Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family] (29 page)

“Maybe not as much as I used to be,” she admitted, “but even if I’m wrong and I have a girl, I’ll love her just as much, that’s
for sure.”

Charlotte knew that Sarah’s heart was in the right place, but she would be a child raising a child. She had no idea what she
was in for. Once the baby arrived, Sarah would grow up fast, but the whole experience would be much harder for her than if
she were older, if she were married and had the child’s father by her side. She and her father were living off John Grant’s
charity, and there was no assurance how long that would last. If only her life were more stable… But it was too late for such
thinking. The baby would be coming soon.

“Do you know how far along you are with the baby?” Charlotte asked.

“Can’t say for certain. It would have been last fall when I got pregnant, but I ain’t too sure which month.”

From the size of Sarah’s belly, Charlotte knew that the time of the baby’s birth was approaching. It wasn’t really possible
to say for certain where Sarah was in her pregnancy, since some women showed more than others, some had smaller babies than
others, but Charlotte thought that there still might be a month, maybe a month and a
half, to go. All the time she had spent with Rachel and her grandmother, both experienced in the birthing of babies, had given
her enough insight to make an educated guess. Decisions would have to be made soon. A doctor or midwife needed to be called.
If Sarah were to give birth in this cabin, still dirty, though cleaner than it had been, and something were to go wrong…

Charlotte was living proof of what could go wrong during childbirth. Her own mother’s delivery had been difficult, though
not impossible, but all it took for disaster to strike was Alice Tucker’s unwillingness to live. Sarah showed no signs of
abandoning her child in its first hours of life, but she also had no idea how difficult bringing another person into the world
could be. What would happen if her labor were to last for hours? Would she have the fortitude to fight through it or would
she surrender, allowing herself or her child to die?

Outside, the rain began to fall harder and the clouds darkened further, as if the weather meant to mirror the ominous trend
of Charlotte’s thoughts.

“Do you wanna be a mother someday?” Sarah asked.

Charlotte took a good long look at her young student, the question momentarily taking her by surprise. No one had ever asked
her before, but there was only one answer that could possibly be given. “I do,” she said simply, smiling.

“Do you have a fella?”

“You’re asking an awful lot of questions.”

“I just want to know.” Sarah shrugged. “What could it hurt to say?”

“I didn’t when I first arrived in Oklahoma, but then I met someone,” Charlotte admitted.

“Would you wanna have a baby with him?”

The bluntness of Sarah’s questions was becoming difficult for Charlotte to deal with. Her relationship with Owen was something
she hadn’t shared with anyone; she hadn’t told Hannah much or written about it in great detail to Christina. Discretion held
her tongue and she changed the subject, asking, “Have you picked out a name yet?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sarah smiled. “But I ain’t tellin’ no one till after the baby’s here.”

“Not even your teacher?”

“Nope,” she said.

“Not even if I traded you the name of my fella,” she kept on, teasing. “Would that be enough to get it out of you?”

Sarah seemed to think about, but blurted, “Still not enough!” and they both laughed, covering the sounds of the growing storm.

Occasional flashes of lightning pierced the gloom of the afternoon storm, punctuated by the deep bass of thunder, as Charlotte
and John drove back to the ranch after Sarah’s lesson. Oppressively dark clouds pressed down. Insistent gusts of wind pushed
at the vehicle’s frame, forcing John to keep both his hands on the wheel to hold the truck on the road. The rain came down
in huge, sporadic drops
that struck the truck’s metal body with the hard sound of hail.

“This weather don’t look good,” John remarked, his forehead wrinkled, as he peered out the window.

“What do you mean?” Charlotte asked.

“Sometimes the weather here in Oklahoma gets a bit wilder than what you might be used to back in Minnesota,” he explained.
“Storms come rollin’ in off the plains with intentions meaner than a horse that’s set on not bein’ broke. Difference is there
ain’t any way to tame a storm. Wind comes howlin’ hard ’nough to pull all the tin off a roof, nails and all. Rain fallin’
so hard and fast that there ain’t no time for it to sink down into the dry ground, so it goes a floodin’ every which way and
you got to just hope it ain’t in the direction you’re standin’.”

