A Patchwork Family Read online

  But there was no time to repeat the reassurances he comforted her with when she lay awake at night, wondering why God hadn’t granted her fondest wish. The stage left in five minutes. He had to make her see reason without upsetting her further, or those two kids would ride on to more rejections instead of finding the home he felt so compelled to give them.

  Judd brushed her cheek with a kiss. “What does the Lord require of us, Mercedes?” he whispered.

  She focused on the top button of his shirt. The verse from Micah was as familiar as her own home, for she’d stitched it into a sampler that hung in the front room. Still, her husband was evading the issue! Quoting Scripture, rather than caring how she felt about a decision that would alter their lives so suddenly. So drastically.

  “To seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God,” he said softly. He pulled her closer so she couldn’t wiggle out of this conversation. “Now—I already love Mercy more than life itself, more than I ever dreamed possible when I married her. And Lord knows you’ve had to walk humbly, since you left your family to homestead out here with me.

  “But where’s the justice for these children if we don’t help them? Malloy’s done all he can to find their mother. Maybe God has chosen us to be their caretakers, knowing what a very special, loving woman you are. Knowing that we feed the hungry and clothe the naked—like we did Nathaniel and Asa—rather than just giving lip service to our faith.”

  Why did Judd have to be so eloquent, and so absolutely right? Why did her own selfish wishes—her already busy life—seem more important than the welfare of children who’d done nothing to deserve abandonment?

  Still, there was only so much time and love to go around. Wasn’t there?

  The scraping of benches against the floor signaled the end of the meal. Mercy’s heart pounded, torn between what she wanted and what she ought to do. She turned toward the open back door to see a taffeta flounce and a dusty red braid disappear into the kitchen.

  “That little . . . she was eavesdropping!”

  “In her situation, wouldn’t you?” Judd teased.

  He knew not to press for an answer, knew his wife needed a few moments to make this difficult decision. As the wind whipped her faded blue dress around her slender frame, Judd wondered if Mercy ever regretted marrying him, and he wished he could provide the comforts she’d been accustomed to in Philadelphia. Life on the plains was difficult, and he prayed he hadn’t asked more of his loyal, compassionate woman than she could agree to this time.

  He entered the kitchen a few steps behind her. Judd had felt responsible for Billy and Christine the moment he heard their story—and so had his wife. Yet she wavered for very human, very understandable reasons.

  And if Mercedes said no, he wouldn’t argue. A man was the head of his household, but out here where the endless days of drudgery made a wife an equal partner, Judd knew not to push too far. He couldn’t possibly manage this ranch and the way station alone.

  He heard voices heading out the front door, eager to press on now that appetites were satisfied. When a small, redheaded figure appeared in the kitchen doorway, Judd held his breath. The boy’s question was written all over his face. So young he was, to beg for the home and affection that should have been his birthright.

  Mercy stood near the stove, looking down at the dusty, bedraggled stranger. Her back remained gracefully straight, but the loose knot of hair at her nape quivered with her indecision. Judd wanted to smile at the boy from over her shoulder, to say something encouraging. But this moment and this choice belonged to the woman he loved.

  Billy Bristol glanced at the departing passengers behind him, curling the brim of his hat in his hands. His sister lingered in the front room, pretending to study the stitched samplers on the wall. The house was so quiet that when the boy cleared his throat, the sound filled the little kitchen, amplifying the tensions he’d caused a dozen times in the past two hundred miles.

  “I . . . that was the best dang pie, Mrs. Monroe! And since there ain’t but two pieces left, I was wonderin’ if I could wrap ’em up for me and my sister,” he said in a tumble of words. “We don’t know how far it might be before . . . before we set down to another feed like you fixed us.”

  Mercy stifled a sob. What a brave young man, to think ahead and provide for his sister! She crouched to get a better look at him, realizing that he might be small for his age. Billy focused eyes the color of cornflowers on her, eyes that blazed with his determination not to cry. His gritty face, lined with a telltale track on each cheek, gave only a hint of the agony he must have felt since he saw that surrey whisking his mother away.

