A Place Called Home

by Elizabeth Grayson

  She'd learned in these last months that a man did what he had to do, and that a woman took her happiness where she could. Those were hard, bitter lessons she had learned with David. She didn't intend to make the same mistakes with Reid.

  She loved him and this valley and this life, and she meant to store up every memory, every sound and sight and sensation, because she understood as she never had before how precious each moment of joy could be.

  Beside her in his bed, Reid stirred and shifted and opened his eyes. She took his wakefulness as an opportunity and trailed her hand down the long, livid scar at the center of his chest.

  "Are you awake?" he murmured.

  "Indeed I am."

  "And I take it you have something on your mind."

  "Indeed I do."

  He grinned at her, his eyes shining in the dark. "Shall I guess what it is?"

  Her fingers skimmed lower, touching him in a way that made him catch his breath. "If you think you can..."

  "Oh, I think I can guess," he whispered against her ear. "I'm very good at guessing games."

  "Are you really?"

  He answered her question with a kiss.

  * * *

  The hours and the days and the weeks of that winter sifted through Reid's fingers like so much sand. He tried to close his hands around them, to hold them fast. He tried to cling to the moments and the memories. Of Cissy's soft, sweet weight as she slept in his arms. Of Little David cooing in the dark. Of the victory celebration they'd given Tad when he mastered the vagaries of long division. Reid tried to store up the silvery spill of Livi's laughter, the gleam of her hair in the firelight, the silk of her touch on his skin. Those were all things David had experienced, but they were new to Reid, sharp and precious and overwhelming.

  From the time he could toddle, Reid had known David was different from him. David understood who he was and where he belonged. David had a family who loved him, a place in the world. When David's life expanded to include a wife and children, Reid had watched with envy in his heart. He'd seen the flush of joy in David's face when he drew Livi close, watched him bundle Tad and Cissy, giggling, in his arms.

  Reid had never aspired to any of that. There was no point wanting what he couldn't have. But now, with her touch and her kiss and the light in her eyes, Livi had opened the door to this other world and invited him in.

  Filled and sated and content in a way he'd never been before, Reid hardly missed the solitude of the woods, the far vistas that had once been so pleasing to his eyes and soul. Sometimes when he hunted far afield, he felt the pull of trails not taken and lands left unexplored. When he climbed to the top of the cliff where he'd mourned for David and looked out at a world as boundless as the sky, he felt his senses stir with the promise in that long horizon. Some day he might seek that world again, but for now, there was too much to experience and relish and explore within the walls of this one tiny cabin.

  One evening in early March, when a late-winter storm howled around the house and muffled the world in drifts of white, Livi came to where Reid sat before the fire. The children were abed and the air hung redolent with the smell of the popcorn Reid had brought back from one of his forays to the station.

  She settled herself on the bench beside him, her eyes alight. "I have something for you."

  "Have you, now?" he asked. "Is it another of those molasses cookies you baked this afternoon?"

  She shook her head.

  "Is it a new pair of socks? I've noticed how diligently you've been knitting."

  "It isn't socks."

  "Is it a kiss?" he guessed hopefully.

  He saw a flush warm the delicate pink in her cheeks, and experienced a slow, delicious rise of anticipation.

  "What is it, then?"

  From the folds of her skirt Livi withdrew a small, cylindrical case. Scarred though the shagreen leather was, the buckle at the closing and the brads that fastened the belt strap shone with recent polishing.

  Reid knew instantly what Livi meant to give him and caught his breath. It was David's pocket telescope.

  Reid knew the story of the telescope well... How Henry Dickerson, one of David's neighbors in Lynchburg, had brought the telescope to the blacksmith shop when he heard David was joining up with Colonel Clark. Dickerson was a tough old bird who had fought against the French more than a decade before.

  "Take the telescope, boy," he'd said to David, "so you can see those demmed Englishers coming. Then part their hair with your best shot."

