. There was work to be done, after all.
But the truth was that he still couldn’t stand to be near their graves, even now. It hurt too badly, seeing both their names etched in stone like that. It felt too final.
He wished to God that he had put his foot down when she had insisted on coming west with him. His plan had been to come here, make his fortune, and return home to her. But she would not hear of being left behind. She was adamant. He often wondered how different things might have been if she had stayed back east.
He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh before setting the tintype back on the table.
“Happy anniversary…” he said dully.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled his boots off. He did not bother to change out of his clothes before lying back on the bed and falling into a fitful sleep.
*****
Over the next few weeks Jacob threw himself into his work even harder than usual. He had found over the past two years that keeping yourself busy was the best way to keep your mind from betraying you by dragging you into a bottomless pit of despair.
The problem was that it didn’t seem to be working nearly as well as it used to, and he wasn’t sure why. He finally decided that it was loneliness, which seemed to have dug its heels in for the long haul. Nothing to be done for it, though.
It occurred to him one day that there was no real reason to keep mining. He had found what he came for and then some. If they had stuck to the original plan he would have returned home to Anna a year ago and they could have started a new life.
But that life was gone now, and this was all he had left. So he continued to mine and save up for a life that he would never have. He supposed he could always call it quits and head back east. But it seemed pointless without Anna. This was familiar to him now, and that offered some measure of comfort in an odd sort of way.
Still, though, it didn’t help with the loneliness. He tried to remember when he had last had an actual conversation with anyone and realized that it had been before his and Anna’s anniversary.
Well, time to stop feeling sorry for himself, he decided. Today he would go into town and get dinner at the saloon instead of cooking alone. There were several people around town that he knew reasonably well who would probably be there.
It might not be a long-term solution, but just having a conversation with someone would probably go a long way toward making him feel human again. He headed home, tended to Moses, and washed up before heading into town.
The smell of stale beer and tobacco smoke greeted him like an old friend as he walked through the door of the saloon. He had spent many nights here trying to drown out the clamoring of his despair in the months after he’d lost Anna.
He had barely made it through the door when he heard a familiar voice from the back corner.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in!” exclaimed a barrel chested man with a thick red beard.
“Ha! Well I’ll be!” interjected the other man at the table. He was wiry and of average height, although he appeared small next to the other man. His brown hair was disheveled, but clean. “Jacob Daughtry, we thought you done high-tailed it back to civilization!”
“No such luck, gentlemen,” Jacob replied with a laugh. “Charlie, Garrett, how’ve y’all been?”
“Can’t say as I can complain,” Charlie said with a lopsided grin.
“’Fair to middlin’,” Garrett boomed amiably. “Come and join us, stranger.”
“I’ll do that,” Jacob said. “Soon as I’ve got myself a drink.”
He made his way to the bar and, a few minutes later, made his way to Garrett and Charlie’s table with a mug of beer in his hand. He seated himself and took a sip of beer.
“Piss warm as always,” he said with a laugh, setting it down on the table. The beer was always piss warm, but none of them ever really cared.
“Smoke?” Charlie asked, offering Jacob his tobacco pouch.
“Eh, why the hell not?” Jacob said, accepting the pouch. He rolled himself a cigarette with practiced ease and placed it between his lips.
“So, what have you b
oys been gettin’ into?” he asked around the cigarette in his mouth as he scooped up Charlie’s matches from the table and struck one. He held the flame up and lit his cigarette, shaking out the flame when he was done. He took a long pull, savoring the roughness of the smoke in his throat.
“Well, as it happens, tomorrow’s a big day,” Garrett replied with a grin. “Charlie here is gettin’ married.” He gave Charlie a hearty slap on the back.
“Ha! Married,” Jacob guffawed. “To who? Or what, rather. There’s not an eligible woman within a hundred miles of here.” Charlie shook his head.
“She’s from New York,” he said proudly, pulling a tintype from his breast pocket and handing it over the table to Jacob. The girl in the photograph was plain, but well-groomed with an earnest face. Jacob snuffed out the stub of his cigarette and studied the photograph briefly before handing it back over to Charlie.
