Chapter 27

27

A knock sounded at Katie's bedroom door.

"Go away," she called out. "I don't need anything." That response always sent Ruby, Delilah, and even Josiah packing.

"Katie girl, it's Pa. I plan to stand outside this door banging until you unlock it."

Not Pa. The shame of facing him after the way he'd found Colby and her in the barn burned hot. She buried her head under the covers.

"If I have to, I'll get Josiah, and we'll bust it down." Then his voice softened. "Please, let me in. I need to talk to you."

The pleading in his voice melted a corner of her heart. She'd never been able to say no to her pa, even when the farce of her marriage should never have taken place.

She rose with weariness and smoothed a hand over her matted hair. A glance in the mirror showed a sallow-cheeked, disheveled girl staring back at her. The glass didn't lie—dark rings around her eyes and pasty white skin hanging on bone. She pulled her wrapper tight and padded to the door.

When she opened it a sliver, Pa pushed in. He took one look and sadness clouded his eyes. He gathered her close. "My sweet girl."

The warmth of his body seeped into hers, and the constant chill and shivers she'd been battling ceased. A new wave of tears burned her eyes and soaked the front of his cotton shirt. She had planned to send him on his way, but the familiar safety of his arms was more than she could withstand.

The facade of the past year melted away. She could no longer pretend. Josiah was divorcing her, and soon the world would know. She couldn't shield her parents from the truth. This marriage had been a terrible mistake, and it was time to stop living the lie. If only she felt like living at all.

Pa smoothed back the hair that had fallen across her face and led her to the bed. "Sit, my dear. We need to talk." He pulled up the chair she'd placed by the window and settled across from her.

"It's time for honesty." His warm eyes held the same love they always had.

"Pa, I never meant to start anything with Colby?—"

"Katie girl, I didn't mean you… I meant me." He shifted. "This is difficult to tell, but I know the good Lord has been asking me to be honest, yet I've been a coward."

She scoffed. "The good Lord? I've tried to believe in a good Lord, but I rather doubt He exists. And if He does, then He's anything but good." She motioned around the room. "Just look at the mess I'm in. All I tried to do was help my family."

"Something we should never have asked you to do." Pa's voice was so much steadier than hers. A calming force. "I made a promise to your mother that I would always take care of her. And then I couldn't." A heavy sigh escaped his lips. "You became our way out of my abject failure."

"You never failed us."

"I did. In more ways than you can imagine. This goes way back, and I need to tell you all of it." Creases furrowed his brow, yet he still looked calm and determined.

"My childhood started back in Richmond. I was just a servant's son, a poor lad living in the home of a wealthy and privileged family with two daughters. Emmaline, the eldest, grew more stunningly beautiful every year. By the time she was in her teens, she had most every man at her beck and call, but her heart was dead and cold.

"The younger sister and I became good friends, but the difference in our stations was ever at the forefront of my mind, even if not in the heart of the younger girl. When she was ten, she confessed her undying love for me and declared she would marry me some day. I, a young teen, laughed it off. I remember kissing her cheek, telling her we came from different worlds. She was destined for much better."

What did any of this have to do with her? Katie was having a hard time seeing the relevance, but Pa was so intense.

"Many said the younger sister was plain because she grew up in the shadow of Emmaline. Few recognized her inner beauty, me included."

He paused and drew in a long breath. "This next part is hard to tell." He stood and turned to the window, staring out. Moments of weighted silence hung thick in the room. He turned back and paced the floor. His lips moved almost like he was praying.

She wanted to prod the story out of him, but something held her quiet.

"The younger sister, true to her word, did love me. She never wavered, never faltered. All through her teen years, her love grew stronger. But I, the fool, got caught in the poison of Emmaline's web.

"Anything forbidden was a challenge Emmaline couldn't resist. When she found out her little sister was in love with me, she started a wicked game. She took delight in the chase. Nothing stroked her ego more than to steal a man from another woman, even from her own sister."

Pa slid back into the chair across from her, but kept his focus on the floor. Whatever calm had cloaked his face before had vanished. "The attention she lavished on me felt real, exciting, intoxicating even. Every man in Richmond wanted the elusive Emmaline, and, somehow, she had picked me. We talked about running away and building a life of our own. I forgot the younger sister in the wake of so much attention. I really thought Emmaline and I would marry, and I did the unpardonable. I tasted all she had to offer, and she offered it all."

Was her careful, upright pa telling her he had a past? Maybe he was trying to acknowledge his own faults so she wouldn't feel as badly about what had almost happened with Colby.

"Emmaline's interest waned quickly. From the time we became intimate until she decided she was bored with me was no more than three months, just enough time for her to become with child."

Katie gasped. Did she have another sibling somewhere?

"I was banished from the house and kicked out onto the streets of Richmond without a penny to my name or the possibility of further employment. I was a disgrace to my family and a scourge to hers. I'd crossed a line between the common and the aristocratic class, and I was blamed for stealing Emmaline's purity. It didn't matter that I hadn't been Emmaline's first." A deep sadness weighed his words. "Even so, my behavior was shameful."