  “Judd and the hands and I haven’t eaten our dinner yet,” she said in a tight voice. “So maybe—”

  “Oh.” He let out a forlorn sigh. “Guess you’ll be needin’ that pie, then. We better be gettin’ back onto the—”

  “So maybe you can sit and talk to us while we eat,” she heard herself continue. Her hands went to his shoulders, and for this boy her heart found the words she couldn’t give to Judd. “I always save our share back . . . and the pie on this windowsill is peach. So if you and your sister want to stay with us awhile, there’ll be plenty to go around, Billy.”

  His mouth dropped open. “You mean it?”

  She nodded, blinking rapidly, feeling Judd’s strength and approval as he stepped up beside her.

  “We’ve got tickets to keep going—clear to Denver,” Christine challenged from the other room. “So it’s not like we have to stay.”

  “No, but we’d like you to,” Judd replied firmly. He smiled at her, respecting the fear behind her defiant pride. “If you’d rather ride another four hundred miles with those two old ladies, though . . . I bet they snore something awful, and take up an entire seat.”

  Christine giggled nervously. And when she realized her arduous ride could be over, she ran through the door, hollering, “Mr. Malloy, wait! We need our trunks!”

  “I gotta go help!” Billy rasped. He wiggled out of Mercy’s grasp, his voice joining his sister’s outside.

  “You certainly have a way with women, Judd Monroe.”

  Mercy rose on shaky legs. Her husband’s arm steadied her, and his lingering kiss spoke of a love come down from God, a love she would have to trust more completely in the days ahead. Not since she’d left her family and friends back East had she made a decision that scared her this way.

  In the time it took to eat a meal, their four lives had changed forever.

  Chapter Two

  “Mama just weren’t the same after they killed Daddy and kidnapped my brother Wesley,” Billy remarked with a doleful shake of his head.

  “Wasn’t the same,” his sister corrected. “But she had no excuse to dump us like unwanted puppies! She’s got some tall explaining to do when she passes through here. And believe me, I’ll be waiting for her.”

  Christine glared across the table at Billy, as a warning not to air the family’s dirty laundry. The little boy who looked so much like her returned her scowl, as though he intended to have his say despite her embarrassment.

  “We left Topeka ’cause you said she weren’t never comin’ for us! So—”

  “I changed my mind, all right?” she snapped. “It only makes sense that Mama would head west to pursue those business opportunities she mentioned. And to get to Denver, she has to ride the stagecoach through here. Right?”

  Piercing green eyes brought Mercy out of her woolgathering. She’d been so intent on listening between the lines of this conversation that her dinner remained untouched on her plate, and Christine’s question caught her by surprise. The girl wasn’t telling everything she knew, perhaps because the truth was too painful. Or because she enjoyed toying with Billy.

  “She could head west in her own wagon,” Judd reasoned, “but given the Indian troubles we’re having, I hope she’s not that foolish. Do you have relatives in Denver, or—”

  “No! It—it just seemed like a good place for us to st
art fresh,” the girl answered quickly. “Billy’s right. Ever since we lost Daddy and Wesley, Mama has acted very confused. Who knows what she had in mind when she packed us all up and bought those stagecoach tickets?”

  Christine was dodging the issue, which was understandable: she sat at a strange family’s table, where two colored hands stole glances at her as they ate and the man and his wife asked a lot of questions. Christine Bristol was young enough to be extremely upset by the drastic changes in her life since the war, yet old enough—proud enough—to pretend she and her brother could get by on their own.

  Seeing how Billy’s eyes lingered on their food, Mercy set a slice of peach pie in front of him. “So the Border Ruffians took your brother, and you’ve never seen him again? How awful.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Wesley was my twin,” he clarified, brightening at the first taste of the pie. “ ’Cept he was bigger and ornerier than me. He was out in the corrals with Daddy that night, drivin’ the horses into the barns before a storm blew in. Next thing we knowed, a gang of bushwhackers with torches and shotguns come thunderin’ in, demandin’ fresh mounts. Daddy said they could pay for ’em, same as everybody else. We had us a fine breedin’ farm, with registered stock, you see.”

