Bleeding Heart (The Heart's Spring Book 2)

by Amber Stokes

  Myghal slid a glance toward Jack, who remained frozen in the doorway, then did as she asked. When he set down the crate, he stayed next to her, crossing his arms over his thin chest. As much as Sally detested the silence, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything to Jack – she had no idea what she could or should say to him.

  Finally, Jack asked, “When did you get to California? I thought… I thought you would be back in Missouri with your ma and pa.”

  Swallowing back the anger she had hoped never to feel again, she squared her shoulders. “I never went back home.” She met his gaze then, and found it to be full of confusion.

  “It’s been over three years. What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”

  His tone was cautious, almost hopeful, like he was catching up with an old friend who would give him a brief description of her adventures before they parted ways again. His gaze flicked to Myghal, perhaps expecting a sweet love story. Like the one he had apparently experienced?

  No words could sum up what had happened to her since Jack told her to go home and left her to find her own way. Tears filled her eyes, and she started to pound the dough, not caring that it no longer needed the harsh treatment.

  “I think ye should leave,” Myghal said, his voice tight but sure.

  Jack’s handsome face scrunched. His brows lowered and his head shook slowly from side to side. “I don’t understand. Obviously, something is wrong. Tell me, Sally.”

  “Tell me your dreams, Sally,” he said as he leaned in close, close enough for her to kiss the tip of his straight nose. “Tell me what you want most.”

  In that moment, the only wish in her head was that he would lean in all the way and press his lips against hers – her first kiss.

  Sally shook the memory away as a hot tear spilled down her cheek at her former innocence and her foolish fancies. “Please, just leave,” she whispered, brushing away the embarrassing display of emotion as her hand resumed its trembling.

  Before Jack could respond, the door opened again, and a young woman entered the bakery.

  “Jack? Don’t tell me you got sidetracked by all the sweets?” Her voice was laced with teasing and affection. She glanced at Sally. “You’ll have to excuse my husband. He can’t seem to limit himself when it comes to sugary things.” She smiled, bringing a self-conscious hand to her pretty pink hat. When no one responded, she turned to Jack. “Did I interrupt something?”

  Sally contemplated escaping through the back door, but Myghal touched his hand to her back, causing her breath to hitch before she took another, deeper one.

  Myghal stepped up to the counter. “I’d be happy ta help ye, ma’am,” he told Jack’s wife.

  He packaged up the pastries she wanted, took the payment from Jack, and walked them the short distance to the door, giving Jack no chance to continue their previous conversation. When the door closed behind them, Sally left the battered dough and sank down onto the floor with her back against the counter. All she wanted to do was hide there and cry.

  Myghal’s steps echoed through the small shop as he came around the counter, sitting down beside her, clasping his hands atop his knees.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered through tears of shame and hurt. “How can he be here? I thought they lived in Oregon…?”

  Myghal didn’t say anything. He probably had no answer, just as she had none.

  ***

  “I’m home,” Seth declared as he entered the house, relishing the feeling of warmth that filled him at the words. He really did feel at home here. It felt good to be in a green place, where the air felt clean and damp, instead of dusty and dry. And it felt freeing to discover that he could indeed embrace a life beyond the one he had always known.

  “Supper’s almost ready,” Sally called back from the kitchen.

  Seth smiled, surprising himself with his own contentment. There was nothing like coming back to this peaceful place after an exhausting week at the lumber camp. The other woodsmen must hate him and Myghal for their constant reprieves from camp life…but that wouldn’t stop Seth from taking them.

  He entered the kitchen and sat down at the table, placing his hat on his knee and leaning back with a sigh. “Where’s Myghal?”

  After placing a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table and rushing back to the stove, Sally hitched her shoulder toward the bedroom he and Myghal used. “In there, getting his stuff together.”

