Linda Castle - Heart Of The Lawman

“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 heart withered. “No. That isn’t always true, honey. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that she didn’t have any choice. She had to go.”

Rachel flew out of her chair and crumpled against his body like a fragile flower seeking shelter from a hard frost. He cuddled her while the sound of her sobs tore a hole right through him.

Someday he would have to explain it all to Rachel. And then he would have to live with the consequences of what it meant to have worn a badge.

A half hour later a knock at the door brought Rachel’s head up. Flynn slowly rose from the chair with Rachel still cradled in his arms.

She had cried for a long time.

Her tears ate at him like acid. He was ill equipped to be a father—but he was the closest thing she had to family now.

“I wonder who would be coming to call?” He hoped he could draw her from the pain she was in.

“Don’t know,” she said with a hiccup.

“Well, let’s me and you go find out.” He gave her a kiss on the top of the head and set her on her feet. Together they crossed the carpeted parlor to the front hall.

Rachel’s ragged hiccups tore at Flynn every step of the way to the door. He was too old and too much a lone wolf to be caring for her. She needed more.

She needed a mother.

When he reached the door she looked at him with such an expression of loneliness that he scooped her up in his arms again.

They looked through the frosted pane of glass and saw the glow of a lantern. Flynn opened the door and discovered Charlie Parker, Hollenbeck Corners’s aging postmaster. He gripped an ancient-looking mining lantern in his deeply tanned, gnarled hand.

“Charlie?”

“Evening, Mr. O’Bannion. Sorry to bother you.” Every time he spoke his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork in the water.

“No bother. Come inside, Charlie. What brings you out so late?” Flynn lowered Rachel to the floor and stepped back so Charlie could enter, but the man hung back. “Is something wrong?”

Charlie glanced down at the thick Chinese carpet beneath Flynn’s feet. He dusted his boots on the backs of his pant legs before he stepped over the threshold into the big house. “Not ’xactly, Mr. O’Bannion.”