Heart Of The Lawman. Linda Castle
very good-not like Mrs. Young’s.” Rachel’s gaze slid to the closed pie safe with the pierced tin panels. Flynn was sure inside must lie a treasure of perfectly formed gingerbread men in precise rows upon the scrubbed wood.
Flynn’s heart contracted at the searching expression in Rachel’s cornflower-blue eyes. “Dumpling, I think that is the finest gingerbread man in town—probably the whole territory.”
Some of the strain left her small shoulders. “Mrs. Young said it was crooked.”
Flynn’s eyes slid to the housekeeper. She was in the process of folding a dish towel. When she had folded four layers she used the towel to pull a black Dutch oven out of the front of the Monarch stove. Then, as she had done every night for three years, she stripped off her apron and turned to Flynn.
“Dinner is roast beef. There is a pan of biscuits and a bowl of gravy on the warmer.” She laid her apron aside and retrieved her brown bonnet from a hook by the back door. “Yesterday’s loaves are in the pie safe if you take a hankering for some.”
Without another word she tied the bonnet on her head and shuffled out the back door. Heavy, determined steps thudded alongside the house. The iron gate in front creaked once when it opened and once when it swung shut. They would see no more of Mrs. Young until seven o’clock in the morning.
The huge house seemed to sigh in relief.
“I’m glad she is gone,” Rachel whispered.
Flynn frowned and rubbed his rough palm against Rachel’s satiny cheek. “It’s just the two of us again, partner.”
“Uh-huh,” Rachel said with another relieved sigh.
Flynn knew that Rachel was uneasy around Mrs. Young. Most of the time he was home and things were fine, but when he had business to take care of or the herd to move, then he saw Rachel become unhappy.
Maybe it was time to make a change. Mrs. Young was old and set in her ways. Rachel had all the energy and curiosity of a normal child.
Maybe if he talked to Mrs. Young…
He wasn’t sure how to ride herd over her. Still, the notion that he needed to make changes for Rachel nudged at the corners of his mind.
He yanked out a kitchen chair and helped Rachel into it. She straightened her petticoats over legs as straight and slender as a yearling filly’s.
“Are you eating man-size or little girl-size tonight?” he asked as he lifted the heavy iron cover from the Dutch oven.
“Man-size,” Rachel said.
He looked at her from under lifted brows. “How about we start small and work up?”
“All right, Unca Flynn.”
He dished up two plates. “Did Mrs. Young snap at you again, punkin?”
“No, not ’xactly.” Rachel squirmed in her chair.
“Truth?”
“No. She isn’t like you, Unca Flynn,” Rachel explained patiently in her young-old voice.
“I should hope not.” He chuckled and tried to make light of what she had said. “I’m a tough old range bull.”
“You’re not old, Unca Flynn.” Rachel laughed but then her expression turned serious. “You’re not old like Grandma Hollenbeck.”
“No, I’m not old like that, Rachel, but your grandma is very sick.” Victoria probably seemed aged beyond counting to Rachel since the woman had been ravaged by her strokes.
Flynn sat down at the table. He picked up a fork and rotated it between his finger and thumb, chewing on the question that he knew had to be asked. Finally he just spit it out.
“What did Mrs. Young say to upset you today, Rachel?” He stared at his food, while he waited for her to find the words.
“I asked her why I didn’t have a mama like Becky Morgan and Maizie Duncan and all the other little girls in town.” Her voice was a quivering whisper as she stared down at her lap.
A hard knot took up residence in Flynn’s belly. This was a day he had long dreaded.
“What did she say?”
“She said I didn’t have a mama.” Rachel’s voice was dry and whispery. “But how come, Unca Flynn?” She looked up at him and tears swam in her blue eyes. “How come I don’t have a mama?”
“Oh, honey, don’t listen to Mrs. Young. She is a grumpy old sage hen who has forgotten how to raise a little girl.” Flynn reached out and rubbed her soft cheek with his thumb. He made up his mind then and there. Mrs. Young would have to go. He would not have a woman in the house who had so little compassion.
Rachel swallowed hard and toyed with her food Flynn tried a piece of meat but it tasted like sawdust while he chewed.
He had known this day would come—that eventually Rachel’s curiosity would bring him to this point, but he was unprepared. What could he tell her?
Rachel had grown up in a town full of secrets. Victoria Hollenbeck’s power and money had silenced the tongues of the residents of Hollenbeck Corners. As far as Flynn knew, Rachel had never even heard her mother’s name spoken. He had said nothing because he just didn’t know what to say. But as he looked at Rachel’s tight little face, he knew he was going to have to find the words.
And soon.
“You do have a mama, Rachel,” Flynn said softly.
Her head lifted. She stared across the blue-flowered china with a look of hope and bone-deep hunger. Her pale blue eyes burned into him.
“I do?”
“Yes, you do. You look a lot like her, in fact. She has blue eyes, just like yours.”
I remember, because she turned and looked at me with those amazing eyes before she walked through the gates at Yuma.
“You—know her?” Wonder tinted every word.
“Yep, I know her.”
Rachel’s eyes scanned his face, as her mind gauged his words, searching for truth and meaning.
“Where is my mama, Unca Flynn?”
Straight as an Apache arrow, her question pierced his heart.
Flynn swallowed hard. Now he had opened Pandora’s box and all the misery that came with his answer would come flying out.
How could he tell Rachel that her mother was in prison for killing her daddy?
Her world would shatter.
No. The world he had built around this tiny girl would shatter, if she learned what part he had played in taking her mother away.
“She had to leave when you were just a baby.” The half truth rushed past his lips.
“Why?”
Something cold and mournful, like wind out of the Superstitions, swept over him. “Sh—she just did. There are times when adults have to do things—even if they don’t want to. I—I can’t really explain it all to you now. Maybe when you are a little older.”
Rachel’s bottom lip trembled. She drew in a ragged breath in an effort not to cry. “Oh.”
He swallowed hard. This little scrap of flesh and bone could wound him with a look. Her tears destroyed him and turned him to a babbling fool.
“She loved you, honey. That is what you need to remember and think about. Don’t listen to Mrs. Young, just remember that your mama loved you.”
Her face took on a sullen hurt look that cut him deep. “If she loved me she wouldn’t have gone away. If she loved me she would come back,” Rachel said softly.
The edges of his