Family Lessons

by Allie Pleiter

  * * *

  “Mercy,” Mason heard Miss Sanders exclaim as she peered into the office fronting the two small cells that served as Evans Grove’s jail, “is there room?” Small as the space was with four bandits, Bucky Wyler and Doc Simpson packed inside, the walls felt as if they would burst out any second.

  “You quit your hollering now,” Bucky was shouting at one of the louder criminals over Mason’s shoulder. “What Doc Simpson’s got for you is bound to be better than what might be waiting for you tomorrow in Greenville.”

  Miss Sanders caught Mason’s eye with a bit of a start. “Perhaps I ought to come back.”

  “No,” he replied, trying not to grin. “I think your timing’s just right.” He grabbed his hat off the hook by the door. “It’s too tight in here and Bucky’s got things well in hand. I could use the air.” He was glad to see her looking a little bit like her old self again.

  She clasped her hands in front of her while they walked. She often did that, closing in on herself as if she was reluctant to take up too much space in the world. “What’s going to happen to those men?”

  “There’ll be a trial in Greenville, but I’ve no doubt the judge will sentence them for robbery and the leader for murder.” He paused for a moment before adding, “I expect the leader will hang.” Beatrice Ward would have greeted such news with a righteous vengeance, but Miss Sanders’s expression was somber.

  “They’ve done a terrible thing, surely, but I still can’t quite stomach the idea that more death makes anything better.”

  His mind shot back to the image of Pheobe’s two killers swinging from the gallows back in Colorado. The sight of their deaths hadn’t brought him any peace, only closure. “Justice isn’t healing. It’s just order and balance.”

  She looked at him, and Mason suddenly found his statement philosophical and wordy. A smart woman like her probably laughed at sentiments like that coming from someone like him. Rather than frown, he could see her ponder the words, taking them in with a seriousness he hadn’t expected. “That’s very true.” She wrapped her shawl tighter as if the harshness of the world had just blown in like a cold breeze.

  “We got word from New York for us to send back Mr. Arlington’s body on the train east this afternoon. We’re sending him on home to his family.”

  “That’s so sad.” Her shoulders gave a little shudder. She wasn’t any more over yesterday’s trauma than he expected she would be, which was why he had to ask what he was about to ask.

  “I spoke with Miss Sterling earlier, and she doesn’t want to accompany Mr. Arlington’s body back to the train today.” When Holly raised her eyebrows in surprise, he continued, “She says she wants to remember him alive. She thought if her last glimpse was of him being loaded onto a train in a box, that’d be hard to do.”

  “I imagine that’s so. Last looks hang on a long time, don’t they?”

  “That they do, which is why I think you should come with me when we take Arlington back.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Me? Whatever for?”

  Mason turned to her. “Same reason, actually. You need to see that platform calm and safe, not the scene of some horrible crime.”

  “So I’m to replace my visions of robbery and murder with the sight of an innocent man’s coffin being loaded onto a train? How can that possibly help?”

  “Order and balance, like I said.”

  Fear iced the corners of her blue eyes. “I don’t like the idea at all.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t.” He crossed his arms over his chest, letting her know he wasn’t going to let her get off so easily. “Can you accept that I might just know a bit more about this than your book learning tells you?”

  “I believe in God’s sovereignty and in Heaven’s justice. I don’t need some pilgrimage to the train tracks to get me over what happened yesterday.”

  Mason looked down at her hands. They were clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. “If your hands didn’t still shake when we talked about it, I’d say that’d be true.”

  She unclasped her hands and put them behind her, like a child hiding a stolen cookie. It would have made him laugh had it not been so sad.

  “Look, Miss Sanders, I been through this enough times to know this is one of those things where you need to get back on the horse that threw you. You need to go back there, and the sooner the better.”

  She rolled her eyes, pretending at calm dismissal. “It’s a fool notion.”

