Daring to Start Again: An Inspirational Historical Romance Book

by Grace Clemens

  Sarah was a little confused, listening to the soft, caring tone of her brother’s voice. Why hadn’t they protected her when she was little? Why had they participated in torturing her after the death of her mother?

  “Look,” Bart said, gesturing toward Sarah. “She don’t believe a word of it. She thinks we’re liars, just like Pa said. She don’t trust us no more.”

  Sarah had never trusted them. They’d shown her quickly how loyal they were to their father. A sense of compassion filled Sarah. They were sons. What did she expect from them? They hadn’t made the decisions or had the ideas of what to do to her.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized Bart and Danny had always followed their father’s lead. When he wasn’t home, they didn’t hurt her. They didn’t play with her or anything like that. But they didn’t hurt her.

  “We have to go outside. You two have to stop Bruce from fighting my husband. Bobby will kill him if he has to. He’s not a weak man. I don’t care what Bobby does to Bruce, but I don’t want Bobby hurt at all. And what if Bruce shoots him or stabs him? I can’t bear the thought of it. Please, come outside. Help him.”

  Danny and Bart took a moment to look at each other, then Danny ran to the window at the end of the hall. Bart and Sarah both followed behind and peered out into the street in front of the hotel.

  Sarah’s chest tightened and her heart ached as she saw Bobby and Bruce still struggling with each other. The deputy and Steven were circling the men, looking for a way to stop the fight.

  “Oh!” Sarah gasped, her hands lifting to cover her mouth. She glanced at her brothers to see if they’d seen what happened.

  “Holy smokes,” Danny breathed.

  Bobby had lifted Bruce in the air and slammed him down on the ground. Sarah watched as Bruce turned over as if he’d suddenly lost twenty years of his life and tackled Bobby like a large bear, his arms up in the air, his fingers splayed like claws. He came down on Bobby’s back, circling his hands around Bobby’s neck. From Bobby’s reaction, Sarah and her brothers could tell Bruce was choking him. He lifted his hands and clawed at Bruce’s. Finding that tactic unsuccessful, he jerked back one elbow and connected Bruce’s face with the hard bone.

  Bruce yelled out and fell backwards, releasing Bobby’s neck.

  “Why aren’t those men doing anything?” Danny asked, confusion on his face and in his voice.

  “They’re afraid to hurt Bobby.”

  “But they’re not afraid to hurt Pa?” Bart asked, angrily.

  Both Danny and Sarah gave him narrow looks.

  “Of course not,” Danny said before Sarah could speak up. “Pa’s been threatening to hurt someone since we got here. He wouldn’t tell us why.” He turned his eyes to his sister. “He’s been lying to us for a long time, Sarah. He told us you stole money from him and took off with it. He said we had to come get you. But I knew he was lying. You’ve never been like that. Now if he’d said Bart here did that, I wouldn’t have questioned it a minute.”

  “Hey!” Bart gave his brother a reproaching look. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

  Again, Danny and Sarah looked at him like he’d lost his mind. He pursed his lips and frowned, looking away from them. “Okay, maybe I would have.”

  “We all know you would have. And that’s not the point. I’m tryin’ to talk to our sister. You ain’t got anything to say to her?”

  Bart shook his head. “I ain’t got nothin’ to say. She left us. She don’t care.”

  “You were both mean to me!” Sarah protested, unable to help herself. “I didn’t think there was a reason to stay. When I got the invitation from Bobby to come here and live, I jumped at it. No girl in her right mind wouldn’t have. You didn’t protect me from Bruce at all!”

  Both her brothers turned red in the face, looking away from her.

  “You were supposed to be my brothers, my protectors, my knights in shining armor. But your armor is dull, isn’t it?”

  “Sarah,” Danny interjected, putting one hand on his brother’s chest so Bart wouldn’t react harshly to her criticism. “We were young. We didn’t know any better. I’m only 23 years old and Bart is 21. We didn’t know how bad it was for you until a couple years ago. I know because it wasn’t until I was twenty that I realized just what kind of man Pa is. I regret ever hurting you, Sarah. Ever going along with what he did. I’m sorry.”

  It was the first time Sarah had ever heard that from Danny. She blinked at him, confused for a moment. Should she even trust him?

  She looked back out the window and watched Bobby and Bruce grappling with each other, still wrestling and throwing each other on the ground. She could tell how worried Deputy Clark was by the look on his face and the fact that he kept lifting his gun and lowering it, yelling at the two men. Steven was doing the same, but he didn’t have his gun out. He didn’t have the authority to shoot an unarmed man and it didn’t appear Bruce had a gun.

