by Delynn Royer
Now, Ross looked away from Emily’s face. What had happened between her and her father was in the past. Nathaniel was dead, and this wasn’t the time to bring up Karen’s odd behavior.
“Maybe you’re right,” he allowed. “Maybe I misunderstood Karen about you being engaged, but she made it clear that you had a life of your own. I figured that if you wanted to contact me, you would.”
“You thought I’d contact you?” There was a short pause, then, “I certainly doubt that any proper young lady would take it upon herself to initiate correspondence with a gentleman.”
Proper young lady? Since when did Emily Winters give a fig about propriety? When had she ever referred to him as a gentleman? Ross looked back at her. Just as he suspected, a teasing smile curved her lips.
“Miss Winters,” he replied with mock formality, “I’m gratified to see that you have been studying your etiquette manuals with such obvious dedication while I’ve been gone.”
“Indeed,” she said. “I’ve studied them devotedly.”
He raised a brow at her emphasis, not missing this pointed reference to the word games they used to play. “You were quite zealous, then, Miss Winters?”
“One might even say assiduous, Mr. Gallagher.”
Assiduous. A tough one to beat. Ross smiled. “Well done, Miss Winters.”
Their eyes held. For just a fleeting instant the impenetrable barrier of time collapsed and things were as they used to be. Easy. Comfortable. Right. A faint voice, a voice from the distant past, sprang to life in his mind. That voice was his own. I’ll never betray you, Emily. From this moment on, you’re my blood sister and I’m your blood brother. I’ll stand by you and I’ll never lie to you. Forever and always. Now, you say it, Em.
Then, the moment was gone. Passed as quickly as it had come. Emily was the one to look away this time. “We should be getting along.”
“You’re right.” Ross tried to adopt a note of lightness he didn’t feel as he gestured toward the south end of the alley. “You do remember the way, don’t you?”
“Better than you, I’ll bet.”
Soon, they emerged onto the sunlit street. They turned west, walking in silence as they passed many familiar faces. Ross nodded politely to some and waved to others, taking notice that Emily kept her attention focused ahead, acknowledging no one.
He soon became aware that heads turned to follow their progress down the street. As a boy, an Irish Catholic in a German Protestant community, he had learned to sense the subtle prejudice that followed in his wake. More recently, as a man risen from the dead, he had been quite the news, but Ross wasn’t the one people were staring at now.
Before long, the brick sidewalks and storefronts were behind them. The landscape took on a rural cast. Spreading young cornfields, verdant green meadows, sprinkles of butter yellow and soft lavender wildflowers, rolling hills and woodlands stretched as far as the eye could see.
Emily and Ross stayed to the side of the Columbia Pike as an occasional buggy, horsecar, or wagon rattled by, headed out of town. They turned onto a quiet dirt road. It was the same road they’d taken home from school years ago.
The more he thought about it, the more curious he became about Emily. In order to spark such interest from the townspeople that knew her, she must have left home not merely a few months ago, but years ago. Maybe that helped explain why she’d stopped answering his letters. But why had she left in the first place? And hadn’t she come home to visit her family during that time?
Emily chose that moment to shatter his train of thought. “How’s the family?”
Ross was surprised at the question. He’d never been very close with the Pennsylvania Dutch farm family that had raised him. “Sam died a couple years ago, you know.”
Emily nodded but didn’t say anything. Ross couldn’t tell whether this was because she already knew or because she wasn’t surprised.
“But Alma’s doing well,” he added. “I visit her from time to time.”
“Where are you living now?”
“I’m renting the old Hockstetter house. It’s not that far down the pike from here. You remember it?”
“Of course I remember it. But it’s an old farmhouse. Don’t tell me you’ve taken to tilling the land at this late date.”
“No, but I do like living out in the country. It’s quiet, and I have time to think, and... well, you know.”
“Time for writing,” she finished. Her attention was on the road ahead, but her mouth curved in a private little smile.
“You know me too well,” he replied, thinking that no girl he had ever met, not even his beautiful fiancée, Johanna, had ever been able to hold a candle to Emily Winters when she smiled.
“So, what are you doing for a living these days?”
Ross hesitated. He had anticipated this question, but he still wasn’t sure how to answer. He opted for the truth. “I’m writing for the newspaper.”
“The newspaper? But...” Her voice faded as his meaning dawned on her. She stopped in her tracks.
Ross stopped two steps ahead of her. He didn’t look back. He knew what was coming.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “The newspaper folded.”
“The Gazette folded.”
“But you just said— ”
“I’m writing for the newspaper, Emily, the only newspaper left in town. The Herald.”
Silence. Ross turned to meet her hard stare. The afternoon breeze loosened a wisp of dark hair from her chignon to stray across her face. She batted it away, not taking her eyes from him. “The Herald. You’re working for that vile Malcolm Davenport. Again.”
And so there it was, hanging in the air between them. As damning as if no time had passed at all. Betrayal.
“He offered me a job,” Ross said evenly. “Your father wasn’t in a position to do that.”
“You didn’t have to take it.”
Ross felt his own anger stirring. “What was I supposed to do? Starve on principle?”
“That wouldn’t have been a bad start. Many writers do.”
