Painted by the Sun Page 10

  It was Saturday morning. The early chores were done, and all of them had gathered in the kitchen to enjoy the rarity of a leisurely breakfast. Banners of sunlight draped across the scarred pine table. The glassware and utensils twinkled in the light. Gold-edged steam rose in swirls from the heaping platters of eggs and bacon and biscuits.

  They clasped hands once everyone was seated, and Lily offered a blessing. With Owen's cold fingers tucked tightly in her left hand and Lily's work-roughened palm clasped in her right, Shea felt so connected to these people, so grateful for their friendship.

  A sharp burr of emotion caught in her throat. She wanted to save this moment, tuck it away forever. She'd done that with the evenings her father had played his fiddle by the fire, the rainy afternoons in the big house in New York when the women servants had gathered to do their mending, and the days when Simon had been well enough to walk with her in the park. They were the memories she took out and fingered when she was lonely and afraid. Yet sometimes, when finding Liam seemed hopeless, Shea wondered if this small store of memories were all she'd ever have.

  Shea had just poured second cups of coffee all around when Cam turned to her. "Shea," he said, fishing in the pocket of his corduroy vest. "I have something here I want to give you."

  "Something for me?" Shea couldn't fight the swell of anticipation that crept up her chest, or the quick pinch of eagerness. No one had given her anything since Simon died.

  Cameron caught her hand in his and gently pressed a key into her palm. Shea closed her fingers around it, feeling the irregular shape of the metal against her skin and the warmth of Cameron's body.

  "Why are you giving me this?" she managed to ask him.

  Across the table Rand was squirming in his chair. Lily favored Shea with her one-sided smile, and Cam's eyes sparkled with mischief.

  Shea's heart gave a sharp little kick of excitement.

  "It's the key to the cabin down by the road," he told her.

  "Down by the road?"

  "The hired man's cottage," he went on. "It's small, and no one's lived there for more than a year. It needs some repairs and a good cleaning to make it habitable, but we thought you and Owen might like to use it for the winter."

  Gratitude poured through her like sunshine. These people had done so much for Owen and her already that she could never repay them, and now they were offering them even more.

  Then, on the heels of that flush of appreciation came an inexplicable wariness, the drag of unexpected reluctance. It was confusing, unsettling when just a few minutes before she'd been thinking how much she was going to miss the Gallimores.

  "I can't think what to say," Shea murmured, fumbling for time to sort things through.

  "Why don't we all walk down to the cabin so you can see exactly what it is we're offering you," Cameron suggested.

  Owen hustled out the door, ten paces ahead of everyone else.

  The rustic log house at the end of the lane had been the first building on the property. A trapper had raised it years before, and Cam and Lily had made do living there while the house on the rise was being built. The cabin had been improved several times since then and occupied by a series of hired hands. It consisted of one main room with a loft above and a lean-to grafted onto the back to serve as a bedroom.

  "The roof's sound enough," Cameron observed, standing in the center of the main room with his hands on his hips staring up at the ceiling. "Though God knows the place does need cleaning and sprucing up."

  Shea could imagine that with the cobwebs swept away and a fire glowing on the hearth, the cabin would be every bit as snug as the cottage where she'd grown up.

  "I've a length of blue calico put by," Lily enthused, her face alight. "We could turn it into some perfectly lovely curtains..."

  "I'll bring in wood every day," Rand promised. "And if you're here all winter, maybe I can teach you to win at checkers."

  Shea laced her arms across her chest and surveyed the place a second time. "There isn't light enough to do photography here," she commented dubiously. "And surely no one would come all this way to have their portrait made."

  "You could rent a studio in town and live out here," Cam suggested. Both he and Rand rode into Denver every day for work and school.

  The Gallimores' open-handed generosity beguiled her. Lily's smile, Rand's excitement, and the warmth in Cam's eyes beguiled her. So why, Shea wondered, was she resisting?

