Chapter 12

D ays ago, the train compartment had been nearly empty. This afternoon's journey was the opposite: the car had only a handful of empty seats.

Jack found himself in an aisle seat, next to a portly woman who was balancing three brown-wrapped packages in her lap and had a carpetbag between her feet.

Across the aisle, a man who must have been around Jack's age held a young boy in his lap while a girl of six sat next to him at the window, swinging her feet.

Jack held a newspaper, folded into quarters. He forced his eyes to scan the tiny type, though the ache in his head made it difficult to concentrate.

He'd been hoping for an answer in the paper's pages. Where was he supposed to end up next?

He needed the focus of a job. A new mission. Something to distract him.

Across the aisle, the little girl was whispering urgently to her father, who looked harried but then sighed. He stood up, juggling the boy in his arms.

"I don't gotta use the water closet!" shouted the young boy.

One or two heads turned at the commotion, but mostly folks were absorbed in their own conversations or didn't seem to care.

The father put the boy in the seat where he had been sitting. The little girl had moved out into the aisle and was dancing in place.

"Stay in this seat," the man said sternly. "You understand?"

The boy nodded, eyes wide with sincerity.

Jack snapped his paper, blinking his eyes into focus.

He didn't care about a little family traveling on the train. Why should he?

The ache from the bruise in his side seemed to pulse.

It was far too easy to imagine Merritt holding a toddler on her hip or comforting a child with a skinned knee.

She'd be such a good mother.

His head ached when he pictured another man in that scene with Merritt. Imagined her looking at someone else the way she'd looked at him, like he was some kind of hero. Like he'd hung the moon. Bitterness coated his tongue.

The little boy across the aisle hadn't sat still after all. He was standing on the seat his father had left him in, facing backward. He seemed to be looking for his father, and Jack found himself craning his neck to try to see the man too.

There were several people crowded at the end of the car. None of them was the boy's father.

The rack above the family's row of seats was stuffed with passengers' bags and parcels. Some soul had left their bag with a long leather strap hanging down. It swung slightly with the sway of the train's movement and seemed to tempt the boy, even though it was at least a foot out of his reach overhead.

Jack could see that the bag was wedged behind another, larger suitcase.

The boy stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth in concentration and scrambled to climb on the back of the seat, craning his head to keep the strap in view.

Jack sent another glance over his shoulder. No father in sight. None of the other passengers seated around them seemed to notice or care that the boy might fall from his precarious position or that if he did tug on that leather strap, something from the overstuffed rack might fall on top of him.

Jack sighed.

It wasn't his business.

But—

"Kid, your pa told you to sit down."

The child pretended not to hear him, still completely focused on the strap. He couldn't reach it. There were still several inches of empty air above his hand.

But then he pushed off the seat back and flung himself into the air.

Jack reacted without thinking, standing to brace one hand on the luggage overhead while his other arm came around the boy, who'd managed to pull on the strap but had lost his grip and was tumbling toward the aisle.

"Hey!"

Jack quickly set the boy on his feet in the seat, aware of the father's presence behind him. He stepped back into the crowded space in front of his own seat, bracing for angry words or a physical confrontation.

But the man nudged his daughter into her seat and slumped into his own, putting the boy on the ground between his knees.

"I told you to sit still," the father told his son and then nodded toward Jack. "Thank you for catching him. He might've been crushed if he'd knocked all that luggage down."

Jack nodded.

"You got kids of your own?"

The image of Merritt holding a baby of her own jumped into Jack's mind. He shook his head.

"No? I thought I recognized that long face. I've seen it in the mirror enough lately. You missin' your family?"

Jack's chest squeezed tighter. "I don't have any family."

He lifted his newspaper, hoping to end the conversation.

The little boy squirmed, trying to nudge past his father and into the aisle. The father, more patient than Jack, diverted his son's attention to something passing outside the window, and the boy went to stand in the space next to his sister's feet, peering out the wavy glass.

"My wife's been with her sister for a coupla weeks," the man said. "Cecil Treadway," he introduced himself, and Jack did the same.

"Her sister was in the family way but lost the baby, and my Jeannie went to be with her. She doesn't know we're coming." Cecil sounded proud of that. "Her last letter said how much she missed the kids. And we all miss her too. So we're gonna surprise her for Christmas, stay a day or two to pick up her spirits."

Jack nodded along, but his eyes had dropped. Cecil was obviously a family man through and through. He cared about his wife, about his kids. He hadn't gotten angry when his boy had done something naughty.

What was wrong with Jack that he'd never had a family to love him? He was envious of a little kid—a stranger on a train.

