by Faye Sonja
“What do you mean?” she asked her.
The older woman looked at them, hesitant to confess what was on the tip of her tongue.
“Well I thought it a bit convenient that he just suddenly showed up,” she said. “He showed up when Kate was planning on starting a family and he just so happened to be your brother. And all this just a year after we almost lost you, Nathan.”
As she spoke the meaning of her words registered to Kate and she realized that she may have been too hard on Jason. “So you made him feel like he was a criminal.”
“Listen to me Kate,” Aunt May said stepping up to her. “Things like this don’t just happen like that, and his father came here seeking money. It all just seemed a bit opportunistic for me. It wasn’t like I told him to leave, I simply told him I would not sit by and watch his presence destroy what you and Nathan spent years building together.”
“What have you done?” Nathan asked.
“What I would do again should I have to... and that is to protect you both,” Aunt May said looking them dead in the eye.
“I didn’t need protection from him,” Kate tried hard to keep the anger out of her voice. “We were both okay building a life from scratch, and you had to go make him feel like he was the criminal he is trying hard not to be. Why would you do something like that?”
“Kate,” Aunt May said her name as if it were a plea for her to see the method to her madness, but Kate was having none of it.
“I am going after him,” she said and turned into the house.
“This is one time you took your meddling too far, Aunt May,” she heard Nathan say. All she could think was that she hoped it wasn’t too late to get Jason back and that he didn’t think she held him in the same regard.
* * *
7
Chapter SEVEN
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“What if the life he is inviting you
into is less than desirable?”
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From his perch on the top of his barn house he felt his heart break all over again. Who would have thought that he would have loved a woman so much?
“Why did you leave her?” Michael asked crawling to the roof top beside him.
He turned to the small inquisitive voice that had become his voice of reason. “She was too good for me.”
“Why would you think that?” Michael had been the one to collect her from the train station and Jason had watched them form a bond almost as mother and child. Jason realized just then that his decision to leave her after the talk with the old woman must also be difficult for him. He turned and looked at the boy, sitting there in anticipation of the response he was about to get, and wondered since when had this little homeless boy become so important to him? Even then he knew that he would protect Michael with his life, and he could not imagine living without him. He had been a friend and good company when he needed it most.
“I don’t know.” He finally said looking at him. “You saw the life she had and the family who loves her.”
“But he is your brother too, and he seemed happy to finally have you back in his life. Why would you just walk away from that?”
“Because I don’t want their charity and I don’t want them to think that my loving her is a matter of convenience.
“So you do love her?” Michael asked with a knowing grin. Jason looked at him with sadness racking every fibre of his being.
“Yes, Michael. I love her more than words could ever explain.”
The boy punched him in the shoulder. “Then you must be dense in the head or something. Why would you walk away from the woman that you love to come back here and mope around like a lost dog? Can you see how crazy this is?
He looked at him momentarily and admired the wisdom of his young years. “Well, when you put it that way you make me sound like a complete basket case. Maybe I am hopeless, you think?”
Michael looked at him before answering. “Please go bring her home. This place is just not the same without her here.”
Jason smiled at him. He had never been the man to run after a girl, girls were usually the ones who came running after him. He simply sat and looked pretty, and yes he was aware he was quite handsome. Even his father had called him that. With his blond hair, blue eyes and his penchant for trouble, he was quite the ladies’ man when he wanted to be. But he was done with his old ways. He saw what hardship had made out of his brother- a man of substance well recognized by the community he served. He had been the son that had been kept, and look at what had become of him. Thirty-two and just bartending his way through life. Then when he had found a special woman who was worth keeping he allowed some old woman to scare him away.
Michael was right; he was a complete basket case.
Without further delay he conceded to the young man’s demands and scurried off the roof. He wasted no time in saddling a horse and riding off to go after the woman he had left behind just hours before.
* * *
“What if he doesn’t want me back?” Kate had a moment of fear and Nathan who sat beside her in the coach took her hand in reassurance.
“I will use all my strength to get him to understand that this was all a big mistake?” Nathan shimmied closer to her and his warmth was a welcomed escape from the cold of the void Jason had left in her.
“What else do you me want to do?” he asked her wrapping his arms around her.
“I don’t know,” she looked at him pensively, with a myriad of thoughts she had floating across her face. “Make him promise to never leave me,” she joked.
“I will tie him to the hitching post if I must,” he said “and pay little Michael to ensure he never leaves your side.”
“Sounds like a mighty good plan to me,” she smiled.
He sighed and rested his cheek on her bonnet. “If only life could be less complicated than it actually is. What happy stress free people we would be.”
