Chasing the Sun (10 page)

Hank studied him for a moment. “You’re older.”

“It has been three years.”

“And you’re not as argumentative.”

“Without Brady around, I haven’t needed to be.”

“And you’re ... well, smarter than I remember.”

“Or maybe you’re just dumber.”

Hank smirked. “Yeah. That must be it.”

Gathering up the clean clothes, Jack nodded toward the door leading into the water closet. “You said all I had to do was turn the left knob and hot water would come out?”

“Eventually. If the boiler doesn’t blow. And be watchful that the knocking of the pipes doesn’t jar the fittings loose and scald you.”

When he limped back into the bedroom a half hour later, un-scalded, dressed, and clean—except for his foot, which was too tender to wash—he found Hank’s wife waiting for him in one of the chairs beside the unlit fireplace.

She was an average-looking woman, with a trim figure, a mass of glossy chestnut hair, and intense hazel eyes. Until she smiled. Then she was downright pretty. At her elbow stood a small table draped with clean toweling. On it sat two cups, a brown jar with a white label, and a wad of cotton batting—the kind used to sop up stuff. Like blood.

“How’s the foot today?” she asked with a pleasant smile.

“Better,” he lied, trying to ignore the odd quiver in his stomach. He hated doctoring.

“May I look at it? I might be able to help.”

With a shrug, he hobbled over to the chair across from hers. As he eased down, he noticed a jug of Buck’s potent brew on the floor beside an ominous-looking black leather satchel.

The quiver became a rolling cramp.

“How did you injure it?”

“In a fight.”

Her expression of disdain gave a clear indication of what she thought about fighting.

With some trepidation, Jack watched her dig through the satchel until she came up with a pair of scissors. She held them out. “Will you cut off that filthy bandage or shall I?”

Not trusting that glinty look in her eye, he took the scissors and carefully cut off the wrappings to expose his enlarged foot.

She had him lift it up so she could look it over top to bottom, then began rummaging in the black bag again. “Has it always been that swollen?”

“At first. Then it got better. Then a week or so ago it started hurting again.” He watched her extract a short-bladed knife and set it on the towel. “What’s that for?” he asked, trying to hide his alarm.

“Pass me the jug, please.”

He passed her the jug.

After pouring a goodly measure into one of the cups, she dropped the cutting tool into the liquid. “Best antiseptic I’ve ever seen,” she explained.

Jack didn’t doubt it.

After pouring a smaller amount into the other cup, she held it out with a smile Jack didn’t altogether trust. “Bottoms up.”

Reluctantly, he drank.

The reaction was immediate. Choking, coughing, fire in his throat. And while he fought to catch his breath and stem the shudders that wracked his body, the evil woman plunged the knife into the sole of his foot.

If he hadn’t been rendered immobile and mute by Buck’s brew, he might have offered more of a reaction than a pitiful mewl.

“Interesting,” she said, examining something bloody she had plucked from his foot.

“Jesus,” he gasped, swiping tears from his eyes, expecting to see the floor awash in blood. Oddly, other than a red stain and some yellow stuff on a corner of the batting, there was nothing.

“The hard part is over.” Dropping the object onto the towel, she picked up the cup in which she’d soaked the knife. “Except for this.” And she poured the remaining brew over the wound she had made.

Jack refrained from screaming like a girl. Barely. Luckily Buck’s concoction soon numbed him—both inside and out—to the point that he hardly felt her do God-knows-what-else to his poor foot before smearing it with a slimy salve, slapping on a fat bandage, and wrapping it tight.

“All done,” she said, returning the items on the table to her satchel. “It should heal nicely now.”

Wondering why his brother would marry such a sadistic woman, Jack glared at her. It seemed to have no effect. Disgruntled, he peered at the bloody thing she had hacked from his foot. It was smaller than he’d expected. “What the hell is it?”

“A chip of bone that must have broken off when your injury occurred. It was working its way out the sole of your foot. That’s what was causing the swelling and pain. It had almost pushed through—”

Jack raised a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

Tipping her head to one side, she studied him through eyes so fiercely intelligent they were unnerving. “What were you fighting about?”

