Christine could only watch in envy as the love between this protective mother and her devoted son deepened with a joy she’d never seen her own reserved family share, even in the best of times.
It was an awesome thing to witness, this love. And although she’d once despised the woman in Gypsy attire whose eyes knew her every secret, Christine now felt a profound admiration for Veronique Trudeau. Tucker’s mother wasn’t laying blame, or cursing her fate, or sniffling pitifully into her hanky. She’d made a worthwhile life for herself. She’d depended upon God’s gifts to her, rather than falling back on prostitution or charity or . . . con artistry. She’d raised her son the best way she knew how.
And she was preparing to set him free.
A torrent of affectionate Cajun French surged between them as they reaffirmed the bond that had seen them through Tucker’s entire life. And now as they chattered, Christine could appreciate the comfort of their Cajun ways. This time, she didn’t feel she was being left out.
Then Tucker slung an arm around her shoulder. And when she felt Veronique’s embrace from within his, Christine knew, for the first time in years, how it felt to belong.
The next day, the train took them through a garden of earthly delight such as Christine had never seen. The flatlands of Nebraska and snow-capped mountains of Colorado had given way to spectacular rock formations and vast stretches of desert, which became fertile, rolling hills as they approached Sacramento. How odd to be seeing green grass and trees when it was the dead of winter back in Kansas.
Another short train ride took them into San Francisco—and civilization. The bustling city of businesses and established neighborhoods easily rivaled St. Louis. She’d studied about the gold rush that brought the Forty-Niners here—recalled reading about Spanish land grants and the immigration of the Chinese, and the way shipping had established this port city as a major trade center. But seeing all these things from her train window made them real.
And it made something very clear, as well: Mama and Richard Wyndham could operate from a dozen different pockets of commerce here, and it might take months to find them. As she stood on the platform with Veronique, while Tucker got Sol and the wagon off the train, Christine felt totally overwhelmed.
All these people! Many wore the stylish suits and bowlers of successful businessmen, while others appeared to be penniless immigrants, huddling in conversations that rang with exotic vowel sounds and rhythms. Mama and her consort wouldn’t even have to leave the train station to run a devious scheme that would make them a living.
And wasn’t that a scary thought?
Christine sighed. There was no backing out now. No honorable way to say she’d seen enough of her mother’s shenanigans and wanted to leave the whole thing alone. If Veronique Trudeau’s instincts were correct—and she’d been right a number of times—they had arrived at their final destination.
This was where she’d find Mama and get her answers, once and for all. Or not, if that “trouble” Tucker’s mother predicted found Virgilia Bristol before she could.
Christine glanced at the woman beside her. Veronique stood with her eyes closed and her face lifted slightly, as though listening for messages from her angels. She appeared removed from the cacophony of accented chatter and the heavy scents of locomotive smoke and unwashed bodies, a single serene soul operating on a different plane from those hurrying around her.
Christine envied that serenity.
She stood quietly, watching the sea of faces—the ebb and flow of passengers boarding or leaving trains from other platforms. A fellow in a stovepipe hat gazed at her, but then went on his way; just one man of many who wore such a hat and a wicked little waxed mustache. Why did he look vaguely familiar?
Because in this crowd, you might see anyone. Or think you did.
One face, however, separated itself from the others, and her toes wiggled inside her shoes. Who wouldn’t adore that distinctive black beard—cropped more closely than the mutton chops and bushy thickets most men sported—and the aquamarine eyes that shone so when they looked at her?
Tucker swooped her up into a kiss and the world went still. For those blissful moments, she knew only the warm softness of his lips and the strength of his arms holding her off the ground, and the little moan that escaped him as he released her.
“I have parked the wagon and paid a boy to stand with Sol,” he said. “In this crowd, who knows what might happen to such a fine horse?”
Then he glanced at his mother, hesitant to interrupt her state of mental suspension. “Have you sensed anything, Maman? In a city this size—”
“I hear . . . male voices. Odd, squawking music and languages . . . black hats and braids,” she murmured in a rush. “Back rooms, behind . . . steam. A strong odor of incense and . . . soap.”
