Endless Heart: Heart, Book 3

by Emma Lang

  Her temper picked a terrible time to pop up. “Then you shouldn’t have stepped in front of the bullet that was meant for me.”

  “I will take any bullet meant for you, over and over.” He tugged her closer. “I meant it when I said I love you. That means I will do anything for you.” His gray eyes were full of the one thing designed to turn her into a puddle.

  Love.

  “I ain’t got a clue how to love nobody.” Her voice shook, along with the rest of her. Now that they were out of danger, this was when the real words would be said.

  He smiled and cupped her cheek. “Me neither. We can learn together. Marry me, Lettie Brown.”

  She turned her face so she could kiss his hand. “Are you sure?” Her question was barely above a whisper, every fiber of her body quivering with hope.

  “I ain’t been sure of much in my life, but I’m sure about this.” He pressed his forehead to hers, and the warmth of his breath puffed across her lips. “Marry me.”

  She smiled, her heart and soul full of light and love. Lettie had finally found her home. “Yes.”

  The preparations for the wedding took over. Everyone was as busy for Lettie’s nuptials as they had been for Angeline’s months earlier. Lettie talked to more people and held entire conversations, more than she had all her life. Suddenly folks were seeing her as a town citizen and not as a temporary one.

  Three weeks flew by in a blink. Each time she woke up, butterflies flitted around inside her as she thought of all the things that had to happen. They were getting married tomorrow, Saturday morning, at the restaurant, like Angeline and Sam. The Gundersons wouldn’t hear of anything else.

  Although Lettie wouldn’t admit it, the attention made her feel special and loved. Two things she didn’t know how to reciprocate. Soon she would learn, though, since she would have a husband by her side for the rest of her life. A real husband this time.

  Lettie walked to Angeline’s house after the dinner shift at the restaurant for the final fitting on her dress. It was a beautiful blue color, the same shade of the sky in winter. Angeline had insisted on it, telling Lettie she spent too much time in brown and assuring her that Shane would love it.

  Her smile seemed permanently stuck to her face nowadays, much to Angeline’s amusement. Lettie knocked on her friend’s door and waited only two seconds before it flew open and a grinning Angeline stood there.

  “You do not need to knock on my door. Get in here.” She grabbed Lettie’s arm and pulled her inside.

  The next thirty minutes went by quickly, full of giggling and talking. Lettie felt so free, so light, so amazingly good. She reveled in the fact she was no longer living in darkness. A man’s love and the strange dreams that bonded them together had brought her to this place.

  “There, that’s it, I think.” Angeline stepped back, a smile on her pretty face. “Look in the mirror now.”

  Lettie didn’t want to, since mirrors were not her friend, but she turned around. At first she kept her eyes closed, then slowly opened them. Standing in front of her was a woman she’d never seen before. She wore a beautiful sky-blue dress that hugged her curves, accentuating her full breasts and hips. Her hair was brushed to a sheen, lying in a thick braid on her shoulder. Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight streaming in from the right through the windows that faced the lake.

  “I don’t look like me,” was what she managed to say.

  “Oh yes you do. That’s who you are hiding under all the brown.” She whistled at Lettie’s reflection. “It took falling in love to let the real you out.”

  Lettie wanted to hug herself, maybe pinch herself, to make sure it was real.

  “You will be Mrs. Murphy tomorrow. No more brown or Brown.”

  The reminder of being Lettie Brown, second wife to Josiah Brown, felt like a bucket of cold water on her head. She’d told Shane almost everything except one small piece. A very important piece.

  Her real name.

  “Oh, Angeline, I’m in trouble.” Her stomach clenched hard.

  “What’s wrong?” Angeline frowned, her expression full of confusion.

  “I didn’t tell him my real name. Oh my God, I didn’t tell him.” Lettie’s heart dropped to her feet.

  “I don’t understand. Your name isn’t Lettie?” Angeline took her hands. “You’re freezing cold.”

