Wolf Creek Homecoming

She’d fallen in love with him. Believing that he loved her in return, she had indulged in her forbidden longings and given him everything his kisses demanded.

Three weeks later, he’d left her with nothing but a note for goodbye, a bleeding, aching heart and three weeks of memories that seemed sordid in light of his defection. She had faced the truth: Gabe Gentry was everything the gossips said he was and more. A liar, a cheat and a womanizer. Oh, certainly he was fun, friendly and he listened. And he used each and every one of those traits she’d been so enamored of against her. Sheltered and innocent, she hadn’t stood a chance. He’d worked at breaching her defenses until she’d given up and given in.

Like Eve, she’d been lured from the straight path. Overnight, Gabe went from being funny and charming to a handsome rogue endowed with more skill and cunning than any man she’d ever met.

She’d found out the hard way the lessons her parents had tried to instill in her. Sin was so tempting because it came wrapped in such an attractive, alluring package, all tied up with the subtle lie that it was not wrong, that it was all right...really.

Realizing how easily he’d deceived her set her to crying so hard and heavily she’d feared the tears would never stop. Eventually anger replaced her sorrow, anger that burned so hotly that it dried her tears. Anger at Gabe. Anger at herself.

She’d moved through the days, more alone and miserable than before, barely able to concentrate on her schooling. Unable to eat, she’d grown so thin and hollow-eyed that Mrs. Abernathy had urged her to see a physician.

“I regret to inform you that you’re expecting a child, Miss Stone,” the doctor had said, peering at her over the tops of his spectacles. He didn’t bother hiding his disapproval.

Rachel felt her heart plummet. Her already queasy stomach churned. Having a baby? Impossible! Having a baby was supposed to be a joyous occasion, not something that just...happened. And not to unmarried women. Babies were supposed to be the result of...of love.

She must have spoken, because the doctor stood.

“All I can tell you, Miss Stone, is that you are not the first young lady foolish enough to believe a man’s lies. I can just hope that you are not so imprudent as to make the mistake a second time.”

“B-but what am I going to do? My family...” She paused and swallowed hard.

“Will be devastated, I’m sure,” he’d told her, offering her not one iota of help or comfort. “Now, you should try to get as much rest as possible, and eat three healthy meals a day.”

She thought she might upchuck at the idea of eating three meals a day. “But I’m so sick, I can’t hold anything down.”

“Tut-tut!” he’d said, looking at her as if she were a strange organism under a microscope’s lens. “My wife was never sick a day during her confinements. I can assure you that you will not rid yourself of this child by vomiting it up. I strongly suggest that you accept your situation and start preparing for some significant changes to your life.”

She’d left his office vacillating between despair and fury. The man’s bedside manner was nonexistent! He was so uncaring he had no right to hang out his shingle. He was right about one thing, though. She had been very foolish. She’d thrown away her good name, turned her back on a lifetime of teaching and jeopardized her soul. All for three weeks of feeling cherished and loved by a man who’d lied to her about his feelings. Lied to her about everything.

A baby was to be her punishment for loving him.

Ever practical, she supposed it was no more than she deserved. Well, so be it. She pushed aside the panic nibbling at the edges of her composure. Despite her lapses in judgment, she was smart and possessed plenty of grit. She was handling medical school, and she could handle this, too—somehow.

She sat down with pen and paper and considered her options. The doctor had been right when he’d said her parents would be devastated and ashamed of her actions if they found out what she’d done, so she would take measures to see that they didn’t find out. That meant returning to Wolf Creek or asking for help from them was out of the question. She couldn’t afford to bring up a child and continue with her studies. The small allowance her father sent for her upkeep barely stretched from one month to the next.

Her only recourse was to have the child and put it up for adoption. Only then could she go home and try to put the whole thing behind her. The next months would be torture as she faced the stares and snide smirks she knew she’d receive from her fellow classmates, but it still seemed her best option.

She soon learned that life seldom went as planned. She was in the final month of her pregnancy when Sarah VanSickle, the biggest gossip in Pike County, happened to be visiting her sister in St. Louis and decided to pay Rachel an impromptu visit.