  Seth nodded and stretched, catching Sally’s glance when she came back to the table with a bowl of beans. She gave him a small smile, and Seth found one of his own rising to match hers. He looked forward to a week of working with her at the shop. The smells of cinnamon and baking bread combined with the sweet taste of stolen samples to provide a happy break from the sweat and cursing and trees crashing to the forest floor.

  Sally returned with a plate of fried chicken, which she set in front of him with a smirk. “No point in putting this anywhere else. We all know you’d climb over the table to get the first piece.”

  Seth laughed.

  “What did I miss?” Myghal asked as he entered the kitchen.

  He looked to Sally with surprise as he voiced the question, his frown incongruous with Sally’s cheerfulness. Her overly bright smile faded at Myghal’s expression, and she turned away from the both of them. Had something happened this past week while he was in Falk? Seth wondered.

  “Only the usual. I was just making a remark about Seth’s hearty appetite.” Sally mumbled the words, her voice suddenly tight.

  “Ah. Well, while we’re makin’ remarks about Seth, ye need a shower, man.” Myghal sat down across from Seth with a grin.

  “As you do every other Saturday, as well.”

  Sally came and sat at the head of the table, between them, appearing relieved with their banter. Seth resolved to get to the bottom of whatever had happened after supper, before Myghal left. He wanted to be there for Sally. He didn’t want to lose the smiles and laughter they had only recently found.

  ***

  Sally strained to listen to the conversation in the next room, every now and then clattering the dishes loudly enough so that the men would think she was paying them no mind. Myghal was telling Seth about Jack’s appearance at the Mended Heart, describing what Jack and his wife looked like and urging him to watch out for her in the following week. Sally would have smiled at their protectiveness if she wasn’t so weighed down with heavy thoughts.

  Jack. Surprisingly, as much as she detested her reaction to his sudden appearance, she found herself more curious about it than heartbroken, now that the initial rush of emotions had passed. Jack was a ghost from her past – a desire, a dream that had haunted her since his disappearance – but he couldn’t hurt her anymore…she hoped.

  “Need any help with the dishes?” Seth walked into the room, startling Sally out of her thoughts. His dark eyes held compassion, and it made him look so different from the man she had met when she first came to his ranch. It was as if he was now a warm, fresh loaf of bread, instead of the nebulous, sad mass of dough he had been.

  She couldn’t help but smile at him, this man who had left everything behind for her and Myghal, for all of them. Like his brother. Her smile dipped just a little.

  “I’m almost done. You can stack these dry dishes in the cupboard, though, if you’d like.”

  “Sure,” he agreed, reaching close to grab one of the bowls.

  “Thanks.” She flicked a glance to the other room. “Myghal leave?”

  He nodded. For a few moments, they completed the domestic task in silence. Then Seth ventured, “What are you going to do?” He must have seen the denial she was about to voice, because he added, “I know you were listening. The house isn’t that big.”

  She shrugged, placing the last plate in his large hands. “I don’t know.” Pulling out a chair, she sat at the table, looking down at her lap where she clutched her hands tightly together. “Part of me wants to tell him everything that happened since he left me –
about working in Jacob’s place. It was what I had been going to do when Myghal and…your brother…and I had gone to Oregon. I wanted him to suffer, and yet a small part of me wanted him to take me back.”

  A chair scraped the floor and Seth sat nearby, but she didn’t look up.

  “Everything’s changed. I mean, he’s married. I got married… And now we’re here, and I don’t want to think about the past anymore. I wish I never had to think about it again.”

  Finally, she risked a peek and found herself held by Seth’s steady gaze. She licked her dry lips. “Should he know?”

  His chair was turned toward her, and his hands were clasped between his knees. She wished he would tell her what he was thinking. Was he remembering his brother? His wife? Was he contemplating the past, or their future – hers and his and Myghal’s?

  With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know, either.” A shadow crossed over his face before he stood. “I’m going to sit outside for a bit.”

  She nodded, following him with her eyes until the kitchen door closed behind him. Then she followed his movements with her ears as she heard him enter the bedroom – probably to grab his pipe – and leave the house.