“New York, huh?” he said.
Charlie nodded with a smile.
“How’d you manage to get a girl from New York to come all the way out here? Come to that, how’d you even meet a girl from New York in the first place?”
“Haven’t met her yet, strictly speakin’,” Charlie replied.
“Oh, I see,” Jacob said with a laugh. “You ain’t met her yet, but you’re gettin’ married tomorrow. Makes perfect sense. Just how many of these you say you’d had?” he said, holding up his beer mug.
“Laugh all you want,” Charlie said good-naturedly, taking a drink from his mug of beer. “I put an ad in the paper and she answered it. We been writin’ each other for nigh on six months now.”
“You put an ad in the paper,” Jacob repeated, laughing. “What’d it say, ‘Man wants wife, respond if interested in sweatin’ in the desert for the rest of your natural born days’?”
“Well…yeah, more or less,” Charlie said. “Minus that last part, o’ course.”
“Lots of folks are doin’ it,” chimed in Garrett.
“You serious?”
“I am,” Charlie said. “She’ll be comin’ in on the stage tomorrow, and we’re goin’ directly to the justice of the piece to get hitched.”
“Huh,” Jacob said. It was all he could think of to say.
“You’re more’n welcome to come to the weddin’, such as it is,” Charlie said amiably.
“I may do that,” Jacob responded thoughtfully. “Mind if I…?” He gestured to Charlie’s tobacco pouch, still sitting on the table.
“Not a bit.”
Jacob nodded his thanks and rolled another cigarette. He smoked in silence and drank his beer as Garrett and Charlie continued to talk. He paid their conversation no mind, lost now in his own thoughts.
He had never considered remarrying. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was just something that had never occurred to him, partly because he knew that, out here, his options were pretty much nil. But what if he did have options?
He brushed the thought aside. This business of finding a woman in the newspaper seemed far-fetched at best. He finished his beer, snuffed out his cigarette, and stood to go.
“Well, boys,” he said. “That’s it for me.”
“Well, alright,” Garrett said. “Don’t be a stranger, now.”
“We’ll see ya tomorrow for the weddin’, won’t we?” Charlie said.
Jacob thought it over for a moment.
“Yeah, I reckon so,” he said. Why not? Couldn’t hurt.
He nodded to them, made his way out the doors, and headed for home. Once he was there, he almost regretted leaving the saloon. After the boisterous noise inside its walls, the silence here seemed almost to mock him.
His eyes fell on the old six- string guitar that stood propped up in the corner. It was the only thing that his father had left to him. It was a C.F. Martin with a light brown finish. All of the tuning keys were placed on one side of the head stock, which curled elegantly at the end.
He picked it up and ran his fingers lightly over its finish. He had not so much as tuned it since Anna had been gone. He sat down and plucked each string in turn, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was still very close to being in tune despite having not been tuned in so long. He tuned the couple of strings that were off and strummed a few chords experimentally.
To his disappointment, the notes sounded flat and dull. He supposed he should have expected as much. After all, the same strings had been on the guitar for far too long. He set it aside with a sigh and made a note to see what he could do about getting some new strings when he went into town tomorrow.
He set it aside and prepared for bed. Sleep was slow in coming.
The next morning he made his way into town. Charlie had not specified a meeting place or time, but he supposed if he was around when the stage came into town he’d be sure to find him.
In the meantime, he decided to visit the general store and see if he could get the owner to order some guitar strings for him. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dim interior.
“Howdy,” Sam greeted him from behind the counter. “Good to see ya.”
“Same to you,” Jacob replied.
“You lookin’ for anything in particular?”
“Yeah, actually. I was hopin’ to get my hands on some guitar strings,” Jacob said.
“Ha! Thought you’d forgotten about these,” Sam said, rummaging behind the counter.
“Excuse me?”
“You ordered these two years ago,” Sam said, coming back up with a small package. “By now, I just figured you’d given up playin’.”
“Oh,” said Jacob. He had forgotten even ordering them. “Yeah, no, I uh…I didn’t give it up.” He supposed that wasn’t, strictly speaking, true.
