Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family]

by Keep a Little Secret

  DOROTHY GARLOCK

  Keep a Little Secret

  NEW YORK BOSTON

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to the Friday morning coffee girls, Ann Doubler, Denise Hathaway-Easley, Mary Ann Hendricks, Lindy Lemon, and Marge Theiss; and good friends Michelle and Doug Klein, Jody and Rex McChesney, and Lois Woiwood.

  Thank you all for being my sounding board.

  Secrets

  Oklahoma’s so bright it hurts my eyes,

  Yet when I squint I can see for miles.

  In this clear light it’s a grim surprise

  That secrets so dark lie behind some smiles.

  Does that kind man hide a cruel past?

  Does this rude man have a tender heart?

  Is this romance too fragile to last?

  Will my brave new life soon be torn apart?

  Is hatred the goad and vengeance the task?

  In such evil soil, can true love grow?

  These are painful questions I dare not ask.

  They have answers I fear to know.

  —F.S.I.

  Prologue

  Longbow, Colorado—December 1938

  OWEN WALLACE STOOD ALONE on the ramshackle porch of his family’s small house, staring absently into the falling snow. The storm had come on hard in the last hour and showed no sign of letting up. Before him, the hood of the doctor’s automobile had already become covered, despite the heat of the rapidly cooling engine. A swirling, merciless wind cut sharply on the exposed skin of Owen’s hands and face, but he paid it little heed.

  Though the inside of the small house was warm, well heated by the wood-burning stove, Owen felt no need to head indoors in spite of the miserable weather. Outside, alone with the growing fury of the winter storm, he could pretend that his mother wasn’t dying, if only for a short while.

  Behind him, the door opened, then was quickly closed.

  “I’m afraid there is nothing more that I can do for her, Owen,” Walter Calloway, Longbow’s doctor, said in a resigned tone of voice. “She never woke while I was examining her, but her sleep is far from peaceful.”

  Owen gave a slight nod in answer, still facing the falling snow.

  “Though it greatly pains me to say it, I believe the day we’ve all been dreading has finally arrived.”

  “How much longer does she have?”

  “It’s all in the Lord’s hands now,” the doctor answered. “Hannah is doing her best to keep Caroline comfortable, but besides making sure that the fire remains fully stoked, all we can do now is wait.”

  Dr. Calloway’s heavy-lidded eyes, hidden behind thick-framed glasses, gave ample evidence that his concern was genuine. He looked tired, worn beyond even the many years he had served the town, weighed down by the burden of an illness he couldn’t hope to cure.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done for her,” Owen offered.

  “I only wish that I could have done more,” Dr. Calloway answered, putting a hand on Owen’s shoulder in condolence, before he trudged through the piling snow to his car and drove away.

  For a few moments longer, Owen remained on the porch. Looking out into the distance, he could see only the faintest glimmer of light emanating from a weather-shrouded home; the homestead he shared with his mother and sister had few neighbors, and now, even in their greatest hour of need, no one offered to help. Whatever was to come they would face alone, as always.

  Reluctantly, Owen went indoors. When he entered, Hannah didn’t glance up from her duties. With determined diligence, his sister wiped away the beads of sweat that dampened their mother’s brow. Caroline Wallace lay small in her bed, ravaged by her sickness, her teeth chattering and her tiny, fragile shoulders shaking as if they were leaves caught in the teeth of an April storm. What beauty she’d once possessed had been stripped away by illness, leaving behind dark and sunken eyes, cracked lips, and skin as pale as faded parchment.

  Soon she would be dead.

  Tenderly, Hannah swept back a stray strand of her mother’s grey hair, tucking it behind the sick woman’s ear. With a weak smile, Hannah whispered words of comfort to the restless woman, but Owen was too far away to hear them clearly. Caring for her night and day, Hannah did all that she could, although nothing seemed to lessen Caroline’s suffering.

  The small, three-room home Owen shared with his mother and sister was sparsely furnished; besides the bed in which his mother lay, the front room contained nothing except a rickety table, a pair of broken-down chairs, and the dilapidated wood-burning stove. Their lives had been full of little but struggle. Owen tossed a few more pieces of wood into the fire, following what little advice the doctor had been able to give.

  Eventually, Hannah rose from her mother’s bedside and joined Owen beside the stove. Both weariness and worry were etched across her face; caring for Caroline in her dying days was a burden they had both willingly shouldered, but a burden nonetheless.

  “Dr. Calloway said that it’s only a matter of time.” Owen’s words faltered.

  “Don’t say such things,” Hannah whispered, her eyes darting to where her mother still fitfully slept. “She’ll hear.”

  “She can’t hear us now, Hannah.”

  “You don’t know that for certain.”

  “Even if she knows what we’re saying,” he explained, “I don’t reckon she’d fault us for seeing the obvious.”

  “It’s just not something that I want to hear.”

  “But it’s the truth.”

  Hannah’s mouth opened as if she wanted to argue the point further, but instead her gaze wistfully settled upon their mother. For a long while, the room remained silent save for the crackling of the fire.