  Getting up, she opened the kitchen door, looking between her empty room on the left and the front door ahead of her. Biting her lip, she pondered her choices for only a few seconds before heading outside.

  He was sitting on their small porch, smoke drifting around his head and into the evening air. She took the chair on the opposite side of the porch, watching the stars appear in the sky and lamplight appear in their neighbors’ windows. The smell of pipe tobacco comforted her, and she breathed a prayer of gratitude for hope, for healing.

  If Jack hounded her, she would tell him the truth. She didn’t want secrets to shatter what they had worked so hard for. But if Jack let it go, she should, as well. They had both changed. Their journeys these past few years had been so different. Their current destinations, while the same literal place, could not provide a shared lodging for their hearts.

  Help me, please, to stop chasing after him, to go back to following Your steps, as my parents once taught me. I don’t want to fight anymore for something I shouldn’t have. I just want peace.

  She begged over and over for God’s guidance as she sat before her new home, surrounded by sweet quiet and tangy tobacco smoke.

  Chapter 20

  When they opened the bakery on Monday morning, Jack breezed in with confidence and determination.

  Seth hadn’t seen Sally so fearful since…well, for several months. He clenched his fists, remembering the times that he had done nothing when he should have done something. When he didn’t tell Elizabeth her brother’s secret. When he didn’t try harder to get medical help for Naomi. When he didn’t come to Sally’s aid at the Bucket of Blood. When he didn’t shoot Rufus O’Daniel.

  He gritted his teeth and rounded the counter. He was a man well-acquainted with inaction, hiding behind a serious demeanor, acting like the older and wiser big brother he had always hoped himself to be, when he was really afraid of all the terrifying changes his own actions could bring about. Perhaps, all this time, he should have been more afraid of the horrible things his own inaction allowed.

  Because change had found him, found them all, no matter how hard he had tried to deny it.

  And these recent changes in his life were worth taking action to keep.

  Assuming a protective stance in front of the counter, he locked gazes with their customer. “What is it you’re needing?”

  The man’s greenish eyes – like a cat’s, or maybe a snake’s – darted between him and Sally. “I’d just like to speak with Sally, if she would allow it.”

  Seth caught Sally’s shudder out of the corner of his eye and heard her quietly agree.

  “I’ll talk with him, Seth.”

  She sounded resolved, if not happy about the situation. He flexed his fingers in agitation. This man was married, and her relationship with him was long past. He knew enough of her story, and this time he wouldn’t sit by and watch a man hurt her.

  “Let me talk with him,” he said.

  He was ready to brush aside her protests, but none came. He looked over to find her close to tears. Her hand shook as she set down the spoon that she had been using to mix cookie dough.

  “Are ya sure?” she asked in a murmur.

  When he nodded, she gave him one of her sugar-soft smiles, and that was all he needed to steer him toward the door, with Jack in tow.

  They walked down the street, passing several shops.

  Jack dragged his feet through the dirt. “May I ask who you are to Sally? I saw her with another man last week, and I just assumed he was her husband.”

  Seth was uncertain how to answer that. He finally decided on a simple response. “I’m her brother-in-law.”

  “Ah.” Jack nodded, as if that cleared up everything.

  “That other man – Myghal – he’s a close family friend.” The words rushed from him before he could think about why it bothered him so much for Jack to assume Myghal was Sally’s husband.

  “Oh? Then where is her husband?”

  They walked past the saloon, and the notes of an out-of-tune piano hit him like the blows Joe should have given him for not whisking Sally away from the Bucket of Blood that day.

  Did this man really need to know all of their heartbreak? Unable to stop his voice from deepening with threat and pain, he replied, “Dead.”

  “Oh. I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  Silence enveloped them as they left the saloon behind.

  When they got to a bench in front of the blacksmith’s place, Jack gestured to it, and they sat side by side, watching a wagon rumble past and the sky darken from white-blue to a hazy silver.

