Heart of Lies

by Jill Marie Landis

There had been no organized meals in the tribe. They never sat down to break bread together. They worked the streets in twos and threes, and when they were hungry and couldn’t steal food, they made their way back to the warehouse where Anita would have a pot of gumbo or beans and rice simmering on the stove. They ate whenever and wherever they desired.

  Dexter was usually seated in his overstuffed chair holding court, collecting earnings and treasures the children brought to him and tossing them into a communal pot. It was the same with their food. Whatever they “earned” they shared.

  On national holidays when other Louisianans went out in celebration, the tribe worked the streets. On solemn holidays when families gathered together in churches and homes and the streets were nearly deserted, the tribe complained about the fact that they were not plying their trade.

  The food on the table smelled wonderful. Maddie’s mouth watered as she started to reach for a bowl filled with a mountain of creamy mashed potatoes beside her plate.

  “Let’s join our hands in thanksgiving,” Mr. Cole said.

  She jumped as if caught stealing, but none of the Coles noticed. They had already bowed their heads and were holding hands with one another. Mrs. Cole, seated at the opposite end of the table from her husband, was holding Tom Abbott’s left hand.

  Maddie slipped her hand into Mr. Cole’s, who was on her own left, but hesitated before she reached for Abbott’s right hand. He must have sensed her reluctance. He turned to meet her gaze for the first time since they had entered the house.

  Heat seared her cheeks. She quickly ducked her head and stared at the table.

  His hand was on the table palm up, waiting for her to take it. Without meeting his eyes again she took a deep breath and slipped her palm into his. When his fingers closed around her hand, dwarfing it, her pulse jumped erratically. She felt herself flush even deeper. Instinctively she tried to pull her hand away and sever the connection, hoping to end the unwelcome emotions sweeping through her.

  His touch was cool, firm, and inescapable.

  She forced herself to breathe slow and evenly.

  Mr. Cole gave thanks for the food. While Maddie sat in silence, everyone, including Abbott, said amen. He finally let go and Maddie pulled her hand away. She folded her hands together in her lap until her heart stopped hammering.

  She was tempted to see if Tom showed any sign of having felt anything when they touched. Fear that he had kept her from looking his way.

  “You may pass the mashed potatoes around, Miss Grande,” Mrs. Cole said. The woman’s voice lacked its earlier warmth, and Maddie wondered if that was because she hadn’t said amen like the rest of them.

  As the meal progressed, she caught Mrs. Cole studying her a number of times. Halfway through, the sound of rain started hitting the roof. The smell of damp, newly tilled earth filled the air.

  Mr. Cole kept up a steady stream of conversation.

  “Where did you say you lived?” Mr. Cole asked.

  “Bayou Sauvage,” Maddie said.

  “New Orleans,” Tom said at the same time.

  Mrs. Cole put down her fork.

  Tom spoke up, “I live in the city. Maddie prefers a quieter life.”

  “Did you ever see a gator?” the youngest girl asked.

  Maddie nodded. “Lots of them.”

  “Did you ever shoot one?” The other girl’s eyes were wide as saucers.

  “Once, but I didn’t hit it between the eyes and it ran back into the water.” Maddie took a sip of water and noticed everyone was listening. “Why don’t you tell them how you became a Pinkerton, Thomas,” she suggested.

  She was pleased when his right brow rose ever so slightly, but he accepted the challenge and soon the Coles were hanging on his every word.

  “Is gambling still prevalent in the city?” Mr. Cole wanted to know.

  Tom nodded. “The statute passed six years ago legalizing gambling hurt more than it’s helped. Sure-thing men are coming in from all over the North and Midwest to open all manner of gambling halls. Some consider this a prime time to be a confidence man.” He looked at Maddie. “But it’s never really a good time to be on the wrong side of the law.” He smiled. “Is it, Madeline?”

  Cole leaned back in his chair and patted his full stomach. “That, Mrs. Cole, was a fine, fine meal,” he told his wife.

