“I’ve changed my mind about Christine, however,” Tucker’s mother went on, smiling fondly at her, “because she’s proven herself a young woman of unswerving purpose who sincerely wished to see her mother again despite the . . . unfortunate scandals you’ve been associated with. I hope you’ll be proud of your daughter, Virgilia—”
“So the posters were a hoax, too?” Christine could barely get the words out, her throat felt so tight. “You’re saying I’ve chased halfway across the country believing the police might catch my mother before I could?”
Her stomach ached as though someone had kicked her, and a bitter sense of betrayal came up her throat like bile.
“I didn’t mean to mislead you, ma chérie,” Tucker pleaded, “but I went along with Maman’s plan—hoping you would find her sooner.”
“You lied to me.” Christine blinked rapidly, determined not to show how devastated she felt. How betrayed! “This whole mission has been based on—”
“An assumption anyone would make,” Harley Carson pointed out. “But when I noticed there was no reward listed—no record of which bank or agency was looking for Wyndham—”
“You knew. That’s why you were so interested in seeing the poster back in North Platte, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “What you wouldn’t tell me is that you’re a—a glorified bounty hunter.”
Now she didn’t know who to be angrier with—Tucker, for going along with his mother’s underhanded scheme, or Carson, for not telling her what he knew that day she was in his jail.
Or should she blame Veronique Trudeau for this whole charade? She was beginning to see all three of them in a haze of red that signaled a tantrum like she hadn’t pitched for a long time.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, “but I can’t spend another minute with any of you!”
Spinning on the heel of her kid slipper, Christine stalked toward the staircase, crying quietly so none of them would know how they’d ripped her heart out. Behind her, Mama was adding fuel to the fire. Burning their bridges.
“Well! If you think you can treat my daughter this way,” she huffed, “don’t believe we’ll ever speak to any of you again!”
Chapter Twenty-eight
I’m heading back. Mama is with me!
Intensely satisfied that she could finally write those words, Christine handed her note to the telegraph operator. “This goes to Billy Bristol, in care of Michael Malloy, who lives just outside of Abilene, Kansas.”
“Yes, ma’am! I’ll send it right now!”
It seemed a miracle that this man’s rapid tapping on a lever would travel through lines that spanned the entire country now, to end up as a message delivered to her brother. Maybe by tomorrow.
Christine watched, her heart thumping as fast as the man’s fingers. It was finally true! She’d found Mama and they were going home—even though she couldn’t name its geographical location yet. Right now, it was enough to be boarding the eastbound train with her mother. Her mission, the journey of the past three years, was nearly complete.
It is finished.
She frowned slightly. What an unhappy omen that the final words of Christ had come to her mind: words of suffering and death, when she should be feeling elated.
“Wasn’t that a fine how-do-you-do?” Mama remarked as they settled on an upholstered seat. “I thought something smelled fishy, the way Carlton Harte insinuated himself into my séances. I did feel safer with him around, since Richard became more devious in Denver—”
Mama widened her green eyes, grabbing Christine’s hand. “But now we’ll just stop at the post office boxes along the way and have money to burn! Who needs men like that? We have each other again!”
Christine’s heart pattered rapidly, for Mama’s excitement was contagious. For so long she’d awaited this victory—this togetherness—
But it’s not like I’d planned, is it?
Christine looked out her window as the train’s whistle blasted its all-aboard warning. They had managed to leave the hotel without encountering the Trudeaus. Despite her fury at their deception, she was still a bit disappointed that Tucker had not made more of an effort to seek her out—she was his fiancée, after all.
And would Mr. Carson resume his pursuit of Mama once Richard Wyndham was behind bars? An article in yesterday’s Chronicle had listed Richard’s schemes in several states, leaving her mother too mortified to be faking innocence. Along with charges of fraud posted by banks and businesses, three women had reported financial scandals of a more personal nature. To her credit, Mama had accepted this information with a martyrlike lifting of her chin.
