Proving Herself

by Yvonne Jocks

"Keep breathing," Mama reminded her. "Now try again, baby. You can do it."

  "You can do it, love," repeated Stuart, low, where his cheek pressed against Mariah's hair. "You can do anything."

  Then Mariah screamed again, and Mama, busy under her nightgown, said "Yes!" Suddenly she was drawing a red, slimy creature out from the foot of the bed. "It's a boy!" she told them, and lifted the baby to Mariah's sheet-covered stomach, mindless of stains. "You hold him while we clean him up."

  "A boy," repeated Stuart. With a gusty yowl the baby started to cry, and Mariah gasped and sobbed and laughed all at once, feeling across him—his grimacing little face, his slow-moving arms—as if she could not believe that he was real and whole and complete. Laurel could hardly believe it her­self.

  "You did it, Mariah," Stuart murmured. "A boy!"

  "You would have loved a girl, too," Mama assured him as she began to wipe the little fusspot clean of the mess that splattered both him and the pulsing cord still connecting him to Mariah. "Laurel, quick, get one of the towels."

  Laurel hurried to where they had set a pot on top of the radiator grille, and clean, dry towels in the pot, so that the baby would not get cold.

  "Aye," said Stuart prayerfully over Mariah's delighted coo­ing. "Aye, that I would."

  "You can touch him too, Stuart," said Mama with a laugh. Tentatively Stuart reached his large worker's hand out and brushed his fingertips across his son's shoulder.

  It was the first time that Laurel, bringing the towel back, had ever seen Mariah's brooding sheep farmer smile.

  She guessed he might be a handsome man, at that.

  And their baby! He had brown hair, wet and plastered onto his elongated head, and a fierce expression in his scowling little eyes, and waving baby hands, and kicking baby feet, and even a little baby... dingus. Laurel had never seen any­thing so wonderful in her life.

  "Well done, Mrs. Garrison," said the doctor, who had put his book down to see to cutting the cord. That, apparently, Mama would allow him. "And Mrs. MacCallum, of course. He looks like a strong, healthy baby. All his fingers and toes, has he?"

  "Oh, yes," insisted Marian, petting the baby's head, pouting in sympathy with his upset. "He's perfect, aren't you, darling?" And as soon as she could, she cuddled him to her chest. "Oh, I know, little man! You have every right to be upset. But you're safe out here. Your da will see to it."

  Stuart, resting an exhausted chin on her shoulder as if he were the one who had done the work, stared in dumb amaze­ment.

  "Don't get too comfortable," warned Mama. "Stuart, you'd best hold him when Mariah's ready to deliver the afterbirth. Laurel, go tell the others that everything's fine, both with Mar-iah and little Mr.— Have you two chosen the name?"

  Mariah looked over her shoulder at her husband, eyes pleading. His closed his for a moment, then opened them, and he kissed her cheek and whispered, "Aye."

  "Garrison," she said. "Garrison Stuart MacCallum."

  Mama's eyes danced her approval. "A beautiful name, and just as fine a gesture. Laurel, have Victoria watch your father's face when you tell him—I'll want a full report, and I know she can give the best one."

  Then she turned back to the next stage in this miracle. Backing toward the door, Laurel knew it was a miracle.

  All of it. Not just the baby.

  The truth of what Mariah and Stuart had built together shamed her. And the full realization of what she and Collier might have built, but hadn't and maybe never would ...

  That hurt so badly she could hardly stand.

  * * *

  Garry MacCallum had been born in the wee hours of the morning. By time Audra, Kitty, and Elise woke In Thaddeas's bed upstairs, for breakfast, the adults were exhausted. Though the younger girls begged to see the baby, Mama re­fused to risk waking the MacCallums; they would have to wait until after school. Laurel and Papa did the cooking. Thaddeas slung a bedroll into his buggy, hoping to catch a nap at his law office. And although Victoria had permission to stay home this once, she couldn't wait to tell her classmates their overnight drama.

  As soon as they left, Laurel lay down in Kitty and Elise's room for just a moment—just long enough to catch her breath and decide what to do about Collier, and Denver... and what a poor wife she'd proven to be, pretend or other­wise. But when she started awake again, to the noise of little Garry bawling in the next room, the slant of sunlight through the windows told her she'd slept until noon.