“Nothing. It was an arranged fight. For money.”

“You took money to fight?” Her voice held a tinge of disgust.

“No. I
paid
money to fight.” Some of the numbness in his foot was wearing off, he noticed, yet there was much less pain than before. Maybe her stabbing and gouging had done some good after all.

“Whom did you
pay
to fight?” No tinge this time. Full-blown disgust with a touch of disbelief.

Women.
They just didn’t get it.

“Not
whom
. What.” At her look of confusion, Jack shrugged. “If I told you, you’d go blabbing to my brothers.”

“I would never do that.”

“You’ll laugh then.”

“No, I won’t.”

Jack looked at her.

She gave a reassuring smile. “I promise.”

He sighed. “It was a kangaroo.”

A moment of shock, then she burst into laughter.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

Which made her laugh harder. And hearing the throaty sound of it and seeing the way her eyes danced with amusement and her stern features softened into a full smile, Jack understood exactly why his brother had married her.

HE SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING AND MOST OF THE afternoon trying to figure out how to get Elena away from his family so he could talk to her.

It seemed every time he turned around, there were kids underfoot or nosy sisters-in-law watching him or that talkative old Scotsman pestering him with questions. Then Brady insisted he come to the barn to see his new Thoroughbred-cross foals, and Hank needed help with a contraption he was building for a windmill, and the fellows in the bunkhouse wanted to hear more about the bare-chested native women on the islands he’d visited. Then he stopped off for a visit with Buck and Iantha, and tried to keep his dismay from showing when he saw how frail they had become. It wouldn’t be long, he realized sadly, and doubted the ranch would be the same without them. So it wasn’t until late afternoon when he saw Elena up by the mesquite tree, sitting on a bench in the little hilltop cemetery behind the house, that he finally got his chance to talk to her.

It was a difficult climb on a crutch—probably more so on a crippled hip—but he was determined to talk to her. He needed her to look him in the eye and explain in a way he could understand why she preferred death in a leper colony to life with him.

A reasonable question, he thought.

It was another beautiful day with just enough breeze to rattle last year’s few remaining mesquite pods that hung too high for the cattle to reach. Time had rendered them dry and leathery and the hollow sound they made when they bounced against each other made Jack think of skeletons dancing a fandango. A depressing image, but fitting for a graveyard, he supposed, and one that matched his dark mood.

He had a sense of time slipping away from him. Of chances missed and changes to come. Of loss. It was almost like a part of him was dying and he didn’t know how to stop it. And that discouraged him more than anything ever had. Time had always seemed endless to him, the unknown future stretching far into the distance, barely imagined but rife with potential and possibility. What if ...

What if he left the ranch.

What if he went to Australia.

What if he married Elena and took her with him.

It had all sounded so possible when he’d left three years ago.

Then had come the failed operation and Elena’s growing fixation with the church, and suddenly the bright future of his imaginings had seemed unattainable and empty. Endless time had dwindled into purposeless days—how long before his next drink, his next woman, his next sailing. And as the months had passed, all the hopeful “what-ifs” had gradually become regretful “if-onlys” until even they had begun to fade away. Now all he had left was “why.”

If he was ever to get on with his life, he had to hear Elena’s answer to that.

The rusty iron gate squealed in protest when he swung it open. As he limped between the stone markers, lush green grass tangled with his crutch and the ground felt soft and damp beneath his boots. In another few months the grass would wither and the earth would bake dry and the breeze would taste like warm dust. That was a cycle that would never change no matter how much time passed. He took some comfort in that.

He could see she had been crying. Tears still clung to her long, spiky lashes, and her lips had puffed up the way a woman’s did when she wept. It touched something deep inside him and made him want to put his arms around her and comfort her. But he knew he shouldn’t. Instead, he stood there until she got herself in hand and finally looked up at him. “Been avoiding me, Elena?”

Not what he meant to say. He could tell the brusqueness of it hurt her, so he tried to cover his mistake by quickly adding, “You look well.”

