After paying the driver, Jenny propped her son on her hip, took Lily’s hand, and scanned the crowd , searching for a head of dark hair rising above the others. Tightening her hand around Lily’s, she began weaving between people and darting around folks talking in small groups and dodging those dashing this way and that. But as she pushed her way through the crowd to where it began to thin out, she felt her heart slowly sinking with the realization that Jason had already left town by other means...
And then she saw him.
He sat on a bench, his thick shoulders slumped, his elbows on his knees, fingers laced together, looking off into space. Jenny could do nothing but stare at him, her feet fixed to the platform, her body frozen in place. Then he lifted his head, as if sensing her presence, and looked toward her. A glimpse of recognition passed over his face, and slowly he rose. It seemed time stood still as they stared at each other, neither moving, neither speaking, until Lily jerked on Jenny’s hand and said, ”Mama?”
Eyes fixed on Jason as Jenny replied, “Yes precious?”
But she never heard what Lily said because her mind was on the man who was walking slowly toward her, hat clasped in his hands, eyes on hers.
He was the first to speak. “You look wonderful, Jenny.”
She wanted to smile, but couldn’t. Why did he just stand there staring at her? Why didn’t he take her in his arms? She had to swallow before words could come. “And you’re looking well,” she said at last. “I was told you had some papers for me.”
“Divorce papers,” he said. “It’s time. I know you want to get on with your life. And I want to get on with mine.”
Jenny saw his jaw bunch. He wants to marry someone else! With that thought, the longing she had stifled over the past two years rose in her throat like bile. Still, she wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her, to feel the warmth and security of his embrace. And he wants to cut the only tie that binds us. “Yes, I suppose it is time,” she agreed, and gave him a joyless smile. “Can you come by the house?”
He looked down the railroad tracks in the direction of the yellow light of the approaching train. “I suppose I could stay another day,” he replied.
“Mama?” Lily stood behind Jenny, her hands clutching Jenny’s skirt as she peeked around her mother at Jason.
Jason crouched in front of her, and said, “Hello, sweet thing.” His voice seemed to trigger something—an infant memory perhaps—because Lily slowly came out from behind Jenny and stood staring at him. Then she smiled and held out her doll. “My baby,” she said. When he went to take the doll, she pulled it back and clutched it to her chest.
Jason brushed a finger along her cheek and smiled. “You’re as pretty as your mama, princess. I knew you would be.”
Lily looked up at Jenny and grinned.
Jenny gestured vaguely with her hand. “Shall we get a coach and go to my house?”
Jason nodded. “I’ll take care of it.” He grabbed his suitcase and went to flag a coach.
The trip to the house was silent but for Lily chattering in baby talk about things they passed on the street. If it had not been for her, Jenny feared the trip would have been in cold, dead silence. Never in her daydreams and longings of one day seeing Jason again could she have conceived that their proximity would be tense, rigid and untouchable.
Once at the house, she left Jason and Lily in the parlor and excused herself to change her son’s diaper and put him down for his nap. When she returned, she found Jason sitting on the sofa, with Lily on his lap teaching him pat-a-cake, her tiny hands slapping his big palms with such force, her giggles and his deep laugh filled the room. It was as if the years had vanished and Lily was six months old again, sitting on Jason's lap, the two engaged in their own little world. She remembered how Jason would laugh, and Lily would pat his face, and he’d call her sweet thing—a name Jenny carried with her when she left.
He looked up and saw her watching. “Lily’s teaching me a new game,” he said.
Jenny pulled the door to her bedroom shut. “Pat-a-cake is a very old game,” she replied to break the tension that stretched between them. It came to her, after saying the words, that Jason would not have known pat-a-cake because he’d been deprived of a childhood and a loving mother to share it with.
From her perch on his lap, Lily reached up and patted Jason’s face, and he took her hand and kissed the tip of each little finger, bringing another burst of giggles from her. “You’ve done a fine job, Jenny,” he said, smiling at Lily. “She’s everything I thought she’d be, and every bit as beautiful. I’ve missed her.”
But not me, Jenny realized. “She’s been well cared for. And as you can see we live quite comfortably. Did you get the photograph I sent last spring?”
Jason shook his head. “After the trial, I gave the house to Seth and Cora, sold the Phantom and all my businesses, and left town. Colby wasn’t a place I wanted to live,” he said, one hand moving idly up and down Lily’s arm as she sat contentedly on his lap, her little hands toying with the fingers of his other hand.
Jenny sat in a chair across from him, not trusting herself to move too close. She peered into dark eyes that once burned with desire for her, and all she saw was a deep, cheerless void. “Where did you go after that?” she asked, fighting the urge to rush up to him and put her hand on his cheek and console that little boy lurking inside. But if she touched him, she knew she’d forget the little boy and focus on the man, whose presence was shattering her nerves and sending her heart pounding painfully in her chest.
Jason gave a grim smile. “I drifted around for a while. I had my own demons to fight and scores to settle.”
Jenny too attempted a smile, which shriveled. Her hands clasped in her lap, she said, “And have you... conquered your demons and settled all your scores?”