  "Before we decide, I think I'd like to go into Denver and see if there's studio space available," Shea hedged.

  "Does that mean you don't want to stay with us?" Rand asked, clearly disappointed.

  "It means she's a businesswoman who must consider her options," Cameron explained, though she could see the pleasure in his face had dimmed, as well.

  Shea couldn't bear to look at Lily.

  "Perhaps we should give Shea and Owen a chance to look over the cabin on their own," Cam went on, and he ushered his sister and Rand toward the door.

  Once they were gone, Owen turned to her. "We staying?"

  Shea could see unexpected hopefulness in Owen's face. "Is that what you want?"

  He shifted from foot to foot.

  Not once since Simon's passing had Owen questioned her decisions or expressed an opinion about where they went or what they did. What made taking this cabin so important? she wondered, and asked him outright.

  "Like it here," Owen admitted, ducking his head.

  Shea had always prided herself on being attuned to Owen's feelings, but she hadn't realized how he felt. Still, if she'd been so taken by the Gallimores, why wouldn't Owen feel the same?

  She pressed him anyway. "What is it you like?"

  He cringed like a turtle drawing back into his shell.

  "What is it you like?" she persisted.

  "He knows," Owen finally whispered.

  "Who knows?"

  "Judge."

  She hadn't realized that Owen had formed such an attachment to His Honor. "What does the judge know?"

  Owen hung his head. It was a full minute before he answered her. "About the war."

  What exactly did Cameron Gallimore know about the war? Lily had said Cam fought for the Union, but Shea hadn't heard him moaning in his sleep caught in the throes of terrible dreams. He didn't appear to be terrified of gunfire. Cam didn't wall himself off the way Owen did.

  But then, she didn't doubt Owen's word. If Owen said Cameron understood about the war, she believed him.

  Owen rubbed his hands together. "Stay here, Sparrow. Please?"

  Shea was stunned by the sudden lucidity in the old man's eyes. How could she have known him for all this time, traveled all these miles in his company, and never once caught a glimpse of this clarity, this other Owen?

  No matter how wrong it felt to accept the cabin from the Gallimores, no matter how remaining on the farm seemed to threaten her own interests, Shea couldn't bring herself to refuse him.

  "All right, we'll stay," she promised.

  "Good." He nodded twice before his eyes clouded over again. "Good."

  * * *

  Shea left Owen in the cabin to contemplate their new home and headed for the photography wagon. The promise she'd made him lay like a rock in her belly, and she hoped that an hour or two of sweeping, scrubbing, and reorganizing the wagon would aid her digestion.

  In truth, she was feeling better when Rand peeked around the back a good while later. "Shea?"

  She looked up from the list of supplies she was making and smiled at him. "Come on in."

  Rand accepted the invitation and climbed aboard. He settled on one of the wooden boxes across from her. "So, what is all this?" he asked her.

  Shea suspected he'd been in the wagon before. What boy worth his salt wouldn't have come in and poked around? Now that she was here, he wanted to know what he'd seen.

  She handed him a piece of the japanned steel. "This is the metal we use to make tintypes," she began in her most instructive voice. "These"—she pulled open the
drawers beneath the dry sink—"are bottles of the chemicals that make that metal sensitive to the light."

  She went on to elaborate, remembering how she'd gone through all this with the boy they'd met up in the mountains. Tyler Morran had been about Rand's age, and his eyes had shone with this same curiosity.

  "Are you going to take a photograph of Pa, Aunt Lily, and me?" Randall asked when she was done.

  Mindful of what Lily might think of having her likeness made, Shea answered carefully. "I'll discuss it with your father, and then we'll see."

  Rand's shoulders slumped. "I was hoping you'd make our photograph and let me watch."

  "I'll show you how this works when we get a studio in town," she promised him.

  Rand seemed momentarily satisfied, though judging from the way he perched on the edge of the box, there was something more on his mind.

  "Shea," he began, though he couldn't quite bring himself to look at her. "If—if someone overhears two people talking about a secret, should he let them know what he overheard?"

