Leaving Independence (3 page)

Mimi was in the kitchen when Abigail burst through the door and handed her the letter.

“What’s this scrawl?” Mimi peered more closely at the letter. “That ain’t Mr. Robert’s handwritin’.”

“His hand. Remember?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

His hand had been injured in a battle—two fingers shot off in a skirmish. The words were legible, just not written in Robert’s formerly neat penmanship.

Mimi read the words aloud. “‘Abigail, it looks like you tracked me down.’”

Her eyebrows shot together in a V.

“‘You always were a resourceful woman, so I am sure you will figure something out on the house. Here is my suggestion, if you care to know. Sell the house. Drop those children at your father’s or leave them with the colored woman.’”

“
The colored woman!
What, he forgot my name? And
those
children?”

“Keep reading.”

“‘Come join me in Idaho Territory. I like it here and do not intend to return to Tennessee.’”

Mimi stared at the letter a minute as if trying to process its contents. “Well, Lord have mercy. What has got into that man? The Lord ain’t whispered nothin’ about this in my ear. I had no idea, Miz Abigail. How could any decent man have that to say after so long with no word?”

“Keep reading.”

Mimi eyed the paper suspiciously before finishing.

“‘You are a beautiful woman. Lord knows, I wouldn’t mind having you here.’”

Mimi’s jaw dropped. She read over the letter again and shook her head. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

“I told you he was altered. It’s the first time in years he’s even mentioned the children.”

“What do you mean? He loves his children.”

“He did when he left. I thought he loved us all.”

Abigail paced the kitchen. Rascal, who had followed her in, stood in a safe corner and watched.

How could Robert do this to her? She put a hand to her chest, as if that could soothe her heart. It hadn’t ached this badly in years. She looked at the letter that now lay like an unwelcome cockroach on the table. “Why couldn’t he have just died, like we thought?”

“You don’t mean that, Miz Abigail!”

“That would have been more kind than choosing not to come home to us!”

That night when Charlie slapped his hand on the dinner table and said, “We should go out there,” Abigail waved the suggestion off.

“No, I mean it.”

Charlie, oldest of the blue-eyed Baldwyn children, was also the most serious. It wasn’t like him to be impulsive, so it surprised Abigail when he looked to Corrine, Jacob, and Lina for support. “We should go. Join him! I bet he loves it out there.” He turned back to Abigail, his eyes bright with hope. “We could make a new start. You said the banker—”

Abigail stopped him by raising her hand. “No.”

She knew Charlie and Corrine felt Robert’s absence the most. They had been the oldest, eleven and ten, when their father left five years ago. Charlie had wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps . . . attend law school in the East. But he’d stopped talking about it, knowing they no longer had the money. Going west was the other direction. No . . . she would think of something.

“Trains leaving Independence go right by Fort Hall,” said Charlie. “I’ve studied the maps!”

“What trains are you talking about?” asked Corrine, her blond brow twisted. “Track hasn’t been laid that far west yet.”

“Wagon trains!”

“Live in a wagon? With strangers?” Corrine sized up her older brother. “Are you out of your mind, Charlie?”

“We would have our own wagon, Corrine. With a cover over it.” Charlie grew more excited, which got Jacob excited.

“We’d see buffalo!” Jacob’s nine-year-old eyes grew as large as Mimi’s biscuits. “Me and Charlie could shoot some.”

Corrine huffed and looked at Abigail. “I hope you’re not listening to him.”

“People do it all the time,” insisted Charlie. “Thousands of people.”

“And how many get scalped by Indians? Bleed to death on the side of the trail?”

“That’s enough, Corrine.” Abigail watched Lina’s face wrinkle in worry.

Corrine had talked earliest, walked earliest, and asserted her independence earliest of all the Baldwyn children. Two schoolmasters at the Marston schoolhouse had declared her the brightest student ever to grace the building. But the quickness of her mind sometimes caused her to be impatient with others. Lina, on the other hand, was all gentleness and sensitivity.

Abigail looked across the table at Mimi, who was watching Charlie with her brows pulled together.

Jacob was the rash one, not Charlie. What made Charlie think of such a thing . . . going out west to be with Robert? No. There had to be another solution.

“We are not going to Independence and joining a wagon train so we can chase your father out west,” said Abigail, signaling an end to the discussion.

But she was wrong.

Hoke’s eyes locked on a white filly. He and James sat on their mounts and stared at a herd of wild horses in the Texan basin below.

“Yes, sir.” James grinned. “Just settin’ there waitin’ for us. My luck, the day I met you. There’s something about not seeing you get clawed by a two-hundred-pound cat, then coming out on this rise looking at our next year’s income, that makes me sentimental.”