“Your father understood my position, Emily. Why can’t you?”
“I’m not my father.”
Ross had to clench his jaw to hold his tongue. She was a woman now, full-grown, poised and beautiful, but underneath it all lurked the same exasperating, mule-headed little girl in pigtails he had known so many years ago. There would be no changing her mind on this subject. Not today, anyway.
Emily held out her hand. “Could I have my bag, please?”
Ross gave it to her without a word.
“Thank you for seeing me home,” she said curtly, then continued up the road toward the red-painted covered bridge known as the Kissing Bridge. For Ross and Emily, that bridge had marked the spot where they’d parted ways on their walks home from school. The Winters’ gray stone colonial home stood within shouting distance on the other side of the creek.
As Ross watched Emily disappear inside the bridge, his anger faded, and he felt a painful stab of regret. The plain truth was, he missed her. It didn’t matter that she was impulsive and exasperating. It didn’t matter that her passion for justice sometimes blinded her when it came to life’s impossibilities. He missed her laugh and her enthusiasm and her imagination and her dreams. He missed her because a long time ago she had believed in him when few others had. He missed her friendship most of all.
“We sure did make our share of mistakes,” he said under his breath. They’d gotten off track a long time ago, but that didn’t mean it had to stay that way. Whether she liked it or not, Ross vowed to do whatever it took to make up for the past.
He would make things right again.
Chapter Two
“I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never fainted before in my life.”
Emily sat on her old bed, stripped down to her cotton chemise and drawers, two fat feather pillows stacked behind her. Through her childhood, she had shared this room with her sister, Karen. Now it belonged to Karen’
s daughter, but, much like the town that had greeted her upon disembarking from the train, it was the same as Emily had left it. The rose floral wallpaper, the white muslin summer curtains that billowed in the open window, the writing desk, the crazy-patchwork quilts on each of the beds.
Karen perched on the edge of the bed, holding a soup bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Em. What with Papa’s death and that long train ride and—”
“And what with coming home and seeing Ross again, you mean,” Emily interrupted pointedly.
Her sister merely frowned. Like their mother, Karen was a natural mediator, skilled at smoothing over arguments and upsets. Her troubled expression told Emily she perceived a disagreement on the horizon and would try to deflect it. “Here,” she said, dipping the spoon into the bowl of chicken cornsoup. “Have some more.”
“I don’t want it.”
Karen lowered the spoon with a sigh. It wasn’t only in temperament that they differed. A stranger would have been hard-pressed to tell they were sisters. With her generous, round face, her cafe-au-lait curls, and wide gray eyes, Karen took after their mother’s side of the family. Emily, by contrast, had her father’s narrower countenance, his ebony hair and piercing blue eyes. And there were those who also said she had inherited more than his physical traits. Nathaniel Winters had loved nothing more than a rousing good argument.
“You’re just tired,” Karen said.
“Embarrassed is what I am.”
Karen dropped the spoon into the soup. “At least you woke up before he had to carry you all the way to the doctor’s office.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t have fainted in the first place if I’d known Ross was still alive.”
Karen shook her head wearily. “Oh, Em.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You sure were quick enough to write when you heard he’d been killed.”
Karen set the soup bowl on a tray on the night table, then stood and moved away. In profile, her five-month pregnancy was apparent, a slight swelling beneath the waistline of her black mourning dress. She was one of the lucky few. Her husband, Henry, had returned home from the war healthy and whole.
Bowing her head, Karen reached up to massage her temples. “I just thought it was better for everyone. What good would it have done?”
“It might have saved me from making a fool of myself in front of the whole town, for one thing.”
“I would have written to you eventually. We had no way of knowing you’d be coming home.”
“That shouldn’t have had anything to do with it. Ross and I were friends.”
Karen looked up. Her uncharacteristically blunt words caught Emily off guard. “You were more than friends, Em, and we both know it.”
Emily couldn’t quite bring herself to look away. She realized now why Karen had delayed telling her of Ross’s return. She was the only person in the world who knew the truth. She was trying to protect Emily from being hurt again. Swallowing hard, Emily started to ask, “You didn’t tell—”
“No. You made me promise, remember?”
“Yes.”
Emily was relieved when there came a knock at the door. Karen called out to grant admittance, but not before throwing Emily a look that indicated she was not through with all she had to say on the subject of Ross Gallagher.
Emily’s mother appeared in the doorway. If anything had changed since Emily’s hasty departure four years ago, it was her mother. Although she had visited Emily just five months before in Baltimore, it was only now that Emily noticed how much Marguerite Winters had aged. As always, her hair, a chestnut brown, was gathered into a loose chignon at the nape of her neck, but it had begun to surrender to the subtle gray invasion that had only sprinkled through it before. Her eyes, a sweet, soulful gray, still sparkled when she smiled, but she hadn’t smiled much since Emily had arrived. She looked tired.
“I wanted to see how you were doing, dear,” she said, pausing in the doorway. “Feeling any better?”
“I’m fine, Mama. I don’t know why you two are insisting I rest when there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Marguerite threw Karen a significant look. “Hasn’t changed much, has she? Still disagreeable as a billy goat and thorny as a rosebush.”
