A Patchwork Family

by Charlotte Hubbard

  “You’re a blessing, Billy Bristol,” she whispered. “Sleep tight tonight. I have all faith that your sister is safe, and sleeping soundly herself.”

  Christine awoke with a jolt from her fitful nap. The train was hissing its way toward the station as the conductor entered her car.

  “End of the line, folks! All out for Atchison!” he cried, plucking tickets from the clips above each seat. “Gather up all your belongings, and watch your step getting out!”

  He was a tall man with gray hair curling around his dark blue hat, and a smile she found far too pleasant. “Best wishes for your mother’s recovery, Miss Bristol. I’m sure she’ll feel better fast, now that you’ll be home with her.”

  She flashed him a tearful grin, eager to join the other passengers clambering down to the platform. It wasn’t the first fib she’d told to get this far; her story became more elaborate each day, with details that compelled everyone she met to help her.

  She’d first tried her tale of woe on the O’Tooles, who’d driven her to the train station in Junction City after that stupid nag insisted on stopping at their door. It didn’t hurt that she looked bedraggled and dusty, clutching the letter that summoned her to her mother’s deathbed. Not only had they fed her and wrapped up fresh biscuits and cheese, they’d given her a carpetbag and two simple dresses their deceased daughter had worn.

  But this was Atchison, not Leavenworth!

  As Christine entered the station, the travelers around her faded into a haze of exhaustion. How many days had she been running now? And after all the clever ways she’d devised to get home—avoiding the stage route, where the way-station families already knew her—how on earth had she boarded the wrong train?

  If Billy were here, he’d say God was getting back at her for sneaking off with Mercy’s money and stealing the reverend’s sorry excuse for a horse. But that was claptrap. If God had been paying any attention at all, Daddy would still be alive and Wesley would be home on the farm where they all belonged. So He couldn’t care less about her little lies. They were small potatoes, compared to the whoppers Mama had obviously told.

  It was this thought that kept her walking. No use crying over all the stories she’d believed—all the trust her mother had betrayed—and no sense in fretting over Billy. He’d found a home, and now she would, too. Right after she figured out which train went to Leavenworth. Right after she ate some real food and slept in a real bed. If she was going to catch up to Mama and Richard Wyndham, she had to keep looking ahead, like a horse wearing blinders. No distractions. No more mistakes made because she was so tired.

  Compared to that spot in the Kansas prairie they called Abilene, Atchison was alive and thriving. Wagons were parked all along Commercial Street, which was lined on both sides with brick and board buildings—real stores and restaurants! Why, if Mama and that Englishman were smart, they’d settle here rather than heading west, where only rutted dirt roads and the endless prairie awaited them.

  Christine paused in front of a plate-glass window, where red lettering announced Aunt Amanda’s Cafe and the scents of frying meat and coffee beckoned. Her stomach growled, but she walked on, wanting to get a feel for this main street before the sun went down. She compared the room rates posted at two hotels, and calculated what she’d have left for a train ticket after she bought a meal. Clutching her carpetbag, she moved on.

  Should’ve taken more than forty dollars, she chided herself as she ambled along the wooden sidewalk. Could’ve taken things easier to sell than those mono-grammed napkins, too.

  She passed a furniture store and then noticed a photographer’s front window, cleverly painted to look like it was framed. Christine gazed wistfully at the people who’d posed for this man’s camera, for she dearly loved having her picture made. How else did a girl remember last year’s Easter frock, and smile over how much she’d grown up since then?

  Here, however, she saw a pair of curly-haired twins in sailor suits, posing with their mastiff between them—a young lady whose hair cascaded down her back like a river as she glanced coyly over her shoulder, and an adventurous sort wearing only an artfully arranged silk sash that barely covered the unmentionable parts of her body. And then there was a couple, perhaps newly married—

  Christine’s heart stopped. A man wearing a derby and a houndstooth suit with leathered lapels smiled from behind his waxed mustache, as though he had the answers to her every question.