  He plied his fork slowly through his pie, as though recalling these events had put him into a trance. “But they was in no mood to argue. They shot Daddy down and then lassoed themselves each a horse. Left the gates open and shooed out the rest of the herd before throwin’ their torches into the barns.

  “That’s when they spotted Wesley runnin’ down the lane to get help,” he continued in a tighter voice. “They rode right at him, and one man just scooped him up off the ground. Mama run out of the house, screamin’ at ’em to bring her boy back, but—but they just kept ridin’ into the night.”

  Mercy’s eyes went wet. Any woman could lose her mind after witnessing such events. She could picture the family they must have made: Christine and her mother in their stylish gowns; Wesley and William, two redheaded boys with devilish grins; a strong, hardworking father who ran the ranch. And within minutes, this portrait—their life—was forever shattered by a shotgun blast and then burned beyond recognition. It would be horrible enough to bury a husband and lose the family’s livelihood, but perhaps worse to wonder if Wesley was dead or alive.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mercy murmured. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Billy. Didn’t mean to pry.”

  He shrugged, still appearing removed from the harsh realities he’d described. “The neighbors returned what horses they found wanderin’ loose, but there wasn’t enough to keep the farm from goin’ broke, even when we sold ’em.”

  “And hardly a week after Daddy was in the ground, Mr. Massena paid us a call,” Christine chimed in bitterly. “He said a payment was due, knowing full well Mama didn’t have the money—and wouldn’t, what with the horses and barns being gone. He reminded me of a vulture in his black frock coat, staring down at Mama with those beady eyes and that beak of a nose.”

  “The bank foreclosed on her?” Judd’s blue eyes blazed as he considered this. News often reached them about corrupt bankers and politicians seizing the farms in war-torn Missouri, but it took a truly despicable man to turn a widow and her children out of their home. Knowing how long and hard he’d worked to establish his own breeding stock here, Judd felt a special sympathy for these innocent victims who now sat at his table.

  Christine nodded, playing with the end of her rust-colored braid. “Mama pleaded with him to give her a little more time, until the hay could be cut and sold. But he’d have no part of that. A couple weeks later, he came by to introduce a Mr. Wyndham as a possible buyer for the place.”

  “He did?” Billy’s next bite of pie stopped short of his mouth as he shot his sister an accusing look.

  Christine’s smile was catlike. “I was on the upstairs landing when they arrived, so I couldn’t help hearing their conversation. Mr. Wyndham was an Englishman, looking to invest in a country estate—very dapper in his pinstripe suit. He wore his waxed mustache curved up like a wicked grin,” she added smugly. “But he wasn’t interested in the property. Said it required too many improvements.”

  Mercy wanted to slap Christine for baiting her little brother with information she’d been withholding—information embroidered by an eavesdropper’s active imagination, perhaps. But this was no time for discipline that might further alienate the girl.

  “That’s a shame,” she remarked as she stood to stack the dirty plates. “I wish your mother could’ve received something for the place, even from a foreigner who might pay less than it was worth. But you and Billy are here now, and we’re pleased to have you. We’ll pray she’s finding another way to support her family, and that she’ll come for you as soon as she can.”

  Was she giving them false hopes? Did she sound sincere, to children who’d been abandoned by the woman they loved and depended upon most?

  As she carried the dishes to the kitchen, Mercy ran the fragments of their story through her mind. Billy appeared thunderstruck by some of his sister’s statements—betrayed, because he hadn’t been privy to information that he, acting as man of the family, deserved to know. Her heart went out to them both, even as she shook her head over Mrs. Bristol’s unmotherly deeds.

  She was inclined to believe Mike Malloy’s version of the story, about how the man in the checkered suit had paid the children’s way, as well as bribing the express office manager to get rid of them. After all, how would Mrs. Bristol have scraped together more than three hundred dollars for their stagecoach fares?