  “So humor a fool. Think of it as doing Miss Sterling a favor, if that helps.” He’d already decided he’d stand here until next Thursday if that’s what it took to haul her back to that clearing. She wasn’t going to admit what yesterday had done to her, and he couldn’t stand the thought of it festering in her. If she thought him brusque and controlling, well, it might make it easier to keep his distance from her on that confounded committee.

  He must have put on a determined face, for she softened her expression. “You really think I ought to? So soon? I have the Selection Committee meeting and so do you.”

  He nodded. “We’ll go after the meeting. It’ll help. Miss Sterling, well, she’s a bit down the road from ready, seeing as she knew Arlington well and all. You’ll be fine once you get past the jitters.”

  She deliberately put her hands back in front, probably to prove him wrong, but her fingers still wound around each other. “I’m not jittery.”

  Mason knew jittery when he saw it. The outside kind one could easily see, and the inside kind that hid behind the eyes. He simply arched a doubtful eyebrow at her.

  “Well, perhaps just a touch,” she admitted. “Any decent person would be. What I really need is for these children to be placed—all of them—tomorrow afternoon. That’s the best tonic I could have, knowing such good came out of all that loss.”

  “Order and balance, just like I said.” He pulled out his pocket watch. “The Selection Committee meets in an hour, right?”

  Miss Sanders couldn’t quite hold back a chuckle. “I think Mayor Evans was right not to give Beatrice any time to work up a head of steam. She’s also smart to put Mr. Brooks on the committee as well, so he can see how well Evans Grove steps up to a challenge.”

  Mason settled his hat down farther on his head. “Brooks, hmm? That is a good idea. She’s done Robert proud, don’t you think?”

  Miss Sanders’s sigh was heavy. “I do, indeed.” She fingered the cross she always wore around her neck. “It’ll feel good to do something happy for a change tomorrow.” She cocked her head to one side. “Who do you think will take in Liam?”

  Mason recalled Liam’s scraggly red hair and wisecracking grin. “Beats me, but Lord have mercy on whoever does.”

  “We owe him.” She parked one hand on her hip. “Running off like that took a great deal of nerve.”

  “Thinking of sending him took a great deal of nerve, too.” He really needed to nip that impulse to compliment her. He was still so amazed at how she’d handled herself that he’d been too encouraging already. They did owe her; that’s why he was forcing her to come to the railroad tracks today. Evans Grove owed Miss Sanders the chance to settle herself and move on.

  Over her shoulder, Mason saw Beatrice Ward marching down Liberty Street in the direction of Town Hall. “Not that you’re asking, but I figure the Selection Committee meeting this afternoon is going to take even more nerve than any gunfight.”

  “Oh, no.” She dismissed his notion with a wave of her hand—the first easy pose he’d seen out of those hands since yesterday. “I’m sure it will be fine. What could go wrong?”

  * * *

  “What else could go wrong?” Holly was near to boiling as she stalked out of the church parlor and climbed into the wagon Sheriff Wright had waiting. Beatrice Ward had so cornered her after the Selection Committee meeting that the sheriff had time to go fetch the wagon, load Mr. Arlington’s casket, and pull up before that old hen had finished her speech. “Here Miss Sterling is trying not to cry for all that’s go
ne on and how grateful she is, and that woman can only list every reason why Evans Grove is...” she allowed herself just the slightest imitation of Miss Ward’s clipped speech, “...‘coming undone.’” The spinster must have used the judgmental phrase a dozen times in the last hour alone. “Pull out before I say something I regret!”

  Sheriff Wright held up a gloved hand, his eyes on the church doorway. “Not just yet.” Holly followed his gaze beyond the frowning Miss Ward to the heartbreaking figure of Rebecca Sterling standing in the doorway.

  The lovely blonde stood pale and still, staring at the wagon’s mournful payload. It never ceased to astound Holly how a man’s remains, or a friend’s body, or a wife’s grief could contain itself to a simple pine box. Death belonged in a bottomless black well, not the neat confines of simple carpentry. Then again, death had no confines at all for those who believed in Jesus, did it? “The presence of that sure hope,” Reverend Turner had said in one of the far-too-many funerals held in Evans Grove since March, “can only balance out hurt, not erase it.” It was the very reason Beatrice’s nit-picking bothered Holly so; here God had handed them hope, a balance for their hurt, and the spinster couldn’t see it for her hunt of fault and error.