“Is this serious?” Charlotte asked, staring out the window and suddenly concerned about their predicament. There were storms
back in Carlson that felled trees, overran rivers and creeks, and blizzards that buried them under enormous piles of snow,
but something about the way John spoke unsettled her, the unknown potential of the storm making her feel vulnerable.

“Could be,” he said simply. “But at least we can be home before the brunt of it gets here. I feared it’d come while you was
givin’ Sarah her lesson. We can be thankful it waited.”

The mention of Sarah brought Charlotte’s thoughts back to the moment when John and Alan arrived back
in the cabin. John’s gaze had wandered again and again toward the pregnant girl. His concern for Sarah’s well-being was obvious,
but Charlotte couldn’t help but question his motive. Nor could she stop wondering about what was to come next…

“What will happen once Sarah has her baby?” she asked after another peal of thunder rattled the truck.

“She’ll be a mother, of course.” John smiled, glancing over at her as he pushed the wiper lever back and forth in an effort
to clear the windshield so he could see. “There’ll be plenty of feedin’s, lots of diaper changin’, and probably not a lot
of sleep.”

“I’m not joking, John,” Charlotte replied with a seriousness she hoped he would find impossible to ignore. No longer was she
willing to play along with the charade. “Once that baby arrives, Sarah is going to need a lot more help than you’re currently
giving her. Groceries and firewood are no substitute for having someone there to help. Alan is doing better, but we both know
he won’t be enough, and that’s if he doesn’t go back to his drunken ways, which is a possibility I don’t even want to imagine.”

“There’s no need to worry. I’ll make sure they get whatever they need.”

“But what if Sarah needs a doctor or a woman to stay and help her care for a sick or difficult baby?” Charlotte pressed, a
sliver of anger sliding into her voice. “I’ve done as you asked. I’ve been willing to be her teacher, but I don’t know if
I’m up to the task of being her mother.”

“No one has asked you to do that,” he said gruffly.

“That doesn’t change the fact that she might need one.”

“These are all bridges that we’ll cross when we get to ’em,” John said dismissively. “There’re folks in town who I know can
keep quiet if I need ’em to go out and check on Sarah and the baby.”

“Then what happens when winter comes?” she argued, refusing to accept John’s easily given answers. “I know that the weather
here in January isn’t like the winters we have back in Minnesota, but it must get cold at night, too cold for a newborn to
be expected to live in a ramshackle cabin on the edge of your property. Surely you don’t intend for the Becks to live there
forever?”

“We’ll take care of it.”

“Tell me the truth, John,” she demanded, the dam blocking her frustration with a situation she had never fully understood
finally breaking and her pent-up emotions finally running free. “Why are you doing all of this for them? Be honest with me:
who are the Becks to you?”

For a long while, the only sounds in the truck’s cab came from the savage storm; though they had not been on the road long,
the weather appeared to have significantly worsened. The rain began to hammer them relentlessly, smashing into the truck as
if it were hell-bent on breaking its way inside. Charlotte thought John was remaining silent because he was otherwise concerned
with keeping them on the road, his jaw set hard and his knuckles
white on the steering wheel. When he finally spoke, he surprised her.

“The last time you asked me ’bout Sarah and them, I told you that my life holds its fair share of regrets,” he said.

“You did.”

“Maybe someday, when you’re as old as me, you’ll understand that you can encounter a situation, something that can remind
you of times past, moments you’d like to forget but can’t, no matter how hard you try.” John took a deep breath, pausing as
he maneuvered the truck around a bend and the ranch came into view in front of them. Charlotte looked out and was instantly
reminded of the day they had raced back to confront the fire, another time that had filled her with dread and foreboding.
“You wish you could change things,” he finally added, “but the past is the past for a goddamn reason.”

“John?” she bravely asked. “Does your past have to do with Sarah?”

“There was a girl I knew back ’fore you would have been born, I reckon. A girl I loved. She was the sweetest thing you could
ever set eyes on. Smart, funny, full of life. I was gonna make her mine, marry her, you know, but then…”

Try as she might, Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to push John Grant for the answers she so desperately wanted. She knew
that the only way to get him to talk was to force the issue; that was a course of action that seemed
particularly cruel, especially since she already knew the answer from Owen: John had gotten Caroline Wallace pregnant and
she had left Sawyer forever.