  Scarcely believing Livi would entrust David's most prized possession to him, Reid curled his fingers around the velvety, green leather case. He remembered that while they were campaigning with Colonel Clark, David was forever oiling and polishing that telescope. Remembered how he'd bound it on a thong at his throat as they waded through the icy, chest-deep swamps on the march from Kaskaskia to Vincennes.

  With hands that shook, Reid slipped the buckle at the top of the case and withdrew the small, elegant spyglass. Fashioned of gleaming brass, the two concentric cylinders expanded smoothly and locked in place with a metallic click. Reid didn't need to put the glass to his eye to know how fine the optics were. He peered through the glass anyway, using the moment to blink away the sheen of tears.

  "Are you sure you want me to have this?"

  Livi simply nodded. "Tad and Cissy and I all have bits and pieces of David's life. I thought the telescope was something you would use, something you would treasure as much as David did."

  Reid warmed with the wealth of her understanding and the depth of her generosity. "You don't know what this means," he began around the emotion snagged in his throat. "I don't know how to thank—"

  Livi took his hand. "David couldn't have loved you more if you were his brother born. You were his friend, Reid, and his protector. I took comfort in that when you were off fighting with Colonel Clark. Even though I hated you for taking him away, I knew you'd look out for him."

  "I would have kept him safe to my last breath."

  "I know that," she said and seemed to hesitate, seemed to carefully consider her next words. "I wish you had been there the night the Indians came."

  Reid fumbled to find an answer that skirted the truth. He said he'd never get you out of Lynchburg if I was there.

  "David thought it was better if he introduced you to Kentucky on his own."

  "If only he'd been able to." Her voice was whisper soft and filled with regret.

  He stared down at their linked hands, tenderness and regret condensing in his chest. "We wasted so damn much time, Livi," he finally said, "fighting for David's loyalty."

  She nodded slowly. Yet after the years of antagonism, there was more for them to discuss. "You thought I was unworthy of being his wife."

  Reid saw the vulnerable curve of her mouth and how his accusations had raised doubts that dogged her still.

  "I only said that," he admitted, "because it felt as if you were stealing my only friend."

  It wasn't a defense. Too much had passed between them for him to have to defend himself. Still, he wanted her to know he hadn't deliberately set out to hurt her.

  "I would come to see David," Reid said, remembering. "And we'd share our dreams and make our plans—"

  "You deliberately shut me out."

  "Just the way you and David did when you looked at each other." He tightened his fingers around her hand. "I'd all but convince him to come west with me, to chase his dream, and there you'd be—so soft and fresh and beautiful."

  Reid watched her in the firelight. Her bright hair shimmered like molten copper, her pale skin burnished by the flames. He had always known why David had fallen in love with her. Now, after all this time, he understood why David's love for Livi had lasted. There was more substance to this woman than Reid had ever been willing to see.

  "You had parts of David I could never have," Livi said, her voice shredding with the force of fresh emotion. "You had all his wildness, all his dreams. You had the parts he denied to me. I wanted hi
m whole and complete, but neither of you would let me have that."

  They sat in silence for a very long time, each grieving for David, each seeing the chances they'd lost or thrown away. Both knowing there was no way to recapture what might have been. Sitting there in the firelight nearly a year after David's death, they each accepted their part in undermining a life that could have been better and sweeter and more nourishing.

  "I'm sorry, Livi," Reid whispered.

  "I'm sorry, too."

  He took her in his arms and held her close. "Neither of us can change the past," he murmured, "but we can work together for our own sake and for the sake of the children. And we will do that, Livi. I promise you."

  They sat for a time in silence. The admissions they'd made, the grief they'd shared, bound them as powerfully as the hope they harbored for what lay ahead. It would have been as natural as breathing for them to gather up Little David and creep across to Reid's cabin to make love, but the baby was fussy tonight. Livi said he was teething, so when Little David began to cry, Reid returned the spyglass to its case and kissed Livi good night.