  Panic flooded her. “His wife, his first wife’s name, was Violet. His daughter’s name was Elizabeth. There were dreams and they were so real.” Her words got all jumbled up inside. “Now he has to know who I am. I can’t let him marry me unless he knows. The names are like poison to him though. What am I gonna do?”

  Angeline led her to the kitchen table and pushed her into a chair. “I need to get you some coffee. You’re not making any sense.”

  Lettie clutched her stomach and leaned forward. “I have to tell him, Angeline. I have to tell him my name.”

  “Lettie, what is your real name?” Angeline sat down, her golden brows together in a V.

  “My name is Violet Elizabeth.”

  The sound of glass breaking echoed around them. Lettie started, and Angeline made a small squeaking noise.

  Sam and Shane stood in the entrance to the kitchen. Her bridegroom’s face was as white as the snow that surrounded the town in winter. On the floor in front of him lay the shards of a vase filled with blue wildflowers.

  “What did you say?” His voice was barely audible.

  “What’s going on?” Sam looked as confused as Angeline.

  “I don’t know. She was smiling and laughing and then she started in about her real name.” Angeline patted Lettie’s hand. “I didn’t know her name wasn’t Lettie.”

  A sob burst from Lettie’s throat as her happiness broke apart alongside the vase. “I’m sorry.” She rose and walked toward him, her heart breaking at the pain in his face.

  “What did you say?” he repeated, his voice now tinged with anger.

  “My name.” She swallowed the denial she wanted to throw at him. “My given name is Violet Elizabeth Stevens.”

  “I don’t know you.” Shane turned and left the kitchen, and took her heart with him.

  Shane wandered for hours, the stitches in his stomach pulling and complaining about the overexertion after weeks of healing. He ignored the discomfort, ignored the strange looks from people when he didn’t reply to their greetings.

  Lettie’s confession—no, Violet’s confession—kept scraping across his mind like fingernails. She couldn’t have a name like Mary or Edwina or Roberta. No, her name had to be Violet Elizabeth. And she’d kept it from him, knowing full well what the names meant to him.

  She’d lied.

  His heart hurt, aching with the slice of betrayal. She knew about his first wife. She knew his daughter had been murdered. She knew he’d done nothing to save them. Her very name mocked all of that.

  Her name was Violet Elizabeth.

  What kind of cruel God existed? Why would he put this woman in his path, make her feature in his dreams, have him fall in love with her? Why? When He knew the pain it would cause.

  Shane wanted to forget the fact he knew she’d lied, that her name mocked his past. He wanted to marry her as planned and live the rest of his life in ignorance. Yet he couldn’t. The wildflowers he’d picked so carefully for her bouquet swayed in the breeze in the field to his right. When he’d heard her dress was blue, he’d had to pick them for her.

  Little had he known it would be the end of his dreams of Lettie.

  It was as though his wife, Violet, laughed from the other side, pointing at him and cackling for his ineptitude as a husband and father, soldier and farmer. As if there could ever be salvation for a failure like him. The idea he would have married Lettie without knowing the truth made him sick. She deliberately hadn’t told him.

  He could understand why. If she wanted to snag herself a husband, not having the same name as his dead wife would be a good start. What he couldn’t forgive was not telling him in the last three weeks. T
here had been plenty of opportunity. What would have happened when they signed the marriage certificate? Or when the preacher said her full name during the ceremony?

  Shane was glad he’d found out now instead of when it was too late. He had thought Forestville would be the place he could reinvent himself. No one here knew Shane Murphy or the mess he’d made of his life in Missouri. Now they never would. He couldn’t stay and see her every day. It would be too much.

  Since he didn’t have a single thing he owned, he could keep walking out of town, out of Wyoming, out of reach of her memory. The first Violet was a selfish, shallow woman who wanted to be pampered. The second Violet was a brave, strong woman who had beaten the odds to survive. She was also a liar.

  Pain cut through him again, like tiny little knives slashing him to pieces inch by inch. Shane didn’t know the town well enough to recognize where he wandered, but he found his boots in front of a saloon. His hands shook first, then his arms and soon his whole body trembled. Thirst roared through him, sinking its fangs into his heart.

