LITMIR.BIZ

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Aren’t you supposed to be ‘Mrs. Collier’ by now? Where’s Pete?”

       She felt the color drain from her face and leave a coating of ice behind. It couldn’t really be happening. Pete’s brother couldn’t have shown up now, unaware his brother was dead, some seven months after Pete’s funeral.

       But thinking it could not be so didn’t make it any the less true, and she realized with panic she would have to be the one to break the news to him. She wondered who had told him how to find her, yet had not mentioned his brother was dead.

       Determined not to tell him about Pete in front of the two bright-eyed children staring curiously at her—not to mention all the other children eyeing them with avid interest—she forced herself to speak normally.

       “Why don’t we let your daughters play outside with the other children for a few minutes?” she suggested.

       He gave a curt nod by way of permission, his eyes still narrowed, and she bent to speak to Lizzie, whose desk was nearby. “Lizzie, will you take Amelia and Abigail with you and introduce them to the other girls? Let them play with you?”

       “Yes, Miss Wallace. Are they gonna come t’ school with us?”

       “We’ll see.” In a louder voice she said, “Class, we’ll take a fifteen-minute recess.” The boys didn’t hesitate, scrambling out of their seats and out the door almost before she finished speaking, as if fearing their new schoolmarm would change her mind. The girls were a bit slower but, clustering around the twins, made their way out the door just as happily.

       Caroline turned back to the suspicious-eyed man waiting by her desk and took a deep breath.

       “Please, Mr. Collier, won’t you sit down?” she said and took her place behind the shelter of her desk.

       Jack Collier stared at the small desks that sat in neat rows behind him. There were larger desks for the older students, but these were at the back of the room, and his long legs still wouldn’t have fit under them. But at last he settled for sitting on top of one of the front desks, though he dwarfed it.

       “Where’s my brother?” Jack Collier demanded again. “Why are you wearing black?” His questions came like rapidly fired bullets, but his eyes, those eyes so like Pete’s, gave away his fear of her answer.

      Lord, help me to tell him with compassion, she prayed.

       “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Collier, but your brother Peter passed away this last winter—” she paused when she heard his sharp intake of breath “—during an influenza epidemic.”

       She didn’t dare look at him as he absorbed this news and sensed rather than saw him rock back on the small desktop as if he’d been struck a physical blow.

       “Pete’s…dead?” he murmured, his hoarse voice hardly above a whisper. “But…that’s impossible. I got his letter…saying he was going to be married to the woman he met from…‘the Spinsters’ Club,’ he called it, this spring. In March. That was you he was marrying, wasn’t it? When I didn’t hear anything more, the girls and I just came ahead, figuring the invite got lost in the mail or something…I figured we missed the wedding, but we’d find you and Pete all settled in together… . Why didn’t you let me know?”

       The last question was flung at her like a fist, but she heard the piercing loss contained in it.

       Caroline had left her hands in her lap below the level of the desk, and now they clutched at one another so he wouldn’t see them shake. She let her gaze drop, unable to face the raw grief she’d glimpsed in his face, the mingled astonishment and fury stabbing at her from those too-familiar blue eyes. She felt a tear escape down her cheek, and she swept it away with a trembling hand.

       “I—I’m sorry, Mr. Collier. I did try. When it…became apparent that Pete was sinking, I tried to ask him your address… He had it memorized, you see, not written down anywhere. But he was delirious, and…I—I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get it from him before…before he d-died.” She grabbed the black-edged handkerchief she kept always within reach in her pocket and, after dabbing at her eyes, took a deep breath. “I…tried to write you,” she said. “I couldn’t remember the name of your ranch, only that it was in Goliad County, so I addressed it General Delivery to Goliad. I…I guess it didn’t find you. I’m very sorry about that, but…I didn’t know what else to do. Pete said you were his only living relative—relatives,” she amended, to include his daughters. Pete had mentioned that his brother was a widower and had a couple of daughters, but after her only attempt to contact them had borne no fruit, she had been too weighed down with sorrow to spare them another thought.

       “What am I going to do now?” Jack Collier wondered aloud as if talking to himself, his voice raspy.

       She lifted her eyes to his again. “I…I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, only to hear such awful news…I’m sure Mama and Papa would be glad to put you up until you feel able to return home.” Her mind raced ahead. She could dismiss school early and have him follow her to the little house behind the post office where she, her brother and her parents lived. She would explain to them what had happened. Mr. Collier could sleep on the summer porch with his daughters.

       “No,” he muttered.

       She thought he was being polite, not wanting to put them to any inconvenience since his visit had been unexpected. “Oh, it’s no trouble,” she assured him kindly, “and it’s the least we can do for Pete’s only family…”

       “No, you don’t understand,” Jack Collier told her, his face haggard. “I can’t go back. I—I sold my ranch. I’m on the way to Montana Territory with a herd of cattle, and I thought I could leave the girls here with you and Pete until I got settled up there… .” His voice trailed off, and he looked away, but not before she saw the utter misery in his eyes.

       She was distracted by it for only a moment until she was able to process what he had said.

       “You thought… You were planning…to leave your daughters with us, with Pete and me? While you went on to Montana with your herd?” She repeated his words, as if merely asking for clarification, while inside, the effrontery of it took her breath away. He’d thought he could leave two children with his newly wed brother without so much as a word of warning, without writing to ask if it would be all right with Pete and, more importantly, with Pete’s bride?

       “Yes, I’m going up there to join a couple of partners of mine who bought ranch land. I figured I’d find a nice lady there to marry so the girls could have a new mama, and then I’d send for them…or come back and fetch them.” He looked away, focusing on a portrait of Washington that hung on the wall as if George might have the answers.

       “But…from what I understand, at least…the snow will be flying before you get halfway there, won’t it?” She wasn’t a cattleman’s daughter, but anyone knew moving a herd of the stubborn, cantankerous critters was no quick proposition—and a potentially dangerous one, at this time of year.

       He shrugged, looking uncomfortable—as well he might, she thought, at announcing such a foolhardy notion.

       “We got a late start, and that’s a fact,” he admitted. “I was going to wait to sell the ranch early next year, but…well, let’s just say I got an offer that was too good to pass up, so we rounded up the herd and left. Then halfway here my ramrod—my second-in-command, that is—got himself all into some uh…legal trouble, and there was no way I was just going to abandon him and move on. We had to wait till his name was cleared…so we figured we’d winter in Nebraska, then travel on in the spring.”

       Caroline felt her jaw tightening and the beginnings of a headache throb at her temples. The muddle-headed, half-baked plans men came up with! Now she was angry, and though she was normally a circumspect and thoughtful woman, she was so upset and overwrought over meeting Jack and talking about Pete that her bitter feelings came tumbling out of her mouth.

       “You assumed you could dump your children with

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