  Jack’s knee bounced up and down, a surprising display of nerves from an otherwise confident, self-assured man. “Look, I know you must be wondering what I want with Sally.” He spread his hands, offering a lopsided smile. “I assure you, I’m happily married and I have no desire to bother her. It’s just that, well, I got the impression that something was wrong last time I saw her. We were close once, and I wanted to make sure she was all right. Perhaps I was just mistaking her grief for something else.” He huffed a humorless laugh. “I don’t know what I was expecting to learn.”

  “When did you and Sally part ways?”

  Jack’s knee bounced faster. “Well, it was a few years ago. I thought she realized that I wasn’t ready to settle down, but unbeknownst to me she followed me from Missouri, all the way to Virginia City. When she caught up to me in Nevada, I told her how it was between us. I told her to go home.” His brows rose. “Virginia City was no place for her, you know? I knew she needed to go back to her family and find another man who was willing to make a home for her.”

  He turned to Seth, and his fidgeting stopped. “Now, will you tell me what happened after that? Because I never thought I would run into her all the way out here.”

  Seth ran a hand through his hair, grateful he could spare Sally from this recounting, but hating the fact that this man could be so unaware of the tragedy he helped to cause. “She never went home. I’m guessing you already figured that out. I don’t know the whole story, but I was told that she didn’t have the means to get home. She ended up working on Sporting Row in order to make enough money to get by.”

  Jack clenched his hands in front of him, crushing the hat that he had taken from his head moments before. “For…how long?” The question was a whisper, a murmur laced with frustration and fear.

  “Almost three years. It’s been close to four years since you left her, right? It’s only in the last year that she got out of that…situation.”

  Seth rubbed his hand over his knee, wishing he could rub out this conversation. “Last summer my brother and that man you met last week came to California to work in Falk. Sally went with them. It’s my understanding that she convinced them to go to Oregon after a while, because she hear
d…”

  “She heard I was there.”

  “Yes.”

  “If she came, why did I never see her?”

  He sounded wounded, like he needed to know more but was having a hard time bearing up under the pain of the story.

  “I don’t know.”

  Jack jumped to his feet, pacing back and forth on the edge of the dirt street. Seth contemplated telling him about Joe and Sally’s marriage and their time back in Virginia City, but images of Sally in Rufus O’Daniel’s bloody arms…of Joe’s lifeless body…of Naomi and Joe’s graves…

  No, he had told Jack all he needed to, all Seth was able to tell. The memories were still too ragged and raw.

  “What can I do?”

  Jack’s question pulled Seth out of his self-loathing and sorrow for a moment. He shrugged. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do now.”

  He hadn’t meant it to sound so accusing.

  Or perhaps he did.

  “I don’t know how to apologize, how to make this right.” Jack growled in frustration. He must have glimpsed Seth’s head shaking slightly back and forth, because he added, “You have to believe that…all this time…I thought she was back home. I knew she had hopes for us, and I did feel bad about hurting her by sending her away, but I knew it was for the best. She shouldn’t have been there.”

  “No,” Seth agreed, “she shouldn’t have.”

  Pushing his slightly crumpled hat back firmly on his head, Jack faced him with determination. “My wife Molly and I have done really well in the dairy business – here and back in Oregon. I’ll give Sally some money, to help with the bakery.”

  Seth shook his head again. No amount of money could ever compensate for all Sally had suffered.

  Jack’s chin lifted defiantly. “That should be Sally’s decision, don’t you agree?”

  It was true. He wasn’t the one Jack had wronged. Seth nodded grudgingly. “You’re right. I’ll tell her about your offer.”

  “Good. I’ll visit the bakery tomorrow.” He hesitated for a moment. “Would you…would you tell her that I’m sorry? That I never knew she was still in Virginia City? I know I can’t ever make up for leaving her like I did, but I want to do something. I have to do something.”