  Shea put down her pencil and gave the boy her full attention. "I suppose it depends on the secret and the people involved," she answered carefully.

  Rand frowned, a crease deepening across his brow.

  He raised his gaze to hers. "I wasn't snooping. Honest, I wasn't."

  Though her belly began to tighten, Shea did her best to draw him out. "I know you wouldn't pry into things that don't concern you."

  He shifted again and looked down at his hands. "Well, this does concern me. It concerns Pa and Aunt Lily and me. They were in the kitchen talking when I came up on the porch."

  Family secrets were dear things, especially to close-knit folks like the Gallimores, and Shea knew neither Lily nor Cam would welcome her interference.

  Still, Rand wouldn't have come to her unless he needed someone to talk to—someone who wasn't part of whatever was bothering him. Perhaps he'd come to trust her in the weeks she'd been here. The notion sent a soft, sweet warmth sliding through her.

  She shifted closer. "They didn't mean for you to hear what they were saying?"

  "I don't think so."

  Shea pursed her lips. Should she hear Rand out, then tell Lily and Cam what was bothering him? Should she suggest Rand go directly to his father? That's what Cam would want her to do, but she wasn't sure she could convince—

  "They were talking about how Pa adopted me."

  Rand's words sizzled down Shea's backbone with all the heat of a lightning bolt. She straightened abruptly. "He adopted you?"

  Worried sage green eyes looked up at her. "If he adopted me, it means Pa isn't my real father, doesn't it?"

  At the uncertainty in his voice, tenderness closed like a fist around her heart. Shea shifted across the aisle to the box where Rand was sitting and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

  She shouldn't be the one explaining what adoption was; it wasn't her place. Still, Rand had brought his questions to her, trusted her with his uncertainties. In the instant she had to frame an answer, Shea did her best to think what Cam would want her to say to his son.

  "It's true that being adopted means you and your father aren't related by blood. But being a parent is—" The dark specter of her own secrets and regrets rose before her. "Being a parent is more than blood. It means taking care of a child every single day. It means seeing that he's healthy and happy. It means guiding him as he grows."

  She hauled in a ragged breath, thinking of Liam.

  "Being a parent means loving a child with all your heart," she continued with fierce conviction. "You know how much your father and your aunt Lily love you, don't you?"

  Rand nodded.

  "I can see how much they love you, too," she confirmed, just to be sure he knew. "You must never doubt for a moment that you're your father's son in every way that matters. You're your father and your aunt Lily's child because they've loved you and cared for you." Shea spoke the words unequivocally, determined that he would believe her.

  "Even if they got me from an orphan train?"

  If his first revelation had stunned her, these last two words seared into Shea as if they'd been dipped in acid. "An orphan train?"

  "That's what they said."

  The faint waver in his voice tore at her, and she tightened her arm around him. She longed to tell him all she'd learned about orphan trains—how city children like Rand and her Liam were herded on. How they were marched out onto the platforms of stations thousands miles from anyplace they knew and paraded in front of prospective parents. Her child must have been picked just that way, like a puppy from a litter. And so had Rand.

  Shea bit down hard on the bitter words. Rand had just told her his most terrifying and closely guarded secret. What he needed was to be reassured and comforted.

  She wrapped both arms around him and felt him nestle against her. He was more solid than she'd expected him to be, broader across the back and shoulders, outgrowing his childhood by leaps and bounds. Yet he was still just ten years old, and he needed the right answers.

  "Do you know what orphan trains are?" she asked him.

  "Sort of."

  If she were wise, Shea thought, she'd climb right out of this wagon and take Rand to his father. If she were wise, she'd let Cameron explain this to him.

  Instead she stroked Rand's hair. "Orphan trains brought children from crowded cities back east out to the West, where life wouldn't be so hard for them," she began. "People who wanted to open their homes and their hearts to the children met the trains and picked the boys and girls they wanted."