“Do you feel Christine’s mother?”
Veronique swayed, squeezing her eyes tighter. “She . . . she is here, in this city, yes.”
Christine’s pulse pounded. “Is Mama all right? Is she with—”
“Anger! Harsh words! I see—I see secret keys and—”
Veronique shuddered, her eyes flying open. She sucked in a few desperate breaths, reaching for their hands as she regained her composure. “We must find her soon. He has left her in an . . . alley. Left her for dead.”
Chapter Twenty-four
How much more impossible could this be? Christine fretted. How many men in black hats? How many odd languages? How many alleys?
They sat crammed together on the seat of the red wagon, peering down one narrow street after another, moving very slowly because the mass of jabbering Oriental humanity kept Sol to a walk. It was nearly dusk, and in their urgency they hadn’t gotten a room—didn’t want to stay someplace that might be city blocks away from whatever had happened to her mother.
Hands clasped tightly in her lap, Christine forced herself to remain calm. If what Veronique had envisioned was true, Mama might already be dead. Her body could be crammed into a doorway where these Chinese people would never see her. Not that they’d help a white woman in this part of town.
“Have you seen anything like what went on in your vision?” she asked Veronique quietly. “Or had any new impressions?”
“Are we close? Going the right way?” Tucker joined in.
The woman between them shook her head. She, too, was gazing in all directions, trying desperately to match their surroundings with those fleeting images in her head. Lamps were being lit behind curtains, and exotic aromas wafted from upstairs windows where people lived above their shops.
“We must get a place to stay, Maman. Or I must park where Sol will be safe while we sleep in the wagon.”
His eyes followed the sidewalks—or what he could see of them, with so many people milling about. They were eyeing his red wagon and huge horse with suspicion, not offering help to foreigners so obviously lost.
“Are we going in the right direction? Or have we passed what you saw?”
Veronique sighed, looking drained. “The images went so fast. But yes, these men are wearing black hats and braids, speaking a strange language. Who could have known Chinatown was so huge?”
“Why would Richard take Mama here?” Christine blinked back tears, wondering if this whole miserable trip would come down to finding her mother lifeless on—
Don’t think about that! Just keep looking. Ask questions.
“Was that incense you mentioned like what they burned in the church?” she quizzed. “Or was it—”
“Opium?” Tucker finished.
Christine hugged herself, more from fear than the breeze blowing in from the bay.
Veronique frowned. “I didn’t think so at the time. The Chinese use incense as part of their daily rituals—offerings to their gods. It’s the impression of hidden places that remains so strong.”
She stiffened, and then pointed to the corner ahead of them. “Is that steam coming from that window? A laundry, perhaps?”
Christine sat straighter. St
eam—scent of soap—they fit together!
But the trio of short men in black Mandarin-style jackets, with long queues and odd little shoes, hardly seemed to be leaving a place where washing was done. A burst of twangy music followed them onto the street as they gesticulated in their excited conversation.
“That’s what I heard! Music like that!”
Veronique would have sprung down from the wagon if Tucker hadn’t stopped her. “Maman,” he said tiredly, “If you can call that awful noise music, it sounds like the same song we’ve heard for the past hour. We need to—”
“Let me ask the angels. We’re very close.”
Christine pressed her knuckles to her lips to keep from screaming. Night was falling in an area where she didn’t feel one bit safe, even with Tucker here. And his mother wanted a consultation!
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, she fretted. But when Veronique, already entering her trance state, asked for Mama’s diary, Christine reached into her valise. What else could she do?
When the seer’s hands closed around the velvet-bound book, she sucked in air. Her body went rigid. She underwent the same facial contortions as before, only this time they seemed more intense. The wagon seat vibrated with her pent-up energy. Then she slumped between them with her eyes squeezed shut, murmuring incoherent phrases and sounds.
