The Complete Oregon Series, page 95
“Excuse us,” Phin said. Three quick steps brought him next to Rika.
Luke stormed toward them, his dark lashes clumped together by... Rika stared. Were those tears?
“What’s wrong with Amy?” Phin asked his boss. “Half an hour ago, she was fine.”
“Something I said unsettled her. I need to talk to her, to explain...” Luke waved his hands as if to shoo them out of the way.
Nattie stepped onto the veranda, paused, and then walked over to them. Her gray eyes looked like coals in her pale face, the red rims like rings of embers. When her father tried to make eye contact, her gaze veered to the side.
Phin hurried over and gripped her elbow. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Nattie said, but her lips trembled and she clung to Phin’s arm.
“What on God’s green earth happened?” Rika asked. Amy had fled to the stable, and even the usually calm Nattie looked as if she’d been through hell.
When no one answered her, something boiled over inside of her. She was fed up with the lies bubbling beneath the surface. The Hamiltons hid their own secrets—and now one of those secrets had hurt Amy. But how could Rika shout at them and demand to know what had driven Amy away when she, too, was lying?
The barn door banged open. Ruby pranced into the yard, led by a grim-faced Amy.
“No!” Her father took a step, then stopped as if coming closer would scare her away. “Amy, please, stay and talk to me.”
“Let her go if she wants,” Phin said. “She’ll stew a little and then be back. That’s what she always does.”
“This isn’t like the other times.” Luke’s voice vibrated with tension. “I can’t explain. It just isn’t.”
Amy grabbed the reins and prepared to swing onto Ruby’s bare back.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Rika flew across the yard. She reached out to grab the bridle. Pain shot through her arm, and she cried out as it fell back into the sling.
“Rika! What are you doing?” Amy dropped the reins to cradle Rika’s arm.
“Stopping you from running away again,” Rika said. She grasped the bridle with her left hand.
Instead of looking at her, Amy stared over her shoulder to where her parents stood. The vacant expression in her eyes reminded Rika of the soldiers in the field hospital. Those young men looked dazed, numb, as if they were still on the battlefield, with mortar shells exploding all around them. “Get out of the way,” Amy said, her voice flat.
Rika tightened her grasp on the bridle. “If you go, take me with you.” In her shell-shocked condition, Amy shouldn’t be alone.
“You can’t ride with your shoulder.”
“I’ll manage.” Rika raised her chin.
When Amy stared at her, the haze finally lifted from her eyes. She sighed and whispered, “It’s not fair to stop a panicked horse from running.”
Rika let go of the bridle and rubbed Amy’s hand until she relaxed her fingers around the strand of mane in her grasp. “Why are you scared?” Rika lowered her voice too. “What happened?”
“Amy.” Luke inched closer, hands at his sides, no hasty moves. “Please come back inside. I know I’m the last person you want to see right now, but please, at least stay and talk to your mother.”
“Is she even my mother?”
Luke flinched as if Amy had slapped him. “Lash out at me all you want. The Lord knows I deserve it. But don’t hurt your mother.”
The bit of mane fell from Amy’s grasp. Her shoulders hunched. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Come inside,” Nora said.
Amy handed Phin the reins and slouched back to the house.
When Rika returned to the cabin, the pastor still sat at the table, white-knuckling his Bible. “We’ll have the wedding on Monday,” he said firmly. “I hope once you are married, you’ll start keeping better company.”
Hamilton Horse Ranch
Baker Prairie, Oregon
June 26, 1868
Amy couldn’t think when she sat still. Not that pacing through the parlor helped.
“For land’s sake, sit,” Nattie said.
The sharp tone stopped Amy’s pacing. Nattie had never talked to her like that.
“I’m already feeling sick to my stomach, and you’re not helping.”
Amy plopped down on the divan and turned to face Papa. He’s not your papa. She. Lord. She pressed her fingertips to her temples. Nothing made sense anymore.
