Way Back

by Williams, Abbie;

  She bore down, closing her eyes, tipping her chin to her chest and grunting. Her arms and legs shook, hips lifting from the tailgate.

  “Good work,” Cole encouraged. I’d wanted him positioned here rather than behind her so he could watch the birth as it happened.

  Axton held her with unconditional tenderness, tucking loose strands of hair to the side so they weren’t in Patricia’s face. I heard him murmur, “You’re all right. It’s all right.”

  I cried, “Another, come on! Don’t give up now!”

  Patricia obeyed, grinding her teeth. She panted and groaned, pushing again. Her face and neck grew mottled with the strain but the baby wasn’t cooperating. There was more than a trickle of blood now, redness staining the wagon bed; I could tell Cole was ready to go ballistic, holding it together only by a thin thread.

  “Tish, try breathing like this.” Marshall jiggled her right hand and demonstrated the breathing technique by pursing his lips.

  “Everyone!” I encouraged. “Come on, push!”

  Patricia, between gasps, laughed at how stupid we all looked, breathing in pants with our lips puffed out like fish. She moaned, “I can’t…it hurts so fucking much…”

  “You can!” I rested my palms on her belly and applied pressure. “He’s almost here! You’ll hold your son!”

  She tried again, straining for all she was worth. Her hairline was wet with sweat; more streaked her face as she emitted a low, guttural moan and the baby’s head emerged, facedown.

  “There he is!” I shrieked. “Cole, get your hands ready!”

  Cole cupped his palms, stun etched across his features as his bloody, wriggling son was delivered into his wide palms. Patricia’s head fell back against Axton’s chest; her ribs heaved.

  “He’s here!” I cried triumphantly, wiping tears on my shoulder.

  Cole kept repeating like he couldn’t quite believe it, “My son. My boy.”

  “Let me see him,” Patricia whispered, beaming at the baby in the manner of radiant sunshine breaking through a cloud bank. Her eyes glowed true-blue in the last of the light.

  “Put him on her belly,” I told Cole, who did so, with utmost care. The baby was splotchy and red, tiny hands curled in snail-shell fists, crinkly face streaked with blood and pinched with the rigor of being born. A thin, pulsing, blue-white cord connected him to his mother. I explained, “It’s all right, some blood is all right. She’s got to deliver the afterbirth.” I told Ax, “Help her lie back a little.”

  Cole murmured to Patricia, “I love you. And I will never let you go again.”

  I avoided looking at Axton.

  Malcolm cupped Cole’s shoulder. “Congratulations, old friend.” To Patricia he praised, “You done a fine job, dear lady.”

  I leaned so I could kiss Patricia’s forehead. “You did so well. There’s just a little more and then you can rest.”

  At my further instructions, Patricia delivered the placenta. It was really messy, it was a little repulsive to handle, but I loved Patricia and I was not about to let her see I felt that way. Marshall bolstered me with an arm around my waist, understanding I was ready to collapse. The wagon bed, already crowded with barrels and flotsam, was now even dirtier, grime mixed with blood and other indefinable wetness; I felt terrible Patricia had been forced to give birth like this. But then, as my gaze swept to the gorgeous expanse of evening sky, I thought, No, this is right. We could have been in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, think of that.

  “Wow, so that’s a placenta,” Marshall marveled.

  “I need a knife,” I said, a little desperately. My fingers were slick with blood and I needed to cut the umbilical cord. The front of my skirt was smeared with more blood.

  “I got one,” Malcolm said immediately, producing a pocketknife, which he politely wiped clean on his thigh before handing it over.

  “About here, do you think?” I wondered, indicating two inches above the baby’s belly button, or what would become his belly button once the end of the cord fell off. He was fussing, working himself into a tiny temper, which I knew was a good sign. I said to the baby, “Hello there, little man.” And then I smiled wider. “He’s a redhead.”

  “He’s so beautiful,” Patricia murmured, cupping his head and caressing his face. He remained curled on her belly. Cole bent and pressed his lips to the baby’s fuzzy hair.

