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“What did she say?”
“She said I didn’t have a mama.” Rachel’s voice was dry and whispery. “But how come, Unca Flynn?” She looked up at him and tears swam in her blue eyes. “How come I don’t have a mama?”
“Oh, honey, don’t listen to Mrs. Young. She is a grumpy old sage hen who has forgotten how to raise a little girl.” Flynn reached out and rubbed her soft cheek with his thumb. He made up his mind then and there. Mrs. Young would have to go. He would not have a woman in the house who had so little compassion.
Rachel swallowed hard and toyed with her food Flynn tried a piece of meat but it tasted like sawdust while he chewed.
He had known this day would come—that eventually Rachel’s curiosity would bring him to this point, but he was unprepared. What could he tell her?
Rachel had grown up in a town full of secrets. Victoria Hollenbeck’s power and money had silenced the tongues of the residents of Hollenbeck Corners. As far as Flynn knew, Rachel had never even heard her mother’s name spoken. He had said nothing because he just didn’t know what to say. But as he looked at Rachel’s tight little face, he knew he was going to have to find the words.
And soon.
“You do have a mama, Rachel,” Flynn said softly.
Her head lifted. She stared across the blue-flowered china with a look of hope and bone-deep hunger. Her pale blue eyes burned into him.
“I do?”
“Yes, you do. You look a lot like her, in fact. She has blue eyes, just like yours.”
I remember, because she turned and looked at me with those amazing eyes before she walked through the gates at Yuma.
“You—know her?” Wonder tinted every word.
“Yep, I know her.”
Rachel’s eyes scanned his face, as her mind gauged his words, searching for truth and meaning.
“Where is my mama, Unca Flynn?”
Straight as an Apache arrow, her question pierced his heart.
Flynn swallowed hard. Now he had opened Pandora’s box and all the misery that came with his answer would come flying out.
How could he tell Rachel that her mother was in prison for killing her daddy?
Her world would shatter.
No. The world he had built around this tiny girl would shatter, if she learned what part he had played in taking her mother away.
“She had to leave when you were just a baby.” The half truth rushed past his lips.
“Why?”
Something cold and mournful, like wind out of the Superstitions, swept over him. “Sh—she just did. There are times when adults have to do things—even if they don’t want to. I—I can’t really explain it all to you now. Maybe when you are a little older.”
Rachel’s bottom lip trembled. She drew in a ragged breath in an effort not to cry. “Oh.”
He swallowed hard. This little scrap of flesh and bone could wound him with a look. Her tears destroyed him and turned him to a babbling fool.
“She loved you, honey. That is what you need to remember and think about. Don’t listen to Mrs. Young, just remember that your mama loved you.”
Her face took on a sullen hurt look that cut him deep. “If she loved me she wouldn’t have gone away. If she loved me she would come back,” Rachel said softly.
The edges of his heart withered. “No. That isn’t always true, honey. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that she didn’t have any choice. She had to go.”
Rachel flew out of her chair and crumpled against his body like a fragile flower seeking shelter from a hard frost. He cuddled her while the sound of her sobs tore a hole right through him.
Someday he would have to explain it all to Rachel. And then he would have to live with the consequences of what it meant to have worn a badge.
A half hour later a knock at the door brought Rachel’s head up. Flynn slowly rose from the chair with Rachel still cradled in his arms.
She had cried for a long time.
Her tears ate at him like acid. He was ill equipped to be a father—but he was the closest thing she had to family now.
“I wonder who would be coming to call?” He hoped he could draw her from the pain she was in.
“Don’t know,” she said with a hiccup.
“Well, let’s me and you go find out.” He gave her a kiss on the top of the head and set her on her feet. Together they crossed the carpeted parlor to the front hall.
Rachel’s ragged hiccups tore at Flynn every step of the way to the door. He was too old and too much a lone wolf to be caring for her. She needed more.
She needed a mother.
When he reached the door she looked at him with such an expression of loneliness that he scooped her up in his arms again.
They looked through the frosted pane of glass and saw the glow of a lantern. Flynn opened the door and discovered Charlie Parker, Hollenbeck Corners’s aging postmaster. He gripped an ancient-looking mining lantern in his deeply tanned, gnarled hand.
“Charlie?”
“Evening, Mr. O’Bannion. Sorry to bother you.” Every time he spoke his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork in the water.