  Her heart leapt in her chest. She had to get down there. But what happened next made her jaw drop. They continued to watch while the two men fought. Sarah knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything more than Steven and the deputy were doing at that moment. She felt guilty for wanting her husband to beat her father up. After all the things the old man had done to her, she felt justified on one hand, but terrible about it on the other.

  Bruce grabbed Bobby around his chest from the back and slung him to the side, taking him right off his feet. Bobby hit the ground and pushed himself back up immediately. Once he was standing, he found himself with Bruce on his back, climbing up like a monkey.

  “Holy smokes,” Bart repeated, his face nearly pressed against the glass of the window. “Would ya look at that? Old man can fight.”

  Sarah could tell Bart was not as advanced as Danny in understanding what type of man their father was.

  “Do you think you can stop him?”

  “I don’t know,” Danny replied. “But I reckon we’d better get down there and give it a try.”

  “Wait,” Bart said, keeping his brother and sister from leaving the window. “Look. Guess he’s not as good as I thought. Held his own for a while.”

  Bruce was on top of Bobby, his fists held up in the air as if he was going to bring them down like hammers on Bobby’s face. Instead, Bobby bucked under him, grabbed him by the mid-section, and tossed him to the side. Bruce went flying and landed a few feet away, his head slamming on the ground, his eyes closing. He didn’t move.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah breathed. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “Might be,” Danny replied with no regret or sorrow in his voice. “Let’s go see.”

  The three of them moved quickly down the hallway to the stairs and descended in a row, with Sarah in between her brothers. Her heart was slamming in her chest. She was nervous and anxious. She wanted to get outside to her husband, especially now that the fight was over.

  She came out of the inn and ran down the dirt road toward Bobby, who was limping toward her, breathing hard and rubbing one arm near his shoulder. He had many cuts and scrapes on his face. Sarah imagined he would be quite bruised the next day and too sore to move.

  “Sarah,” he moaned as he approached.

  All she wanted to do was grab him into a hug. But she couldn’t. She had to stand a foot away, holding out her hands, running her eyes from his head to his feet, looking for injuries. When he held out the injured arm to her, his hand extended, she gently took it.

  “I’ll be okay, Sarah. Don’t worry so much about me.”

  Sarah glanced around him at Bruce, who was still motionless on the other side of the road. There was no building across from the inn, only a grassy empty lot between two buildings. He was on the edge of the grass, his body slightly distorted.

  “Howdy,” Danny said, coming up behind Sarah. He and Bart had hesitated, staying behind for a moment until they could assess how Bobby would react to them.

  Sarah looked at Danny. “This is my brother, Danny. This is Bart. This is my hu
sband, you two.”

  Danny took Bobby’s hand right away. Bart was a little more hesitant but reluctantly shook, as well.

  “Good to meet you two,” Bobby said after a quick confirmation glance to Sarah, who smiled at him.

  “Did ya kill my pa?” Bart asked in a cold voice. When the three of them gave him direct looks, he shrugged. “It’s a honest question,” he said.

  The four of them all turned around and looked in Bruce’s direction. The deputy was leaning over him with Steven looking on, his arms folded over his chest, a disgusted look on his face. Deputy Clark looked up at them, after running one hand over Bruce and feeling his neck for a pulse.

  “He’ll be fine,” the deputy said clearly. “He’ll just have some bruises.”

  Bobby touched the bleeding corner of his mouth and winced. “Can’t say I won’t be the same,” he said in a low voice.

  “I’m sorry about my pa,” Danny said, shaking his head, examining his brother-in-law with eyes filled with regret. “He’s been like this ever since my ma died, and that was a long time ago. I’m real sorry.”

  Bobby shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Danny… it is Danny, right?”

  Sarah glanced up at Bobby. He knew full well which brother was which. He didn’t need to ask.

  “Yes, sir, that’s right.”

  “Well, you can call me Bobby, son. Just call me Bobby.”

  Sarah’s heart almost jumped out of her chest when the sound of a commotion behind them made the four of them turn and look.

  The deputy yelled out. Sarah watched as her father rolled over, yanked the gun from the deputy’s belt and held it up at them. Without hesitation, he let out a single shot.

  Chapter 29

  Sarah screamed, her hands flying to her mouth. Her first instinct was to check Bobby, to make sure he hadn’t been shot. But it wasn’t Bobby who was hit by her father’s bullet. It was Bart.

  Her brother went down to his knees and then fell to the side, groaning, his hands over the right side of his stomach.

  “You shot me, Pa!” he yelled out in anger.

  “Well, you ain’t dead!” his father yelled back, still holding the gun, backing up so he could swing it and take in everyone around him. “You boys shouldn’t have come out here, anyway,” he continued. “You’re nothing but a waste of space, the both of ya!”

  “How could you do this, Pa?” Danny exclaimed, closing the short distance between himself and his brother in just two steps, kneeling down and beginning an inspection of Bart’s wound. “How could you shoot your own son?”

