Chapter Ten
“Hold it steady,” JackWendler said as Beau gripped the edge of the wagon with all his might to keep the weight off the newly fixed wheel. “There it is. It’s on.”
He let go and caught his breath as his new brother-in-law finished up securing the wheel to the axle. Beau didn’t know much about fixing wagons, but Jack seemed to know his way around them. All Beau did was follow his directions.
“Did you grow up doing things like this?” he asked as he stretched out the cramps in his hands.
Jack glanced up at him and laughed. “Not at all. I grew up in New York, in the city. The only thing I could fix was a business deal, and I wasn’t even very good at that. I excelled at spending other people’s money. And making friends—except with Faith, at first. She was rightfully skeptical of me.” He ran a hand over the wheel. “Good as new.”
Beau glanced about the land where they stood. The farm seemed to be as productive as a factory, at least from Beau’s unpracticed eyes. A cozy-looking home stood nearby, along with a barn, several outbuildings, and neat lines of fencing. Chickens squawked from an enclosure, and two horses and a cow munched on grass. It seemed Beau wasn’t the only one who’d had to learn an entirely new way of life, although seeing all of this made him thankful Faith didn’t have a farm. Farming had to be much harder to learn than Morse code and being civil to all manner of people who came to send and collect mail.
“Faith and Celia seem very close,” Beau said. “I suppose I’m not surprised she felt protective of her sister.”
“She also saw right through me.” Jack leaned against the side of the wagon, smiling a little at some memory or another. “I was hiding something, and she knew it.”
“Oh?” Beau stiffened a little. He still hadn’t told Faith why he’d left home when he did. It was easy to push it from his mind, out here, so far away from those memories—and the guilt—best left undisturbed.
“None of my business ventures back in New York were particularly successful. The last fellow I’d convinced to invest in my ideas wasn’t forgiving when the entire venture fell apart. I left town at dawn, but he eventually found where I’d gone and sent some of his men after me.”
Beau shoved his hands into his pockets. This was all entirely too familiar. “How did you tell Celia?”
Jack ran a hand through his hair and frowned. “I didn’t. She found out on her own, and then I had to crawl out of the hole I’d put myself into. She forgave me, thankfully. And she saved my skin, along with the entire town.”
“Hmm.” Beau looked away, out across the flat farmland, wheat reaching for the blue sky, toward the large bluff that sat behind the farm. There was a lesson in Jack’s tale, one he didn’t much care to think about it.
But he needed to.
After accepting a good meal from Celia and thanks from Jack for the help, Beau started back toward town on the horse he’d rented from the livery. Jack’s story played through his mind again. The message was clear: he ought to have told his wife what danger he’d left behind in New York.
Beau had left danger behind in New Orleans.
He rubbed a hand across his face. It all felt so distant, as if it had happened in another life. And when he’d left, he’d left more than just the city. He’d put aside the ugly gambling habit he’d developed after selling the newspaper. He’d left the so-called friends he’d made at taverns and brothels. He’d vowed to become the man he’d been when his father was alive.
And he had.
But none of that wiped away the fact that he’d done the worst thing possible before making that decision.