“No bother. Come inside, Charlie. What brings you out so late?” Flynn lowered Rachel to the floor and stepped back so Charlie could enter, but the man hung back. “Is something wrong?”
Charlie glanced down at the thick Chinese carpet beneath Flynn’s feet. He dusted his boots on the backs of his pant legs before he stepped over the threshold into the big house. “Not ’xactly, Mr. O’Bannion.”
The postmaster was acting so jumpy that Flynn found himself looking both ways down the steep hill toward town. J. C. Hollenbeck had built his mansion on a rocky knoll near the San Pedro River. Flynn could stand on the front porch and view most of Hollenbeck Corners below. Right now the place was pretty quiet. A horse nickered, a dog barked and a furious-sounding cat answered, and there was a faint tinkle of barroom music floating on the dry spring breeze. But there was nothing to account for Charlie’s nervousness.
“Would you like some supper, Charlie?” Flynn asked as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Mrs. Young left us a pot full of prime Hollenbeck beef.” Charlie always looked as if he could use a hot meal and an extra night’s sleep.
“No, thank you kindly. I am here on business.”
Rachel looked at Charlie from her position behind Flynn’s knee. He could feel her little fingers, curling into the fabric of his Levi’s.
“Business?” Flynn frowned and shot a glance at Rachel. “And it couldn’t wait until the morning?”
Charlie’s Adam’s apple worked up and down a couple of times real fast. “I—I wasn’t sure. Uh—a—a letter has come—” Charlie glanced toward Rachel and swallowed hard.
“A letter?” The short hairs on the back of Flynn’s neck rose of their own will.
“It—it ain’t ’xactly for you—” Charlie subtly nodded toward Rachel once again “—if you catch my meaning.”
Flynn didn’t catch Charlie’s meaning, but the way he was acting the letter must have something to do with Rachel.
Marydyth.
An icy finger traced a line up Flynn’s back. He was hard-pressed to keep from shivering. He looked down at Rachel, still hiding halfway behind his leg. The salty outline of dried tears was still evident on her little cheeks.
Once right after Victoria had persuaded Flynn to become Rachel’s guardian he had seen a pile of letters tied with a black ribbon. They had been addressed to Rachel and sent from Yuma.
Flynn and Victoria had some strong words on the matter before she ended the discussion by tossing them into the flames of her fireplace.
“Sugar, why don’t you go clean the dishes off the table? I’ll finish with Charlie, then we’ll wash them up and have some gingerbread and milk.” Flynn gave her a wink.
“All right, Unca Flynn.” Rachel unclasped her fingers from his pants and walked slowly down the long hall. She looked small and way too vulnerable as she passed beneath the crystal chandelier.
“Thanks, Mr. O’Bannion, I didn’t wanna say nothin’ in front of the child.” He pulled an envelope from his vest pocket. His fingers worked nervously around the outside edge. He seemed undecided about whether he wanted to keep it or give it to Flynn.
“Is it a letter for Rachel?” Flynn finally asked when Charlie’s fingers had trodden the same ground for the third time.
“No, not precisely.” Charlie’s lips parted but no sound came out. Then he took a deep breath. “It’s—it’s, aw hell, the letter is addressed to—to the Black Widow.” The words spilled out in an awkward rush.
“I don’t like that name, Charlie.” Flynn took a step closer and lowered his voice. “I never did.”
Charlie’s eyes widened and his Adam’s apple worked up and down. “It is to Mrs. Marydyth Hollenbeck,” he corrected himself, and thrust the letter at Flynn. “Now who would be a-writin’ to her here? I said to myself. Well, nobody who knew what happened, I answered myself. And then I says, well, I says, I better get this to Mr. O’Bannion, right away.” Charlie was staring at the paper as if he thought it might come to life.
“I figger you’d best be the one to have it—since Miz Victoria is—well, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” Flynn glanced at the envelope in his hand. It was dirty and ragged. There was no return address and the postmark had been blurred by dirt, greasy stains and the passage of time. It was an old envelope, and had passed through a lot of hands.
Flynn glanced back at Charlie. A hundred questions raced through his mind.
“What do you suppose you’ll do with it, Mr. O’Bannion?” Charlie was still staring at the paper. “I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Mr. O’Bannion, I am mighty happy I don’t have to do nothing with it. That Black Wi—I mean that Mrs. Hollenbeck, she came to no good, and everythin’ that touched her was the same way.”