“It’s really true?” Nattie asked, her voice trembling. “Are you really...?”
“A woman,” Luke said. “Yes.”
Nattie swung her head back and forth. “I don’t believe it.”
“Please,” Luke said, “don’t make me show you.” The lines of despair in the pale face made Amy’s protective instincts flare.
How strange. She’d never needed to protect Papa. Luke. Lucinda. Not Papa. Her brain was stuck on that one thought. “It’s all a lie. My whole life and Nattie’s...all one big lie. How could you do that to us? How could you trick Mama into believing—?”
“Wait a minute, Amy.” Mama thrust out her hand. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you sooner, but Luke never tricked me into anything.”
“You knew?” Amy asked and then shook her head at herself. Of course Mama knew. She had shared her life and her bed with Luke for decades. The air whooshed out of her lungs. “D-does that mean...?” She glanced at Mama, then at Luke, who again dropped her gaze to the Brussels carpet. “You share your bed with...a woman?”
Mama fanned her fingers over Luke’s shoulder. “I share my bed, my body, and my life with the person I love. Her gender doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Nattie shot up from the divan. “How can you say that? Of course it matters! Suddenly everything is so...so...” Tears sprang into her eyes.
Amy wrapped her in her arms and rocked her as she had when they had been little girls. She didn’t know if it helped Nattie, but it had an unexpectedly soothing effect on her.
Mama stood next to Papa...Luke, as she always did, chin up, emerald fire in her eyes. “Luke’s gender didn’t matter when she led our wagon train to Oregon,” Nora said, her voice velvet-lined steel. “Her gender didn’t matter when you, Nattie, broke your nose and were crying for Luke to hold you. And it didn’t matter when—”
“It mattered when you lied to us,” Amy shouted. “You lied to us every day of our lives.”
Luke’s head jerked up. “No.” She took a step toward them, then stopped and held out her hands. “Please don’t believe that. I wasn’t pretending. It’s not an act. I showed you my true self all along. I just let you believe that this true self is male.”
“But why?” Nattie asked. She lifted her head from Amy’s shoulder and rubbed her eyes.
“Because this,” Luke tugged at her shirt, “is who I am. There is no other life for me.”
Nattie sniffled. “No, I mean, why lie to us? Why did you let us believe that you’re a man and our father?”
“I never wanted to deceive you. I thought I was doing what was best for you.”
“Best for us?” Nattie’s voice sounded like the squeaking of chalk over a blackboard. “How can all the lies be what’s best for us?”
“In the beginning, you were too little to understand and to keep my secret. If you had blurted it out to the wrong person...” Luke pressed her lips together until they formed a razor-sharp line.
Again, Mama threaded her fingers through Luke’s. It was a familiar gesture, one that Amy had witnessed a thousand times over the years, but now it looked different. Nothing would ever be the same again. “You need to be careful not to give Luke away,” Mama said. “If the wrong person learns her secret, we will all be in danger. The ranch could be burned down or Luke killed over this.”
Amy’s stomach turned to stone. The panicked squeals of the horses in the burning barn echoed in her ears, and she imagined Mama kneeling in the ashes, crying, clutching Luke’s dead body. She dug her short nails into her palms and forced away the image.
“We couldn’t risk our lives, our safety on the discretion of a child,” Mama said.
“We haven’t been blabber-mouthed children for many years.” Nattie’s eyes flashed like knives. “You could have trusted us.”
“This was never about trust,” Luke said. “I trust you with my life, otherwise I wouldn’t tell you now.”
“Why are you telling us now?” Nattie asked.
From across the room, Luke’s gaze met Amy’s. “Because I’m through ducking my head in shame for who I am.”
Like I do. Amy hung her head. The message was intended for her. When she noticed what she was doing, she forced her chin up, looking from Luke to Mama and back again. Everything she had believed in, everything she thought was true turned out to be a lie, but one thing was still clear without a doubt: her parents loved each other, and they wanted her to see how proud they were of their love.