  Once he had stirred up the fire in his own hearth and added wood, Reid sat fingering David's telescope. He could still see the fair-haired boy who had raced him to the uppermost branches of the oaks that overhung the river, the laughing youth who had dared him to paint a mustache on his stepmother's bright new portrait, the rock-steady man his boyhood friend had become. It was impossible to believe that David was gone.

  How could he be, when they'd faced so much of life together? They'd fought bullies who'd sneered at Reid's Indian heritage, hidden David's pet pig deep in the swamp when it was time for butchering. They'd drunk their first whiskey and smoked their first cigars, gone whoring together to celebrate their sixteenth birthdays. David had toasted Reid's success as a fur trapper long before he proved himself. Reid had been there when Tad was born. They'd kept each other safe during the war, pooled their land grants, and built this cabin. They'd shared a dream that somehow wouldn't die.

  Reid braced his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. But David was gone, and with his passing, so much goodness and strength and wisdom had gone to waste.

  Tonight Livi had given him David's telescope. It was a keepsake Reid would treasure all his days, a remembrance so special that he could scarcely take it in. With David dead, he'd inherited Livi and the children, the cabin and the land. He'd stepped body and soul into David's place. But somehow Reid couldn't let himself believe he deserved that. Not while David's death went unavenged.

  Though he had accepted Ben Logan's counsel months before and given up his search for David's killers, Reid's conscience had never gone silent. That Creek law demanded a death for a death, that Reid himself subscribed to those beliefs, kept the questions alive inside him. He needed the answers now more than ever. If he found David's killers and made them pay for what they'd done, maybe he could accept what David's death had given him.

  The very next evening, Reid cornered Livi after supper and asked again about that night on the trail.

  "I don't know why you're bringing this up," she admonished, both her hands and voice trembling. "I don't want to talk about how David died. I don't remember more than what I've told you."

  "I need to know about the Indians, Livi," Reid prompted her. "Tell me about the Indians."

  She went silent and resentful, then turned away. For the first time since Little David was born, Reid felt as if Livi were shutting him out.

  He felt even worse when Tad came to him while he was chopping wood the following morning.

  "I heard you and Ma talking last night," Tad accused, "about Pa being killed on the trail."

  Reid nodded, sure he knew why Tad had sought him out. "And you don't want me asking questions that upset her."

  Tad cast a glance over his shoulder, as if he didn't want Livi to hear. "No," he said softly. "I want to tell you about the raiders myself."

  Reid set aside the ax, an odd, eerie shiver trailing the length of his back. "Your ma would skin me alive if she knew I was talking to you about this."

  Tad nodded, his eyes reddening. "She doesn't understand."

  Reid thought he might.

  "All right, then," he said with a nod. "Go get your gun, and tell your ma we're going hunting."

  Once they had tramped more than a mile into the woods through the melting snow, Reid pulled up beside a fallen tree. Leaning his rifle against the trunk, he gestured for Tad to take a seat.

  "All right, boy," Reid said. "You tell me about the night your pa died."

  Reid waited in silence. When a boy had been holding something like this inside him for so long, it took a while to break it loose.

  Finally, staring past Reid as if he were seeing something far away, Tad began to talk. "It was the sound of Pa's rifle firing that woke me."

  In a voice that shook, he described the sound of the single shot, the war whoop that followed, and the beat of running footsteps. He'd heard the shouting, the clatter of a fierce, brief battle, and his mother's scream. With more than a hint of frustration, Tad told Reid how Livi had wedged herself in the opening at the head of the tent to block his path.

  "When Ma finally went to see to Pa, I followed her outside. Pa was lying there covered with blood, so still I knew he was dying."

  The boy's face twisted as he fought for breath.

  "I started to follow the raiders, but Ma grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. She didn't understand I needed... to make those men pay for killing Pa—"

  Tad's voice frayed and the tears broke free. Reid pulled the boy to him and held on hard. He let Tad burrow against his chest, the boy's shoulders heaving. Tad wept tears he'd been holding inside him for nearly a year, tears he'd refused to shed in front of his mother and sister.

