Stay a Little Longer (27 page)

Charlotte nodded.

“When I didn’t come back when I was supposed to,” he continued, “your mother and grandmother and even Rachel thought that
I had died, but I… just… couldn’t make my way back home as fast as I should have.”

For a long moment, both of them were silent. Mason looked down at their entwined hands. In that moment, he truly felt that
this girl was his daughter
and that nothing would ever change that. He vowed that even though he had failed Charlotte’s mother, he wouldn’t fail her
child.

“I know this has to be hard for you to understand, Charlotte,” Mason said, “but I want you to believe that if I had known
you were here, or that your mother had been sick with worry, I would have done everything I could to come back to you. Nothing
I say can make it right, but I hope you can believe me when I tell you that I’m sorry.”

“But… but, I…” Charlotte began, then fell silent.

“Tell me,” Mason encouraged.

“But… but does this mean that my mother might be alive, too?”

“No, Charlotte,” he managed through the sorrow her question evoked. “I’m afraid she’s gone from us now, no matter how much
we wish otherwise.”

Suddenly, the little girl sprang from where she sat on the bed and turned into Mason’s arms, a move that startled him. As
she sank into him, he tenderly embraced her, and from somewhere deep in his chest, he felt a growing sense of completeness,
the filling of a void he hadn’t even known existed. That she hadn’t been repulsed by his scarring gave him a glimmer of hope
that his life could be repaired. He felt a tear slide free from his eye and descend down his cheek, but he didn’t mind, not
in the slightest.

Their moment was broken by a sharp bark from Jasper.

“Hush, now,” Charlotte scolded him. “You don’t have to be jealous… He’ll be your daddy, too!”

Mason laughed heartily at his daughter’s words as he rose from the bed and walked over to where he had hung his worn coat.
From the inside pocket he retrieved the photograph and letter he had treasured for so many years. “I have something for you,”
he said.

“You do?”

“These were the last things I received from your mother… before I got sick,” he explained gently. “They’ve helped me through
some very rough times, and whenever I look at them, I remember her as clearly as if she were standing right before me. Now
I want you to have them.”

“Really?” she exclaimed.

“Yes, really. They’re yours.”

Without having to be cautioned, Charlotte took the photograph and letter from Mason as delicately as if they were made of
glass. As she examined the photograph, a bright smile spread across her face. Looking up at Mason, she said, “That’s my mother!”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed as he again marveled at how much of Alice lived on in Charlotte.

In that moment, he knew that Alice, wherever she was, was smiling.

Rachel knocked gently on the door to her mother’s room before entering. Carefully balancing a tray with that afternoon’s lunch,
she found her mother once again standing in front of the window, brilliant sunlight streaming in through the crack in the
curtains; the rest of the room was still dark with gloomy shadows. Eliza glanced at her daughter for only a moment, her face
a mask of frustrated anger and spite, her jaw rigid and her mouth pulled into a tight line, before returning her gaze to the
street below.

Setting down the tray, Rachel mumbled, “I’ll be back for it later,” and began to turn back toward the door.

“How could you have lied to me in such a way?” her mother asked suddenly.

Rachel sighed. As she had prepared her mother’s tray, she had known that this was going to happen. Even the night before,
well after she and Mason had left her mother’s room, she had lain awake in bed, unable to sleep, thinking of how her mother
had reacted to the surprising news that Mason was still alive. Over and over, she saw the horrified look in the woman’s eyes
as she gazed upon Mason’s scars. While Mason had been the one slapped, she had known that Eliza Watkins’s ire would eventually
find a familiar target.

“It’s just as Mason told you, Mother,” Rachel explained, turning back to face the woman’s accusing stare. “He asked me to
keep his identity a secret. Besides, when we first brought him to the boardinghouse, we had no idea who he was.”

“I just bet you didn’t!” Eliza said sarcastically.