Chuckling she replied. “Alex would tell you that if wishes were horses beggars would rid-.”
Her words were cut short by the loud boom of a gunshot outside and the carriage swung dangerously to the side as the horses reared up in fright.
"What is going on here?" Nathan asked, trying to look outside to see what was causing all the fuss. A gunshot sounded again and the wooden siding of the carriage near his head shattered on impact.
"Get back in here!" She screamed at him pulling him back to relative safety. They sat in fright staring at each other before their attackers spoke.
"We will take all the jewellery you have in there or the woman in payment," a surly voice said. It was followed by rounds of laughter at the lewd suggestion. Ironically it did not make Kate fearful; it made her angry that these men could possibly think that demanding a woman as payment for things they had no right to made them manly.
"We have no valuables here," Nathan called, "but if it is money you seek, give us safe passage back to where we came from and I will see that you have your fair share."
The men laughed. "We have a negotiator on our hands.”
"I am coming out!" Nathan called before turning to her. "Stay here. Do not come out until I tell you it is safe."
She wanted to beg him not to go out there, but she knew even then that it was better for him to go out than for them to come in. When she got to Jason she was going to smack him silly herself for having forced her to go through all of this.
That was if she ever got to him alive...
"Father?" She heard Nathan say and she rushed out of the coach to see the man she kept meeting under these circumstances.
"Oh Golly!" A bearded man missing a few teeth exclaimed. "It is your reject son again, Cain."
She looked at the man who chewed pensively on single strand of grass from atop a white steed. She instantly thought of how much irony existed in that one situation. The devil himself perched atop something that represented purity.
> "He ain't no son of mine," Cain said and she could see the pain flash across Nathan's face. It made her angry.
"You are right he is no son of yours," she spoke up stepping down from the carriage as their coach driver dashed up the hill behind them. "This is a man of honor and substance. You are a spineless fool who goes around taking from people what they have worked hard to get. You do not deserve to have him call you father."
"Shut your mouth!" Cain fired back at her taking a threatening step forward on his horse. "I should have cut your treacherous tongue out the first time I met you."
The bushes rustled behind them. "You will not hurt her or him." Jason stepped forward cocking a gun as he did.
He walked to stand between them and the men pointing guns at the carriage.
"Jason!" She cried and pulled him into her arms.
"I am sorry I left," he said kissing her forehead. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head.
"Nice timing," Nathan glared at him. "When this is all over we need to have a conversation about you walking out without so much as a goodbye."
Jason smiled at his older brother. "When this is all over I will have no need to do that ever again."
"What is this? Some family reunion? We want what we asked for!" The man with the missing teeth growled out. Taking one look at him and the many scars the others sported Kate knew that they were not men to be played with.
"Give them what they asked for," Jason advised. "They have fatally harmed others for less."
"And this is the father you have come to love?" Nathan asked in disbelief.
"I am beginning to realize I know very little about the man I called father all these years."
Kate kept quiet during the exchange. She had no jewellery to give them for she was never one for such things for these very reasons. But when the man to her immediate left swiftly moved to grab her hand she let a scream out and Jason instinctively fired. The man howled in pain as he grumbled. The others screamed and rushed to his side and in the haze of confusion a few more shots were fired.
She turned just as the surly man missing a few teeth pointed the barrel of his gun at Nathan's chest and watched as his father jumped in the way of the shot that was fired. The impact threw both Nathan and his father back and seeing his mistake, the cowardly man turned his horse and rode off in the opposite direction.
"No!" Jason screamed and rushed to his father's side, but even from where she stood Kate could see that the wound Cain had suffered was no wound he would soon recover from. He might have a chance if they were able to get him to the town's doctor right away.
"Put him in the carriage!" She shouted and Nathan swiftly lifted his father into the safety of the coach as Jason took the helm and urged the horses into a gallop. The men who stood shocked at seeing their leader wounded scattered in the confusion and they wasted no time rushing through the forest.
"Hold on father," Nathan whispered repeatedly to the man whose face was red from the effort of trying to breathe and the pain of the wound in his chest. "Just hold on."
She stood to the side as Cain started to speak.
"I am sorry Nathan," the man gurgled around the blood that was collecting in his airway. She looked at him and saw nothing but sadness in his eyes.
"Shhhh, don't try to speak," Nathan urged him but Cain spoke again.
"Take care of your brother for me," he said. His words barely audible around the blood in his mouth. "I tried to do right by him and I am sorry I never did right by you."
"Hold on father" Nathan said, but even then they both knew that the man was not going to make it to town.