  And indeed he did. For the woman standing behind him was none other than her mother, Virgilia Bristol. Her arms were wound around his shoulders, and a delighted smile lit up her face. She had the gall to be gazing directly at the camera. Directly at the daughter she’d left behind!

  Christine caught her breath, calmed the pulse that pounded in her ears, and got control of the knees that trembled with shock and exhaustion. Perhaps it was no accident that she’d taken the northbound train. Perhaps God Himself had guided her here, and was about to reveal her future!

  Christine grabbed the door handle and walked inside the photograph shop. There was no time to waste!

  Chapter Seven

  A bell tinkled merrily above her head. The shop was empty, except for the framed faces on the walls and a desk where orders were taken. The floors were plain but clean, and the acidic scent of chemicals tickled her nose. One entire wall displayed awe-inspiring spectacles of nature from the West—the Grand Canyon and other places she’d read about in schoolbooks.

  “Help me! Can somebody please help me?” Christine cried in a tone that always got people’s attention.

  Then she felt a pair of eyes peering at her from behind the curtained doorway that divided this front room from the studio in back. A bright flash and a poof of gunpowder told her the photographer—one Tucker Trudeau, according to the lettering on his door—was busy with a customer.

  The wizened woman who came out looked right through Christine, apparently assuming the waif wanted a favor she couldn’t pay for. Dressed in motley prints of many colors, the woman seemed quaintly European. Her manner seemed suspicious. Reminiscent of a Gypsy—or what Christine imagined a Gypsy to be like.

  “Oui? Que voulez-vous, ma’amselle?”

  It was a form of French, Christine realized, but it left her textbook learning far behind. The heavily accented voice sounded centuries old, and as those obsidian eyes widened, she wondered if she was being hexed.

  Christine let out the breath she’d been holding. “I—I must look a fright, because I just got off the train after days of—”

  But her tragic tale wouldn’t sway this old crone. Better to try another tactic.

  “You have a certain—very fine—photograph in your window,” she began in a more sophisticated voice, “and I’d like to ask Mr. Trudeau about it. When he has time, of course. I could come back later—”

  “Qui est-ce, Maman? Je ne crois—well, now. Hello, ma princesse. There is something I can do for you?”

  A sable-haired man stepped out from behind the studio curtain to tower above his scowling mother. His close-cropped beard, broad, muscled shoulders, and plaid shirt suggested a lumberjack, yet the fingers he combed through his hair looked too long and pale to belong to an outdoorsman.

  Christine gave him her finest smile. Now her mission would be accomplished. Mr. Trudeau was perhaps twenty-three, and he was certainly drinking her in with those eyes—eyes the color of a springtime sky, which sparkled with an energy she felt from across the room.

  Standing taller, brushing the dust from her skirt, Christine smiled at him again. “My name is Christine. Bristol,” she added, in case he’d heard of her family’s horse farm. “I just arrived in town, and—it’s God’s providence! I’m looking for my mother, and you have her picture in your window!”

  The blue-eyed giant blinked and then remembered his manners. “Tucker Trudeau, à votre service,” he said as he came around the desk. He reached for her hand, so Christine offered it coyly.

  She had him now. Had him mystified and curious ab
out why a girl her age had come alone, telling such a tale. God’s providence, indeed.

  “And which portrait would that be?” he asked. He gestured toward his front window display, assessing her as though he wanted to make her picture, perhaps.

  “The one with—the man in the houndstooth suit.”

  Christine swallowed hard, appalled that a lump had risen into her throat and her eyes were getting wet. After all this time—all these miles—it wouldn’t do to dissolve in tears like some ninny who couldn’t withstand a little torment.

  Or would it?

  “You know him, this fellow?” Tucker retrieved the large frame from the window display. The cadence of his accent played in her ear, and he moved with a restless grace—like the thoroughbreds they’d raised. “These two, they came in just last week for this wedding picture. Said they were heading west to start a new life. Denver, I think.”

  She swallowed hard again. Nothing he said struck her as a surprise, but it was still hard to hear an unin-volved party confirm it so casually. And soon this man would know her secret fears. Her utter humiliation.