“Does Amelia know?” she asked.

“About Sarah? No… I haven’t told her a thing. She was round back then, watchin’ as I fell in love. If she knew I was keepin’
them out at the cabin, she’d understand in a second why I was doin’ it.”

“So what
are
you going to do after the baby is born?”

“If I was bein’ honest,” he said, looking at her in such a way that she knew he was, “I don’t rightly know.”

The truck followed the path that wound through the horse corrals toward the main house. Their headlights cut through the gloom
of the storm, but the going was awfully slow. Just as they were about to pass the horse barn where Charlotte and Owen had
been together the night before, she was startled to see Owen rushing from the doors and frantically waving his arms for them
to stop. John tromped down on the brakes and the truck skidded to a halt in the growing mud.

“What’s happenin’ here?” John asked.

Charlotte got out of the truck, shielding her head from the rain, although it showed her no mercy, instantly soaking her blouse.

“What’s wrong?” She shouted to be heard.

“Come into the barn right now! Both of you!” Owen yelled back. “Hurry!”

Neither John nor Charlotte hesitated, following Owen
as he ran into the barn. The meager light of the thunderstorm was enough to poorly illuminate the building’s interior, but
Charlotte could see no sign of anything the matter.

She was just about to ask Owen another question when he did something that made her blood run cold as ice; the man whom she
loved, the man who had captured her heart, drove his fist into John Grant’s jaw with all the strength he could muster, his
face screwed up in a mask of rage. The sound of the blow was as startling as a crack of thunder. John never saw the punch
coming; he dropped at his attacker’s feet as solidly as if he were a bag of feed. Charlotte could only stare.

O
WEN STOOD OVER
John Grant, his fist throbbing, a sharp ache from where it had struck the older rancher’s jaw. His heart thundered even louder
than the storm just outside the barn door. Unknown to him, his shoulders shook slightly, the tremors running down the length
of his arms, he was so enraged, staring holes through the man whom he believed to be his father. Though Owen had come to Oklahoma
for the purpose of making John Grant pay for what he had done to his mother, this was the first moment when his rage threatened
to consume him and he struggled to resist it.

When he had risen that morning, his sole thought had been of his night with Charlotte. Happiness gripped him so tightly that
he never wanted it to let him go. All he had desired was to hold her in his arms, kiss her, and
make her promise that what they had would last forever. After he finished the morning chores, he’d hurried to find her.

But when he had, he’d watched as she’d left the main house with John Grant and gotten in the truck and driven away. It was
a sight he’d seen many times before but had never asked her about; at first, he had supposed that Grant was showing her around,
acclimating her to her new home, but then he kept seeing them together, again and again. Still, he never asked Charlotte for
an explanation; if there was something untoward about it, she would have told him, he was sure. But on this day, for a reason
he could not explain or even fully understand, he decided that his ignorance was no longer enough and that he needed answers.
He determined to follow them.

Once the truck was out of sight, Owen had saddled up Cinnamon and set out after them. The weather had been threatening, growing
worse with each passing second, but he hadn’t given a damn if he got caught in a downpour. The truck was much faster than
his horse, even without a head start, so he’d had to be content to follow along behind, hurrying in the direction they’d been
headed. He pushed Cinnamon hard.

Where were they going?

He’d known he was taking a risk, both with John and with Charlotte, but he hadn’t wavered in his resolve. If he was found
out, he’d simply say that he was out on a ride, stretching his beloved horse’s legs. He would have hated to
lie to Charlotte. In the end, he needn’t have worried; he’d never seen a soul.

Soon, Owen had climbed a low rise and found a cabin he’d not known was located on the ranch property. It wasn’t much, decrepit
and shoddy looking, with smoke drifting from its dented stack. John Grant’s truck sat outside. Owen had tied Cinnamon to a
felled tree trunk, made his way to a spot where he felt confident he couldn’t be seen, and waited. Long minutes passed, but
he saw no sign of them. They had to be inside.