“I always tried to teach you by example, but in this one thing, I failed.” Luke’s voice rose barely above a whisper. “I hid out of fear. But that’s the thing about keeping secrets. The longer you keep quiet, the harder it becomes to tell the truth.” Silver-gray eyes met Amy’s. It was like looking in a mirror.
Amy swallowed and looked away.
Silence filled the parlor. What now? Could their family survive this? Were they still a family?
“If Papa isn’t...if he...” Nattie paused and tugged on her hair with both fists. “If she isn’t our papa, then where do we...?” She gestured at Amy, then pressed her palm to her own chest. “Who’s our father, then?”
Amy’s stomach twisted itself into knots. For some reason, that thought hadn’t yet entered her mind, but Nattie was right, of course. A woman couldn’t father children, no matter how long she’d lived as a man.
“A father is the person who’s there to pick you up and make it all better when you fall and skin your knees and who’s watching over you for three nights in a row when you’re sick,” Mama said, eyes alive with passion.
True. Luke had done all of that many times. One of Amy’s earliest memories was sitting in front of Luke in the saddle, strong arms keeping her safe. Her throat burned with tears. How could that be an illusion?
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Nattie said. “Don’t we have a right to know?”
Mama rasped her teeth along her bottom lip. Her fingers tightened around Luke’s until Amy could no longer tell which fingers belonged to whom. Mama looked at her. “The man who fathered you was a dashing young man I knew in Boston.”
“Did you love him?” Nattie asked.
“I thought so at the time.” Mama stared off into the distance as if she could see the past. “But I had no idea what love really was. I wasn’t as mature as the two of you. My father and brothers ignored or bullied me all my life, so I was starved for attention. Rafe gave it to me.”
Rafe. So that was her father’s name. Not Luke. “What happened to him?” Amy asked.
Luke wrapped her arm around Mama and drew her against her body.
“He wasn’t ready to be a father,” Mama said.
He didn’t want us. The thought cut like steel. But Luke did.
“If he wasn’t ready to be a father, how come you had me?” Nattie asked.
Silence stretched through the parlor, interrupted by Mama’s ragged breathing. She leaned against Luke’s shoulder and looked at her.
Luke nodded. “They deserve the truth. We can’t hold anything back now.”
There was more? Amy’s insides trembled. Her knees felt as if they would collapse under the burden of yet another revelation.
“Rafe is not your father, Nattie, just Amy’s.”
Nattie stiffened against Amy’s side. Her breathing stopped. “What? We’re not real sisters? Not even that is true?”
“You are sisters. You just had different fathers.”
“Who was mine?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me!”
Mama’s mouth tore open in a silent sob. Tears ran down her face faster than Luke could brush them away. “I don’t know, sweetie, I really don’t.”
Amy clutched Nattie more tightly. “You don’t know? But, Mama, how can you not know?” A thought slammed into her, robbing her of breath. “You weren’t violated, were you?” She sucked in air, but none of it seemed to reach her lungs.
“No, not like you think.” Mama laid a trembling hand across her eyes. “When I met Luke, I was working in a brothel.”
Amy’s knees buckled. She sank onto the divan and dragged Nattie with her. “A brothel?” Mama, forever the embodiment of love and goodness, had worked in a brothel? Had sold her body to strangers?
Nattie pressed her forehead to her knees and groaned. A steady stream of “no, no, no” fell from her lips.
“She had no other choice.” Luke no longer looked down in shame. Shoulders squared, she stared at them. “She had no family, no friends, no money. No one offered work to an unwed woman with a child. It was either the brothel or letting you starve to death, Amy.”
She did it because of me. Guilt added to the queasiness in Amy’s stomach. Images flashed through her, memories she had all but forgotten. Faces of young women. The tinny plunking of a piano. Rough laughter and cigarette smoke drifting upstairs. Had she lived with Mama in the brothel?
