“Of course you did,” Shea said, not understanding the sudden urgency in the words, or the meaning.
And then her mother screamed.Shea hurried out of the ward to find a nurse.In minutes there was an injection, and Sara’s calm gray eyes clouded.
“I did what I thought was best,” she mumbled again.
“It’s all right, Mama,” Shea said.“It’s all right.”
Sara’s eyes closed, and Shea wondered whether she would ever forget the fear that was etched on her mother’s face.
He had been so handsome.So charming.So persuasive.Sara saw him now in her fevered pain.
Jack Randall.He had been everything a young girl could want.It had been a miracle when he asked her to marry him and go West.
And then the miracle had turned into a nightmare.She discovered that Jack Randall was an incurable thief.Far more money than he earned showed up in his pockets.For a while she believed his explanations: a wager, a gift, a bonus from a grateful superior.But then Jack would say it was time to leave, often quite abruptly and in the middle of the night.
He always found another position; he could charm birds out of trees, employers out of checking nonexistent references, but then he would tire of his current job, complain it was not worthy of his skills, start stealing, and, when he thought he might be caught, move on again.
Like so many women often did, Sara thought at first she could reform him.But stealing seemed to be an addiction with him.He took more and more chances, and then she discovered his participation in a robbery of the bank in which he was a clerk.She had found wrapped bills in his traveling bag following the robbery, just days after she knew she was with child.
He had promised so many times to stop, and she didn’t believe him anymore.Part of her would always love him, but she wouldn’t raise a child on stolen money.Not as the child of a thief.She might be able to exist that way, but she wouldn’t burden a child with that kind of legacy.
And so without telling him of the child but threatening to reveal his part of the bank robbery if he came after her, she left him, telling friends in Boston that her husband had died.She had no intention of marrying again.Shea was born just when Sara’s own father died, leaving her a small inheritance, just enough to buy the millinery shop where she worked.
And the lies had started, the lies she had warned Shea about, because she knew better than anyone how destructive they became.She couldn’t let Shea know of her tainted blood, and so she lied and lied and lied, allowing Shea to believe that her father had been an honorable man, a good man.
She knew now what a mistake she’d made.As she emerged again from the foggy, weighted world of morphine, she was terrified that Shea would learn her father was still alive and try to go to him.She couldn’t let that happen.Jack Randall would corrupt her as he corrupted everyone around him.
Why had she kept the letters, the money, the newspaper story?
Because you couldn’t ever completely let him go.He was her weakness, the kind of weakness she’d tried to keep from infecting her daughter.Perhaps there was still time to burn those few keepsakes of a marriage that had been both paradise and hell.
She looked up at her daughter, who was sitting in the chair next to her, and saw her blue-gray eyes were closed.If only she could go home, she thought just as the pain hit again with agonizing sharpness.
A moan escaped her, and Shea’s eyes opened.Such honest eyes.She must never know about Jack Randall.He would charm her with that smile that delighted the heart.
“Mama?”
“There’s a box, Shea, a wooden box,” Sara said.“In my closet.Go and bring it to me.”
Shea shook her head.“I can’t leave—”
Sara tightened her clasp on her daughter’s hand.“Please … it won’t take long.…”
Shea hesitated.She didn’t want to leave, but her mother was growing agitated.She would hurry.“I’ll bring it.”
Sara’s fingers dug into her hand.“Don’t open it.”
“I won’t,” Shea said.“I’ll get a nurse.…”
Her mother’s hand dropped as her body arced again with pain.“Just bring …”
“I’ll bring it, Mama.I’ll be right back.”She leaned down to place her hand on Sara’s cheek, and Sara knew she must look frighteningly ill.“Go,” she said.
Her daughter nodded and hurried out the door.
Pain hit again, and Sara felt more of her life draining away with each new onslaught.She must destroy Jack’s letters, those few letters that begged her to return, the envelopes of money he’d sent.He had never known about the child, and she never wanted him to know.
Her eyes closed, and she saw him again in her mind, in her heart.Jack had begged her to come back ten years ago.He had said he had joined the army and was now a respected major.He had said nothing about the stealing.He could never admit doing anything wrong, but she knew he was trying to tell her he was through with that.She had been tempted.Dear God, how she had been tempted, and then she read the story in the Boston paper about a court-martial in Kansas and how a Major Randall had testified against another officer accused of payroll robberies.Most of the money had never been found.And she had known, deep in her heart, that it had been Jack who was responsible, not the other man.