  “She isn’t going to be able to tell us now,” Owen finally said. “Once she’s gone, we’ll never know.”

  “It’s no longer important.”

  “The hell it isn’t!” he snapped, the worry and anger he had been holding inside for days, months, and even years finally starting to erupt. “Are you saying that the knowledge we’ve waited our whole lives to learn can just die with her?”

  “What are we supposed to do, Owen?” Hannah pleaded, her eyes growing wet with tears. “Do you want to rouse her and make her talk? Should I quit making her as comfortable as I can until her tongue finally loosens and she tells us who our father was?”

  “But we just can’t… we have to know…” he sputtered, knowing how difficult it had always been to put what he wanted into words. Frustration burned in his belly. “Goddamn it all!”

  Hannah’s hand found his and he turned to face her.

  “We need to accept that we may never know,” she said softly.

  Owen fought against the meaning of his sister’s words. All his life he had wondered about the man who had abandoned them when he and Hannah were still in their mother’s womb, who had broken his mother’s heart and left her to fend for herself and her children… the man who had forced them to accept charity and ridicule from neighbors and who now would not be there to watch Caroline Wallace breathe her last.

  “I can’t do that,” Owen spat solemnly. “I can’t accept it. I’ll tear this place apart piece by piece if I have to. Mother may have wanted to keep her little secret, to try her damnedest to protect us, but for what that man has done to all of us, I swear that I will know his name.”

  And then that son of a bitch will pay!

  Chapter One

  Kansas City, Missouri—June 1939

  WITH AN OPEN HAND, Charlotte Tucker slapped the well-dressed young man flush across his clean-shaven face, releasing a storm of shock and anger to darken his handsome
features. While her blow clearly hadn’t hurt him, her reaction to his forward and improper advances had undeniably taken him aback. The sound of her striking him, loud as a gunshot, hung in the air of the train depot.

  All around them on the busy station platform, people had begun to gawk. In the instant after Charlotte struck the man, there had been a deafening silence, hushing the frantic hustle and bustle of travelers scurrying to their destinations. But that quiet was short-lived. Murmuring voices rose as faces turned, fingers pointing at the source of the commotion.

  “How dare you say such things to me!” Charlotte shouted, ignoring the attention she was attracting. “Have you no shame!”

  “Miss… I… I…” the man stammered. “I’m afraid that you must have misunderstood me…”

  “How could I possibly have mistaken what you said?” she disagreed forcefully. “When a man approaches a young woman he doesn’t know, has never so much as spoken to before, and asks if she would like to find a hotel room for the afternoon, what could his intentions possibly be?”

  Color rose at the man’s collar, a bright, obvious crimson of embarrassment, in stark contrast to the perfect white of his starched shirt. His discomfort was worsened by the snickers that rose among the crowd.

  “But… but I never said such things!” he argued defensively.

  “And now you go and make it worse by lying!” Charlotte accused. “How many other young women have you approached in such a scandalous way, scheming and lurking in the shadows until you found an easy mark?”

  “Ne-never!”

  “I suppose you imagined that I would go along with your ridiculous, insulting plans,” she continued, not giving the man a moment’s pause. “You never imagined you would be exposed, did you?”

  “What kind of man says such a thing?” a voice asked from the crowd.

  “Must be some kind’a pervert!” another added.

  Quickly looking from side to side, the man was uncomfortably aware that he was drawing too much attention to himself. Dropping the façade of innocence, he stepped closer to Charlotte, reached out, and snatched her tightly and painfully by the wrist.

  “You better keep that mouth of yours shut, bitch,” the man threatened, “unless you’re looking to get hurt!”

  Instead of shrinking in fear from the man’s threats, Charlotte rose to meet them defiantly, her gaze never wavering, even as she unsuccessfully tried to disentangle herself from his grip.

  “Let go of me this instant!” she cried.

  Before the sound of her angry voice could fade into the depot, the man suddenly raised his hand as if he meant to strike her, a blow that would have hurt more than the one she had struck. Still, Charlotte never flinched, facing her would-be attacker with steely determination. But before the man could follow through with his intentions, a voice cut through the relative quiet of the platform, startling all those who watched.

  “Now what seems to be the matter here!” a deep baritone bellowed. “That ain’t no way to treat a lady, fella!”

  Charlotte turned to see a squat, frowning policeman waddle over menacingly to where she and the man stood, his watchman’s stick clutched tightly between calloused, thick fingers. He looked ready to act and broach no disagreement. At the sight of him, the man released his grip on Charlotte and took two hesitant steps backward.

  With his arrival, the crowd began shouting in explanation, a jumble of voices where only bits could be heard.

  “… and then that man laid hands on her…”

  “… was only defendin’ herself!”

  “… and it’s just like she done said, ’cause I seen the whole darned thing!”

  “Now, now, now, let’s everybody quiet down!” the police officer shouted, putting a quick end to the rising chatter. Turning to Charlotte, he asked, “Is what these here people is sayin’ true, miss? Was this chap botherin’ you?”

