He loved animals, but rearing cattle wasn’t in his blood. He hated plowing and the other chores associated with farming. If he could, he would spend all his time making things. There was money to be made, since the more successful ranchers or miners either didn’t have time or the knowledge to make things for themselves, but he was tied to the farm. He told his ma the extra cash Davy paid him for doing jobs around the Sullivan ranch came in useful. And it did. But the reality was, it gave him an excuse to do what he loved doing. Working with his hands, making things.
He’d been dreaming his older brother had come back, leaving him free to become a carpenter and to marry Laura. Ma could live with Jackson and his wife. But then he’d woken up. Jackson would never come back to Colorado, but even if he did, his wife would kill Ma rather than live with her. He could understand why; the woman would drive a… He smelt coffee. Ma was up.
“There you are. I thought you would have started early on the chores. The farm doesn’t run itself, you know.”
“It’s still early, Ma. I’m going out to the barn to work on some of the furniture Mary Sullivan asked me to make.” He’d made a bed for Davy Sullivan and Mary had asked if he could make a small table to match.
“That man spoils that wife of his.”
“Davy is generous, Ma, but he can afford to be. It helps me, too. You know I love working with my hands.”
“You wouldn’t need to be making furniture for other couples if you married Ida Hawthorn. It’s time you settled down and raised a family. Time is moving on.”
“Ma, stop it. I’m not marrying Miss Hawthorn. I know who I want.”
“It better not be that girl who arrived at the Sullivan’s last week. Why does a pretty girl always turn a man’s head? She is no more fit to run this farm than I am to do a jig.”
“Ma, you don’t know anything about Miss Murphy.”
“I know she’s another one of those orphans from Boston. She’s got a questionable past. She’s wearing a wedding ring but no sign of a husband. She may be wearing a black dress, but it’s hardly widow weeds from what I heard.”
“Ma, this isn’t the Civil War years. Women don’t go into deep mourning anymore. Times have changed.”
“They haven’t changed that much, son. Doc had to see her the first day she arrived here. Rumor has it that she’s with child. Probably isn’t even married, knowing her sort.”
Paul stared at his ma. How on earth did she learn so much when she hadn’t left the farm in years? Ida Hawthorn. He’d seen her huddled with Mrs. Shaw in town a couple of days ago. They must have been gossiping about Laura.
“Don’t make judgments about people you haven’t met, Ma. Laura Murphy is a widow and deserves our compassion. Remember what the Good Book says.”
“Don’t be cheeky, boy. I know my Bible. I also know you, and your head’s been turned by that girl. If she’s a widow, why are you calling her Miss Murphy?”
Paul had no answer to that. Sorcha had introduced her as Laura Murphy, and he just assumed she wasn’t married. He’d been calling her Miss Murphy since. Nobody corrected him, either. But she was wearing a wedding ring and her dress had been black. He wasn’t sure of her story, but he wasn’t about to argue with his ma. She wouldn’t listen. She was still talking.
“Before she arrived, you were happy to marry Ida. Now you walk around with your head in the clouds. The Sullivan guest is no match for you, Paul Kelley. The sooner you accept that, the better.”
Paul walked away, leaving his mother talking to herself. He couldn’t help thinking about Laura. She was the reason he couldn’t sleep. He found himself making excuses to go visit the Sullivans just to catch a glimpse of her. She was still as nervous as a filly, but he hoped over time she would see he meant her no harm.
Was it true? Was she too good for him? He didn’t have much and he wasn’t as handsome as some of the men in town. Maybe she had set her heart on someone else already.
Chapter 20
Laura opened the kitchen door, about to step outside to get some air. Instead, she found herself staring into Paul Kelley’s eyes. She’d promised there would be no more men in her life, yet here she was eagerly anticipating Paul’s visit. He was so attractive. His wavy brown hair curled at the collar of his shirt. Would it feel as soft as it looked, if she ran her fingers through it? Get a hold of yourself.