  This was a side of the businesslike sheriff Holly had not seen before. How had he known to hold the wagon still, to disregard all of Rebecca’s declarations that she had no desire to see the casket off? Without words or gestures, he seemed to read Rebecca’s eyes even from this distance and let her say this momentary goodbye to her colleague. Holly felt a tear slide down her cheek to see the fragile way Rebecca’s hand gripped the church doorway, to see the way her body caved slightly toward Reverend Turner when he took her elbow. It was clear Mr. Arlington had been important to her—maybe even a father figure, for Holly had found him to be such a kindly older gentleman—and she looked so very, desperately alone.

  Rebecca gave the slightest nod to Sheriff Wright, who gave a slow nod back before edging the horse gently forward. Even Beatrice fell mercifully silent. The silence continued, heavy as a blanket despite the tug of a spring breeze as they rolled down Victory Street and made a careful turn to head south down Second Street toward the path that led to the railroad. Mr. Arlington was making his final journey home.

  Holly turned once to look at the sheriff, but he was somewhere else. Hat pulled far down, spine rigid, hands tight on the reins, it wasn’t hard to see that Mason Wright had closed off the world for the moment.

  She let him be for a long while before finally asking, “How do you know so much?”

  He seemed startled out of his thoughts, yanked back to the present by her question. “So much? About what?”

  She couldn’t think of another way to put it. “About death. About killing and grief.” The words seemed ugly said aloud, and she had to look away, fingering a smudge on her skirt instead of braving the look she thought she might find in his eyes.

  When he didn’t answer for a while, she regretted her question. “I’m sorry. I suppose I ought not to pry. It’s just that...” Again, the right words seem to fail her. Mason Wright seemed so brave and strong—now more than ever—and she’d always found him handsome enough to unsettle the mousy girl who lived inside the book-learned schoolmarm. “You seemed to know just what ought to be done.”

  He gave a low chuckle, but it was too dark to be called a laugh. “Do I, now?”

  “It seems so.” Holly felt foolish, treading where she had no right. And yet, he’d never paid so much as a lick of attention to her before all this happened, and she couldn’t help but be curious about the parts of him she could see now.

  He turned to look at her, and Holly felt as if she could see a dozen sad stories in his eyes. “I know too much for my liking.” He shifted the reins in his hands. “I’ve buried kin, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It wasn’t, really, because Holly could see his acquaintance with death went deeper than that. “You’ve buried dear kin, haven’t you? Is that how you knew Rebecca needed to say goodbye when she said she didn’t? Or why you think I need to come today?” She couldn’t say what made her so bold, only that his pain seemed so plain to her that she couldn’t help herself. Please, Lord, she prayed as her questions hung in the air between them, let this be the Spirit pressing me on, and not my own foolishness.

  “I buried my wife.” The words were thick and heavy, as if he dredged them up out of a place that never saw daylight.

  Chapter Seven

  Sheriff Wright had been married.

  Moreover, he’d been widowed. No wonder he defended Pauline Evans so fiercely and had taken such care with how they wired Mr. Arlington’s poor wife. “I’m so sorry,” Holly whispered.

  He might not say more—and she had no right to ask for details—so Holly kept quiet, sending up a prayer for the poor woman’s soul.

  “It was out in Colorado territory,” the sheriff said after a long pause. “We had a little ranch. Not much, but enough to...make a start. Phoebe was smart and brave. She always saw everything as a grand adventure. Loved being far out in the wilderness like that, fancied herself building up a whole estate like some kind of founding family. Saw the open space as something she could fill.”

  He paused for a minute before continuing. “Me, I liked the space but worried about how far out we’d gone. I was away too much, said she needed neighbors to turn to for help in a rough patch, especially with a baby on the way. Phoebe laughed at that. Said I saw danger where there wasn’t any and worried too much.”