"I lov-love you both," his father said pulling him closer to his ear. "I have always loved you both the best way I knew how to."
Tears slipped down Nathan's cheek as his father placed a bloody hand there. "I am proud of you Nathan. So proud of yo-"
His words were cut short as he choked on the blood in his mouth and as much as Nathan tried to get him to relax it was futile. In the deafening silence of the coach they both watched as his father took his last breath. Nathan threw his head back and screamed in pain and she was not sure if it was in final surrender to the man who had beat him most of his life, or if it was in grief for the father he had lost.
The carriage came to a stop moments later and Jason entered with tears streaming down his face. He threw himself on his father's body and wept. That was where they stayed, on the forest’s path while the two brothers wept. But even then Kate saw something beautiful being born. In one act of final surrender their father had given them a wonderful gift in each other. He had taken a shot meant for his oldest son and in so had breathed life into the relationship they would both now have. Kate watched the two men grieve together and for her that was the end of an era of pain and criminality and the birth of one filled with nothing but love and hope for the future.
An hour later when they reached town and Cain's body was left for funeral preparations Jason took her hands in his.
"I am sorry about everything. Had I stayed my father would still be alive."
She had no words to dispel the pain and guilt she knew he felt and so she let him be. In time it would pass but for now one thing was important for him to know.
"I love you Jason," she whispered in his neck as he pulled her in for a hug.
"Thank you for loving the broken man I am," he whispered back. "I love you more than I have words to explain."
He may have lost his father, but today he gained a brother and a wife. Soon, he too would have the family he always wanted and he was sure he had whoever had decided to place that ad for him to thank. He glanced at Michael, he was almost sure it was him who had done it, but he would leave him be. If he had done it then Jason would make sure a place to call home for the rest of his life was the payment he would receive.
* * *
8
Chapter EIGHT
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“What if the life he is inviting you
into is less than desirable?”
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A week later they laid their father to rest by the lake to the back of the mansion that was to become Kate’s new home. They sang the songs Jason had said he loved and even Nathan participated in the celebration of the life of the man who had fathered him. Kate stood watching the brothers enjoy getting to know each other and she knew that if she was proud of nothing else in her life she was proud of two things, the fact that her quest for love had brought Nathan this gift, and that Jason had come to see that he was worth much more than he thought.
Now her days would be filled with nothing but talk of her wedding and the preparations for it. She was fitted by aunt May for a special wedding dress. The white dress with light green highlights was to compliment her eyes and her wild hair. Alex stole her away for consecutive days to taste things she was having the baker put on the menu, and when it all got to be too much Jason would sweep in to give her a break.
They took walks in the woods and sat by the stream talking about everything but their wedding, when she finally did mention it, it was to share her introspective thoughts.
“Are you nervous?” she asked Jason who looked at her confused while he tucked a stray strand of hair away from her face. “The marriage, are you nervous?”
“I half expected you to say the wedding,” Jason laughed at her interesting choice of words.
Kate shook her head and picked nervously at the blades of green grass around her. She looked across the river slowly being swallowed by darkness as the sun began its descent the very evening before her big day.
“Weddings really are not for the people who are getting married. They are for everybody else to come celebrate with them. The marriage itself is all about us, I am less concerned with walking down the aisle and more about making our house a home.”
He placed a finger on her chin to turn her head to look at him and rested his forehead
against hers. “I am not worried in the least. If we have survived this much then we will certainly survive whatever else may come our way.”
She closed her eyes and smiled, soothed by his confidence in what they would become.
That night sleep was not to be her friend, but come daybreak she emerged with more energy than a school house full of children. She constantly switched between worry and excitement trying to give shape to the thoughts of the future. When Alex knocked on her door she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Stop worrying, Kate,” Alex said hugging her as she looked in the mirror at her reflection. “You will make an excellent bride.”
Aunt May and Nathan made their rounds with encouraging smiles and fussing but proud to be a part of the wedding where half the people who were invited were strangers to her. Nathan said something about putting down some roots and had used his influence to invite the people who mattered from town. It was his way of making sure that she knew the right people to get her started in the place she was to call home. He could see the happiness and the sadness on her face. He would miss her being in his house, but she would make sure she visited as often as she could for his sake.
“I love you Nathan,” she said to him as he came to walk her out to the yard where she would be given to another man for the rest of her life. He kissed her cheek.
"An outdoor wedding, she said," Nathan teased behind her. "It will not rain, she said."
She punched him in the arm. "Don't tease me. This is important to me."
She tried to hold her tears back, knowing that if the rain ruined her big day, no amount of hugs or kisses could keep her from breaking down.