“Morning, Miss Murphy. You’re up early. Are you heading into town?”
His voice made her insides melt; she could listen to him speak all day. Her brain refused to engage.
“Do you want breakfast, boys? What you doing standing in the doorway? Are you going to stand there all day, Miss Laura?”
Jerked from her daydreaming by Mrs. Higgins question, Laura stood back to let the men go through to the kitchen. She stared after them.
“Admiring the view?” Mary asked, her eyes teasing.
“Yes. Isn’t it wonderful? The mountains are so majestic.” Laura knew she wasn’t fooling Mary, but she wasn’t about to admit to finding Paul Kelley fascinating.
“I thought it was something entirely different that caught your attention. Or should I say someone.”
“Not at all. I was lost in thought. I have to make a decision on what I am going to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mary, I have to get a job. I can’t live on your charity forever. The last week or so has been lovely, but it’s time to make a change. My arm is better now.”
“Laura, forget about getting a job. You have to get married again. Clover Springs is a nice town, but it’s no place for a single woman. Being married will give you respectability as well as protection.”
“Nobody will want to marry me, Mary. I’m ruined.” Laura dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She wasn’t going to cry anymore. It was pointless.
“What do you mean ruined? You are a widow. That’s respectable.” Mary didn’t give Laura a chance to reply. “Laura, there are lots of men who would marry you. You are beautiful, not to mention hardworking. This isn’t Boston. There aren’t enough women out here for men to get picky.
“Oh good, someone will marry me because they are desperate.”
“Stop it, Laura, I didn’t mean it like that and you know it. I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose. Father Molloy sent you here to get married. He must have thought that best.”
“He knew I couldn’t stay in Boston.”
“Why?”
Laura stared at Mary. It was time to tell her the truth. She had evaded her questions for long enough. Although, to be fair, Mary hadn’t pressed her for answers. Perhaps she had sensed Laura’s need to get her thoughts straight first.
“Walk with me. I’ll tell you my story, but I don’t want anyone to overhear us. Mrs. H knows some of it.”
“You told Mrs. H and not us?”
She cringed inside at the hurt in Mary’s voice, but how could she explain the older woman had caught her at a weak moment? She had poured her heart out to her after the woman had helped her dress for bed one night. Mrs. H had brushed her hair without comment as Laura had sobbed her way through the horror of the last couple of years. She didn’t regret telling the housekeeper, but she was sorry she had hurt Mary in the process.
She sent Mary a look pleading for understanding before she started walking.
“Johnny, my husband, wasn’t a good man. I didn’t know it at first, but he was involved in gambling. He wasn’t respectable. He owned a saloon.” Laura watched Mary’s face to see her reaction.
At the look of shock on Mary’s face, Laura crossed her arms around her chest. “He had girls there. You know, the ones who entertained customers. I didn’t do that. The only man I slept with was Johnny. He kept threatening to sell me to customers, but he never did. It was just one of the many ways he used to make me do whatever he wanted.”
“Laura, I am so sorry.” Tears flowed unchecked down Mary’s face. Laura couldn’t stand being the reason her friend was hurting—but she had to know the truth. It was the on
ly way she would forget about matchmaking.
“Why didn’t you go to Father Molloy for help?
Laura shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s not the worst of it. When he died, there was a large amount of gold in his safe. More than he could win at cards. I don’t know where it came from. The police didn’t believe me at first, but Father Molloy convinced them. Seems some of the working girls told them Johnny had connections all over Boston and elsewhere.
“How did Johnny die?”
“He used to cheat at cards. He married me because of my gift.” She saw Mary flinch at her sarcastic reference to her perfect memory.
“What has your gift got to do with cards?”
“He knew I could memorize the pack of cards and know the odds of the next card. He trained me in every game they played at the saloon. When he was playing for a big stake, he made me dress up. The gowns he picked didn’t leave much covered. He said between my body and my memory, the other guys hadn’t had a chance.”