Jason shrugged. “For the most part, yes. What’s left doesn’t matter.”
“Where are you living now?” she asked, fighting the urge to move to the sofa and sit close to him, so close their knees might touch. Just the thought of that casual contact made her heart hammer against her rib cage.
“Nowhere, really,” Jason replied, his finger toying with one of Lily’s curls. “I’ll find a quiet town, start a business, and settle into middle-class respectability.”
“Somehow I can’t see you doing that,” Jenny said. “But then, we’ve been apart for two years now and your life has apparently changed for the better. I take it you want to divorce me so you can remarry and make your middle-class respectability complete.” She tried to sound detached, but the waver in her voice belied her forced indifference.
Evading her question, Jason said, “Enough about me. Tell me about you. You have a nice home and a fine little family. What does your husband do?”
“Husband?" Jenny looked at him, perplexed. “How can I have a husband? I’m still married to you.”
“I don’t mean it in the legal sense," Jason said. "I mean it in the practical sense.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Jason, but there is no—“
“Jason?” Lily piped in. She looked from Jason to her mother, then back at Jason. “Baby brother named Jason,” she said.
Jason looked at Jenny, and during the stretch of several heartbeats, realization began to dawn. His brows gathered in a frown. His eyes on hers, he said in a bewildered voice, “You named your son after me?”
Jenny looked steadily at him. “You’re his father.”
If Jenny had thrown the custard pie cooling in the pie safe at him he could not have looked more shocked. He lifted Lily off his lap and set her on the floor, then walked over to stand in front of the closed door to Jenny’s bedroom, where his son napped. “You never sent word, never contacted the attorney.” He glanced over his shoulder at Jenny.
She looked at him. “There was no reason to complicate your life further by springing a son on you. Besides, the last I saw of you, you were being led away in handcuffs by federal marshals. I take it you went to jail.”
“Well, no. News from Colby doesn’t exactly reach here.”
“Then it’s not important,” Jason said with an air of indifference.
“Yes, it is, Jason. I want some answers,” Jenny said, feeling her anger rise. He stood there, unshakable in his control, impregnable as a fortress, and she had the all-consuming urge to rush up to him and shake him, or beat her fists against his chest, or kiss him until she couldn’t breathe. Instead, she drew in a sharp breath, and said, “I’ve waited two years, wondering what happened to you, wondering if you were in jail or dead or alive… hearing nothing. I’m still your wife, and I want some answers. Nothing has changed since you last asked me to sign the divorce papers. I still want answers before I’ll sign. So if you want your divorce, I want to know what happened at that trial.”
The muscles in Jason's jaws tightened. “And I’m telling you to leave it be,” he said in that quietly-contained voice she was becoming familiar with again. “What came out during the trial would only harm you and Lily and the memory of your first husband.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jenny snapped, determined to press the issue. She would get her answers. “I’m not a child who has to be protected against hearing unpleasant things. I’m a woman, fully grown and capable of facing whatever happened at your trial.” She set her jaw in a firm line and waited.
Jason drew in a long breath. “All right then.” He walked over to his suitcase and opened it. Removing a leather folder, he slipped a newspaper clipping from it and handed it to her. “This should give you the answers you want, but I’m warning you, it’s not something you’ll want to know about, or should know.”
“I may not like what I read," Jenny said, "but I’m entitled to know it.” She took the paper from his hand and unfolded it and began to read.
Jason watched her. In fact, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. From the moment he’d seen her step out of the house and stand on the porch with her laundry basket, he’d wanted her with the same intensity he’d felt before. Time had done nothing to quench the white-hot flame that had burned inside him for two long years.
But when her husband—or the man she’d taken into her heart—stepped out of the house and kissed her and bid the family farewell, all his hopes and dreams vanished, and he knew that the flame would continue to burn inside him until he was a bad tempered, withered up, unfulfilled old man. Just contemplating the long lonely years ahead made his heart thud painfully in his chest and his head ache with a steady beat. His basic needs could be met by any number of nameless willing females, but his heart and soul could never belong to anyone but the woman he was looking at right now.
He studied her face, the way her eyes narrowed and her brow puckered as she read. But gradually the expression on her face changed to disbelief, her hands began to tremble, and her chest began to rise and fall with short, anxious breaths, and he knew she was struggling with the reality of exactly who Myles MacDonald had been, the man who’d slept in her bed and fathered her daughter. When she finished reading, she sat silently staring at the clipping, as if trying to disbelieve what she’d read.
“I knew it would be hard on you,” he said, “learning that the man you once loved was not who you thought, and that’s why I tried to protect you from finding out.”
“It’s upsetting to learn that Myles was a man named James Dagget, but not a complete surprise,” Jenny said. “Myles had a past he refused to talk about, and I knew almost nothing about him when I was fool enough to marry the man. Ours was not a happy marriage. And you were right. He married me for my property." She swiped at unexpected tears and looked at him. “But that’s not what’s upsetting me now.”
Jason curled his fingers into fists, least he take her in his arms and lose all control. She might be his wife, but she’d made a new life for herself and he had no right to her now. “I don’t understand,” he said, peering down at her. “What then?”