"You look like I did before I got my life straightened out and convinced Jeannie to marry me."

Jack didn't know what he'd done to invite Cecil into this personal conversation, but found himself frowning. "I don't have a woman. I don't have anyone."

"Hmm."

Jack suddenly realized, after years of gambling, that he'd clenched his fist on his knee—a tell.

"It would never work between us." He practically growled the words to this stranger. "Our lives are too different."

"So change."

Cecil said the words in a matter-of-fact way, as if doing so was as easy as a snap of Jack's fingers. How was he to make a living if he didn't visit a poker table?

Jack didn't know whether he could be content living in one place. He thought of the way all of Merritt's friends, her community, had pitched in to help when she'd needed it.

Thought of the lonely nights he'd spent lying in bed in a different hotel than the night before.

He'd told himself it was what he wanted, being anchorless. Having nothing to tie him down.

But now he saw the emptiness of the life he'd been living.

Merritt had seen an empty future stretching before her, and she'd taken action. Not run away from it.

"What if I'm not worthy of her?" His voice sounded rough, and he saw a flash of surprise in Cecil's eyes.

"You ever heard of the Good Book?"

He'd sat through several hours of Mr. Carson reading him stories, explaining what they meant. The prodigal son, with his father waiting for the lost son to return. The road to Jericho. Jesus.

They weren't the stories Mrs. Farr had told Jack when she'd raised the belt to punish him.

Jack had promised himself he'd let Carson's stories filter over him like water over a stone in a creek.

But Cecil's question brought everything he'd heard this week into sharp relief.

"None of us are worthy," Cecil said. "Not without the sacrifice Jesus made for us."

Jack felt the truth of it settle in his bones. Mrs. Farr had been wrong. God wasn't a cruel taskmaster or waiting for Jack to make a mistake.

He'd sent His Son to earth to make it possible for Jack to be worthy.

He sat with the realization, with the tears that smarted his eyes, for long moments while the noise of the train car faded into the background.

When he looked back to Cecil, the other man was smiling patiently.

"Thank you," Jack said. "I needed to hear that."

"Ain't it funny how God's Providence put us on this train together?"

It was something, all right.

"I got one more question for you."

Jack nodded for him to continue.

"Did you tell her you loved her? Your girl?"

No. He'd been too much of a coward to show his feelings when he'd seen the hurt he'd caused.

"Maybe you should."

* * *

Merritt heard a shuffle of feet as she tugged another hardback chair into perfect alignment with its neighbor.

She glanced up to see Corrine and Danna walk into the dance hall.

The compassion on her friends' expressions was too much to bear, and she gave an impatient sniff as she moved a step forward and rearranged another chair.

Merritt had counted earlier, but she turned to the front of the room and began to count the chairs all over again. It gave her an excuse not to face her friends directly. The signs of her tears from earlier had faded. No more splotchy cheeks or red tip of her nose.

She was fine.

"Have you eaten lunch?" Corrine asked.

"…forty-five, forty-six—just a moment," she called to her friend. More counting, the rhythm a constant in her head. Sixty chairs.

It was more space than she'd had last year in the classroom, when families had squished together, most standing, to see their children perform.

She glanced regretfully at the plain blue backdrop, hastily assembled and painted after she'd left the preacher's home this morning. The room still smelled of paint, and they wouldn't have the scene for the manger, but it would have to do.

Thinking of the destruction of the beautiful artwork that had been made by her students and Jack made her angry.

She moved through the rows of perfectly straight chairs to the tables she'd dragged to one side of the room.

Danna's and Corrine's footsteps rang out as they trailed her across the room.

"How can we help?" Corrine asked carefully.

"I think everything is in order," Merritt said with a falsely cheerful note to her voice. She wished they would just go away.

She caught sight of the haphazard way the auction pieces were displayed. That simply wouldn't do.

She began to straighten them, wrinkling her nose as she tried to decide whether to sit up or lay down the porcelain doll donated by the mercantile.

"Merritt." She'd heard a gentle tone in Danna's usually strident voice only once before—when the marshal had been attempting to comfort a young child who had witnessed a tragedy.

Merritt found it easier to focus on the small changes to the auction items than face her friends. She was fine, after all.

"Stop," Corrine commanded, and now there was an impatient snap to her voice.

When Merritt reached for the next piece, a black hat that reminded her of Jack with a piercing intensity, Corrine stepped forward and gripped her forearm. "Merritt!"

Merritt felt a little breathless when she faced her friends, her eyes instantly smarting. She didn't want to cry anymore.