“So I wasn’t the only poor fool sucked in by his charm,” she’d mused aloud. “Well! Life rolls on—like a train on its tracks—and I’m leaving him behind. Thank God!”
As the train lurched away from the platform, however, Christine felt a pang of regret. She searched the crowd one last time for Tucker’s midnight hair and boyish grin—the man she’d promised herself to on the shoreline, because she’d loved him since the moment they’d met. Why, she’d practically bullied him into proposing—
Have we learned anything from our mistakes? Miss Vanderbilt asked in her mind’s ear.
Maybe Tucker’s hesitation then was a sign of his guilt. Even so, she wished he’d kept it to himself that he and his mother had been behind that WANTED poster. She’d learned enough things she wished she hadn’t, these past weeks.
Mr. Carson led him into it. That’s what they were talking about—with Veronique—while they waited for us to come downstairs.
“Don’t you just love riding the train?” Mama trilled beside her.
She leaned across Christine’s lap to gaze out the window, where the city’s impressive buildings passed by more quickly with each minute. “I could live forever in a Pullman car—my own little world!—until I cared to come out for dinner, where polite darkie waiters in their white coats indulged my every whim!”
Christine bit back a retort. This woman was in for a rude awakening—quite a comeuppance!—when she sat down to old Asa’s cooking in Abilene.
Yet she envied the privileges Richard Wyndham had obviously bestowed upon her mother. Just as she envied Mama’s appetite for life, now that she’d left that shyster behind. She hadn’t seen her mother this happy since—when?
Since she and her lady friends sipped too much of Beulah Mae’s elderberry wine. When Daddy wasn’t there to scold her for it.
A sobering thought. One that followed right behind Judd Monroe’s line about Mama being ripe and ready to—
“Why such a glum look, sugar? I thought you’d be excited about the two of us going home.”
Christine gazed at her mother’s face. While the bruise still haunted the upper side of her cheek, Mama’s skill with powder and rouge had camouflaged the ugly reminder of her last minutes with Richard Wyndham.
Mama’s good at covering things, remember? The mistress of misdirection.
“I—I wasn’t ready to hear about that WANTED poster being Veronique’s idea,” Christine replied. “She and I were just starting to understand each other—”
“You’d rather believe your mama had a price on her head? And that she’d helped such a huckster with his life of crime?”
Christine blinked. “Mama, I sat at your séance table and watched while you—”
“Brought peace to Lewis Grantham’s lonely parents, and helped the Merritt sisters donate their mother’s money to a worthwhile project.”
Mama sat straighter, looking right into her daughter’s eyes. “There is nothing illegal—or immoral—about contacting the Other Side, Christine. Especially since I never charged for my services. It’s my God-given ability to bring hope from the Hereafter to those who need it.”
“But they paid you—”
“Voluntarily.” Mama looked away with that familiar lift of her chin. “Had I been smarter, I would’ve put the donations jar where Richard couldn’t get to it first. But that’s all behind me now—and beside the p
oint, considering we were talking about that WANTED poster.”
When the talking gets tough, change the subject. The technique she’d learned at this woman’s knee didn’t feel any better, now that she was once again Mama’s conversational victim.
“And we must look at the silver lining, Christine,” her mother said. “Tucker and his mother designed that poster so you could find me, sweetheart. And thank God you didn’t give up on that, because I’d be—well, I can’t imagine how utterly disgusting I’d smell by now, lying dead in that alley.”
“Which is again beside the point,” Christine said, and then wished she hadn’t.
It meant she’d have to admit how empty she felt without Tucker . . . and how she’d reverted to her old habit of storming off before she’d heard his explanation. What was it about Mama’s presence that made her behave like a spoiled child again?
Mama sighed wistfully. “I have to remind myself that you’re all grown up now. Not the sheltered little girl I raised in Richmond. Did you love him, Christine?”
“Yes, I did,” she whispered miserably. “I do.”