  “You boys have never been like sons to me. You’re both a waste. Nothin’ but a waste.”

  Sarah knew her brothers would be hurt by that talk from their father. It enraged her and she turned on him. “They did everything you ever asked!” she screamed out, feeling the blood rising to her face as anger coursed through her body. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a look of shock on her husband’s face. “If anything, you have never been a father to them! You had no right to come here demanding money from me. You aren’t entitled to anything we have here. You don’t deserve a dime of my money, if I had any, and you certainly don’t deserve Bobby’s—or Jon’s for that matter! You are a horrible human being and I’m ashamed to be in your bloodline.”

  “You were even more of a waste than your brothers!” Bruce retorted, his voice low, his face in a disgusted sneer. “Just a mouth to feed. I didn’t have the money to raise you and give you all your prissy little girl things. And you were mad about that, hoo boy, yes, you were.”

  Sarah was taken aback for a moment, confused. Was he thinking of a different daughter? A different family? She was never angry that he didn’t have the money to provide for her. He had. He just didn’t.

  “You are a liar,” she hissed, clenching her fists in anger. “You didn’t buy me the things I needed. I would never have asked you for something I wanted. There would be no point. You weren’t out to make me happy.”

  “I tried everything I could to keep your mother with us,” Bruce said, for the first time showing an emotion other than hatred.

  “The only reason you wanted her with you is to take care of us,” Danny put in, glowering at his father. “I remember. They might not, but I’m older. And I remember how you were. You didn’t treat her with any loving kindness at all. You were just as mean to her as you’ve always been to Sarah. And don’t tell me we weren’t sons to you. You gave me and Bart whatever we wanted as long as we did what you said to do. You told us Sarah wasn’t even our sister. Remember that, Pa? But you’re a liar.”

  Shock ran through Sarah. She turned wide eyes to her brother and then back at Bruce. “What is this?” she asked. “What did he say?”

  Bruce shook his head, glaring at her. “You ain’t my daughter. Your ma made you with another fella. You ain’t mine.”

  “You’re a liar, Pa!” Danny retorted, all the while helping his brother tend to his wound. Sarah noticed when Steven backed up out of the view of Bruce, whose eyes were on his children. She didn’t say anything, watching him run toward the jailhouse. They were still excluded from much of the street, blocked from most passersby. But the yelling had attracted a few, who came around the tall bushes to see what was going on.

  None intervened. In fact, Sarah was surprised by how many of them hightailed it back out of there.

  “I ain’t lyin’.” Bruce grinned, his eyes directly on her. “You ain’t mine.”

  Sarah was surprised by how okay she was with that information. She looked up when Danny jumped to his feet, abandoning his brother, who was moaning in pain incessantly.

  “You ain’t from another man,” Danny insisted in a firm voice. “You’re Pa’s and you’re our full-blood sister. He’s lyin’ to you.”

  “Just how would you know that?” Bruce turned on his son. “You ain’t got the sense God gave a moose.”

  “Because I asked a lot of people over the last four years about any such possibility and they all assured me there was none. Ma was completely in love with you and that’s why you had us kids. But you never loved her, did you? Never.”

  “You don’t know nothin’.” Bruce continued holding the gun on the five of them, keeping the deputy at bay by waving it toward him every now and then.

  Sarah wondered if the deputy had another gun on him anywhere. Some of the men were armed with an ankle holster or had a gun tucked in the back of their trousers. Apparently, Deputy Clark did not. He was standing with the rest of them, his hands up slightly, ready to throw a punch or tackle the man at the first opportunity.

  Sarah was amused to see that Bobby was in a similar stance, though he seemed to be waiting for her to be done speaking her mind.

  “Just put the gun down, Pa!” Bart barked. “You’ve already shot me. You want to shoot Danny, too? You want to shoot Sarah? You kill us all, won’t nobody be providing for you. You haven’t done a lick of work in years. You think you’ve been the one winning at the card table? ‘Cause it ain’t been you, Pa! It sure ain’t been you!”

  “You tryin’ to act like you’re better than me, but you ain’t!” Bruce’s face was as red as a beet. Sarah had never seen him so angry. She felt like the more her brothers taunted him, the sooner he would react with a gunshot. And this time, he might kill her, one of her brothers, or her husband. From the way he waved the gun, Sarah didn’t get the impression he was going to even try to shoot the deputy. On that, he knew better.

  She held up both hands in the air and took a step toward her father. Bobby grabbed her arm but only held on gently and she didn’t take another step. She enjoyed having his hand there and the area felt cold when he took his hand away. She knew that meant he trusted her not to do anything stupid, and respected her decision to do something stupid if she felt like it.