  Noon!

  She sat up unevenly. Blinking down at herself, she saw that she was still wearing the new gown she'd put on in Denver the morning before, complete with a spattering of purple-gray water stains from the splash when she'd doused Lady Vivian.

  What had she done?

  Her mistakes milled so chaotically through her memory, she feared never grasping them all. Then, somehow, she cor­ralled them into one clear condemnation.

  She'd lied.

  She'd lied to her family and her friends, cheapening some­thing holy, when she'd married Collier. She'd lied to his fam­ily when she posed for that wedding portrait. She'd lied to Collier when she'd agreed to pose as his wife—the first time trouble came, what did she do but embarrass and desert him?

  And she'd tied to herself. She'd thought she could do this and still have self-respect left, but she didn't. She felt as wrin­kled and soiled as this brand-new, ruined skirt, and she didn't know how she would ever put things right again.

  But she realized, finally, that she wouldn't do it alone.

  She found her father in the stables, oiling his saddle.

  "Hello," said Laurel, sidling in.

  He looked up, blinked at her for a moment, then nodded his own greeting and went back to work.

  "Some doings last night, huh?" she asked, timid. But if she saw her behavior as shameful, what would he think?

  Papa said, "Yup."

  "I'm glad Mariah's okay," she added. Again he paused to look at her, long and hard. When she said nothing, he nod­ded again—he was glad, too—and turned back to the saddle.

  Frustrated with her own cowardice, she finally just spit it out. "Oh, Papa. I've done something terrible, and I don't know what to do about it!"

  Papa's hand on the saddle stilled. He looked back up at her. He watched her for a long moment with his steady gray eyes, sturdy and dependable as he'd ever been. Then he cleared his throat and asked, "Anyone dead?"

  She stood up straighter. "No!"

  When he started wiping the oil off his saddle with a clean rag, she could have wept from relief. Maybe the lack of a corpse meant anything could be fixed, in his view... even if he didn't yet know what a poor excuse for a daughter or a wife she was.

  "Got a bounty on your head?" demanded Papa as he worked.

  She shook her head. "No!"

  His eyes narrowed. "Likely?"

  "No, sir!"

  So he put the rag away, left the saddle where it could dry, and shrugged into his coat. "Best see yer mother, then."

  And they went in together.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  "Didn't look pretend to me," Papa noted dangerously.

  Laurel did not have to look up to know what he was think­ing; Collier, answering the door barefooted in a quilt.

  "It only started pretend," she'd said. "And not even pretend so much as... arranged."

  "This will be easier," said Mama, "if you don't defend it."

  So Laurel tried. But she had to defend Collier, even if she couldn't defend herself. Especially when she explained their plan to divorce several years from now.

  "Divorced." Papa spat the word. "Widowed, more likely."

  When Laurel made herself face him straight on, his disap­pointment looked like dark fury. On her mother it seemed calmer, sadder. Laurel felt the way she had the morning after her wedding, when she'd thrown up.

  "He tried to talk me out of it," she insisted. "But I wouldn't let him."

  Then she had to explain how things had changed after she fell in the creek and he rescued
her. "We didn't mean for it to happen, exactly, but he was so wonderful, and we just..."

  "I think we get the idea," assured her mother quickly.

  "And now I've ruined it." Laurel was embarrassed to feel tears threatening. She never cried—except, it seemed, for Collier.

  "You ruined it." She guessed Papa really didn't like Collier, if he couldn't conceive of her being the one at fault.

  She told them a little about Lady Vivian. She recounted her indignation, which she now suspected was its own brand of snobbery, and the dumped vase. She admitted how she'd fought with Collier, refused to apologize, called him a liar... her! And she told them about running away, with no more than a note.

  She tried not to spare herself.

  Mama said, "Oh, Laurel!" quite a bit.

  "What if I can't make this right? What if he doesn't even come back? He never chose Wyoming—he was just exiled here."

  "Married," Papa reminded her firmly. Whether he meant he'd make Collier honor his vows, or that Laurel must accept the consequences of her behavior, she wasn't sure.