"We want to talk to you about Jack," Danna said gently.

Merritt pressed her lips together to keep them from shaking. "There's nothing to talk about. He lied to me. He wasn't my groom after all."

There was no husband for her. No future children. Only a classroom and work, work, work…

Corrine squeezed her arm. "When my first husband died, I felt…well, I felt a lot of things. Relief. Guilt. I started to sink into loneliness, but it was you who reminded me that God is always with me—husband or no husband."

Had it been almost two years ago? Merritt remembered evenings spent with Corrine when Corrine had been a widow with a newborn and toddler. She couldn't tell the other woman what she'd said back then. God is always with me . She might've said that.

But right now the words felt like a scrape against raw skin.

She caught sight of the children's costumes, lying neatly over the back row of chairs, waiting for her students to arrive. One white angel's robe had slipped and pooled in the seat of the chair. She slipped past her friends, ignoring the look they exchanged, and went to straighten it.

She'd been a fool to think she needed more than this. What was so wrong with getting a little lost in her work? She was needed here. A teacher was always needed.

Danna sidled up next to her, reaching out to touch one of the angel wings. "There were times in my marriage to Fred that I felt lonely. A husband isn't a guarantee that you'll never feel that way. It wasn't until I realized I had to find my contentment in God that I truly found peace."

A shudder passed through Merritt as realization washed over her. She'd kept her plans to marry John Crosby from her family and friends because she hadn't wanted to admit how lonely she'd become. She'd allowed herself to become lost in her job and then in the idea of having a husband of her own.

She should've been looking for peace from her Heavenly Father. And it wasn't too late to start searching, was it?

Danna cleared her throat, then changed the subject. "I got hold of some interesting information when I wired the marshal back in Nevada."

Merritt shook her head. She didn't know whether she could hear any news about Jack, and that must be what Danna was talking about.

"Rumor is Jack won a large sum at the poker tables. Nearly bankrupted a grocer who was charging higher prices to some of the folks in town—folks who mostly seemed to be immigrants, if you catch my meaning."

Merritt's heart squeezed. I was trying to protect you . He'd said the words to her, and she would never be able to forget the man who'd once been a boy, who'd tried and failed to save his best friend and adopted brother. Of course Jack would've tried to right the wrong.

"The marshal said those same folks came into some money. Seven families in all. None of them would say where they'd gotten the cash."

A tear slipped down Merritt's cheek.

"Also heard from the sheriff over in Colorado, where this Morris fellow is from. He's a hired gun mostly working with a silver miner there. Big operation, bad working conditions. Several men died in a cave-in. And their widows mysteriously came into some money after Jack left town there. After he won a big pot in a hand of five card draw."

Merritt swiped at the tears on her cheeks. Her hollow stomach rumbled. She'd skipped lunch. Maybe she should go home and find something to eat.

"He sounds like the hero from the play you wrote when we were children. The one based off that Robin Hood book," Corrine murmured. "As I recall, you made me the Little John character."

If Jack had done those things, it did sound like someone stealing from the rich to serve the poor. Jack wasn't a fictional character. But that didn't mean he wasn't heroic.

Could one be heroic and be a liar at the same time?

Her emotions were muddled. Her thoughts, too. Jack had cleared away most of the rubble so the school building could be rebuilt. He'd hauled auction donations to her house.

Then we gotta talk .

I need to tell you ?—

Had Jack tried to tell her the truth? There'd been times she'd sensed something building up between them, on the cusp of being shared.

If she blinked, she'd see the stricken expression when she'd given him the hat box.

I've never been given a Christmas gift before…

Corrine came close and put her arm around Merritt's shoulders. Only last night, they'd giggled together as they'd whispered what next Christmas might be like with Merritt as a married woman.

"I let myself get lost in him," Merritt whispered. "I should've known—how could I not have noticed that he wasn't John?"

He'd told her from the beginning. Call me Jack .

She felt so foolish.

"You fell in love with him," Danna said softly.

Merritt shook her head, but she couldn't deny it out loud. She had. She'd fallen for Jack. The man with the pirate's smile. The man who'd once been a boy who had desperately wanted a family and found hardship instead.

She blinked against more tears that threatened to fall. There'd been too many realizations in too short a time. She needed space to think. Time. And she didn't have that, not with the pageant and auction looming close.

She smiled a trembling smile at her friends. "I have to finish getting things ready."

Danna's eyes showed the compassion she felt.

Corrine squeezed Merritt's hand. "We'll help."

Merritt didn't know what God had in store for her. But she had friends beside her who hadn't let her forget that God truly loved her.