“What a vile man. I’m glad he’s dead. If he wasn’t, I would want to strangle him.” Mary’s cheeks flushed as her temper got the better of her.
“He’s dead all right. His luck ran out. At that last game, the men he was playing with guessed he was cheating. They shot him. It was all my fault, too.”
“That’s how you got hurt?”
“The bullet went through him and into my shoulder. I could say he died in my arms, but I don’t remember. I passed out.” Laura sniffed, eyeing the tears running down Mary’s face. “I woke up in the hospital. Father Molloy found me there, and now I am here.”
“Why would him getting shot be your fault? You didn’t shoot him, Laura.”
“No, but I wished he was dead. The evening he died, I got distracted. A man, a poor man, had won at one of the tables. You should have seen the men desperate enough to think they could change their lives by winning money. I lost count of how many men I saw lose.” Laura swallowed the lump in her throat. She had to tell Mary now or she would never do it. “Johnny would let a man win a couple of games. Then, just when the man thought he was on a winning streak and couldn’t lose, Johnny’s staff would arrange it so he lost.”
Laura hesitated as she tried to deal with the terror generated by remembering that last night in the saloon.
“This one man had won quite a lot of money. I was urging him to leave before he tried his hand at another table and lost. I wasn’t paying attention to Johnny’s table. I lost track of the cards.” Laura gulped, trying to quell the fear the memory triggered. “Johnny wasn’t happy. I knew he would punish me later. I prayed something would happen so I wouldn’t get hurt. He died.”
“He died because he cheated and got caught. That has nothing to do with you. You don’t have the power of life and death, Laura.”
They came to a little bench. “Sit down, Laura. Davy put this bench here for me to rest when I was pregnant with Cathy. It has the nicest view.”
Both women sat. Mary took Laura’s hand and held it in hers.
“You know what the nuns would say. They held me responsible for Widow Murphy dying shortly after she found me. They said I was cursed, and they were right.”
Laura pulled her hand away from Mary. She buried her head in her hands and sobbed. Mary put her arm around her, but she shook it off. She didn’t want to taint anyone with the evil that grew inside her.
“You are no more cursed than I am. Sure, you have an unusual gift, but it is the same as Katie being blessed with the ability to sew beautifully. There is a reason God gave you a perfect memory, and it certainly wasn’t to help the likes of this Johnny at cards.” Mary wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “The nuns said a lot of things to all of us, Laura. We have to do our best to forget the bad stuff and concentrate on the good. Do you remember Sister Una used to say how special you were? You have to believe that. You are also loved.”
Mary sat quietly for a few minutes. Laura tried to compose herself, but the next question voiced the biggest fear she had.
“Does Father Molloy think these friends of Johnny’s are going to try to find you?”
Laura gave a little nod but stayed silent. In her dreams, men came after her, but she didn’t know who most of them were. They didn’t have faces. Except for one. Coleman. His face stayed with her all the time, whether she was asleep or not.
“This is serious, Laura. We have to tell the sheriff. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’m not staying in Clover Springs. If the men come after me, who knows what they will do? I can’t risk you, Sorcha or any of your friends being hurt on my account. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place. I need to go.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. California, maybe. Somewhere nobody knows me.”
“You can’t go alone. I won’t let you, and neither will the girls. Laura, you are like a sister to us. We all know what the orphanage was like. You and Sorcha had the worst of it there, but those shared experiences are what make us like family. I am closer to you girls than I am to my sister, Cathy.
“Where is Cathy now?”
“Somewhere in Europe. I barely get one letter a year from her. Don’t go. Stay here. Marry and settle in Clover Springs. You have friends, Laura. We will help you.”
“No, Mary, I can’t bring trouble to your door.”
“Who says you will? For all you know the men in Boston don’t even know about you. I don’t think a man is going to credit a woman for his luck at cards, do you?”