  "He wouldn't desert me," she assured them—and maybe herself. Just in case. "He's too much of a gentleman, and he's too good a man. But staying against his will would be as bad."

  Again Papa said, "Married."

  Mama was more helpful. "You haven't had any indication that you might make him happy?"

  "In some ways, maybe." None of which she meant to tell them! "And when I'm pretending to be someone else. But we don't have important things in common. That's got to be bad."

  "Ah." Mama looked at Papa. That must be our problem, dear."

  "Figured you'd work it out," he agreed dryly.

  "You do so have things in common! There's the ranch, and the family. And you both ..."

  But suddenly Laurel couldn't think of much else. Papa came from a large ranching family, while Mama, orphaned, had been raised by her grandparents. Papa came from fron­tier stock, while Mama grew up in some kind of luxury back east. Papa was stem and abrupt, while Mama was loving and talkative. Papa's habits were conservative, while Mama worked for such progressive ideals as suffrage and the rights of laborers and immigrants.

  Mama held up two crossed fingers. "We're like this."

  Papa looked annoyed. But when Mama just wrinkled her nose at him, he sighed and looked at a paper he'd drawn from his pocket.

  They weren’t alike, not in any obvious ways—and yet Lau­rel had never once doubted their love and permanence.

  That was when she began to hope again.

  She'd never been much for compromise. But doing things alone sure hadn't worked for her. Maybe she couldn't stop being herself, any more than her mother had stopped being a suffragette, or her father a stem old cowboy.

  But maybe being more of what Collier wanted didn't have to mean losing herself at all. Especially if she loved him.

  "I guess I need to go back to Denver," she said—but that was when Papa slid the paper he'd been looking at across the table, and she saw that it was a telegram.

  LAUREL ON 9:15 P.M. TRAIN. PLEASE CONFIRM SAFE ARRIVAL. WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY. SAY I AM SORRY, PEMBROKE.

  He was coming back! He would be here—soon!

  Maybe she hadn't run out of chances after all.

  "Cooper will fetch him," Papa warned before she could insist on going to the depot. After everything she had to make up to her parents, she guessed she could give in on that.

  Besides, she had work to do.

  Lord knew she'd proved she would make mistakes. It was time to show Collier that she could make an effort, too.

  A real one.

  Laurel bathed in perfumed water, scrubbing mercilessly at her elbows. While her hair dried, she starched and ironed the most salvageable of her Denver dresses out of her trunk. It was midnight blue cashmere, with black braid and aswagged overskirt, and it took forever to press. Poor Stuart MacCallum almost couldn't leave the house to check on his sheep ranch, until Mama noticed him hovering just outside the kitchen, looking longingly past Laurel and Papa to the back door.

  Since she was only wearing her robe—until every swag and braid was straight on the dress—Laurel had to step into the bathroom until Stuart had left for the stables.

  She could only guess that Papa let the new father pass.

  Even Mariah, barely recovered from childbirth, helped with Laurel's transformation. She insisted on sitting up in bed while little Garry slept in an open, pillow-lined drawer beside her, and using a crimping iron to style Laurel's hair.

  "You'll wear Mama's jet earrings," she insisted. "And the matching brooch."

  Laurel, never comfortable being fussed over, reread the telegram. Say I am sorry. Pembroke.

  It was because Collier said he was sorry that Papa had kept the telegram from her—that, and the distraction of Mariah having her baby. Because Collier said he was sorry, Uncle Benj would be meeting his train instead of Laurel. But Laurel trusted Uncle Benj to see the truth of the matter as soon as Collier explained everything, and then he'd be home, and ...

  And Laurel felt torn between fearing to hope and refusing to despair. What was Collier sorry for—their fight, or some­thing more permanent, yet to be confessed? She didn't like that he'd signed it Pembroke. He'd paid for the word please when asking Papa to confirm her safe arrival, but not for his first name.

  But she liked that he'd worried about her, even so.

  "Didn't Audra used to practice walking with a book on her head?" she asked fitfully. But when she turned her head, she burned her ear on the crimping iron. "Ow!”

  "Be careful!" scolded Mariah. "Yes, that's how Audra prac­ticed her comportment. And no, don't you dare try it today. Not after all the work I've put into this hairstyle."