  Judd was apparently interested in this angle, too, because when she returned to the front room he was encouraging the children to recount the events at the Holladay depot. “What can you tell us about the driver and the man in charge of the stage stop in Leavenworth? They might help us locate your mother,” he added with a kind smile.

  Christine rolled her eyes, pointing across the table. “Ask him! I was using the necessary, and when I came out, Billy was babbling about Mama riding off in a surrey, with some man in a suit. If Wesley had been with us, he would’ve chased them down!”

  “If you didn’t take so long in the—I couldn’t just leave you there to—”

  “Scaredy-cat! If you weren’t such a baby—”

  “Enough!” Judd smacked the table to silence them. “I know you’re tired and upset, and we’re asking you questions about a very difficult situation, but squabbling with each other won’t solve anything. Billy, did you get a good look at that man with your mama?”

  “No, sir. We’d spent most of the night in the stage comin’ from home, and I had to use the privy, too.” He studied the crust of his pie. “When we went runnin’ back to the coach, the clerk handed us our tickets like he knowed who we was. He told us we was to ride on ahead. Said Mama had run across an old friend, and she’d be along a stage or two later.”

  “I informed him our mother would do no such thing!” Christine put in. “And I said we’d best wait for her there at the depot. I told him to get our bags out of the boot, but he refused—and showed us that Mama’s two trunks were still on board. Then he gave me money for our meals and a hotel room in Denver. Mama had told him we’d be obedient, capable children, and that I was to be in charge and Billy was to quit sniveling and mind his sister. It . . . that’s just what she would’ve said, you see.”

  Judd exchanged glances with his wife, noting the suspicious rise of her eyebrow. “Is that how you recall it, Billy?”

  “Yup.” He sighed, resting his head forlornly on his fist. “The man told us to hurry up, that we was makin’ the stage late. I just couldn’t believe Mama would send us ahead—not after the way she carried on when Wesley got snatched. But when I caught sight of her, ridin’ away with that man, she weren’t lookin’ back, neither.”

  “And as we rode to the next couple of stops, we talked about how Mama didn’t have any friends in Kansas,” his sister said. Her voice faltered, and she took a moment t
o compose herself. “And if she did, she’d want them to meet us, wouldn’t she? We—we thought she might’ve had one of her spells when she’s not thinking quite right, so we got off at Topeka. Stayed there two days and nights, watching for her when every stagecoach passed through. Hoping it was just one of her silly mistakes.”

  Mercy had stepped up beside her seated husband to listen to this tale, and she gripped his sturdy shoulders. All cockiness had gone from Christine’s voice as she slumped dejectedly on the bench. The girl’s agony clutched at Mercy. How horrible it must have been, to realize her mother had taken off without a backward glance, without any warning. Probably on purpose.

  Billy cleared his throat. “We asked the man in Topeka to telegraph Leavenworth, to check the passenger lists for Mama’s name. When the reply come back, it said they’d never heard of no Virgilia Bristol nor her children. It was a lie, but what could we do about it?”

  “We do have our fares to Denver,” Christine asserted with an upward tilt of her chin. “So we’ve decided to find a new life for ourselves, somewhere we can keep an eye out for Mama. Mr. Malloy took a shine to Billy—even let him ride up on the driver’s seat. So of course Billy spilled out the story about—”

  “He was a nice man,” her brother protested. “He wanted us to be safe, so he asked the station managers along the way if they had a place for us.”

  “And we do,” Mercy said firmly. Now that she’d heard the details from the children’s point of view, she couldn’t possibly begrudge them bed and board. “Back when the stages first started running, we built the upstairs onto the house to lodge travelers who needed a night’s rest. Those two rooms are yours now, for as long as you want them.”

  Judd’s hand found hers, making her heart swell. “We’ll expect you to help us out, of course,” he told them. “Since you grew up on a horse farm, you know what it takes to keep such a place running. And you can see how much work Mercy puts into feeding stage passengers each week. So as long as you’re agreeable to those terms—to pulling your weight, just like you did at home—we’ll be happy to have you.”