Rachel could still picture the jubilation in Sarah’s eyes as she’d swept her up and down with a knowing eye. The loathsome woman had wasted no time scurrying home to recount the news to not only Rachel’s parents, but everyone else in town.

It was little wonder that she gave birth to a baby boy the very day her father arrived to confront her about the rumors. Seeing the anguish in his eyes, knowing how deeply she’d disappointed him, she vowed that no amount of persuasion could tempt her to tell him who had fathered her child.

Though he was heartbroken over her actions, Edward Stone was as stubborn as his daughter. From the moment the baby was born, he began to campaign for her to keep him.

After two days of reasoning that sometimes bordered on outright coercion, she’d agreed. She and the son she named Daniel had stayed in St. Louis until she received her medical degree, something made possible when Edward upped his monthly stipend and arranged for Mrs. Abernathy to keep Danny while Rachel was in class. Only then was she forced to summon the courage to go back home and face the music.

Since Sarah had blabbed the news all over town, there was no way Rachel could pretend she’d married while she was away, and even if that had been an option, she wouldn’t have added lying to her sins. Instead, with her well-respected father at her side, she’d brazened out the whispers and cold shoulders with the same determination and dedication that had seen her through her schooling.

A week after arriving home, her mother died, and Rachel always felt at fault. A short time later, she’d found the courage to go back to church and seek God’s forgiveness.

Since then, she had worked alongside her father trying to earn back the respect and goodwill of the townsfolk. When Edward suffered a stroke two years ago, she’d taken on the bulk of his practice. Though there were a few who still regarded her as a fallen woman, for the most part she’d been restored into the town’s good graces.

To this day no one—not even her father—knew the identity of Danny’s father.

Now that man lay in her downstairs bedroom and there was nowhere to run from her past. She’d always believed God had a plan, that things happened for a reason and that He was in control. When Gabe had walked out on her after taking her innocence, she’d wondered what the Lord could possibly have been thinking by bringing them together. Now she wondered what on earth He could possibly have in mind by doing it again.

* * *

That afternoon, still weary and upset, Rachel decided that since sickness and accidents seemed to be taking a holiday, she would take her mind off of what she’d begun to think of as the situation and bake oatmeal cookies with Danny.

She knew she should drive out and tell Caleb his brother was back and seriously injured, but she didn’t want to talk about Gabe Gentry, didn’t want to waste one single moment even thinking about him. Therein lay the problem. All she’d done since she’d recognized him on the gurney was think about him.

She was reaching for a tea towel to take a batch of cookies from the oven when Danny asked, “Do you know that man, Mama?”

Rachel paused, halfway to the stove. Take a deep breath and answer him. After all, he was only exhibiting the natural curiosity of an eight-year-old.

“I knew him a long time ago,” she said, choosing her words with care. “But not very well, it seems.” It was the truth, after all.

“Pops said he’s Mr. Gentry’s younger brother.”

“That’s right.” One by one she lifted the hot cookies onto a stoneware platter with the egg turner. Mercifully, before Danny could ask another question, she heard someone knocking. Her father was dozing in his favorite chair, so there was no need to stop. He’d answer the door.

She heard the rumble of masculine voices, and in a matter of minutes Caleb entered the kitchen. “Caleb!” she said, surprised to see him.

“Edward told me it’s true,” he said, twisting his hat in his big work-roughened hands. His unusual silvery eyes were a dark, stormy gray.

“Yes.” Rachel gestured toward a chair at the table. “Have a seat. I’m sorry I didn’t come out and tell you, but it was a long morning, and I took a little rest.”

“No need,” Caleb said, stepping farther into the room but refusing to sit down. “Between Simon and Roland, the Wolf Creek grapevine is in prime working order. Sarah drove out about noon on the pretext of wanting to be the first to see Eli. Of course, she couldn’t wait to tell me the news.”

“After the way she slandered you and Abby, I can’t believe that woman would have the gall to even look you in the eye,” Rachel said with a bitter twist of her lips.