Veronique suddenly sat bolt upright. Her eyes flew open and she pointed ahead of them.
“One more block. Turn and enter the alley from the other side,” she directed. “Wyndham knocked her against the building to scare her. We must find her before he returns.”
Tucker clucked to Sol and they lurched ahead. The streets were clearing. Apparently the Chinese men who’d clogged the streets earlier had gone home for their evening meal. The huge horse’s hoofbeats ricocheted off the tall buildings. They rounded the corner, found the narrow passageway that doubled back to the laundry, then proceeded more slowly.
Silently, they scanned the dark, fetid passageway. The stench of rotten vegetables and human waste stung Christine’s nose; Mama would be mortified if her daughter knew Richard Wyndham had dumped her here like a pailful of garbage. They simply had to find—
“There! Is that someone—?”
Tucker scrambled down from the seat, holding up his arms to assist his mother, then Christine. The only light came from a window where steam still emerged, so they stepped carefully toward what he saw.
When she spotted a pale face at an odd angle to its body, Christine’s stomach lurched. I will not vomit, she vowed as she knelt beside the eerie figure. I will not collapse or make this any harder than—
“Oh, Mama,” she breathed. “Oh, my God, Mama . . .”
“Are you sure?”Tucker squatted on the woman’s other side. “Something tells me that in this part of town victims get left this way a lot.”
“It is Mrs. Bristol,”Maman affirmed. Her hands began an assessment, checking for blood and broken bones. “She wasn’t shot or stabbed, at least. Pick her up carefully, Tucker, while I open the wagon door.”
Stunned, Christine tucked Mama’s limp arms and long skirts close to her body while Tucker gently gathered her into his arms. Dozens of possibilities whirled in her frightened mind, but she didn’t dare think about them. Better to remain separated from reality and just do something. Better to keep moving from one little task to the next so she wouldn’t be overwhelmed by a sense of defeat as dark as this alley.
As they stepped up into the wagon, Tucker balanced himself carefully, adjusting Mama’s weight in his arms. His mother had lit a lamp with a reflector, and the candles on her angel altar; she was kneeling in the corner, out of the way. Her hurried, whispered prayers were in Latin, but Christine understood their urgent undertone perfectly: Veronique didn’t think Mama was going to make it.
And indeed, Mama looked far removed from this world as Tucker laid her on the back bunk. He stepped away, slipping his arm around Christine as his mother again checked for breathing and a heartbeat. The traiteur then lifted one of Mama’s eyelids to reveal a pupil that was barely visible.
“I suspect a large dose of opium,” she said, brushing debris from Mama’s shoulders.
She positioned the limp head on her pillow and smoothed Mama’s loose auburn hair. “It fits with what flashed through my mind—that they were having a disagreement . . . something about keys. He could’ve slipped the drug into anything she ate or drank. That bruise on her face is from hitting against the building, or the ground.”
“But—but will she . . . ?” Christine choked on her worst thoughts. Mama resembled a rumpled corpse laid out for burial, and she just couldn’t talk about that right now.
“It depends on how much opium he gave her, and how resistant to it she is,” Veronique replied. “And we don’t know that she lost consciousness from hitting her head. I can’t revive her with strong coffee because she can’t swallow it. And we can’t get her up and walking to move the drug through her system faster.”
Veronique straightened, her dark eyes sorrowful. “If she survives the night and tomorrow, she stands a fair chance of recovery. Until then, all we can do is wait. And pray.”
It was the longest night of her life.
While Tucker drove, Christine sat beside her mother. She held the hand that had caressed her face and arranged her hair in ribbons and led her with disciplinary determination when she’d disrupted church as a child. How vividly she recalled Mama’s touch from those moments!
She would’ve given five years of her life to be yanked down an aisle that way right now—ten years for one more time when Mama smoothed her hair, smiling with such love in those beautiful green eyes. Love Christine had taken for granted, thinking it would never end. Thinking it would always be her mother’s special gift to her.
But Mama lay so still.