The hurt look died in a smile. “As do you.”

He motioned to the empty space on the bench beside her. “Mind if I sit?”

“
Por favor.
Please.”

He sat.

For a long time they didn’t speak. Like awkward strangers, they sat side by side staring out into the valley, trying to pretend the weight of three years of unspoken words didn’t hang between them.

“I went to the abbey,” he said after a while.

“Oh?”

“The nun at the gate told me you’d come here.”

She nodded and looked down at her hands. “Sister Mary Margaret.”

He watched her fingers move up and down the string of beads that tied a heavy silver cross to her belt and wondered if she was praying or if it was just a nervous habit. “She said you’d be taking your final vows next month.”

“
Sí.
After retreat.”

Movement caught his eye, and he looked up to see a red-tailed hawk rise from the ground halfway down the hill. A snake dangled from its talons. The bird carried its prize to an outcrop thirty yards away, where it worked at the twisting body with sharp quick pecks.

“So you’re still going through with it,” he said. “Taking your vows.”

“Yes.”

He glanced at her downcast face, wishing she would take that headdress thing off so he could see her hair. She had beautiful hair. The kind a man liked to feel in his hands.

Silence again. Thunderheads crowded the far peaks, promising evening showers along the high slopes. On the outcrop, the hawk pecked and tore.

Had it always been this difficult for them to talk to each other? By nature, Elena was quiet. He was a talker. But had they ever actually
talked
to each other? It bothered him that he couldn’t remember. It bothered him that despite his desperation to reach out to her, he didn’t know how to do it.

Such indecisiveness irritated him. He thought he’d grown past the stupid, bumbling kid his brothers had always accused him of being. He had traveled halfway around the world, for Crissakes. He had fought in the Maori wars and had watched friends die. He had outrun fire and outswum sharks and he’d looked down into a bubbling caldron of lava and seen the beating heart of the earth. Surely he could think of something interesting to say.

Apparently not.

It was laughable. Jack Wilkins—a man who could spin a line that women on two continents had gladly hung their clothes on—and he couldn’t think of a thing to say to the only woman that mattered.

He ought to shoot himself.

Having finished its meal, the hawk lifted off the outcrop. Jack watched it soar higher and higher on the updrafts until he lost it in the lowering sun.

“Why Kalawao?” he asked.

She turned her head to look at him.

“Why a leper colony?”

“I may not even be allowed inside the settlement. The church has not yet decided.”

“And when they do?”

She spread her hands and smiled. “I will do God’s will.”

He couldn’t let her get away with such an easy, pat answer. “It was God’s
will
to give the poor bastards leprosy in the first place. Are you thinking to undo His work?” He tried not to sneer when he said it.

“Not undo, Jack. There is no cure for leprosy. But perhaps I can ease the suffering of those afflicted.”

“By becoming a leper yourself?”

She shrugged.

Fury burned through him. “And how will that help? Is that what your
God
wants?”

“He is your God, too, Jack.”

A bitter taste rose in his throat. “I don’t want Him. Not if this is His doing.”

Reaching out, she rested her fingertips on his arm. “Please. Do not hate God or blame Him for my decisions. He simply opened the door to me. It is my choice to walk through it.”

He saw that his hands had curled into fists. Forcing them open, he wiped his palms on his thighs. “Was the idea of being with me so bad, Elena, that you’d choose to live with lepers to avoid it?” He hated the way that sounded, hated the self-pitying tone. But he needed to ask the question as much as he needed to hear her answer it.

She sighed and took her hand off his arm, sadness etched on her beautiful face. “I do not know how to explain this to you,
mi amigo
.”

Friend.
Was that what he’d been reduced to after all they’d shared? “Try, Elena. Please. Just try.”

For a time she stared out into the valley, her fingers dancing over the beads. Then, in a hesitant voice, she said, “In the hospital, when Dr. Sheedy told me of the damage Sancho had done, and how I could never live as a normal woman—”

“That doesn’t matter.”

She held up a hand before he could say more. “Shh,
querido.
You must let me say this.”