  Shane walked into the saloon.

  Lettie wrung her hands and paced back and forth in the kitchen at Angeline’s house. Her heart ached so hard it stole her breath. She’d hurt him badly, and he had walked away from her. Why oh why hadn’t she told him weeks ago? Would it have made such an impact if she had?

  She was sick with the knowledge she had lied to him by omission. There was no excuse for not telling him. If only she had said something before he’d told her the story of how he’d lost his family. But then he might not have told her, they might not have fallen in love, and they might not have planned on marrying.

  Her lie made that all happen and now it tore it to pieces. Lettie threw herself in a chair and put her face in her hands, trying to breathe. Angeline walked up beside her and rubbed her back.

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong now? I’ve got Sam scouring the town for Shane, and neither one of us knows what happened.” She squatted beside the chair and peered at Lettie beneath her arm. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”

  Lettie blew out a shaky breath. “Part of it is his story and I can’t do the telling for him. I can tell you that my real name, Violet Elizabeth, is powerful bad for him. I should have been honest, but I was afraid.” Her voice wobbled with each word. “When the dreams started, I didn’t know why or what would happen. Then I let myself love him.”

  “Dreams? I don’t understand.” Angeline pulled Lettie’s hands away. “What dreams?”

  Lettie’s laugh was punctuated with a sob. “We both had dreams of each other, um, dreams about being together. You know, between the sheets and such. Vivid ones that was so real, I, um, woke up feeling them.” She was embarrassed to admit she had woken up wet and aching for him.

  Angeline, bless her heart, seemed to understand anyway. Her eyes widened. “Wait, both of you had these dreams? Were they the same dreams?”

  “Uh-huh. Near as we can tell. We didn’t talk about them second by second, but they were awful similar.” She wiped her eyes with the already wilting handkerchief.

  “How many dreams?”

  “Four, I think. They started a few days after he got here.” Lettie closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the intensity of the dreams and how real life taught her how muted the imaginings were. Being with him was better than anything she’d ever dreamed.

  “Were they like memories?” Angeline seemed more than excited. Her expression lit up like a roaring fire.

  “Yeah, they were like memories. Of course that’s impossible because I ain’t never met the man before. We sure as heck didn’t do any of that before, well, before I had the dreams.” Lettie didn’t want to share too much detail with Angeline about what went on during the ill-fated supply trip. It was too personal, too painful.

  “If I were my husband, I would say the spirits talked to both of you. Did you find a sparrow feather?”

  Lettie was startled enough to forget about Sam. “How did you know?” She’d kept the feather in her chest of drawers. She’d considered throwing it outside but found she couldn’t.

  “Remember? I told you about Sam’s mother.” Angeline took Lettie’s hands. “She was Indian, and her name was Sparrow. When Sam was courting me, I found a sparrow feather in the kitchen. I didn’t know what to make of it until I found out about Sparrow. Her spirit looks after folks.”

  Lettie didn’t pretend to understand any of it. “She doesn’t know me. Why would she look after me? Is she a ghost?”

  “No, she’s not a ghost, and she doesn’t have to know you. Sparrow is part of the spirit world, and they take care of all creatures on Earth.” Angeline jumped to her feet. “I’m not doing a good job explaining this. We’ve got to find Sam and see if he found Shane.”

  They left the house and went in search of Angeline’s husband. The sparrow feather was another strange piece of an already strange world she existed in. Thinking back, she’d seen a flock of sparrows, another feather on the printing press and yet another sparrow outside the cabin. It was all too much to be a coincidence. The idea Sam’s dead mother was behind all those instances didn’t scare her, but she didn’t pretend to understand it. If Angeline thought Sparrow could help fix the mess with Shane, she wouldn’t question it.

  Shane was numb from his head to his feet, pleasantly numb. He could hardly put two thoughts together. In a twisted way, he’d missed drinking. The slow burn of the whiskey as it slid into his stomach. The buzz that spread outward from his gut to his head.