Christine felt she was already sitting vigil beside a coffin. It was awful enough to endure those long hours in the crepe-draped parlor where Daddy was laid out before his burial, but this—this was Mama. This was the woman she’d turned to for direction, approval, and true understanding—the woman she’d never stopped loving these last three years, even though she’d behaved in un-motherly ways.
“If it helps you,” Veronique’s voice broke the silence, “at least your mother is feeling no pain. She is beyond whatever that wicked man did or said to her because we found her. And she is breathing. For these things we can be very thankful.”
Christine nodded. Her throat was so tight she didn’t try to talk.
“I’ve asked the angels for assistance,” the seer went on. “I’ve implored Saint Raphael to minister to her as we cannot. I’ve prayed to Saint Michael for his supreme protection while she’s in this suspended state. I’ve asked the Archangel Gabriel to whisper words of encouragement in her ear—assurances that she is safe, and with people who love her. Who need her. Sometimes we mothers can get by on very little if we know we are needed.”
Tears slithered down Christine’s face again.
Oh, Mama, if you only knew how I’ve needed you! How I’ve missed you—even though my questions about why you abandoned us seemed more important than anything else, she mused miserably.
If I could turn back time to when I saw you last week, I’d shuck that veil and just hug you—no questions asked. It was my selfish questions that drove you away . . . my need to make you suffer for the way you treated me. It was my deception that made Wyndham desperate enough to leave town—and to poison you.
What an awful thought, but it was true, wasn’t it? If she hadn’t sent that Englishman fleeing into the night, he’d still be in Denver. Mama would still be conducting séances, instead of lying here as pale as a china plate.
Oh God, if You let her live, I promise I’ll never again ask why she abandoned Billy and me. It—it really doesn’t matter anymore.
“It’s normal to blame yourself for this sad chain of events, Christine.”Maman’s soft voice came from behind her. “But we all make our choices. And some
times it only takes one bad choice to require another, and another—to convince ourselves we’ve done the right thing. To believe we had no other choice that first time.
“Despite what you might think,” she went on gently, “I’m guessing your mother’s had more than her share of regrets since she left you. When she rode off with Richard Wyndham, she was trying to fill a desperate need inside herself. She would never have intentionally hurt you, dear.”
Christine kept rubbing Mama’s cool, limp hand, as though it might revive her—or hold her here, so she couldn’t slip away to the Other Side.
There was nothing else she could do.
I love you, Mama. Please don’t go.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Christine, ma princesse,” Tucker murmured. “Come outside for some air. Come see the sunrise—and the ocean.”
Her eyes were so red-rimmed, and the circles beneath them so dark, he wanted to enfold this poor girl in his arms and hold her forever. She’d been awake nearly twenty-four hours now, refusing to rest in case her mother came around. But Virgilia Bristol hadn’t even shifted in her sleep—if indeed she was only asleep.
From the corner, Maman looked up from her prayers. “Yes, Christine, you should stretch your legs. Breathe the fresh morning air. I’ll call you if I see the slightest change, dear.”
Christine rose stiffly from the padded storage bin where she’d kept watch. How many times had she held the mirror over that pale face to catch the vapor of such shallow breathing? How many times had she probed the underside of Mama’s wrist for a pulse?
How many prayers had she said to God—to those angels and saints and anyone else who might listen—asking for a sign? A way to know if Mama would live or if she was slipping away.
About the same number of times I’ve kicked myself for confronting her in Denver. Sighing, she let Tucker help her down from the wagon.
On the mist-shrouded horizon, the sun glowed like a fireball, shimmering above water that went on endlessly, bounded only by the shoreline on her left. Buildings constructed shoulder-to-shoulder clung to the hillsides above the piers, where magnificent sailing ships and little fishing boats bobbed peacefully in their slips. After feeling like a mouse caught in the maze of those terrifying Chinatown streets last night, she’d never expected this panoramic view of land and sea and sky.
Journey to Love (Angels of Mercy) Page 22