  “Thank you, Mr. Cole.”

  Maddie wondered what it would be like to live like these law-abiding folks. To live an upstanding life in a house where the family gathered together to share each meal. How would it feel to tend to her home, to prepare every meal for her family, to wash and clean and polish and set a fine table full of a bounty of food?

  She knew nothing of manners nor how to teach them. She wasn’t adept at polite conversation. She knew nothing of God or prayer.

  I never gave my child this. I never even knew how.

  She knew how to survive on the wrong side of the law, and for most of her life she’d been content because she knew of no other way. She had been part of the tribe, but it was made up of a group of individuals. All that bound them together was Dexter and the need to survive. Her life had been worlds away from the kind the Coles lived, and yet there was something hauntingly familiar about seeing them gathered together at the table. Some misty memory that she couldn’t grasp and wouldn’t know what to make of even if it did pulse at the ragged edges of her mind. All she knew for certain was that being here made her feel melancholy and empty and she had no idea why.

  She watched Mrs. Cole in the act of reminding her son to sit up straight and found herself wondering if this placid life was enough for her. Did the woman ever long for more than her children, her house, and her farm? Was Susan Cole content with such a settled life?

  Maddie looked at the children. If only I could have my children back for an hour, for even a minute, I would be happy no matter what the circumstances. I would hold them close, treasure each and every precious heartbeat and beg for more.

  When tears threatened, she forced herself to think of the bayou. She pictured herself in her pirogue, poling across the still water, wading through the marsh. She saw the banks lined with trees. She would miss her children always. She would miss Louie and Dexter and, yes, even life in the tribe, for it was often as exciting as it was terrible. But she would survive. She wasn’t completely happy, but she was content. She had been at peace listening to the hoot of a night owl, staring at the full moon reflected on the surface of the still waters. She had learned there were treasures that came with solitude if one was open to accepting them. There were small jewels of happiness in every life if one had the ability to see them.

  “The rain doesn’t appear to want to let up tonight, does it?” Mr. Cole said. “You two might just as well bed down here and start off fresh in the morning.”

  Maddie could see that Mr. Cole was far more enthusiastic about having them stay the night than his wife. The woman grudgingly suggested, “I can put a cot in the girls’ room for Miss Grande.”

  “I’ll sleep out in the barn,” Tom volunteered.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Mr. Cole insisted. “We’ll put a pallet on the sitting-room floor. You’ll be comfortable enough for one night.”

  Though Maddie told Mrs. Cole she didn’t want them to go to any trouble, she was thrilled at the prospect. She didn’t dare look at Tom Abbott, afraid that if she did, he would see her renewed energy and determination.

  If there was any way to slip out of the Cole house during the night, she would find it.

  Tom stretched out on the pallet Mrs. Cole and her elder daughter had made up for him on the far side of the sitting-room floor. His body may have been exhausted from a restless sleep at Maddie’s camp the night before, but his mind was churning. Even more frustrating, he knew he should be focused on finding the Perkins girl, but his mind kept coming back to Maddie.

  After dinner she’d jumped up to clear the table and help with the dishes. Shortly thereafter, she excused herself to go up the nar
row stairs to the children’s rooms on the second floor. Before she went up, she paused and with a defiant lift of her chin said, “Sleep well, brother.”

  Sleep well, indeed. He was worn out from watching over her last night. Tonight things were no different. He’d laid her shotgun on the floor beside him and was perfectly situated with a view of the front door and the kitchen. There was no way that she could get out without him seeing her.

  He propped his head on his stacked hands as the occupants of the house quieted down and took to their beds. He heard one of the girls giggle upstairs and wondered if Maddie was thinking of her children. She’d been silent all through dinner, watching the Coles closely. Her wishful expression told him more than words could say.

  He knew now that her loss accounted for her air of loneliness. But he was certain she was not seeking his pity.