Hoke took off his once-black hat and smoothed back his dark hair. He needed a haircut . . . and a shave . . . and a bath. Afternoon sunlight sparkled off a creek winding through the picturesque basin below. “You think that creek’s deep enough for a full-body bath?” It would make for another cold one, but that was the kind he was used to.

“I make a profession of gratitude and you want to know if the creek’s deep enough to wash in? That really hurts, Hoke.”

“You rattle on more than I got ears to tolerate.”

“But I was sayin’ nice things. It looks like you could tolerate listenin’ to nice things.”

As their horses picked a careful footing down the slope of the hillside, James asked, “Take ’em to St. Jo or Council Bluff?”

“Independence.”

“I thought you didn’t like Independence.”

“Why’d you think that?”

“You never want to go there when I suggest it.”

“Well . . . suggest it now.”

James shot him a look. “Is the trail dust itchin’ you?”

Hoke didn’t answer. He was watching the white Appaloosa, who was now watching him. He and James were nearly to the bottom of the hill. Several horses in the wild herd had raised their heads to eye them. That Appaloosa had been the first.

“Always said I wouldn’t keep a white horse,” Hoke said. A white horse was easy to spot. It made a man a target. “But she’s a beauty.”

“I think that cat done spooked you. That’s what I think. And now you’re drawn to the angelic. Say, aren’t you from Independence?”

“It’s where my folks are buried.” The cat hadn’t spooked Hoke, but his dreams of Independence had. Why was he suddenly filled with longing to see those grave markers again . . . to walk those dusty streets? Independence was calling him back after a twenty-year absence. He’d fought with Federal troops in other parts of Missouri during the war but had been thankful to avoid the town that held his childhood nightmares. Hoke’s gut usually served him well. It was trying to tell him something . . . but he didn’t know what.

Dreams of Independence had spooked him good.

James thought for a minute. “I’m trying to remember if I know any women in Independence.”

Hoke cut him a sideways glance. James was younger than Hoke by nine years, taller, leaner, with a thick, full beard, and a talker. Hoke wouldn’t have had the tolerance for most talkers, but James knew when
not
to talk, and he was capable. Hoke held a capable man in high regard.

“Women love me, Hoke. And I can’t say I blame ’em. Don’t be jealous just ’cause you ain’t had any luck with women. There’s always new women in a jumpin’-off town. That’ll make things interestin’.”

They had reached the valley where they would spend the next few weeks hovering around the wild herd, roping and calming, letting the horses get used to the smell and sound of civilized men—if he and James could be called that. Capable men . . . reliable men . . . but men with hearts as wild and free as the western horses running loose in the basin into which they’d descended.

“I wouldn’t mind tackin’ on to a wagon train one of these days,” mused James. “Be kind of nice to see the upper half of the Rockies, wouldn’t it?”

Hoke cast him a sideways glance. “I wouldn’t mind seeing ’em, but I’d hate to be shackled to a train full of people while I was doing it.”

Abigail sat brooding in her rocker, a cherry box filled with letters open at her feet. Rascal lay next to it, his eyes grown heavy from the rhythmic sound of the rocker hitting the slats of the wood floor. The children were at school. Mimi would be back from the butcher’s soon.

When the screen door banged in its frame, Rascal’s head popped up. Abigail was already in the hallway, itching to get the newly formed decision out of her mind and over her lips before she lost her courage. She could hear the dog’s toenails skidding across the floor as he scrambled to get his balance and follow her to the kitchen.

“I’m selling the house, Mimi, and going out there. I can’t sit here passively, expecting some miracle to fall into my lap.”

Mimi covered her mouth.

“Don’t try to talk me out of it. My mind is made. If I sit here one day more than necessary without trying to reclaim my husband and put my family back together, I’ll go mad. Suddenly this house—”

Mimi put her hands on Abigail’s arms and peered into her eyes like she did with the kids when they ran a fever. “You love this house, Miz Abigail! You stitched every curtain.”

Abigail wiggled out of Mimi’s hold. “This house is choking me. Every room holds reminders of Robert and how our life was before the war came and tore us apart.” She could hardly believe she was speaking these words herself but knew deep in her gut they rang true.

“Charlie’s right. We need a new start. If we move to a smaller house in town I’ll be sad every day it’s not this one. If we move back to Daddy’s, he and my brothers’ families will resent us for our neediness. And I don’t want the children to finish growing up under that burden. If we leave Marston we can start fresh. Why shouldn’t that be where Robert is? If we get out there and he doesn’t want us, then at least we’ll know where we stand.”