  Phoebe. Her name had been Phoebe. The way he spoke her name made Holly wonder how many years had gone by since he’d said it aloud.

  “I was away, out driving cattle, when...” He swallowed, hard, and scuffed his boot against the rail of the wagon. “When the attack came. I was gone. Nobody was there to help, and I wasn’t there to protect her. I wasn’t there when it mattered most.” Something fierce overtook him, as if he’d thought he could talk about it but found he couldn’t. “How could a woman in her condition do anything to defend herself?” he accused himself. “She was lying facedown in the doorway when I rode up.” His jaw worked, clenching at the memory that stiffened his spine as if someone had hit him from behind. When he turned his eyes on her, they were so dark and tormented that Holly felt as if she’d stumbled into a cave holding a pack of wolves. “A pregnant woman, facedown, curled up over her belly as if that could do any good.”

  Holly’s hand went to her chest, the picture all too real. She flinched from the pain-sharp edges of his words.

  “I left the bloodstain on the threshold. To remind me. As if I ever had any chance of forgetting. I could have ripped the whole house up plank by plank and still never gotten it out of my head. Not even after I found the men responsible and made sure they could never hurt anyone again. It won’t go away and it never should. Ever.”

  “I’m sorry.” Holly could only whisper inadequate words. How does a soul live with that kind of weight? So desperate a darkness? She remembered him saying bad news could wait for morning, and her heart twisted at how she’d dismissed the remark as polite compassion.

  “So yes,” he nearly hissed the word, “I know a lot about killing. I have killed. Never forget that about me. I am not an honorable man.”

  Holly didn’t know how to respond. The pain in his tone prickled between them, and she knew she ought to be afraid. The invisible wall he kept around him—the one that had come down a moment earlier—held this wounded beast inside. Still, she knew that beast wasn’t all there was to Mason Wright. It was something that had wrapped itself around the man, but it wasn’t the entirety of the man himself.

  But to reach any part of him, Holly would have to get past that wall—and it wouldn’t be easy. Now that he’d spoken his piece, his defenses were up again. Holly looked down at her lap and prayed for some kind response, some word stronger than that looming wall. “I’ve never seen you act with anything but honor. You ran out into those bullets to pull me to safety. Isn’t that honor
?”

  * * *

  “Duty isn’t honor.” Mason barked the words at her, regretting the mistake this ride had become. Why did he keep doing this, going near her when he ought to stay away? He hadn’t spoken aloud of Phoebe to anyone in nearly four years. Was some part of him thinking the awful memories would pull up enough pain to squelch what he was starting to feel toward this woman he couldn’t hope to deserve? He knew he welcomed the sting of so harshly forcing Holly Sanders to face her fears. He wanted Holly to finally realize he was dangerous and to stay away. But no, she wasn’t staying away. The pity in her eyes made him want to hit something. Phoebe deserved pity. Him? On his darkest days, Mason could easily argue that he deserved the pine box currently occupying the back of his wagon. He certainly deserved far worse than the compassionate look the teacher was giving him. Her regard made him angry. “You’ve only seen me doing my job.”

  He wanted to shout and growl Stop coming near me. To tell this foolish, innocent woman what it was like to dig his family’s grave and rip the pretty, hopeful curtains off the windows because he couldn’t bear the sight of them. He wanted to thrust his hands in her face, tell her about how he didn’t wash Phoebe’s blood off them for two days, certain the stain ought to stay forever and repulsively believing it would be the last part of her living body he’d ever touch.

  Why not? Why not scare her half to death with who he really was? Tell her what he did and thought and craved in the black blotch of time after he let Phoebe die—the thousand awful things no one else knew. She’d be so much better off if she ran away.

  Instead, he said nothing. He would take her back to the clearing and make her face her trauma. It would help her...and she would hate him for it. That was as it should be.

  They rode the whole rest of the trip in silence, broken only by the whistle that announced the coming train. Miss Sanders gulped audibly as they pulled into the clearing. He kept his gaze off her eyes, but could see the whites of her knuckles where she gripped the wagon bench.