  The Coles’s room was on the other side of the sitting-room wall. As Tom lay there wide awake, the couple’s voices drifted to him, first on a whisper or two until Mrs. Cole spoke loud enough to hear clearly.

  “I’m telling you, Jed, he wasn’t looking at her the way a brother should look at his sister. There’s something very wrong here and I want them gone in the morning.”

  “Calm down, Addy. I think your imagination is working too hard.”

  “That man’s interest in her isn’t brotherly. And she wasn’t any better. Did you see the way she pinked up every time he looked at her?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, that’s because you’re a man and men don’t notice things like that.” Her words were followed by what sounded like one of them giving a pillow a good punching.

  “Now, now, dear,” Jed Cole murmured.

  “Don’t dear me. I want them gone after breakfast.”

  They fell silent and within a minute or two, Cole’s snores filled the air.

  Tom found himself wide awake, staring at the ceiling.

  Rationalize as he might, his attraction to Maddie was obviously impossible to hide if Mrs. Cole had noticed. Surely Maddie had noticed as well, which would account for her “pinking up” whenever he looked at her.

  Staring up at the ceiling, he wondered if Maddie was awake. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face. Her hazel eyes, the freckles across her nose, her high, smooth brow. Her full lips.

  He groaned in frustration and opened his eyes.

  Staring at the ceiling was far safer.

  Sometime during the night, he fell sound asleep and awoke the next morning to the sounds of a house stirring—the clatter of dishes and flatware against one another as plates were laid out for breakfast, the sound of a cast-iron skillet against the stove.

  Tom threw back the quilt, rolled off the pallet, and got to his feet. He was just tucking his shirt into the waistband of his trousers when the younger Cole daughter came running downstairs barefoot.

  She glanced his way and then walked into the kitchen, where the aroma of frying bacon had set Tom’s stomach to rumbling.

  He heard the girl ask, “Where’s Miss Maddie?”

  “Isn’t she upstairs?” Mrs. Cole asked.

  There was a pause, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. Tom reached for his boots and hurried toward the kitchen.

  “Maybe she’s in the outhouse,” the girl said.

  Tom paused at the kitchen door, saw Mrs. Cole glance out the back window.

  “No. The outhouse is open,” she said.

  His heart picked up double time.

  “Maddie’s not upstairs?” He tried to hide his alarm.

  The Cole girl shrugged. “Her cot’s empty.”

  Mrs. Cole ignored the bacon she’d been moving around the skillet and pinned Tom with a look that spoke volumes. “Is there any reason she’d take off by herself?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and then rubbed two days’ worth of stubble on his jaw. “She hasn’t run off,” he said.

  Mrs. Cole looked out the window again. She sounded smug when she said, “Well, then, someone else must have ridden off with your horse and left that old swaybacked mare behind.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Tom Abbott’s horse was a far better mount than Anita’s mare, but being an inexperienced rider, Maddie was afraid to push the gelding as fast as she might have. Clutching the reins, she carefully glanced over her shoulder, convinced she would see Tom Abbott closing in on her any minute now. She was amazed that in two days he still hadn’t found her.

  She’d slept in her clothes at the Coles’s, so all she had to do was put on her shoes once the house was quiet and the girls had fallen asleep. She had slipped out of her cot and tiptoed to the window at the end of the hall that divided the two rooms beneath the gabled roof. Not about to risk Tom catching her, she avoided the sitting room. Inch by inch she opened the upstairs window until she could fit through.

  She gauged the distance to the ground. It was too far to jump without breaking anything, but she had options. She hadn’t learned to escape from second- and third-story windows and dash across the rooftops of New Orleans for naught.

  Surveying the back of the house, she quickly spotted what she was looking for and lowered the window. Silently she crept into the little boy’s room. He was sound asleep with one arm thrown above his head, his fingers curled inward, making a soft fist. She had the urge to stop and brush his tousled hair off his forehead, to lean close and inhale his little-boy scent. She resisted and moved on.