  Reid hugged Tad tight, feeling helpless. He didn't know how to comfort the boy, since no one had ever in his life held or comforted him. Instinctively, he splayed his hands against Tad's back and bowed his body around him. He stroked the boy's hair, whispered words Reid barely understood himself.

  Out there in the woods, where the silence would keep the boy's secrets, Reid helped Tad be a child again.

  At length the boy released a shuddery breath and pushed away. His face was mottled and tear-streaked. "You won't tell Ma—"

  "No, Tad," Reid promised. "I won't tell her."

  "It would upset her, you know?"

  Reid knew.

  "She thinks Cissy and I have forgotten what happened, but we haven't. We won't ever forget."

  Ben Logan had told Reid about the hardships Livi and the children had faced on the trail, about the massacre they'd ridden through. Reid couldn't help wondering what other memories this boy had tucked up inside himself.

  "But it's the raiders I wanted to tell you about," Tad finally said. "That night—the night Pa was killed—five of the men who came into our camp were Shawnee. I recognized the way they dressed, and some of the words they said to each other."

  Reid nodded. "Your mother said your father spoke with one of them."

  Tad sniffed and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. "Was she able to tell you that two of the men in the party were Englishmen?"

  "Tad, for God's sake, are you sure?" Reid felt his hackles rise. "Why didn't your mother realize who they were?"

  The boy shrugged. "They were dressed up in buckskin and feathers and weren't in camp very long. I don't think the Britishers said anything, either. Besides she was taking care of Pa. But I noticed them."

  "How can you be so sure they were white?"

  "They kind of didn't look right," the boy hedged. "Like you, you know? Even when you dress like one, you never quite look like an Indian."

  Reid understood.

  "And when I looked at their tracks the next morning," Tad went on, "I saw that two of the raiders were wearing boots."

  Reid's insides went cold. "What kind of boots?"

  "Stitched boots," Tad said. "The one that killed Pa was wearing boots w
ith the soles stitched on."

  English officers wore that kind of boots. Fine boots, expensive boots. The kind Reid himself was wearing.

  If English officers had been in the group that came into David and Livi's camp, then it hadn't been a random attack. The raiders had come for a reason—and Reid knew exactly what they were looking for.

  "Did they take anything?" he prodded Tad. "A doeskin bag? One embroidered with flowers and beads?"

  The boy hesitated then shook his head. "They didn't take anything. Nothing except the man Pa shot."

  But Reid knew that somehow, without either Tad or Livi seeing, the raiders had taken the sacred disk Reid had entrusted to David to bring to Kentucky.

  He sucked in a breath and let it clear his head. Tad had given him the answers he'd sought for nearly a year. He knew now why David had been killed. It wasn't mindless brutality or happenstance. Politics—England's last, desperate bid to maintain its power in the West—was the reason David had died.

  And Reid had a very good idea who had struck him down.

  Clearly Tad hadn't told Livi any of this. She probably hadn't given the boy a chance to tell her, and it was just as well. It wouldn't help either her or Tad to know David had been sacrificed to the British cause in America.

  Knowing that was only important to Reid—so he could avenge his friend.

  He and Tad barked a couple of squirrels on the way back to the cabin to cover their long absence. While Tad skinned them and set them to soak, Reid gathered up the things he'd need on his journey to the Ohio country.

  As far as he knew, there were only two British officers still operating north of the river. Captain William Caldwell had led the attack on the Kentucky settlements and been in command of the troops and the Indians at Blue Lick. From what Reid had heard of him, Caldwell was an honorable man. He wouldn't involve himself in a raid like the one that had taken David's life.

  But the other man, Captain Martin Weems, had lived and intrigued with the Indians for several years. The officer had a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty, and David's murder had the stench of Weems all over it.