  After the courage Mariah had shown, Laurel guessed she had some catching up to do to avoid cowardice. So she went ahead and risked asking, "What if he doesn't forgive me?"

  At least Mariah wouldn't answer, Married, as Papa had.

  "Papa and Mama forgave you, didn't they?" she charged.

  "Actually... when I said I was sorry, Papa said he reck­oned I was. And when I said I didn't guess they would trust me much for a while, he said he didn't guess so. Mama just looked sad."

  "But they forgave you. There." And Mariah sat back to in­spect her work. "All done."

  Laurel took a deep, trembling breath. "But Mariah, they love me." She didn't have to explain that Collier...

  "Oh, sweetie." Mariah opened her arms, and Laurel found herself taking hugs and comfort from a weak, hurting sister she herself should be comforting. But right now Mariah was only physically weak, and her reasons for that lay sleeping in the open drawer.

  "I'm sorry," Laurel whispered—and, damn it, wept—into her sister's shoulder. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Now that she'd started saying it, she felt as though she couldn't stop.

  She loved her big sister all the more for not asking what she was sorry for, just reassuring her. "It'll be all right. You'll see. Everything will be fine. Just you wait."

  But Laurel would believe that from only one person.

  And he hadn't gotten in from the station yet.

  Laurel was not waiting for him at the Sheridan depot, and Collier felt a stab of disappointment. Whether she was happy, dutiful, or still furious, he longed to see her. He'd missed her more than seemed possible in the day they'd been apart. That she'd not come at all hardly seemed promising.

  That Benjamin Cooper had—and stood leaning casually against a post with his arms folded and his large cowboy hat sloped down over his forehead—seemed even less so. Es­pecially when Cooper looked up with honest threat in his shadowed blue eyes.

  "That'll go to my buggy," the rancher drawled to the porter with Collier's trunk. Then he strode over to Collier, his cow­boy boots thumping ominously on the wooden platform, and draped an arm over Collier's shoulders in a fatherly way.

  Fatherly except for the grim line of his mouth under his handlebar mustache.

  "Son," the ra
ncher greeted.

  "Cooper," responded Collier more carefully. He didn't shrug off the man's arm—that would be rude—but he did pointedly note the familiarity. "Laurel's ... all right. Isn't she?"

  He'd gotten her father's simple telegram—She's here—be­fore he left Union Station. In the end, it had been his train that got delayed for snow. So by "all right," Collier wasn't even sure what he meant. Not all right would be if she were still feeling guilty for their argument, or hurt by his angry words, or determined to end their charade of a marriage once and for all.

  But when Cooper said, "She's fine," Collier doubted he was encompassing all those possibilities.

  "Safe at home with her folks," assured Alexandra's hus­band. "Funny how the weather works 'round here. You got snowed in, but up here the streets are muddy as the Missis­sippi. We'll be a while getting there. This is a good thing. Trust me on this."

  "Oh?"

  "Plenty of time to chat." Cooper swung himself into the driver's seat of his phaeton. Collier had to go around, step­ping into the filthiest, slushiest snow he'd ever seen. His foot sank into icy muck. Before he'd made it around the horse, one of his shoes vanished. He had to stop and dig into the mess with a gloved hand to retrieve it; then he tugged it on with a grimace.

  Welcome home.

  "Perhaps I should purchase boots," he said. "If I'm to sur­vive spring in the Rocky Mountains?"

  "Oh, your survival rests on more than that," assured Coo­per. He clucked his teeth at the horse, driving away from the station and toward the street. Thank goodness it was paved. Enough snow and mud flew before they reached it to plaster a building.

  "Pardon?"

  "Your telegram asked Jacob to pass on an apology to your wife," explained Cooper. "Musta been a whopper, to send by wire."

  Collier thought of all he could have done better. "It is."

  "Care to enlighten me before you face her daddy with it?"

  That was when Collier realized what this was about. "As a matter of fact, I would not. That is between myself and my wife."

  "And her father. You saw to that when you sent the cable."

  "Her father allegedly being Jacob Garrison?" It went against Collier's breeding to insinuate such a thing, but damn it, he had to know. Just not for the reasons he would have ex­pected.