"Pa, they threw you out on your own?" Her heart ached for her father.

"They did. But the younger sister found me. She had talked to Emmaline, and they'd worked out a deal. Emmaline would go away long enough to have the baby and save face. The family wouldn't have to bear that embarrassment and social disgrace. When the baby was born, Emmaline, who didn't want anything to do with motherhood, would give the baby to her sister. The sister suggested we marry so this child would have a family."

He shook his head. "I still can't quite fathom the depth of such love. And so, the baby stayed in the family. Emmaline went on with her selfish life. I became the father I so longed to be, and the sister, although I didn't deserve her, became my wife."

Katie's heart raced. How had all that ended? Pa must have learned about her pending divorce and didn't want her going through the same kind of pain. "Does Ma know about this marriage?"

"Allow me to finish." Pa ran a hand through his thinning hair and breathed out a heavy sigh.

"Our plan worked except for the one factor we hadn't counted on. Her parents were furious and wanted nothing to do with us, especially her mother. They said she'd made her own bed and could now lie in it. They allowed her to take her clothes, the few pieces of jewelry that had been given to her, and her hope chest with the things she'd collected for her wedding day.

"We had a meager start, although things were a little better after we sold the jewelry. We awaited the arrival of the baby with Emmaline in a town called Charlottesville while I took work on the railroad. Following the birth of the baby, we traveled to the Shenandoah Valley and started our new life here. I worked for other farmers until we could afford that small scrap of land we called our own."

Confusion clouded her mind. What had happened to that wife, to that baby? She wanted to ask, but part of her…part of her feared the answer.

"Katie." Pa leaned forward and lifted his eyes to look directly into hers. He took her hands. His were chilled and felt weak against hers. His soft brown eyes glistened with emotion. "You're that baby girl."

Katie blinked. A jumble of colliding thoughts tumbled over one another. It couldn't be. What was he saying? "Ma is…my aunt?"

He nodded. "And Emmaline is your birth mother."

Her mouth dropped open, yet she couldn't shut it. His words fell like a rockslide, crushing all she knew to be true. Covering her. Choking her. Suffocation set in, and she had to work to breathe.

The weight of all the lies, of Ma's unjust harshness, pressed in. "It…that…explains so much." Memories swirled back. "That's why she hated the way I looked."

"She didn't hate the way you looked, Katie. She feared that your beauty would take you down the same road it had taken her sister."

Too many thoughts and emotions churned inside her, and Katie pushed up from the bed, clutching her wrapper tight around her chilled body. "Let me get this straight. I've been abandoned by my birth mother, and never loved by Ma the same as the others."

"She does love you. It's the reason she refused to let this knowledge out. She always argued she had to protect you from Emmaline, knowing how wicked her sister was. She didn't want Emmaline showing up, or you wanting to find her. You were her daughter."

As nice as those words sounded, they didn't match her experience. "Say whatever you want, but we both know how I was treated."

He lowered his head to the floor. "I won't deny the truth any longer. I'm so sorry. Your mother's insecurity started way back when she was living in her sister's shadow. Her parents favored Emmaline, and your mother was always in the background. What I did to your ma compounded the problem. And you, my girl, have suffered many times growing up because of our sins." A network of worry lines etched the corners of his eyes. "I pray over time, you'll be able to forgive."

Forgive. She couldn't begin to wrap her mind around all the injustices. The thoughts brewed into a storm. "It still hasn't changed. Ma invites Amelia with her to Richmond but refuses my company, a prime example of how nothing has changed."

Pa's head snapped up. "You've got that wrong. Your mother needed to face her past alone before she could find the courage to be honest with you. Can you understand? It wasn't that she didn't want you there. She was just afraid of all the secrets, the lies, that hadn't been revealed. She hasn't visited her parents since you were born and wanted them to understand you're her daughter. She needed to be sure they would respect this. Also, she wanted to learn the whereabouts of Emmaline."

"Where is this so-called mother of mine?" The thought of the woman who'd given her away stirred a rush of anger in her chest.

"She disappeared to Europe with another lover before the war. No one has seen or heard from her since."

Good. One less complication. There were far too many as it was. The last thing she needed was a long-lost mother expecting something from her as well.

The memory of Josiah's refusal to let her travel slipped in. "Was Josiah in on this? Was that why he refused to let me go?"

Pa nodded. "I told him the truth and begged for some time for your ma to sort things out with her parents. He wasn't happy about the secrets we've kept." Pa's voice broke, and his weathered face crinkled as he moved close enough to brush his hand down her cheek. "I don't know if you can forgive me, Katie girl, but I'm sorry. So very sorry."

She let Pa wrap his arms around her. Let herself sink into his warmth. And with her defenses down, she couldn't hold back the tears that surged.

"Why tell me now?" Her body shook as sobs racked through. "You know things aren't good between Josiah and me. You know I'm struggling. Why now? It's all too much to take."