  “I’m trying to remember what Wy’s belly button looked like when he came home from the hospital. It had a safety-pin thing on it,” Marsh said, his hands wrapped around my waist; he bent down so he could kiss the side of my neck. We were unable to stop touching each other. He speculated, “We should tie it off first, with twine or something like that. Will he have an outie or an in-y belly button? Isn’t that based on how the cord is cut? That’s a lot of pressure, Ruthie.”

  I giggled, lifting my face so I could kiss him, never minding that now probably wasn’t the time – I simply had to feel his mouth on mine. Marsh grinned and pulled me closer. He was giddy with relief and delight, same as me; I could feel it flowing from him like whitecaps over a lake. Marshall touched our foreheads together and squeezed my waist. He whispered, “Holy God, I’m almost afraid to blink, angel.”

  “That is most certainly Marshall Rawley,” I heard Patricia murmur.

  Malcolm eyed the heavens. “I hate to say so but we oughta move before too long. It’s a terrible thing to ask of a new mama but we ain’t in a good place out here.”

  Within minutes we were westward bound, where the sky gleamed with a faint yellow stripe, seeming to guide our way. I’d successfully cut and tied off the umbilical cord, and as I scrubbed clean with water from Marshall’s canteen, was rather proud of myself. Axton drove while Cole lay in the wagon bed with Patricia and the baby, cradling both of them in his arms. Malcolm rode alongside, talking quietly with Ax, while Marshall and I rode double on Blade, as we had so many times back at home in Jalesville, on Arrow, lagging in the wake of everyone else. Marshall’s thighs were tight against mine, his arms locked around my waist, and he felt so good behind me I was lightheaded. I wanted to flip around and straddle him, to take him into my body in a thousand different ways.

  Reading my thoughts loudly and clearly, cloaked in the deepening darkness, Marsh swept aside my hair and bit the side of my neck, then my earlobe, cradling my left breast with his free hand, finding the rounded swell of my nipple with his thumb and letting his heated words play over my skin as he murmured, “I know this isn’t the time and I’m being completely honest when I say it is heaven above just to hold you, but I need to be inside of you. I need it like I need water or oxygen. I can’t think of anything but feeling your beautiful, delicious nakedness pressed against me. Oh Jesus God, woman…”

  I shivered and clutched his thighs, tilting my head to kiss his neck and take his chin between my teeth. He groaned as I closed my teeth over his lower lip, reaching back to stroke him through his trousers.

  “That’s gonna poke you in the back all the way there, I’m sorry,” he whispered against my mouth and I giggled, even though I was breathless with need for him.

  “You don’t sound very sorry…”

  “Oh God, I’m not sorry, I admit it. That feels so good, angel, don’t stop…”

  Tears flowed even though I didn’t want to cry anymore; emotions stormed through me, beyond my control. His easy way of teasing me was so familiar, so right, something else I had forced myself not to think about in his absence. Before my throat closed off I whispered, “I’ve missed you so much…”

  Marsh drew on the reins, bringing Blade to a halt to enfold me in both arms. “I missed you so much I thought I would die. Every second we’ve been apart I hurt like someone beat me senseless.” He pressed his lips to my temple. “I’ve been living like a dead man without you. I’ve only held on day to day because I knew I would find you. I couldn’t rest until I did.”

  “When did…how did…”

  “I went after you the very next day, back in 2014, as soon as Tish an
d I figured it out. I was crazy with worry, honey, you can’t imagine. And I got here, to 1881, last September,” he explained. “I was mauled the first half hour I was here. Here I am, this naturalist, this outdoorsman, and I blunder into a goddamn stray wolf. I thought I was dead right there. I didn’t come to for a good three days after Amos found me. I was lucky as hell he did. I was just miles from Grant and Birdie’s place.”

  “You were right there?” I whispered. I increased my grip, as though he might just disintegrate. “You’ve met Grant and Birdie? Oh Marsh, sweetheart, there’s so much to tell you…”

  “I know, angel, I really do. I met them all, and the Spicers. It’s so crazy to see Garth here as another version of himself, and Becky, I can’t get over it. And their house and our land…” He drew a deep, shaky breath. “And to see everyone we know in the people here, like Case and Tish, and Mathias. I don’t know what to think. I don’t have any context for what I think.”