“I’ll have to give it some thought,” Flynn interrupted, strangely annoyed to hear Charlie condemn Rachel’s mother in her own house.
“I knew you’d know just what to do, I mean you takin’ care of the little one and all. Yep, that was why I brought it to you. Well, I best be going.” Charlie suddenly turned and shuffled toward the front door, as if he had used up all the words inside him and was anxious to escape.
“Thanks for coming all the way up here. I appreciate it.”
“Just wanted to get it to you right off.” He glanced at the envelope once again. “I figger it might be important—or it might be bad news of a kind. Bad news seemed to follow that woman.”
Flynn ran his finger over the stains and dirt on the yellowing envelope. “Charlie, I’d like for you to keep this quiet.”
Charlie looked at Flynn and blinked. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, Mr. O’Bannion, I’d be happy to oblige. It’s a load off my mind just to put in your hands.” Charlie ducked his head and pulled his shapeless hat back on his head. “I told myself that Miz Victoria wouldn’t like me waitin’, nosirree, she wouldn’t like it a’tall.”
“Thanks again, Charlie, and good night.” Flynn closed the door behind Charlie.
He glanced down at the envelope, allowing the questions to come unhindered.
Why would somebody be writing to Marydyth at this address? The papers had been full of the details of her trial—the details and those names: the Black Widow and Murdering Mary.
The public had turned on Marydyth with the same vigor they had once pursued her. And the very ones that had been so happy to be guests in her home, to have attended the fancy dances and dinners, suddenly didn’t know her name.
“Unca Flynn, the table is all cleared.” Rachel’s voice drifted down the hallway.
He shoved the letter in his pocket. He would have to deal with the letter later. Right now his main priority was caring for Rachel.
Chapter Two (#ulink_e7f16514-d9d4-512f-b4d0-536ad3b01139)
As sundown came to the prison, the oppressive heat of the day vanished. Within an hour Marydyth was shivering in the cold.
She turned on her hard, rickety cot and closed her eyes. The hand she rubbed her face with was rough, callused and dry as the desert around Yuma. There had been a time when Marydyth’s hands had been soft, white, delicate, J.C. had called them.
Marydyth smiled and thought of her husband. There had been a time when the most important question she and J.C. shared was how many beaux they would allow to call once their darling daughter began receiving. Now each night when Marydyth lay down to sleep, the first and last thought in her head was a prayer for Rachel’s happiness. It was all that kept her sane.
Once more J.C.’s face came to her mind. She remembered their wedding day, all bright sun and giggling anticipation. J.C. had given her his name on that day.
“Marydyth Hollenbeck. It suits, I think,” he had said. Then he had smiled, creating a dimple in his cheek.
Did Rachel have a dimple? Marydyth tried to visualize Rachel’s face, how it would have changed and matured during the time she had been away.
As an infant Rachel’s hair had held the promise of reddish highlights. Would it be blond or would it shine like an Arizona sunset? Would it flash with auburn fire?
A smile tugged at the corners of Marydyth’s mouth. For a short march of time she was able to forget her environment. In her mind, if not her battered body, she could rise up from the depths of Yuma’s hellhole and live through the hopes and dreams she cherished for Rachel.
Her little girl would be a beauty, of that Marydyth had no doubt. And she would be a lady.
Victoria would see to it.
Rachel would never have to go to bed hungry. And she would never have to worry about money.
But would she be loved?
Would Victoria be able to put aside the poison of her hatred and embrace Rachel? Or would the bitterness of J.C.’s death be a blight on Rachel’s life?
The chilling question made Marydyth shiver more than the bleak cold of the Arizona desert. Would Victoria be able to love the daughter of a woman convicted of killing two husbands?
The moon rose and sent a silvery shaft of light through Rachel’s frilly starched curtains. Flynn had opened the window halfway to allow a little fresh air into her room while he got her ready for bed. Now she was tucked up and listening to him with a look of pure fascination on her face.
“…and the little princess lived happily ever after.” Flynn closed the slender volume and placed it on the table beside Rachel’s bed. He leaned close to give her a kiss on the forehead.
“That was a nice story.” She yawned and stretched, nearly giving him a shiner with her small clenched fist.
“You ought to know it by heart, as many times as you’ve had me read it. I think tomorrow you can read it to me.”