“The girls in the saloon knew. They hated me. In their eyes, Johnny treated me better than them. He gave me nicer clothes and he didn’t make me see any other men.”
“You were his wife.”
“Maybe.”
“What? I thought you said you were married.”
“I did. I thought we were, but the police said Johnny’s name wasn’t really Johnny. He wasn’t from Boston but from New York. He could have a wife already. In fact, he could have several.”
Laura fought to keep control, not liking the sound of hysteria in her voice. She dug the nails harder into her palms to distract herself from the panic threatening to overwhelm her. It had been one thing living with the knowledge she had married a gambler and a thief. It was another to have lived in sin with him.
“You are not leaving Clover Springs. Now you are here; we are all together again. You, me, Katie, Sorcha, and of course Emer. We are family, whether you like it or not. So I don’t want to hear another word about you going to California or anywhere else. Family sticks together.”
Laura couldn’t believe her ears. Mary knew the whole story, yet she still wanted her to stay. She hadn’t thrown her out. What about the others, would they feel the same way?
“Yes, Sorcha and Katie will agree with me. Emer will likely shoot you herself if you try to leave.”
“How did you know I was thinking about them?”
Mary wrapped her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders. “I told you. We are family and it’s only natural you would care what they think. Just so you know, they love you as much as I do.”
“Emer doesn’t know me. She’s a nurse and respectable.” Laura wanted to believe Mary, but her negative experiences with other people made it difficult.
“Sorcha and I are respectable married women now.” Mary smiled, letting Laura know she was teasing. Then her face grew as serious as her tone. “Emer would be the last person to judge anyone. She’s a nurse now, but once she lived with outlaws. She can shoot straighter than most men. She doesn’t know you, but she loves Sorcha and Sorcha loves you. So Emer would make sure you stay here.”
Laura bit her knuckle, making Mary swipe it out of her mouth.
“I thought you gave up that disgusting habit years ago. It’s worse than biting your nails.” Mary stood up. “Now come on. Mrs. H was baking earlier. I’m starving.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
Laura let Mary put her arms around her and pull her into a hug. “We love you, Laur
a. Stay in Clover Springs and let our children be as good friends as we are.”
Laura stiffened, causing Mary to push her back gently.
“What’s wrong now?”
“I’m never going to have children. Nobody will want to marry me, especially when they know the full story.”
“Nobody has to know everything, Laura. It’s up to you who you tell. I won’t say a word. As to nobody wanting to marry you, I think you have forgotten a certain cowboy. I swear I haven’t seen Paul Kelley as much in the last four years as I have seen him over the last week.”
Laura’s cheeks glowed, causing Mary to look at her speculatively.
“If I am not mistaken, I don’t think you are as immune to his charms as you claim, either.”
Laura opened her mouth, but Mary put her finger against it. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve seen how you look at him when you think nobody is looking. He’s a fine man, as Mrs. H would say.” Mary linked Laura’s arm and half pulled her along as they walked toward the house. “We’ll go into town tomorrow and see the sheriff. He’ll tell us what to do.”
Chapter 21
Mary insisted Laura take a nap that afternoon. She was worn out from telling her story, and Mary didn’t want her to lapse back into melancholy. Davy was going to town, so Mary decided to go with him. She wanted to talk to Katie.
Sorcha and Emer had made plans to have lunch every Wednesday, so she knew she would catch up with them, too. Mrs. H almost jumped for joy at the chance to spend some time alone with Cathy.
“You all right, Mary? You are awfully quiet.” Davy stroked her arm with one hand, driving the wagon with the other.
“Laura told me her story. It didn’t make for easy listening, but I’m glad she came to live here. That orphanage has a lot to answer for,” Mary said, seething as the image of Mother Superior came to mind.
Davy kissed her lightly on the top of her head. “I am very thankful to it. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the nuns.”
“True. They did do some good.”
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