  “Marshall,” I whispered, not certain how to begin what I wanted to say. Tears fell over my face, wetting my jaws, dripping to my breasts. I clutched his forearms. “I met you here. Did they…did they tell you…”

  I felt him nod. He said, with quiet reverence, “I met his little boy. And Celia asked me to give you her love, first thing.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I breathed, choked up all over again. “She brought the baby to Birdie…thank God.”

  “He was born around Thanksgiving. She named him Jacob Miles Rawley. Birdie and Celia told me everything they could about you, and about Miles. He’s buried along the creek near the homestead, angel.”

  A sob pushed at my breastbone. I didn’t want Marshall to feel guilty, or jealous, but I had to tell him what had happened. “Miles was you, Marsh, I knew he was you…and he loved me…”

  “Of course he did,” Marshall whispered, and tears tracked over his cheeks in the moonlight. There was nothing but sincerity in his voice. “He was me. Of course he loved you. There’s never been a time when I haven’t loved you.”

  I cried and Marshall held me as we traveled across the nighttime prairie, intending to make swift tracks from Illinois. We talked almost without let-up, speaking over the top of each other, interrupting as we’d always done.

  “You’d disappeared with Patricia only six days before I arrived at Grant’s,” Marshall said. “Can you imagine? I’ve never felt so helpless. I slept all winter in the room you’d been using, angel, and the pillows in there smelled like you. I wouldn’t let Birdie wash those sheets for anything. I can’t believe they managed to live with me all those months, when I was ready to tear apart the walls. And then it snowed, and snowed, and covered the train tracks. We couldn’t hope to travel, even by horseback, and I was like a crazy man. We didn’t discover exactly where the Yancys secreted you and Patricia, or if you were even still with her, until just two weeks ago. I’ve never been so insane with worry as these past months of searching and waiting.”

  “Did you…was Fallon…”

  “No, we got all our information from a servant in the Chicago estate, Dredd’s butler. ‘Footman’ is what he called himself and he told us that Mr. Thomas Yancy and Mr. Fallon Yancy were ‘away.’ He didn’t know where.”

  So Fallon hadn’t yet returned from wherever he’d disappeared before I struck him while in his train car; at least, he hadn’t returned to Chicago. I recognized the need to tell Marshall everything about Fallon, including what I’d learned about Faye – I was so sick over what Fallon had revealed that night I could hardly hold it in my mind, let alone consider the pain it would cause Marshall. And the question remained, begging to be answered – where had Fallon existed these past months? What if he was roaming the twenty-first century at this very moment, targeting our families? We had to get word to them, somehow. There had to be a way.

  Marsh was saying, “Axton is about the best spy you could imagine. He seems so innocent that people don’t suspect him of anything. I mean, he really is a good guy. I feel like he could be my little brother. And does he ever love you. I’d be jealous as hell except I couldn’t hate anyone who cares for you and it’s so obvious he’s in love with Tish. Or Patricia, I mean. Cole knows it, too, and his tolerance is pretty goddamn low, but even he can’t deny how much Axton helped us find you two. He helped us even knowing Patricia was pregnant with another man’s baby. That’s devotion.”

  “How did you find out about the convent?”

  “Dredd’s footman was in a relationship with the maid who cleaned the room where you and Patricia were kept until you vanished last November. This woman said one of you was pregnant – and I’m not gonna lie, angel, I just about fucking died thinking it might be you – but her next words were it was ‘young Mrs. Yancy.’ Thank God she was willing to dig into the matter a little deeper. Between her and the footman, we finally found out where Dredd had sent you.”

  “We were sure we were goners.” I shuddered violently. “The nuns meant to take the baby, Marsh. Patricia and I have been planning an escape for months now but I think both of us knew there was nothing we could really do.”

  Marshall tightened his grip on me “I will always come for you, angel, no matter what. I admit I cut it pretty close this time, but I will always come for you.”

  Later he explained, “I’m a marshal now, can you believe it? A lawman. I took over for Miles since there was no one else available, or willing, in Howardsville. Axton volunteered, but he’s too young.”