Another sigh, like the sweet, satisfied sound of reading THE END when the heroine of a romance made good. “He’ll come around, sweetheart. If he’s your destiny—if it’s really love—he’ll be back for you.”
Why did that answer sound so trite? So patently false? All her life she’d thrived on the images of the handsome prince sweeping her off her feet to love her forever—and indeed, Tucker had promised her that.
But was that how love really happened?
She’d never witnessed such overblown emotion between her parents, after all. And as she recalled the girlish joy in Mama’s diary entries about the debonair Englishman who’d hauled her up from the miry bog of her grief and listened to her sentiments about Wyndham now, well—where was Prince Charming? And if Harley Carson were so smitten by Mama’s mind and adventurous spirit, why wasn’t he in the seat across from them?
So much for fairy tales. Maybe that’s why Miss Vanderbilt never married: too much the realist to get sucked in by romance.
And yet . . . when she recalled the sweetness Michael and Mercy Malloy shared—even before she’d seen them cavorting naked—Christine had believed the feelings she and Tucker Trudeau explored would evolve into the same everlasting bond.
Was it really over between them? All because of a poster—a photograph that had haunted her with the joy he’d captured on her mother’s face?
It was too long a trip to sit brooding—or wondering how much to believe of what Mama told her—so Christine reached beneath her seat for the carpetbag. The red velvet diary would remain at the bottom of it, out of Mama’s sight, but the prints Tucker gave her might make her feel better. And they’d be something to talk about with the mother who felt like a stranger in so many ways.
“Photographs!” Mama cried. “And how do I know your Mr. Trudeau was behind the lens?”
Christine smiled at the thought of Tucker beneath his black camera cape, waiting for just the right moment to squeeze the shutter bulb.
“That’s how I came west,” she explained as she lifted the prints from their box. “Tucker has been appointed the official photographer for the Union Pacific railroad. But when Veronique had visions of you going to California—being in danger—Tucker said my mission—finding you—was more important than taking his pictures.”
“Well, then, that tells me he’s very devoted to—oh, who’s this? Why, she could be your little girl, Christine!”
Why did her heart leap up into her throat every time she saw this picture? Christine couldn’t gaze at that little face, even on paper, without feeling those downy blond curls brushing her cheek and seeing the pink of that gingham dress, and hearing that reedy little voice saying, “Kwis-teen!”
She smiled proudly. “That’s our Lily, the mystery girl. She was left on Mercy’s porch in a basket last spring, with a note pinned to her collar.”
“Mercy?”
Christine blinked. So much had happened—so many lives had entwined with hers—since Mama ran off, it would be impossible to catch her up on all those stories in one sitting. She leafed through the box until she came to the portrait of Mercy and Michael standing against the porch pillar.
“Mercedes Malloy, and her new husband Michael,” she explained, letting her fingertip trail over the carved Ms between their faces. “Mercy and her husband Judd took us in when Michael—who was driving the stagecoach we were on—asked if they’d keep us until he could . . . find our mother. They’re very kind, decent people. Billy took to them—”
“And what happened to Judd?”
She smiled wryly: Mama had switched the direction of their conversation, much like railroad men diverted a train’s cars onto side spurs. “He was killed in an Indian raid last year. Mercy was carrying Solace—”
As she looked for the picture of the entire family, Mama scowled. “And where was Billy during the raid? You’re not going to tell me—”
“He went down into the root cellar to hide with Mercy and Asa and the two dogs,” she replied, knowing Mama would never remember all the names. “It’s a good thing, too, because that winter, during a snowstorm, he and Asa and Michael delivered the baby! See—there she is! Looks just like her daddy.”
Mama snatched the picture where all of them sat on the front steps. “My God, he’s—he’s so grown up! My little Billy is—”
“He’s fourteen now, Mama,” she said, more tersely than she intended. “Hardly anyone’s baby boy anymore.”