  His window slid up easily. On the corner of the house within reach of the window was a sturdy drain spout. Unlike so many places since the war, this house had been kept up. Maddie had no doubt the drain would hold her weight.

  She climbed out the window and shinnied down the drain spout without a sound.

  Both horses were corralled close to the barn. She moved quickly and quietly as she grabbed Anita’s saddle blanket and saddle and toted them over to the corral. Tom had her shotgun. She knew she could make do with the skinning knife in her saddlebag.

  She had just slipped the bit into the mare’s mouth when it dawned on her that Tom’s horse was much younger and faster. If she truly wanted to put distance between them, then she should leave him the nag.

  Now, after two days alone on the road and looking back once more, she was glad she had traded. Tom Abbott was still nowhere in sight.

  She kept to the road that meandered through pinelands and wooded swamps. Before the war the idea of a white woman traveling alone was unheard of, but since the surrender there were countless displaced and homeless of every race and gender still on the move even now, nearly ten years later.

  She stopped at plantation homes and modest farmhouses alike to ask for whatever folks could spare in the way of food. No one turned her away. She told the same story over and over — that she and her niece had been on the road, bound for Kentucky.

  “We were separated,” she said mournfully. “There was confusion at a ferry crossing. I’ve been searching for her ever since.”

  Describing Penelope, she would go on to say that her niece would be bound and determined to get to Kentucky on her own in the hopes that they would be reunited. It was no surprise that the child wasn’t afraid to hitch a ride with just about anyone.

  If folks doubted that she had a young adventurous niece wandering the countryside on her own, they never admitted it. Dexter used to say, “Most people are gullible enough to want to believe a well-old tale that tugs at the heartstrings. It gives them the chance to help someone worse off than they are. Makes them feel superior.”

  Maddie found it was true. Not only had she received sympathy, but generous packets of leftovers to tide her over.

  She finally reached Parkville before nightfall. She stopped at a sawmill just as the manager was locking up for the day. He directed her to the trading post where the owner claimed to know old man Stanton, but Stanton had already come and gone. As far as the trader knew, there had been no child with him. Nor had Stanton seen or heard of any matching Penelope’s description.<
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  If Penelope had managed to hop out of Mr. Stanton’s wagon undiscovered, then she was still on the run. Maddie asked for directions to Kentucky.

  At first the trader laughed, but he sobered when he realized she was dead serious. He pointed northeast.

  “What’s the next sizable town directly up the road?”

  He scratched his head and smiled. “Follow the road and you’ll come to Baton Rouge eventually. When you get that far you’ll have to cross the river to get to Kentucky. Ask somebody the way from there.”

  He watched her mount up. She was about to bid him good-bye when he said, “What’s a gal like you really doing out travelin’ on her own?”

  “A gal like you.”

  What kind of a gal am I, exactly?

  Kidnapper. Thief. Liar.

  If she gave up the search for Penelope, she could take off in any direction, hide out, and start over. But right now, she was the only one who knew where Penelope was headed. If she did find her and made an attempt to turn the child over to her parents, things might go easier for her. At least she hoped so.

  Maddie sat a little taller in the saddle and told herself she was doing the right thing. “I’m heading to Kentucky. Looking for my niece, like I said.”

  “You wouldn’t want to change your mind, maybe stay here and settle down, would you? My wife up and died and left me with eight young’uns and —”

  “Thank you kindly, but I’m not looking to get married, mister.” “Never hurts to ask, does it?” “I expect not.”

  Disappointed but not surprised that no one had seen Penelope, Maddie left Parkville behind and rode on until twilight stained the sky a dusky violet. She veered off onto a side road and came to a deserted cabin with a crumbling barn behind it. Abbott had found her easily camped beside the road last time. Tonight she would sleep in the barn.

  There was as much sky showing through the roof as there was cover. Pulling out her oilcloth slicker, she slipped it on. She rolled up Penelope’s cape and used it for a pillow. Despite a slight mist that fell off and on through the night she slept well. Thankfully, she was too tired to dream.