“What I’m telling you is the truth,” Rachel answered defiantly. “If you had seen him lying in that cabin, if you had seen
the disheveled mess he had become, you wouldn’t have known who he was either. Even if Zachary Tucker himself had stumbled
across him in the woods, he wouldn’t have had any idea he’d found his brother.”

The sudden realization that Zachary had no idea of his brother’s return sent shivers racing down Rachel’s arms. With everything
that had happened lately, particularly the revelation of Mason’s true identity and the vicious attack by Jonathan Moseley,
it had been easy to forget Zachary’s desire to own the boardinghouse and use it for the incoming lumber company. But the threat
hadn’t disappeared.

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell me once you had learned the truth,” Eliza continued. “Regardless of what he
asked you to do, there was no reason for you to keep it from me.”

“Maybe I didn’t say anything because I could see how genuinely hurt Mason was to learn about Alice.”

“He didn’t know?” Eliza asked incredulously.

“How would he? He’s spent the last several years hiding in darkened rail cars, moving back and forth across the country. When
he finally decided to return to Carlson, the first thing he did was to go to his and Alice’s old house, but before he could
find an answer to any of his questions, he became ill. He didn’t know about Charlotte either.”

“But Alice wrote to him,” her mother said. “She told him!”

“He never received the letter.”

“Does Charlotte know who he is?”

Rachel nodded. “He told me that he was going to tell her.”

“You can’t let him!” Eliza shouted, finally stepping away from the curtains and approaching her daughter, her face creased
with worry. “Just imagine how much that would hurt her!”

“Why?” Rachel frowned. “The poor child has had to live with the burden of her mother’s death her whole life, every birthday
being dragged out to see a tombstone of a woman she never knew. She’ll be happy to have at least one parent! She and Mason
get along wonderfully.”

“How can you allow them to be together? Have you forgotten that it is his fault that Alice is gone?”

Rachel knew that her mother’s angry words were meant to upset her, but she was beginning to see that there was another side,
a different truth; what had happened to Alice was as much a result of her sister’s inability to deal with her grief as it
was about Mason not returning from the war. For many years she had blamed Mason for what occurred. But now, even if there
was still lingering anger in her heart, she knew that it was time to let it go and, just as Mason had begun to do, try to
reclaim what was left of their lives.

Clinging to the past won’t help any of us any longer…

“Mother,” she began as gently as she could, “what’s done is done. I can’t keep hating him for what happened, and neither should
you.”

“Don’t think you can tell me how I should feel! It’s his fault!”

“That’s not fair,” Rachel disagreed, standing her ground in the face of her mother’s ever-increasing fury. “Some of the blame
has to rest with Alice. She was the one who chose not to live without Mason, even though she knew she was bringing his child
into the world.”

“Don’t say such things about her!”

“But it’s true, Mother. Deep down, you know that I’m right.”

Surprise and indignation filled Eliza’s face as she listened to Rachel’s defiant words. Crossing her thin arms over her chest,
she declared, “I can’t believe you would say such things. For that matter, I don’t know how you can stand to even be around
him!”

“Because, just like Mason,” Rachel explained, her own ire rising right alongside her mother’s, “I want to put the past where
it belongs! There’s no need to carry all of this anger and pain around anymore. Blaming Mason will do nothing to bring Alice
back and will only cause more hurt. What has it gotten any of us but needless suffering? Look at yourself, Mother. All it
has given you is such fear that you never leave your room!”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’ve spent the last eight years carrying Alice’s death around as if it were your own personal cross to bear,”
Rachel argued, allowing the thoughts she had held within herself for so many years finally to be let loose. “You lock yourself
in this room as if you were in a prison! While life goes on as it always has just outside your windows, you remain here, acting
as if we are still in the days when Alice and I slid down the banisters. You still act as if you expect her to come walking
through your door!”

“You can’t know the pain I’ve gone through!” Eliza shouted.

“I do, Mother!” Rachel answered truthfully. “I went through it too, remember? I’m the one who has cared for Charlotte as if
she were my own daughter! I’m the one who has turned away each and every suitor who ventured to court me because of my responsibilities
here in the boardinghouse! I’m the one who has had to bring meal after meal into this gloomy room!”