“He’ll always be my baby. You’ll never know how I suffered, watching as those godless Border Ruffians snatched Wesley—”
She drew a ragged breath, gazing at the picture to compose herself. “And this is the baby he—you can’t mean Billy assisted with the birthing? What sort of woman would allow—”
“Yes, Mama, this is Solace,” Christine answered with clenched teeth. “Since there were no ladies nearby, because a blizzard kept everyone—”
“What an odd name, Solace. She won’t like that when she gets older.”
Christine stifled a remark about how Judd’s daughter had been the solace that kept Mercy alive, for Mama had challenged every single thing she’d said about this patchwork family . . . a family who now seemed far dearer than she’d once believed.
“And this must be Michael’s son? Mr. Malloy hardly looks old enough to have been married before.”
“That’s Joel, yes, Mama. He’s three now, and quite a handful.”
Two could play at Mama’s conversational cat-and-mouse. Christine kept smiling, gazing at those faces so she wouldn’t say things she’d regret. Lord, but she missed these Malloys more than she realized.
“And these are Billy’s Border collies, Snowy and Spot,” she went on, trying to remain patient. “Smartest dogs you ever saw, the way they keep the children corralled and—”
“Who’s that old biddy? She must’ve played with God when He was a boy!”
Christine clenched her fist until her nails stung her palm—so she wouldn’t slap the woman beside her. When had Mama forgotten those high-and-mighty manners she’d drilled into her children? Did she have no regard for anyone—other than Billy and herself?
“That,” she replied, elevating her voice with pride, “is Miss Agatha Vanderbilt, headmistress of the Academy for Young Ladies. I’ve nearly completed my studies there, and have earned an apprenticeship with the most exclusive couturiere in St. Louis. You should see the gowns I’ve designed, Mama!”
Surely the topic of fashion would make for more pleasant conversation. Mama had fled Denver on short notice, but her trunk—which they’d fetched from the hotel room she and Richard checked into—was filled with gowns in the latest styles.
“You? A seamstress? Well, there’s something I’d never have imagined.”
“Not just a seamstress, Mama—although the gowns I made over to go to school were what caught Miss Vanderbilt’s eye,” she explained proudly. “I e
ven convinced her I should design a new school uniform—”
“My daughter went away to school in made-over clothes?”
Mama flipped back through the pictures, studying what she and Mercy and Aunt Agatha were wearing. “What sort of woman is Mrs. Malloy that she’d subject a pretty young girl—from a highly respected family—to the humiliation of cast-off clothing?”
Something inside her snapped. Christine snatched the photographs from Mama’s hand and put them back in the box. “If you have to ask me such a question—you, the mother who abandoned her children—you wouldn’t understand the answer!”
She stared out her window then, seething. It was still a long, long way to Abilene.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Christine awoke from a fitful nap to find Mama gone. What a relief, since talking had made them hostile—or revealed more things she didn’t want to know. While she believed her mother was mostly unaware of—and uninvolved in—the major swindles Richard Wyndham had masterminded, Mama’s attitude appalled her.
Nothing measured up to her standards. Nothing pleased her. Unless the conversation centered on Mama and her own whims, she got bored and asked for those photographs again—so she could gaze at Billy and chatter about him.
A flirtatious laugh floated from a few rows behind her. Christine sighed, watching Mama’s animated expression and hand gestures as she carried on with a well-dressed gentleman twice her age . . . a man who acted anything but grandfatherly as he leered at her—and then kissed her cheek!
Mama, realizing she was being watched, gave him a playful peck in return. She returned to the seat with a triumphant giggle.
“We’re dining in style tonight, my dear,” she whispered breathlessly. “Compliments of Mr. Acree, who so looks forward to our company in the diner—and who is requesting that a Pullman car be made ready for us at Cheyenne.”
Christine wiped the sleep from her eyes, dumbfounded. “And what did you tell him, to wrangle such an invitation from—”
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