Caleb’s smile mimicked hers. “I warned her last year not to ever step foot on the place again, but I guess she decided facing my anger was a fair trade for the pleasure of being the first to tell me about Gabe. How bad is he?”

“Bad enough.” Rachel listed his injuries and Caleb winced.

“Can I see him?”

“Of course. I should check on him anyway. I’ve given him some laudanum, so he’s unconscious. It’s best if I keep him that way for a day or two, until he’s past the worst of the pain,” she said, preceding Caleb into the bedroom.

As he approached the bed, Rachel heard him draw in a sharp breath. He swallowed hard and looked up at her with an expression of horror. “His face...”

She nodded. “Whoever did this to him intended for him to remember it.”

Never one to show emotion, Caleb’s response was to turn and walk out of the room. In the hall, he hesitated, almost as if he wanted to say something and didn’t know how...or what.

“Would you like a cup of coffee and some cookies?” Rachel asked in a gentle voice. “They’re straight from the oven.”

“That would be nice,” he said. He followed her into the kitchen, where Edward was plopping out spoons full of dough, and pulled out a chair.

Rachel sent her father a silent message and Edward said, “Come on, Danny. It’s warmed up some, so let’s go outside awhile. I’ll sit on the porch while you make a snowman.”

Since he’d been begging to go out all day, Danny gave a shout of joy and bounded from the room.

“Bundle up!” Edward shouted to his retreating back, turning his chair and following.

When they were gone, Caleb said simply, “Thank you.”

Rachel sat down across from him. “You wanted to tell me something?”

He took a swallow of coffee. “I don’t know what I want. When I first heard Gabe was back, I intended to come here and give him a piece of my mind for walking out all those years ago and never once contacting us. That was before I saw how bad he is.”

He swallowed hard. A smart, self-educated man known for his toughness and an unyielding attitude, Caleb had softened a lot since marrying Abby Carter.

“Now I don’t know how I feel or what to say to him,” he confessed, rubbing a hand down his cheek. “Seeing him like that caught me off guard.” He gave another halfhearted smile. “It’s hard to summon up a lot of anger when someone is lying there battered and bleeding and can’t defend himself.”

She gave a half shrug. “True, I suppose, but there’s absolutely no excuse for him to not contact you all these years,” Rachel said before she could temper her tongue.

Caleb frowned at her animosity.

Realizing she’d let too much of her antagonism show, she took a calming breath. “You never really got along, did you?”

“No.” He ran his hand through his shaggy hair. “Well, that’s not exactly true. Actually, we never had much to do with each other. He was four years younger than me, and I was always expected to toe the line, get the work done. Lucas mostly let Gabe go his own way, so he never did much of anything that resembled work. When he asked for his inheritance, Lucas just up and gave it to him, and I was left to deal with everything here.”

“It must have seemed very unfair.”

Caleb’s short bark of laughter lacked true mirth. “In more ways than you can imagine. I guess it’s pretty obvious that Gabe was always the handsome one, the charming one, the one who could make everyone laugh. I was the drudge, the sensible one, the serious brother. Right or wrong, I always resented him for it.”

Caleb pinned her with a hard look. “Maybe I still do. It will be interesting to hear what kind of story he spins when he wakes up. I can’t imagine anything he could possibly say to make me feel different toward him, so he needn’t expect me to welcome him with open arms. In fact, once he gets better, I won’t mind seeing him leave town.”

It was quite a speech for the taciturn farmer. Knowing the feelings of her own heart, Rachel kept quiet.

Caleb lifted his gaze to hers. “I know the Bible says I should forgive him and let go of the past, but I don’t mind telling you I’m having a real hard time with this.”

Rachel offered him a wan smile. “Believe me,” she said. “I understand better than you think.”

* * *

That night, after checking on the patient, Rachel went into Danny’s room and sat on the side of the bed. Sweet, innocent little man, she thought, brushing the dark, wavy, too-long hair away from his forehead. Until today, she’d never realized just how much he looked like Gabe, probably because she had taken such pains to bury her memories of him.