  He stared at the amber liquid in the glass and licked his lips. It would be his eighth drink, and he had only one more dollar to spend. Later on he’d be embarrassed he spent the five dollars Pieter had given him as a wedding gift. Now all he wanted was to sip at the drink and enjoy the smoky flavor.

  The first three drinks had gone down too fast, and he barely tasted them. He’d slowed down and tried to sip the fourth, fifth and sixth, yet he’d found his glass empty before he knew it. But he’d been feeling good by then, real good. His pain had faded to a dull throb and then the seventh drink washed over that throb and the pain was gone.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt relaxed. Thank God there was a saloon in this town, whatever town it was. Something that started with an F, but it wasn’t important. What he cared about was the next two drinks the final dollar in his pocket would buy.

  Shane sipped the nectar, the flavor exploding in his mouth. Then in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

  “Where did my drink go?” he heard somebody ask, and it echoed in his head. Shane glanced around and only saw the burly barkeep staring at him with a frown.

  “You had enough, fella. I ain’t serving you no more.”

  “I got a dollar left.” He searched his pockets but didn’t find any money. “Somebody took my money too.”

  The barkeep leaned over the bar. “You drank that money. It’s in your gut.”

  Shane blinked. “I drank the money?”

  “Ain’t you one of the Gundersons’ folk? I should go get Pieter.” The man started to move when Shane grabbed his arm.

  “Noooo, don’t do that. He’ll know I drank the money.” Shane didn’t know what it meant, but he knew Pieter couldn’t know what he’d done.

  “You can’t stay here. Hell, I’m guessing you could drink a bottle of that cheap rotgut every hour if I gave it to you. Not here.” The barkeep shook off Shane’s grip easily. “You gotta leave. If you won’t, then I’m gonna fetch Pieter.”

  Shane knew the familiar story, the boot in his ass when he ran out of money. He thought the town—Foresttown? Forestvalley?—was different somehow. The townsfolk had been nice to him and then there was somebody else. A woman.

  Yes, a woman.

  His stomach flipped upside down, spilling the whiskey. It burned like acid deep inside him. In a flash, he remembered exactly why he sat at the bar drinking his money away.

  Lettie.

  Oh God. Oh God. She wasn’t Lettie. She was Vi
olet Elizabeth. Violet. Elizabeth. The two names that would forever remind him of his failure as a man, a husband and a father. How could he love her? How could she love him and lie to him?

  He laid his head down on the bar and waited for someone to drag him from the building and throw him in the dirt. His life wouldn’t be worth a spit in the wind without Lettie anyway. He also couldn’t be with her knowing her real name. It would be like rubbing salt in a wound every minute of every day.

  He wasn’t strong enough to get past it.

  Tears stung his eyes as he fell back down to the bottom of life again. He was comfortable there, safe from the pain that waited for him.

  “Shane?”

  He lifted his head and spied a black-haired man standing beside him. “Hmm?”

  “Oh hell, did you drink half a bottle of that shit?” The stranger put his arm around Shane’s waist and hauled him to his feet. They made their way slowly to the door because the man had a hitch in his gait. “You could help by actually walking.”

  “I don’t wanna go.”

  “You’re going anyway. Mike doesn’t want you in here. Angeline is going to kill me.” The man sounded angry, but Shane didn’t know who he was so it didn’t matter, did it? “I didn’t expect to find you here, so I wasted too much time looking every place else.”

  “Who are you?” Shane’s head lolled back as he tried to look at the man. “Are you Indian?”

  “Walk, Murphy. We’re going to my house. I’ve got a surefire cure for that whiskey bath you took.”

  “I didn’t take no bath. I drank the money Pieter gave me. Shhhh.” Shane tried to put his finger on his lips but found it in his nose instead. “Don’t tell him ’cause I don’t want him to be mad.”

  The stranger’s dark eyes held kindness and pity. “Ah, Murphy, you are a wreck.”

  Shane was used to pity but not the kindness. He was a leaf blowing on the wind, landing in puddles, mud and horse shit, never knowing who would step on him, break him into pieces or burn him. It was no way to live, but he didn’t know any other.