Colorado Gold
Page 33
“I’m here. We’ve asked God to have His hand upon this situation. Do we believe He will?” She nodded and let him lead the way.
After Daniel’s knock, it seemed they waited forever. Finally the door was slowly opened. Silently she stood aside to let them enter. When the door was closed, Amy went to stand in front of her mother. For a moment Amy found herself trying to imagine this woman with her scarred face and dowdy dark dress in that pink boudoir.
She took a deep breath. “I’ve come to say it all over again. This time I won’t let you make me angry. Mother, please forgive me. I did say those terrible things and I am sorry. I want my mother back, regardless of who she is or what she has done.”
Silverheels turned to pace around the cabin. When she stopped across the room from Amy, her face was drawn and pale. “The past can’t be ignored, Amy, if it weren’t—”
There was a pounding on the door. With a startled glance at Silverheels, Daniel went to open it. They heard him gasp, “Eli!”
Amy ran to the door. “Father, oh, Father!” She pulled him in, touching his white face, sobbing and tugging at his coat.
Daniel patted her back. “Amy, it’s all right.” He looked at Eli. “She’s doing fine. It’s just been a rough week.”
Eli looked past them both, grief pulling furrows into his face. Moving heavily, like a very old man, he walked past them. Daniel slipped his arm around Amy as they watched him approach Silverheels.
“Amelia? Amy left a note saying she’d found you. I’ve come—”
The woman turned away. “Kind of you, but totally unnecessary. I’m doing well. I didn’t realize you were here.” The words sprang from her lips in a jerky rush as she turned, studied his face, and then turned away. “I’m sorry you’ve come. The past is too painful for either of us to discuss, and certainly it doesn’t warrant this.” Her pocked hand swept out to include them all.
His voice was weary, slow. “Amelia, I didn’t come immediately. After all these years, just knowing you were in the territory, accessible, brought it all back. I would not be here if I weren’t ready to take you home with me.”
She gasped and whirled around. “Eli Randolph! You are crazy to consider it. You’d open yourself to the same kind of life we had in the past?”
Amy saw him wince. He straightened his shoulders and said, “If it were all your fault, I would hesitate. Both of us were too inexperienced with life then. I hope the years have added a maturity that’ll see us through.”
“Maturity?” Her voice was bitter. “After Jake Jenson tossed me over for a new excitement, I had nothing. Without a cent, how do you suppose a good-looking woman makes a living?”
“I know. You don’t have to explain. If I’d had less pride and more sense, I would have come after you when I got your first letter.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I wouldn’t have stayed. I won’t come now. My pride would have had me out the door and now my pride won’t let me in. Eli, I am ruined, broken. The only thing I ever owned in my whole life was my beauty. It’s gone. Do you think I’ll come begging now?”
“Silverheels.” Daniel’s voice slashed through the dialogue and they both turned. For a moment she stared at Daniel and then wearily touched her forehead. He was still silent. Finally she lifted her head.
“I know. You are going to remind me of that prayer.”
“Didn’t you mean it?”
“Yes, at the time.” She hesitated, moved restlessly around the room, and then came to stand in front of Daniel.
“Sorry.” Her mocking smile made Amy’s heart break. “I guess it just didn’t take. When I consider how far I would have to go—” She gestured toward them all. “I guess I know better than to trust me.”
“Mother,” Amy said hesitantly; then throwing herself at the woman, she cried, “Hold me; tell me you really don’t love us, want us!”
That smile was bent on Amy now. “You’ll introduce me as your mother, the prostitute, who earned her living by manipulating men, breaking their hearts, taking their money?
“Amy, do you have any idea what you are so easily suggesting? You can’t imagine. It is out of the question to suggest that I could use my body in this manner and then casually step back into life expecting to be accepted as a decent woman.” Her eyes were sad, not flashing with anger. “Some sins can’t be rectified. Forgiven—”
Amy wasn’t hearing; she was looking at Daniel, and his steady brown eyes told her he was recalling the scene that was passing through her own mind. She stepped close to him.
“Daniel,” she whispered, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “Please forgive me. Until now, I couldn’t see it that way. But now—please?”