She raised tear-filled eyes to meet his gaze. “That you wouldn’t tell me. That you never said anything when you could. That you let them take you away in handcuffs when you could have avoided it just by telling the truth... exposing who Myles was.”
He looked at her cheerless face, and for the first time since he’d seen her again, wondered if she was truly happy. He could feel the strong pull between them, and there had been no passion in the kiss the man gave her when he’d left. But her life was secure, and she didn’t need a husband from a paper marriage popping up to complicate it. “If I’d told you about your husband back then,” he said, “would you have believed me?”
“Maybe not at first,” she replied. “But later I would have believed anything you told me because I was in...” she paused. She had no right to say the words now. He was here to seek a divorce, not be a husband to her. “Well, I would have believed you.”
“Because you were what?”
She waved an evasive hand. “It doesn’t matter now since we’re both ready to get on with our lives,” she said, her voice indifferent. At lease she hoped it sounded that way.
“Has that answered your questions then?” Jason said, reaching for his suitcase.
“No,” Jenny said quickly. “Jack Bishop told me you were a wanted man, that Myles had been looking for you for years and finally caught up with you and that you shot and killed Myles to keep from being arrested for some murders you committed years before.”
Jason set the suitcase down. “I did kill your husband in self defense, but Jack Bishop lied about the rest. I was never wanted. I’m not proud of my past, but I never broke the law. Your husband came after me because I’d hauled in his father and brothers who were tried and hung for murder. I was eighteen at the time, and I was a bounty hunter. Your husband got away, and as you read, killed the real Myles MacDonald, who was to be the new marshal in Cedar Rapids, then buried him and took his identity. When he told you he was going west to look for a gold mine, he'd actually gone to recover gold from several robberies, which he'd hidden in the Dusty years before, when the mine was abandoned. But the Dusty had resumed operations and he couldn't get to the gold, so he killed the owner and purchased the Dusty from the man's widow. The irony of it was, when your husband came to Colby, allegedly to purchase a gold mine, he didn't know I had been the bounty hunter who'd brought in his father and brothers. Jack Bishop tipped him off to that. He too was waiting for his chance to get to me since I also brought in his brother, though I didn't connect the two until later.”
“Which was the reason Myles was so filled with hatred for bounty hunters,” Jenny added in a voice, barely audible. “That night at the dinner table, when the brides were talking about the bounty hunter who’d come to town, I said such horrible things about them. I had no idea you.... that is... Myles filled my head with the hatred he felt for bounty hunters, and all I was doing was parroting him.” She looked up at him then. “Can you ever forgive me for the things I said?”
Jason gave her a remorseful smile. “There’s nothing to forgive. You were right. Bounty hunters are the scum of the earth. Money should never be accepted for doing what’s right, but that’s exactly what I did, hauled in men for money.”
Jenny knew there had to be more to why Jason did it, but she didn’t want to press him for it, at least not now. Looking down at the clipping in her hands, she said, “Life can be horrible at times.” For a few moments she said nothing, just sat staring at the clipping, her mind fixed on Jason’s admittance that bounty hunters were the scum of the earth. But he was a good man, and there had to be more to it than Jason simply hauling in men for money. Looking up at him, she said, “I can't believe you just one day decided to be a bounty hunter. Eighteen is very young to be doing that. There had to be something that set you on such a course.”
Jason nodded. “There was. The first time I b
rought a man in I was only sixteen.”
Jenny felt her stomach knot, and she tried to keep her voice composed as she said pragmatically, “Sixteen is very young. Who was the man?”
Jason turned his back to her and stared out the window. “My father. I tracked him down, collected the bounty and gave it to my mother. I was fool enough to think it would make her care some for me. Instead, she took the money and just walked away from me. Never even looked at me. No thanks. Just walked away.”
“But surely things must have been better after that?”
“No. The day my father was hanged for murder I thought things would change, but they didn’t. Maybe it was my mother seeing the man’s face again, but she went a little bit mad and took it out on Seth because I was too big by then, and she couldn’t take it out on me. So I packed up Seth and left home for good and never saw my mother again. But then I had Seth to support, and bounty hunting paid well, so that’s what I did for the next two years. I justified it in my mind because I only went after murderers and rapists, and I always brought them in alive. But I still accepted the bounty money. I could have gotten honest work, but I took the easy way out.”
“Tracking down murderers and rapists while putting your life on the line doesn’t exactly sound like the easy way out, Jason. At least those men never raped or murdered again. I believe you were doing a service. But Seth must have been about six years old at the time. Did you take him along with you?”
Jason shook his head. “No, he lived with a couple who raised him until he was sixteen. But I had to pay the people every month or they wouldn’t keep him. Seth thought the folks loved him like a son, but they didn’t. They did it for money. He’s mad about that now, but Cora helped him get through the worst of it and he’ll be fine.”
“Do you see him?”
Jason sighed. “No. They’re better off with me out of their lives,” he said in a wistful tone edged with regret. He lowered himself into the chair beside hers.
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