With him now beneath her roof, that was impossible. She could only hope and pray that he mended soon so that he could be on his way, preferably, as Caleb suggested, out of town. She didn’t want Danny around Gabe any more than necessary.

Brushing her lips against her son’s forehead, she rose and went to join her father in the parlor.

“Everyone okay?” he asked, looking up from his book and peering at her over the tops of the glasses that lent his attractively lined face a professorial look.

“Everyone’s fine.”

Edward laid aside his book, and Rachel sat on the end of the sofa. “What about you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you fine? You don’t seem so,” he said, tapping into his uncanny ability to see things beyond the surface. “You’ve been jumpy all day, and angry and...oh, I don’t know, maybe even sad. Would you like to tell me why?”

She crossed her arms across her chest. “No.”

“Well, then,” he said, “do you mind if I hazard a guess?”

Rachel gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Guess away,” she said with a nonchalance that did a reasonable job of masking her apprehension.

Edward tented his fingertips and regarded her for a few long seconds. She felt as if he could see into her very heart and soul, and that all the secrets she’d held so close were about to be exposed. He was no fool. Perception and spot-on intuition were two of Edward Stone’s greatest assets.

“In all your thirty-one years, I’ve never seen you the way you’ve been today. I’ve tried and tried to figure out what’s behind this hostility you have toward Gabe, especially since you never had much truck with him before he left town.”

“And have you come up with a reason?” she asked in a voice that, like her hands, trembled the slightest bit.

“I have.”

“And?” she asked, regarding him with a steady expression.

“The only thing that makes a woman act the way you have today is rejection. You know, the old ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’” He looked her squarely in the eye. “I believe Gabe Gentry looked you up when you were in St. Louis. I believe he’s Danny’s father.”

An anguished cry escaped Rachel. How could he have figured it out just from her attitude? She felt a sob claw its way up her throat and pressed a fist to her mouth to hold it back.

“Oh, my dear!” Edward said in a tortured voice, rolling his chair over to her and putting a consoling hand on her shoulder. “How hard it must have been for you to keep that secret all this time.”

“I would never have told you,” she said as tears slipped down her cheeks. “Never.”

“I know that, you hard-headed, silly girl. Would you like to tell me about it? The abridged version, of course,” he asked with an awkward attempt at a smile.

Why not? Rachel thought. Perhaps if she told him how it had happened and how she’d felt, it would release some of the guilt and misery that had made her prickly and skeptical and robbed her of so much joy through the years.

“There isn’t much to tell,” she said almost thoughtfully. She told him how she’d come home from school and found Gabe at her boardinghouse. “I was so lonely and homesick, and it was so good to see a familiar face...” Her voice trailed away. “I invited him in and we had lemonade.

“As he was leaving, he asked me to dinner the next night and we spent every day together after I got home from school,” she said, allowing long-suppressed memories their freedom. “He brought me flowers from a street vendor, took me out to eat at fancy restaurants, bought me trinkets and told me all sorts of wonderful, fantastic stories of the places he’d been and hoped to go.”

Her tears ran freely as the memories continued to tumble out. “He teased me, and it was—” she gave a huge hiccuping sob “—so nice to laugh. Every evening, he insisted I tell him about what I’d done and what I’d learned. He was just so encouraging, both about my studies and...just everything. I told him all about my dearest hopes and dreams.”

She took the handkerchief Edward offered, mopped at her eyes and blew her running nose.

“He made me believe that all of those hopes and dreams could come true. I fell in love with him,” she said, summing everything up in those few words. “I’m sure you can figure out the rest.”

“I think I understand,” Edward said when she ran out of words. “Your upbringing gave you little or no defense. You had no idea how to guard your heart. So tell me why he left. Did you quarrel?”

Rachel shook her head. “Nothing like that. I thought things were going along just fine. And then I came home from school one day, and he’d left a note with Mrs. Abernathy that said a friend had caught up with him and talked him into taking a paddle wheeler to New Orleans. It was supposed to be great fun, and he’d always wanted to go there. He said the next time he was in town, he’d look me up and we’d go to dinner.”