  “They make a pretty pair, non?” he remarked. He focused those eyes on her, assessing her reaction as he turned the portrait so she could see it.

  “Well, they might be pretty, but by God, they left my little brother and me at the stage depot in Leavenworth!” she blurted out. “Mama sent us west, saying she’d catch up to us—but that was before she married Richard Wyndham! Of all the . . .”

  She pivoted, wiping tears from her dusty face. It was one thing to play upon people’s pity, but unwise to air the family’s dirty linen before she knew how these strangers might react. Or use her weakness to their own advantage.

  A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder. A blue bandana dangled in front of her face, and she snatched it. Blew her nose loudly, and then felt mortified by the grit and grime she’d wiped from her face.

  “Nearly time to close up shop,” Mr. Trudeau said from behind her. His voice sounded kind and unhurried now. “We’ll go to the house to talk about this, oui? You can freshen up. Eat some supper, maybe get some sleep.”

  Christine turned slowly, blinking at his sudden kindness. “Thank you,” she breathed. “I’d like that very much.”

  Mother and son exchanged a glance that spoke volumes: while Tucker wished to accommodate her needs, his mother smelled a rat. The old woman left with a swish of her skirts and dangling gold earrings. It was plain she was planning on getting her licks in once it was time to talk about Christine’s unusual family situation.

  When the door had closed behind her, Tucker smiled. “Don’t mind Maman. She refuses to speak English—but understands most of it—and her second sight scares people sometimes.”

  Second sight? Wasn’t that like being a witch?

  “She sees beyond a person’s surface—and usually knows if the truth is in them,” he continued in a warier voice. “And you are young to travel alone, Miss Bristol. And to say this woman is your mother—after Maman met her, and had the impression—”

  Christine snatched the portrait and held it up beside her face. “Tell me I don’t look like her! And then tell me where they were going—what they were planning to do—and I’ll be out of your way,” she pleaded. “No need to inconvenience your mother, if she doesn’t believe me. I—I have a hotel room, anyway.”

  The photographer glanced at her carpetbag, stroking his beard. He was indeed noting the resemblance . . . gently turning her chin so the angle of her face matched the woman’s in the photograph.

  “Désolé, chérie. Forgive me for doubting your story.”

  He let out a puzzled sigh as he looked at the portrait again. “This—Richard Wyndham, you call him? He was a fast talker, big ideas. Introduced himself as Dick Witmer, and the lady he called Veronique—and that’s Maman’s name! Not common here, like in the bayou country. And Maman, she whispered to me that this man was not the marrying kind. That he—how do you say? He talks from both sides of his mouth.”

  Christine drank in these details like a girl parched from a trip across the Kansas prairie. It fit, every bit of it. What if they weren’t married? What if Wyndham really was leading Mama down a primrose path to perdition—just as she’d suggested to Billy a few nights ago—and they were living in sin?

  “You’re probably right,” she breathed, gazing up at him. “So I’m sure you understand my concerns, Mr. Trudeau. We suspect Richard Wyndham paid our stagecoach fares to get rid of Billy and me, so he could . . . well, we don’t know what he had in mind.”

  Her agitation would eat her alive if she didn’t control it. She must display just enough that this man with the musical accent and mischievous eyes would see her side and help her. This was no time to act like Mama, since Tucker Trudeau had already seen the warped cloth she was cut from!

  “We only know that Mr. Wyndham—or whatever his real name is—was feigning an interest in our horse farm. He had to realize Mama was still lost in grief after Daddy got shot,” she went on, dabbing her eyes with his bandana. “She—Mama—was never the most astute woman, you see. And in her vulnerable state, well, who knows what wicked intent that man might carry out?”

  Thank goodness Tucker nodded, and when he’d put the Closed sign in the window, he ushered her out the door. The sidewalks of Atchison still hummed with people attending to their business at the end of the workday, and she felt their curious gazes as they greeted the large man strolling beside her.