“Well, that’s good to hear,” Sam said with a smile. “This be all then?”
Jacob hesitated for a moment. There were other things he needed, but he hadn’t brought Moses with him to carry them. He decided they could wait.
“Yeah, that’ll be all,” he said. He paid for the strings and left, slipping them into his pocket as he made his way out the door.
Once he was outside, he began looking for Charlie. He didn’t have to look long.
“Hey!” Charlie shouted, waving Jacob over from the other side of the dusty street. Jacob raised his hand in greeting and made his way over to him.
“You made it,” Charlie said. He seemed genuinely pleased, and excitement radiated from him. Jacob hoped that he wasn’t getting his hopes up for nothing. He half expected the girl from New York not to even show.
Garrett joined them a few minutes later and the three of them decided to wait at the saloon until the stagecoach arrived. After a couple of mugs of beer the three helped themselves to some of the cold cuts, cheese, and celery that the saloon offered. Jacob ate his food and sipped at his beer wordlessly as the other two men spoke of the imminent wedding.
“What about you?” Charlie finally asked him. “You ever consider gettin’ married?”
Garrett froze and looked at Jacob worriedly. He knew what a touchy subject Charlie had just brought up. Charlie seemed to be oblivious.
“Don’t know,” Jacob said with a shrug. Realization dawned on Charlie as he looked at Jacob’s face.
“Jeez, I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I wasn’t thinkin’.”
“It’s fine,” Jacob said, holding up a hand. “No harm done.”
Garrett visibly relaxed. The subject was quickly changed and Garrett and Charlie made small talk until they heard the sound of hooves outside. Charlie’s features lit up. He set down his unfinished beer and headed for the doorway. The other two men downed the rest of their beers before joining him.
The three of them watched as the stagecoach clattered along the dusty street drawn by four horses. They approached it as it drew to a halt. Two men and a woman climbed down, but Charlie paid them no mind. After a moment another woman exited the coach.
“Sarah!” Charlie exclaimed, waving to her.
“Charles,” she replied with a timid smi
le. She looked exactly like her photograph, though perhaps a bit more disheveled from her travels.
Just as Charlie had said they would, the pair went straight to the justice of the piece. And just like that, Jacob watched his friend marry a woman he had not laid eyes on until that very afternoon.
But later, as he lay in bed alone and listened to the silence, it didn’t seem like nearly so crazy an idea.
Chapter 3
Cassandra stared absently at the wallpaper, letting her eyes idly pick out patterns and shapes in its design. She had given up, for the moment, trying to conjure a solution to her problem. She had already established that she couldn’t possibly consider staying with Hannah, but she was at her wits’ end as for what to do about it. She still had told no one about the baby.
Her breakfast that morning had stayed down, so that was something, she supposed. She unbraided her hair and let it fall loose against her back. After a moment she stood and retrieved the brush and began to brush and re-braid her hair.
There was a brief knock at the door, and Hannah came in with a newspaper under her arm.
“It’s good to see you up,” she said to Cassandra with a smile. Cassandra offered her a weak smile in return.
“I thought you might like something to read,” she said, offering Cassandra the newspaper.
“Thank you,” Cassandra said, accepting the paper and setting it down.
“I’m going out for a bit. Do you need anything?”
Yes, a man to marry me and help raise my child, Cassandra thought drily. And quickly, please. Time is of the essence, you know!
“No, nothing,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Alright. I’ll be back in a little while,” Hannah said. She let herself out and shut the door behind her.
Cassandra sighed and picked up the newspaper. She made her way over to the window and drew aside the heavy curtain to allow enough light in to read by. None of the articles particularly interested her, but she skimmed through the stories anyway. It was better than staring at the walls and worrying over what to do.
She stopped reading when she reached the personal ads and was about to set the paper down when an advertisement caught her eye.
AFRICAN AMERICAN URBAN FICTION: BWWM ROMANCE: Billionaire Baby Daddy (Billionaire Secret Baby Pregnancy Romance) (Multicultural & Interracial Romance Short Stories) Page 65