Kari blinked back tears, her eyes welling now, too, and shook her head. “It was a miracle, really. She suffered for so long, but she died peacefully. We were all with her, me, my sisters and brother—”
“I should have been there! Why couldn’t she have written me sooner?Why?”
His agony almost too personal to witness, Kari didn’t know what to say. What could she say? At least Caleb had the letter now, her task done, her promise to her mother fulfilled.
“Perhaps…perhaps you might wish to be alone,” she murmured, glancing uncertainly at Seth. He looked so somber, and shifted uncomfortably as if anxious to leave his uncle to his grief, too. Instead Caleb drew closer to Kari and thrust out the letter to her.
“Go ahead, read it. Much of it concerns you.”
“Me?”
Caleb nodded, studying her again as if searching for something in her face. “You resemble her, you know…except for her hair. I’d never seen such fair hair before, like sunlight glistening on the surface of a lake. Lara was so beautiful…so beautiful. She was to be my bride. My wife. Shall I tell you where I met her?”
Kari didn’t answer, silently accepting the letter he held out to her, the paper damp from his tears. Strangely, she couldn’t bring herself to read it, a deep intuition dawning upon her as she gazed at the color of his hair…a deep honeyed brown a few shades darker than her own.
“I was a Confederate soldier, a prisoner of war. The Union Army needed more men to protect the settlers along the northern frontier, so they gave us a choice. Remain in prison and most likely die of disease like hundreds of others, or switch sides and become a Union soldier. I chose life and was sent to Fort Ripley in Minnesota where your mother’s father was an officer.”
“Yes, my grandfather, Captain Bernhard Olavson. I never knew him. He died only weeks before I was born—”
“May he writhe in hell, too! The letter says he forced Lara to marry another man when he discovered she was carrying a child.Ourchild! He didn’t believe she would ever hear from me again, and he despised me anyway for being a Johnny Reb. I was mustered out of the Army when the war ended and decided to return to Texas, but I asked Lara to wait for me to send for her. I wasn’t sure what I might find in Walker Creek after the war, if it was safe. If the town hadn’t been burned to the ground. God help me, I would never have left her side if I’d known she was pregnant—if I’d known!”
Caleb had turned back to the window while Kari stood there staring at him as if made of stone. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, his words echoing in her brain.
Our child…our child. Her gaze drifted down to the letter in her hand, her fingers oddly grown numb. Could it be true that Arne Hagen wasn’t her father after all, but instead Caleb Walker…?
“When I finally had enough money and sent a letter to Lara with train fare, she sent the fare back to me with a note that she was married and to forget her. I figured her father had something to do with it, hating me like he did, but I never guessed there might be a baby.Oh, God, forget her?As if I ever could…”
Caleb’s voice so desolate that Kari’s throat tightened again, she lifted the letter at last so she might read it herself.
Her mother’s shaky handwriting seemed to burn into her mind…confirming everything Caleb had revealed and so much more.
How much Lara had loved Caleb.
How her heart had broken when she’d agreed to marry Arne Hagen to save her father’s reputation.
How Arne had been a good man and accepted Kari as his own, and that Lara had borne three more children.
And how much she wanted Caleb at last to know his daughter, to protect her and to protect her other children, too, if he could find it in his heart to help them.
Last, she asked Caleb for forgiveness that she only wrote to him now, never answering any more of his letters, but her faith would not allow her to forsake her marriage. Then she’d become ill, a wasting shadow of the young woman he remembered, and she couldn’t bear to see him again only for him to watch her die.
Kari’s fingers trembled as she read the letter’s final words, “I will always love you, Caleb, my true love, my dearest heart. I pray that in spite of all, you remember me fondly. Yours forever…Lara.”
A stillness fell in the room, Caleb with his back to her at the window. Seth stood close by and silent, while Kari dropped her hand to her side.
Within a few brief moments, her life had turned upside down, everything changed. Her father wasn’t Arne Hagen at all, but the man who stood only feet away from her. A heavy sigh escaped him as he lifted his head and squared his broad shoulders. Slowly he turned around to face her.
“Welcome to my home, Kari. I’m sure this news has been as much a shock for you as for me…but you’re my daughter, and not a guest. From this moment, Walker Creek Ranch is as much yours as it is mine. I’ll have rooms prepared for you at once—”
“Forgive me, Mr. Walker,” Kari cut in lamely, not really sure what she should call him, but not prepared at all yet to call him Father. “Surely you wish me to meet your wife first and your children, and I’d fully intended to find lodging in town—”
“I’ve no wife. Nor children…at least not until now. You’ll stay here, I insist upon it. Now if you’ll excuse us, Seth and I have business to attend to, my new stallion. Do you enjoy horse racing?”
She stared at him, as astonished he had no wife and family as that a man wracked by grief only moments ago could have regained full command of himself so quickly. “I’ve never been to one…a race, I mean.”
“Well, we’ll have to change that. It’s a passion of mine. Are you feeling well enough to be left alone for a few moments?”
She no sooner nodded than Caleb gestured for Seth to follow him and walked past Kari to the door.