  "And Pa and Aunt Lily picked me?"

  She could still hear Rand's uncertainty and groped for words that would make him feel as if he was wanted, privileged, unique.

  "They must have been able to see right off what a good boy you were," Shea said, squeezing his shoulder gently. "They realized even then what a fine, upstanding man you were going to grow up to be. They chose you, Rand, because they could tell you were special."

  "They picked me because they thought I was special?" His voice wavered a little, and she hugged him closer.

  "Very special," Shea rested her cheek against his hair. "You're the kind of child any parent would be proud to claim."

  Cam and Lily were exactly the kind of parents every mother dreamed would take the child she'd given up.

  "What I think," Shea went on, "is that it's time for you to tell your father what you've just told me. I think you need to hear what he and your aunt Lily have to say about how they came to adopt you."

  Rand sat back and looked at her. "You don't think he'll be angry I found out?"

  "Your father loves you," she encouraged him. "I think the questions you have left are ones only he can answer. Why don't you and I go find him?"

  "Now?" His eyes widened. "You want to go find him now?"

  "I'll go with you," she offered and rose to stand over him. "I'll help you explain how you found out you were adopted."

  Rand didn't budge. "I don't want to talk to him. I don't want him to know I was listening."

  She ached for him, for all that contrition and confusion and uncertainty. She held out her hand. "Your father loves you. He'll want to explain this to you in his own way."

  "I don't want to talk to him about it!" Rand insisted, and sprang to his feet. "That's why I came to you."

  "Rand, please! This is what's best!"

  "No, it isn't!" he cried and pushed past her. He leaped out of the back of the wagon and was halfway to the corral by the time she'd clambered to the ground.

  As Rand scrambled over the fence, Jasper lifted his head and trotted toward him. The boy threw his arms around his pony's neck, and the neat little roan turned his head to nuzzle his boy.

  Shea stood watching them for a moment more, then let out her breath. Rand had owned up to a lot today. He needed time to think this through, time to gather the courage he'd need to face his father. There was nothing to be gained by pushing him.

  She sagged back against a w
agon wheel, weary now that Rand was gone. Her hands were shaking and her heart was chugging like a freight on an uphill run. She couldn't help wondering if she'd said the right things to Rand, the things that would convince him to talk to his father. To the father who loved him.

  She gave a long, bone-deep shudder as she realized what it was she'd just done. In telling Rand about the orphan trains, she'd put herself in the place of someone who'd adopted a child—not someone who'd given one up. She'd cried a lifetime's worth of secret tears because she'd given up her boy. She'd wrapped her hopes and dreams around finding him. Yet in the space of a few short sentences she'd disavowed all that heartache.

  What if it was people like Lily and Cam who had taken Liam? What would she do if Liam had come to love his adopted parents the way Rand loved the Gallimores? What right did she have to arrive unannounced and disrupt the only life her son could remember? And why, in God's name, was she trekking all over the West looking for a boy who might not want his mother back?

  Shea swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "My boy does want me," she insisted under her breath. "He is waiting for me to come for him. Once I have him, once he's mine, I'll make a wonderful life for both of us."

  Shea straightened slowly, feeling years older than she had half an hour before. She raked her fingers through her hair. She drew a breath and let it go.

  No matter what her own concerns, she needed to let Cam know what Rand had discovered. At first she didn't have any idea how she was going to do that, then she realized that back in the wagon she had just the thing to open their conversation.

  * * *

  Shea had been dreading this moment all day. The rock that had lain in her belly since early this morning had migrated north, lodging at the base of her throat, making breathing all but impossible.

  "Please help me find the right things to say to Cam," she whispered, then hastily crossed herself. She hadn't had all that much to say to the Lord since she'd given Liam up, but she could use a little help tonight. A little wisdom and insight.

  Her hands shook as she reached for the pressboard portfolio she'd taken from the bottom of her valise. She clutched it against her chest like a shield and headed resolutely toward the kitchen.