  Charlotte nodded, explaining the man’s repugnant suggestion that they find a hotel room. “And that’s when I slapped him,” she added.

  The police officer laughed heartily. “Can’t say I blame ya for it!”

  “But… but… but what she’s saying isn’t true, Officer,” the man protested, assuming the innocent look he had unsuccessfully used just after Charlotte slapped him. “I’d never so much as spoken a word to her before she walked up and slapped—”

  “Now why don’t you and I head on back to the depot office,” the officer said as he clamped a vicelike grip on the man’s wrist while wiggling his watchman’s stick threateningly. “That way we can have ourselves a little chat ’bout the whole thing.

  “Sorry for the problem, miss,” he added to Charlotte as he led the man away.

  A small smile crept across Charlotte’s lips at the satisfaction of having the disgusting man led away to his just punishment, but just as she was feeling smug about her victory, she glanced up at the large clock at the far end of the depot, and realized that she was about to be late. Snatching up her bags, she turned on her heel and dashed toward her rail line.

  She had a train to catch.

  Settling breathlessly into her seat, Charlotte thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t missed her train. Out on the platform, the conductor shouted, “All aboard!” Moments later, the engine’s shrill whistle pierced the air of the busy depot and the train began to pick up speed and head toward its destination.

  “We’re moving, Mommy! We’re moving!” the little girl in the seat ahead said in excitement.

  “Yes, dear, we sure are,” her mother answered.

  Charlotte smiled and settled into her seat.

  Outside her window, the hustle and bustle of Kansas City, the cars and trucks and trolley cars, the buildings and construction that strained upward toward the summer sky, soon began to fall away, replaced first by houses and then by tall stalks of corn and endless fields of cattle as the city gave way to the countryside.

  Removing her white hat, Charlotte pulled a small mirrored compact from her purse and began fixing her long, tousled blond curls. For a moment she paused, examining her bright blue eyes, high cheekbones, and pert nose. Accepting compliments, welcome or otherwise, had always been difficult for Charlotte, even if she knew she had some beauty. All her life, she had been told that she was the image of her mother, Alice, who had died while giving birth to her.

  With a sigh, Charlotte closed her compact, smoothed the soft fabric of her white blouse and dark blue skirt, and settled back into her seat, thankful that her ordeal on the platform was over.

  I’ve come a long way from Minnesota…

  In her purse, folded carefully, was the telegram sent to her from Sawyer, a small town out in northern Oklahoma, hiring her to teach in their school. Her hands had shaken, with equal parts of excitement and nervousness, when she stood in the telegraph office at Lancaster College to send her acceptance. From that moment to now, traveling to her brand-new job, she had walked on air.

  All her life, Charlotte had wanted to get away, to see what the world had to offer her. Growing up in Carlson, Minnesota, little more than a hiccup of a town north of the Twin Cities, she’d spent her childhood days playing in the woods that lined the shores of Lake Washington. But even before she went away to teachers’ college, she had yearned to see more of the world.

  And that telegram from Oklahoma promised the opportunity to be independent in a new environment.

  But excited as she was over what lay ahead, she knew that there were things she’d miss about the life she was leaving behind.

  Saying good-bye to her family, especially her parents, was hard. They were in tears the whole way to the depot. For Rachel, her mother’s younger sister who had raised Charlotte and then married her father, the separation was particularly painful. Though there was no doubt that Rachel wanted her “daughter” to go out in the world and succeed, she still felt as if she were losing her little girl. Leaving her father, Mason, brought back some of Charlotte’s earliest memories. For her first six years, she had believed, as
had the rest of Carlson, that her father had perished on some unknown battlefield in France during the Great War. When he finally returned, his face terribly scarred by an exploding shell, Charlotte had been the one to find him, deathly sick in a shack in the woods. To have him returned to her life, to watch as he smiled over her accomplishments and he worried at her failures, was a greater joy than she could ever have imagined. Seeing him at the depot, his dark hair growing white at the temples, affection beaming from his face, was a memory that Charlotte would carry with her to Oklahoma.

  Even her grandmother, Eliza, who had helped Rachel raise her, had come to the depot to see her off. She had often chastised Charlotte for the troubles she caused as a child, but Eliza was now proud at what her granddaughter had achieved.

  The hardest person to say good-bye to had been her half sister, Christina, younger by seven years, and her closest friend. There were many differences between the two of them physically; Christina had black hair and piercing green eyes and an even temperament while Charlotte was far more prone to fly off the handle, but the bond between them had always been unshakeable. All the hours they spent together, talking about their dreams and hopes, seemed to have passed by in an instant. To watch her older sister set off on the course of her life had prompted Christina to count the days until she could do the same.

  And so, two days earlier, the twenty-year-old Charlotte Tucker had waved farewell to all that she had known. Through tears, she imagined that those who had passed away from her life—her mother, old Uncle Otis who had died one night in his sleep with a beaming smile across his face, and even Jasper, the mangy mutt who used to follow Charlotte on her many adventures around Carlson—were all watching down approvingly from Heaven above.