He guided her back to the edge of the bed, and they sat together with his arm around her.

"Since the time your Aunt May and Uncle John became Christians and I witnessed the change in them, I've been reading the Bible and talking to God. I gave my life to Him a number of months back and, though I know I've been forgiven for all my sins, that doesn't remove the consequences of what I've done."

She sniffed back the moisture still leaking onto her face. "You became a Christian?"

His eyes grew warm again. "And I have such peace for the first time in my life. I don't know how to explain it. I've told your ma, but she waves it off as if it's a phase I'm going through. It's real. I'm trying to figure out how to live by reading the Bible. I wish my sister lived closer so I could ask the hundred questions I have rolling around."

"I've tried praying sometimes, but…" She shrugged. God never seemed to answer.

"Life is a journey toward faith, not a lightning bolt hitting us from above." He leaned in and squeezed her shoulders. "And change for the better doesn't happen instantly, it takes time. But I tell you, when I walked into the tack shop and witnessed the closeness between Colby and you, I knew I had to come clean about my own sin. That remark about the apple not falling far from the tree?—"

"I wondered what that meant, but never had the courage to ask."

"That was about my own indiscretions and what sin has brought into my marriage and into my life. I don't want that for you. I've caused your ma and you so much pain. I don't want my sins to be passed down to any of my children." His earnest eyes pleaded with her. "Please don't follow in my foolish footsteps. It'll lead to pain and years of hardship. I'm begging you to turn your heart from Colby to Josiah."

A new pain pressed in. "Oh, Pa. Colby is a temptation, but only because Josiah left me a long time ago."

"Left you?" Pa's eyes narrowed, and he regarded her a long moment. "I don't know what happened between you two. I figured, when your relationship started fizzling, it was because of Colby."

A shuddered breath slipped from her lips. "No. This can't be pinned on Colby. How about we start with an arranged marriage I wasn't prepared for, memories of Charles, expectations I couldn't meet, insecurities, Josiah listening to half conversations and abandoning me. Only then can you add Colby. It's so complicated."

Pa raised his brows in a pointed look, but the kindness still wreathed his gaze. "You're a married woman, Katie. You and Josiah belong together. There's hope if you allow your heart to soften instead of harden."

"Harden? It's not me who's hard." She let out a long breath. "There's no hope, it takes two to make a marriage."

"Josiah loves you. I know he does."

Her feelings were too raw, too exposed. And the fury, the hurt she'd been tamping down for weeks, erupted. She jumped up, and her father leaned back, eyes wide. "How come everyone is so sure of Josiah's love for me? He sure has a funny way of showing it. Did he tell you about the papers he's having drafted up to end our marriage?"

The shock on Pa's face said it all.

"End your marriage? But that can't be." His brows bunched together. "You and Colby haven't?—"

"We haven't done anything. What you saw was the closest we ever got to even kissing, and then only because, when I was upset, my husband sent him out to comfort me. Colby has been more of a husband to me this past year than Josiah."

Pa shook his head. "I don't understand."

"Josiah and I were growing close. I shared his bed, his dreams, his life the best I knew how."

"Did you ask him why things changed?"

As she told Pa about the conversation when she'd confronted Josiah, his eyes widened and glistened with tears. He gathered her close and rocked her in his strong arms, and she rested in his warm embrace, letting his strength cover her. A whisper of words she couldn't decipher flowed from his lips. She didn't have much faith in prayer or God, but she couldn't explain the peace that filled the room and seeped into her tortured soul.

They stayed that way for a long moment. Then, with a tenderness, he pulled back and took her shoulders in his hands, piercing her with that knowing gaze. "Did you tell him?"

"Tell him what?" She had to fight to keep from nibbling on her lip under his scrutiny.

"Did you ever tell Josiah that you loved him?"

"I…I didn't. I was just figuring it out myself."

"That explains a lot. Here you are, this young, beautiful woman, forced into a marriage. Although he was determined to win your love, he had his insecurities too. When he heard you talking to Colby, could it be that jealousy got the best of him?"

Pa was right, no doubt. But it was too late. The sorrow in the pit of her stomach threatened to overwhelm her. If only… She glanced at the bottle of laudanum and craved the option of feeling nothing.

Pa followed her gaze and rose to his feet. He strode to the bureau. "I learned the hard way that the only one I can turn to when life is painful is God. You don't need this." He picked up the bottle. "You need your Heavenly Father. Talk to Him. He'll give you wisdom and strength. I promise."

"Pa, I'm so confused."

"I can't tell you what to do, but this one thing I believe. Josiah loves you, despite his hardened front. The way he looks at you when you're not aware, and his concern for you, shows someone deeply invested in your well-being. I suspect he's suggesting an end to your marriage because he thinks that's what you want. You're his wife, and I would bet my life that all he wants is to hear you tell him you would like to stay his wife."

Pa stepped close and kissed her forehead. "I'll be praying for you." Then he left…taking the bottle of laudanum with him.