“It was a very bad time in my life, and I’m not proud of it,” Mama said, her voice a whisper. “But still, a few good things came from it. You, Nattie. And I met Luke.” Her tears stopped flowing.
A myriad of thoughts buzzed through Amy’s mind. “You met...” She stopped and licked dry lips. “...in a brothel?”
“It’s not like you think.” Mama brushed her fingers across Luke’s shirt. “Luke was never anything but the perfect gentleman.”
Nattie lifted her head off her knees. She straightened and clutched her stomach. “And Papa...” Her gaze flitted to Luke, then away. “Luke decided to disguise herself as a man so that you could pass yourself off as a married couple?”
“No, Nattie. I lived as a man long before I ever met your mother. She married me without knowing I was a woman.”
“When did you find out? How?” Countless questions tumbled through Amy’s mind.
“On the way to Oregon, Luke was shot, and I treated the wound.”
A vague image rose from the haze of Amy’s memory: her papa huddled under a blanket in a wagon, face bruised and pasty, and Mama crouching next to him, just as pale. She tried to remember what had come before that.
Nothing.
Just a few hazy memories of a busy town full of oxen and horses. She couldn’t remember her life before Luke had joined the family.
“And after finding out, you still stayed?” Nattie asked. “I don’t understand.”
Amy did. Mama is like me. And Papa...Luke is too.
“Maybe one day, when you fall in love, you will, Nattie.” Mama’s thumb caressed Luke’s knuckles. “I married Luke to give my daughters the best life possible, but I stayed with her because I love her. You can’t just walk away from the person you love.” Mama looked at Amy.
Was this another message for her? Did Mama think she was in love with Rika? Am I? She kneaded the back of her neck, where a knot of tension sent painful flares to her temples. Her whole life had crumbled, and she had no idea how to crawl from beneath the ruins. She stood on shaky legs and stumbled out of the parlor.
Hamilton Horse Ranch
Baker Prairie, Oregon
June 26, 1868
Amy lingered in the doorway of Nattie’s room and watched her sister at her desk. She appeared to be bent over a book, but when she shifted, Amy realized she was staring into a handheld mirror. What is she seeing?
Finally, Nattie looked up and turned around.
They stared at each other.
“Are you all right?” Amy asked, still holding on to the doorframe.
“No.”
Amy took a step into the room, reaching out a hand, then drew it back. What was there to say or do? Nothing could change the fact that their family lay in shambles.
“Do you think this is why we were never really close?” Nattie’s voice sounded sluggish, as if something inside her was numb and frozen. “Because we’re only half sisters? Do you think we’re so different because I’m like my father?”
The agony on her face made Amy’s eyes burn. She walked across the room. “Are we so different?” She no longer knew. Finding out Luke’s secret had united them and brought them closer than they had been in years. “We both love horses and the ranch, and we want to be more than just some man’s wife.”
“If we have so much in common, then how come we’ve never spent much time together?” Nattie clutched the mirror she still held. “Why do you never really talk to me?”
“We talk all the time,” Amy said.
“Not about the important things. You never share your thoughts or feelings.”
Why is this suddenly about me? But the pain on her sister’s face kept her from harshly denying it. She glanced down at the mirror as if it would give her a glimpse into Nattie’s heart and soul. When their gazes met, she understood. It’s not about me. It’s about her and where she fits into our family. “That has nothing to do with you. You’re my sister, and I love you.”
“Why, then?”
“I guess I never grew out of the habit of seeing you as my annoying little sister who kept me from riding out to the range with Papa.”
Nattie lifted her chin. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”
“No, you sure aren’t.” Sometimes, Nattie was more of an adult than she was. But in the last few years, Amy had learned to keep her growing attraction to women to herself, and in the process, she had shut out Nattie not just from that part of her life, but completely. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you more, asked your opinion on things, and shared my thoughts. It’s just that...”