“I never asked you—” her mother began but was cut off.

“Every one of us has suffered and sacrificed, and for what?” Rachel vehemently argued. “We keep living in the past, feeling
sorry about what happened, but never doing a damned thing about it! Well, I’ve had it and it’s time for us to stop!”

Eliza could only stare at her daughter in disbelief.

“Mason is right,” Rachel said, suddenly aware of just how much she had finally allowed herself to say, but not feeling the
slightest bit sorry at having said it. “We have to go on living. Though we all miss Alice, Mason included, we have to go on
if we truly want to live again. These days alongside him have reminded me of all that we have lost, and I know, in the bottom
of my heart, that Alice wouldn’t want that… for any of us.”

Without waiting for an answer, Rachel turned and walked to the door. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to find her
mother still silently staring, emotion beginning to get the better of her.

“I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive, Mother,” Rachel explained. “Because if you can’t then you will have
lost the part of you that Alice and I loved best.”

With that, Rachel went out and shut the door behind her.

Z
ACHARY TUCKER STOOD
silently at the side of his father’s bed, watching the old man as he slept. Outside the room’s windows, the breaking November
morning was brilliant; rays of golden sunlight streamed down from a nearly cloudless sky, warming away the stubborn frost
that had settled upon the ground overnight. The weather, however, would go unnoticed by the room’s sole occupant; in Sherman
Tucker’s narrow world, there was no longer much of a difference between day and night.

Though he was just sixty years of age, Sherman Tucker bore the outward appearance of a much older man. Deep, insistent wrinkles
lined his worn skin; age spots dotted his scalp, swept over by wispy, thinning hair as white as snow. While he slept soundly,
dark circles underlined his rheumy eyes. Once upon a time he had been a fit, robust man who had led his bank through tough
times with a fiery, strong resolve that never wavered. Now he was a shell of that man. The reason for such a profound change
was simple.

When his older son had first gone off to war, Sherman Tucker had been very proud to be his father. But after he received the
fateful communication that Mason had been reported as missing, presumed killed in action, he had gradually lost interest in
the world. All he had worked for was gone. The legacy he had sought to leave his son no longer mattered. In the beginning,
his despair showed in a slumping of his broad shoulders, a watery look in his eyes as he tried to carry himself through another
day at the bank. Soon it became a chronic pain in his back, a nagging cold that never seemed to go away, before finally depression
overcame him, sending him to his bed, never to leave.

And that was the day when all that you had created became mine…
Zachary gloated at the thought.

When Sherman’s misery forced him to step away, Zachary had filled the void in his business that had been left behind, even
if that had never been his father’s intention. Within months, he had consolidated control, removing anyone stubborn or unwise
enough to stand in his way. The power and authority he had always lustfully craved from a distance was finally his. Now, with
his father’s death more imminent, he felt no remorse, no impending sense of loss. In fact, he found himself filled with anticipation.

You’ll finally be out of my way, Father… just like Mason…

Zachary had never been his father’s favorite. Where Mason seemed to be able to do no wrong, every attempt that Zachary made
to please his father met with unmitigated failure. He could still see the look of displeasure in the man’s eyes when he made
a mistake in the bank’s ledgers, the first of many such disappointments. Mason had been the brother brought before important
investors and visitors from out of town looking to bring business to Carlson. At Christmas parties and other celebrations,
Mason was marched up before the throng and asked to say a few words about how much their work was appreciated.

Sherman Tucker had known that his younger son would never be able to emulate his sense of fairness and honesty in business,
his strong ethic of doing what was right in preference to what was profitable. That was why Mason had been given every opportunity
to be the one to replace him.

“But then he had the good sense to go and get killed,” Zachary muttered to himself.

He walked over to the window and looked down upon Carlson. As pleasant as it was to be reminded of how he had managed to acquire
all he desired, gaining control of his father’s financial empire, his thoughts at such an early hour were more troublesome.