Karen merely rolled her eyes as she gathered up the soup tray.
From down the carpeted hall, they heard the patter of a child’s feet. Karen’s four-year-old daughter, Dorcas, appeared, hovering behind her grandmother’s crepe skirts. The child had inherited Karen’s crowning glory, her naturally curly hair. “Mammy, I thought you got lost.”
Marguerite patted her head. “It’s been years and years since Mammy’s gotten lost in this big old house, tulip.”
As Marguerite spoke, Emily didn’t miss the furtive yet curious looks she received from her little niece. She wasn’t surprised. Dorcas had accompanied Karen on her occasional visits to Baltimore only a few times, and that had been a while ago. The child had no memory of Emily, and it would take more than simply her mother’s well-meaning assurances to convince her that the irascible, dark-haired stranger who had commandeered her bedroom was indeed a blood relation.
Emily offered an encouraging smile. “Hello, Dorcas.”
“’Lo.” The child’s response muffled into her grandmother’s skirts as she hid her face.
There was an awkward silence before Karen spoke, softly admonishing, “Dorcas, remember, this is your aunt Emily.”
“That’s all right.” Emily brushed off the slight. She was determined to hold a smile. “It’ll take some time for us to get acquainted.”
From downstairs, they heard a knock at the front door. Whoever it was, the timing couldn’t have been better.
“More callers,” Marguerite said. She took Dorcas’s hand. “Come, tulip. Let’s see who’s at the door.” Before they turned to leave, Marguerite addressed Emily. “You stay put and rest. Calling hours will be over soon, then we’ll see about supper.”
“I still say there’s no reason to coddle me, Mama.”
“Fine,” her mother said, turning away. “In that case, you can wash and wipe dishes after we eat. How’s that?”
Emily gave up on arguing. Her mother had a soft-spoken manner, but when her mind was made up, there was little anyone could do to change it.
Karen was left standing in the middle of the room, resting the soup tray over the bulge of her waistline. “Give up the fight,” she advised.
Emily sank back into her pillows. “It’s so strange. Being home again, being in this room. It’s as if I never left.”
“Yes. Having you here feels like that to me, too.”
After a moment of melancholy silence, Emily scowled. “You can go now. I’ll just lie here thinking dark and stormy thoughts until someone comes to release me.”
“If you find you absolutely can’t sit still, maybe you can go through some of your old things.”
“What old things?”
Karen inclined her head toward the closet. “In there’s a whole crate of your old sketchbooks.”
“My old sketchbooks? Really?”
Karen moved toward the door. “See you at supper.
As soon as her sister was gone, Emily threw back the sheet and climbed out of bed. She hadn’t thought about those sketchbooks in years, but now that Karen had mentioned them, she couldn’t wait to get a look at them.
She pulled open the closet door. On the floor, a scarred wooden crate was crammed to overflowing with loose papers and sketchbooks. Emily felt a tiny thrill course through her. For the first time since stepping off the train, she was able to put her father’s death and the shock of returning to find Ross alive out of her mind. She carried the crate over to the bed and set it down.
Digging through to the bottom layers, she searched for one sketchbook in particular. Then she saw its raw, dog-eared edge and pulled it out, baring it to the light of day for the first time in years.
Settling back onto the bed, she pulled her legs up to s
it cross-legged as she laid the sketchbook flat before her. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t sat in such an unladylike position in years, not since those days when she had worn her hair in braids. Since about the time she had made the drawings on these very pages.
*
April 1855
“Papa, that boy is back again.”
Emily stood in the open doorway to her father’s office.
“What’s that, Emily Elizabeth? What boy?” With his pen poised over a sheet of paper on his desk, Nathaniel Winters looked up with a frown. He still retained a full head of hair, but its color, once black as starless midnight, was now speckled with gray. Even his chin whiskers were giving in to these distinguished signs of age.
Accustomed to her father’s crusty temperament, Emily tossed her head, flipping a braid over her shoulder. “It’s that boy, Ross Gallagher. He was here yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and— ”
“Oh.” Nathaniel raised his pen hand to nip his daughter’s recital in the bud. “I suppose he’ll just keep coming back, won’t he? Like some blasted housefly? Is that about the size of it?”
“Sure does seem like it.”
“Well, go fetch him, then. Might as well get this over with.”
Emily couldn’t help a little scowl as she headed back toward the front of the shop. Along the way, she effortlessly skirted a pair of job presses and two tall composing desks where young men in aprons and rolled-up shirtsleeves stood setting type on composing sticks.
Emily knew the layout of her father’s place of business so well she could have negotiated safely past desks, cabinets, worktables, and printing presses with her eyes shut. She even loved the smells. Ink, turpentine, new paper, and pipe tobacco.
This, the first floor, comprised the job printing department and front business office as well as her father’s private office near the back. Adjoining his office was a small, windowless room with a washstand and a cot that was always kept stocked with fresh linens and clean towels. That was where Nathaniel stayed when he had to work into the wee hours of the morning. Since the Penn Gazette had become a morning daily, night work was common. The newspaper itself was printed on a new double-cylinder power press up on the second floor.