He wrapped his arms around her. “Amy, all’s forgiven. I mean it. Please, sweetheart, don’t cry. It’s all in the past.”
But the shame and ugliness were obvious to her, and she had to say it. “I was doing that very thing, trying to get my way. Bargaining with my body. How can I ever claim to be better—”
Daniel caught her close, murmuring in her ear, reminding her of the prayers she had prayed, the promises they had made. Amy lifted her head from Daniel’s shoulder and confronted the other faces. Eli and Amelia stood shoulder to shoulder, their faces stricken, waiting.
“It’s just exactly what I did.” She couldn’t meet their eyes as she explained. “I wanted Daniel to leave Colorado Territory. I tried to use my body to get my way.”
Eli was pacing back and forth; every jerky movement of his body proclaiming his outrage. “My daughter, sinner—”
His waving hand dropped. Slowly he sank down in Amelia’s rocking chair. With head in hands he sat while Amy trembled and pressed against Daniel’s shoulder.
When Eli lifted his head, it was Amelia whom he addressed. “Sinners, we all are. How can we measure sin and decide which sins to forgive, which to use as bludgeons?”
Amy caught her breath, looked at her mother. Amelia’s face was impassive, pale. Daniel said, “Pride is a sin, particularly when it binds people away from us.”
She began speaking slowly, hesitantly. “You don’t know how impossible it is. Difficult. I’m ruined. If I had something to offer. I’m trying to see my sins as forgiven, but—” Her voice was muffled as she moved restlessly around. “I’m scarred and ugly.”
“Mother.” Amy’s voice was strangled and it was difficult to force the words. “All we want is for you to love us. If just once you would hold me, if only I could know you really loved me—at least in the past, if not now. Do you know? I used to dream about you, wondering if you loved me when I was little.”
Amelia came, and Amy saw the tears running down her face, pooling in the scars. As she opened her arms, she said, “Eli, may we have the rocking chair?”
When Amy finally sat up and looked at her mother, she gave a shaky laugh. “We’re soaked with each other’s tears.”
Eli was standing behind the chair, patting Amelia’s shoulder. Daniel was setting out the coffee grinder, filling the cabin with the aroma of roasting coffee beans. “Mother, is it possible to grind coffee beans while they are still hot?”
“You can try.” She was smiling as she hugged Amy again.
“Mother—” Amy looked from Amelia to Eli. “What about—” She couldn’t finish. It would be an outrage.
Silverheels pressed her face against the hand on her shoulder. “Please, Eli, will you forgive me? That’s all I ask. Nothing more.”
“Amelia,” he said, “I never wanted you to leave, even when I knew—it was just that in the end I wanted, more than anything else, to have you happy. That wasn’t happening while we were together.”
Amy got up and went to Daniel, who was shaking his hand. “Burned my fingers. How do you grind hot beans?”
“You wait for them to cool.” She pushed her head against his shoulder. “I have a request.” Lifting her head she looked into his eyes, searching for those shadows that just might be there. There didn’t seem to be any, but just i
n case, she said, “Could we say our vows again, in front of Father and Mother?”
“Because a father and mother should be there when a girl is married?” He was grinning, but there was a question in his eyes, too.
“I suppose that would be nice. But, no. Because of us. Daniel, my heart is so full of love for you, I feel the only way I can express how I feel properly is to stand here and say our vows and really mean them. For richer or for poorer, in sickness and health, as long as we live, I want to be your wife.”
Daniel reached for Amy. When they turned they saw Eli and Silverheels standing shoulder to shoulder, nodding, with smiles just beginning in their eyes.
MARIAN WELLS and her husband live in Boulder, Colorado, which gives her immediate access to the research and documentation of the historical surroundings of this book and the books to follow in this series. A well-known author, her research and background on Mormonism provided the thrust for her bestselling STARLIGHT TRILOGY, The Wedding Dress and With This Ring.
Books by Marian Wells
The Wedding Dress
With This Ring
Karen
THE STARLIGHT TRILOGY SERIES
The Wishing Star
Star Light, Star Bright
Morning Star
THE TREASURE QUEST SERIES
The Silver Highway
Colorado Gold
Out of the Crucible
Jewel of Promise