  But it didn’t matter. She was walking toward a hot meal and information that might lead her to Mama. Not bad for a day that began on the wrong train.

  Christine swirled her spoon through broth with a layer of grease that nearly gagged her, as had the chunks of smelly old cabbage and stringy meat she’d gingerly picked out of it. Or she thought it was meat. The little kitchen was so dark and dank-smelling, she wasn’t sure what might be swimming in that oily mess before her. Tucker and his mother were spooning it down as though it were the ambrosia of the gods, so she hoped they wouldn’t notice how little she had eaten. She took another bite of bread so stale it took a good bit of chewing before she could swallow it.

  She felt those dark, feral eyes from across the tiny table . . . eyes like the ones she’d seen peering at her from the bushes along the riverbank at night while she traveled on Gregor Larsen’s old horse. Mrs. Trudeau was so quiet, Christine wondered if she’d only imagined the old crone could talk. There was no mistaking the woman’s dislike of her, however: it came across the table in waves almost as noxious as the odor of her soup.

  Tucker swiped the back of his hand across his face, letting out a satisfied sigh. Then, with a little grin at Christine, he plucked the napkin from his lap—just for her, she sensed—and patted at his beard. It framed lips now pink from the heat of his dinner, and she wondered if it felt as soft as that unruly mop on his head looked.

  “Now then—what about yourself, Miss Bristol?” he asked with an enticing smile. “You would be what age?”

  “Sixteen—going on seventeen!” she piped up. “I’d nearly finished my schooling when . . . when Daddy got killed. Things have been pretty horrible since then. When those same outlaws kidnapped my younger brother Wesley, Mama lost a part of herself. Which explains why a dandy like Richard Wyndham could just sashay into her life and convince her to abandon her children!”

  The man nodded, glancing at the gnarled woman who sat at his other side. He spoke to her in rapid-fire French, as though translating what he’d just heard, pointing to the dapper man in the photograph.

  But Mrs. Trudeau only narrowed her eyes, like a witch putting a hex on her. She looked thoroughly unconvinced.

  Tucker smiled gently. “Maman says so little. Didn’t really want to come north, and it’s been difficult for her to learn new ways. But we all do what we must, eh?”

  Nodding, Christine wondered where this thread of conversation might lead. If she found a graceful way to escape this shack, she’d walk to that hotel nearest the d
epot. But for now she hung on, ignoring everything she found repugnant in order to clutch at the straws this man offered . . . any information he might have about Mama’s whereabouts.

  “My mother was very sociable. Talked too much sometimes,” she replied with a sigh. She turned the photograph so she could see it again, while Tucker steadied it between his hands. “She hasn’t looked this happy since . . . long before Daddy passed on. I can only wonder what this man must’ve enticed her with. Lord knows she was ripe for the picking.”

  “You’re not far wrong about him, chérie.” Tucker glanced at the man in question, as though considering how much he wanted to share. “They had this likeness made—the minute they came from the justice of the peace, he said—but they never came back for it. I found out yesterday there’s no bank account for the check he wrote. So no money in it.”

  Christine’s eyes widened. “So he is crooked! I knew it! I just knew—”

  The darkening gaze from across the table stifled her. But she had a right to know these things! She would not be intimidated by some old witchy woman!

  “Did they say what they would be doing?” she asked breathlessly. “Time is of the essence, Mr. Trudeau. Once they get much farther west than Abilene, there’ll be no finding them! They could get lost out there on the prairie if they ride alone. Or Indians could attack them! Or even if Richard—or Dick, or whoever he is—finds his way to Denver, they might disguise themselves so they can’t be found!”

  She fought for control again, wishing his mother would leave the room and take those silent, interrogating eyes with her.

  “And then, well—I’ll get a job and make out all right,” she continued in a softer tone, “but my little brother Billy will be heartbroken. He’s too young to understand such things.”

  The man beside her listened carefully, focusing his full attention on her as though she were a woman of the world who knew precisely whereof she spoke. Christine sat straighter, so her chest would stick out.