  Cold terror gripped me at this information. “No. Marsh, no way. Absolutely not. It’s so dangerous.” As I spoke, a lightbulb seemed to crackle to existence above my head; I could almost see it in the air. I whispered, “Wait a second, you’re the marshal. The marshal from Una’s letters! When I read those for the first time in 2013 that’s why I was so worried about him – because he’s you. Una mentioned Miles’s ‘passing.’ I knew about Miles dying before I even got here. Oh, my God…”

  I felt Marshall shiver; the same tremor passed from him to me as the realization spread through us both.

  “It makes sense now,” he murmured. “The letters make sense.”

  My mind was muddy with lack of sleep, with everything I was trying to contemplate. “There’s so much we don’t know yet…”

  Marshall rested his chin on the top of my head. “Sleep, angel. You’re exhausted. And I found you. Nothing else matters.”

  At last I slept, held fast in Marshall’s arms; when I woke, hours later, a bright dawn spilled across the eastern sky, clouds rippling in a succession of narrow little waves with gold-gilt edges. The air was chill with night; the first sun beams shone a fiery orange. We didn’t stop for breakfast and I was well aware of the quiet, intense conversation taking place among the men while I took a turn riding in the wagon with Patricia, even as I tried to tune it out; they were discussing the immediate future. It seemed the nearby Cedar River was the point where we would be forced to venture in separate directions.

  Patricia was as comfortable as our meager supplies allowed, bundled in a shawl, her son in her arms while Cole handled the team; he sat with shoulders hunched and I would have paid a fair amount to know what was in his mind just now. I couldn’t begin to guess. Axton rode only a few yards away, his spine straight as a soldier’s, keeping his eyes from the wagon with all his effort. I lay beside Patricia and the baby, smoothing my fingertips over the baby’s soft scalp, trying not to think about how quickly I would be separated from this woman I loved as much as my real sisters. I knew Tish and Camille would understand; they wouldn’t begrudge me this love for Patricia, here in 1882. I’d spent the past ten months in her almost-constant company and to say I would miss her was a grievous understatement.

  “You did so well,” I told Patricia for the hundredth time, kissing the baby’s forehead. The back of the wagon was hard and bumpy but the jostling didn’t seem to bother him.

  “I could not have done so without you.”

  “Hi, Monty,” I murmured, caressing his silky cheek. “I think ‘Monty’
suits you.”

  “You know, I rather like it,” Patricia said. “And it would be less confusing that way.”

  “It would,” I agreed.

  Studying my eyes, she acknowledged, “You have found your Marshall.”

  Tears blurred my vision. “I have.”

  “I could not be happier for you, sweet Ruthann.” Patricia reached to tuck loose hair behind my ear, both of us determined to keep the mood light. “You are glowing this morning, from within. He is a very striking man, if you do not mind my observation. What is it Aunt Jillian would say about him?”

  I giggled, thinking of all our candid conversations. “A fox.”

  “Yes, that’s the way of it.” Patricia smiled. “A total fox.”

  Marshall looked my way; neither of us could keep our eyes from the other for very long. He grinned and my blood rushed accordingly. I couldn’t help but wonder, despite all the pressing matters crowding for top attention in my mind, when he and I would be allowed a moment alone. Right now I would be content with fifteen minutes. Five, even. And I shivered with pure, surging anticipation.

  “You warm enough, angel?” Marsh called over.

  “I am. I’m snuggling with the baby.” But my eyes told him the real reason I’d shivered and his grin turned wicked. He blew me a slow, sweet kiss.

  “We haven’t long, do we?” Patricia murmured a little later, her head braced on her bent arm and her eyes closed.

  “No,” I admitted, watching the rising sun play over her lovely face. Despite her joy over Monty I sensed the anguish pulsing just beneath her skin; I could not help but notice the amount of times her eyes sought and held Axton. The shadows beneath them were deep, her honey hair loose and tangled. I felt a sharp pang at the thought that someone should brush it for her – and that someone had been me, for so long now. I’d cared for her as I would a beloved little sister and now I had to entrust her care to Cole. And there was no chance to discuss weighty matters with Patricia, such as how she felt about her inevitable future with Cole; I witnessed the same desperate agony stemming from Axton even though his face was currently impassive.