She should have contacted army authorities, but then that would have meant revealing her own lies, allowing Shea to know her father was a thief.Still, she had hung on to that clipping.And the money he’d sent.She’d never spend a penny of it.Stolen money.Blood money.She wore an albatross of guilt about that other man.
That clipping … in the box with the letters.
The pain was fading now, drowning in a sea of fog.Hurry, Shea.Hurry.
Oh, Jack, if only …
Shea couldn’t find the box right away.It was well hidden under a number of hatboxes, and she had to go through each one to find what her mother apparently wanted—a lovely carved wooden box with a lock.
She wondered where the key might be.She went through her mother’s desk, looking for one.Wouldn’t her mother want the key as well?
Almost frantic with worry, she gave up.The key must be either in her mother’s possession or at the millinery shop below.Just as she was leaving the house, a neighbor stopped to ask questions, and it took Shea several moments to get away.She couldn’t find a rental carriage and started to run, urgency eating at her.
She held the box as if it were a treasure as she ran up the steps of the hospital.
The nurse on the second floor looked away from her when she approached.Feeling a sting of apprehension, she hurried to the room her mother shared with three others.
The doctor was looking down, his face bleak.He saw her and shook his head.Shea rushed toward the bed, fear rushing through her.Her mother’s face was pale, unnatural.Shea leaned down and touched her lips; the cheek was cool.Still.Lifeless.
“I’m sorry, Shea,” the doctor said.
Shea looked at him uncomprehendingly.Her mother had been fine five days ago.How could this have happened?She looked at the doctor through glazed eyes.She wanted to blame him, but she couldn’t.Her mother had resisted Shea’s entreaties too long.
Shea knelt next to the bed.She grabbed her mother’s hands, trying to get some sign of life.“You can’t,” she whispered.“You can’t go.”
Shea willed her to open her eyes, willed warmth back into those hands.All Shea had was her mother.
She felt pain gather behind her eyes, a tightness that threatened to squeeze life from her.“Don’t leave me like this,” she whispered as tears started to trickle down her cheeks.
She didn’t know how long she stayed there before Dr.Sanson pulled her to her feet, the old, often irritable doctor trying awkwardly to give comfort.
“What will you do now?”he asked.
“I don’t know,” Shea said brokenly.Dully, she looked at the box that had fallen to the floor.It had held importance to her mother, and that was strange.Shea had thought they shared everything.
But that didn’t matter.Nothing mattered now except the loss and loneliness she felt.In that state of numbness that protected one from grief too strong to bear, she thought of what must be done.A funeral.Friends to notify.Decisions about the shop.
She leaned down and picked up the box.She would examine it later.Alone.
She watched as the doctor pulled a sheet over her mother.A tear snaked down her cheek, and she brushed it away.Sara Randall had always been strong.Shea could be no less.
Rafe Tyler hesitated outside the walls of the Ohio Penitentiary.The prison-supplied clothes were ill-fitting on his tall, lanky form, and on a hot summer day the wool was uncomfortable and scratchy.But then anything was preferable to the stripes he’d been wearing for so long.Three thousand, six hundred, and fifty-two days, to be exact.He’d counted each one of those days in hell.Ten years gone from his life.Stolen.Just as his honor had been stolen.
He yearned for a cotton shirt, for trousers that fit, for a pair of boots instead of the little more than cardboard shoes he wore now.He longed for a lot of things.A night looking at stars.He hadn’t seen stars in ten years.His tiny cell hadn’t had a window, and the convicts were locked up long before evening.
Convict.Even if he didn’t wear that damning brand, he knew the stench of convict radiated from him.Outside the walls he still found himself shuffling like one; his voice, like that of so many other prisoners, sounded hoarse from disuse.
His marked hand went into his pocket.Abner was there.Abner who helped save his sanity.His finger rubbed the small, contented mouse who liked the wool far better than he did.
Rafe watched as people looked at him warily while they passed him on the street.Some looked through him, as if he didn’t exist.He felt a muscle move slightly in his cheek.Ten years locked away, and now …
Rafe tried to think of something else, of things small and large he hadn’t permitted himself to think about during the past years.
A horse, by God.How he longed to be in a saddle again, to feel control.To go where he wanted.
And a woman.A woman of dubious virtue and no pretensions.Christ, but he needed that physical release.After Allison’s betrayal, though, he wanted nothing more from females than a few minutes of physical pleasure with their bodies.He knew damned well he would never trust one again.
But those desires paled in comparison with his longing for revenge.For retribution.For justice, if there was such a thing.