“That’s it?” Edward said, with a look of disbelief.

“Oh, no. He said it had been a fun few weeks and that he’d never forget me.”

She laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. “I was so ashamed,” she said in an anguished whisper. “I’d ruined my whole life. That was bad enough, but when I found out I was going to have a baby, I was terrified. I thought I’d figured out a way that no one would ever find out. Then Sarah showed up and sent all my plans tumbling down.”

Tears spilled down Rachel’s cheeks. “I know bearing my shame was hard for you and Mother, especially after I came home, and I know my actions are what brought on her death, but I want to thank you for never once throwing it back in my face and for...for making me...k-keep Danny.” She choked on another sob.

Edward gave her hand an awkward pat. “Your mother had a heart condition, Rachel. Her health had been going downhill for more than a year. Her passing so soon after you came back was just an unfortunate coincidence. She loved you and she adored Danny.”

He smiled. “And as for that young scamp, I hope I didn’t make you do anything. I hope I just encouraged you to do what you really wanted. I know you well, my precious girl, and I don’t believe you’d have been able to live with yourself if you’d given him up. And selfishly, I couldn’t bear the thought of strangers bringing up my flesh and blood—or worse, him being put into an orphanage and never knowing the joys of real family. He’s a delight, Rachel. I can’t imagine life without him.”

“Neither can I.”

“Besides,” he added, “I’ve never been one to think that two wrongs make a right.”

For long moments, the fire popped and crackled while Rachel worked at regaining her composure.

“What do you plan to do now?” Edward asked, at last.

“Do? About what?”

“Gabe. How do you feel about him after all this time?”

“Nothing,” she snapped. “I plan to do nothing and I feel nothing but anger toward him. I hope and pray that he’ll leave town again as soon as he’s able, which will suit me just fine.”

“And if he doesn’t? It will certainly be a test, won’t it? How long do you think it will take before he figures things out?”

Rachel’s face drained of color. “What are you saying?”

There was no compromise in Edward’s eyes. “You need to tell Gabe the truth. Danny, too.”

Her horrified gaze met his. “I can’t!”

“Listen to me, Rachel. You need to tell Danny before someone else sees the resemblance and starts spreading it around town. Believe me, as hard as it may be, he’ll be much better off hearing the truth from you than someone else. They both will.”

Chapter Two

Christmas Eve morning dawned crisp and cold. Just as dawn was breaking, Rachel rose from the cot beside Gabe’s bed and lit the lamp.

He had rested well in his laudanum-induced sleep, but she had not been so blessed. Sleep had eluded her, as thoughts and recollections tumbled round and round in her mind like colorful fragments in a kaleidoscope. Besides a jumble of troubling memories, her mind replayed the conversation with her father again and again.

She couldn’t believe how light her heart felt since sharing the secret she’d carried alone for so long. Who would have thought that something that seemed so small could weigh so heavily on a heart? She would be eternally grateful that her father’s love and support had not wavered, even after learning the truth.

She knew Edward was right about telling Danny about Gabe, yet the very thought of doing so filled her with dread. How would she find the words? What would Danny say...and think?

She stoked the dying fire and went to see how Gabe was doing, busying herself with changing his bandages and checking his temperature. Her ministering seemed to agitate him, and he began to move about. When she tried to restrain him, he cried out and opened his eyes. Thankfully she saw no recollection there, no wicked, teasing gleam, nothing but agony. The doctor in her wanted him to be pain free and improve under her care; the woman in her shrank from the moment he would open his eyes and look up at her with recognition.

What would he see when he awakened? What would he think when he saw her for the first time in nine years? She turned toward the mirror hanging above the washstand, drawn to it like a June bug to the light. Her reflection wavered in the flickering light of the oil lamp.

She stared at herself for long moments and then, womanlike, rubbed at her forehead with her fingertips as if she could massage away the few slight creases she saw there, lines etched by her deep concern for her patients.

Exposure to the elements in all sorts of weather had tanned her face and hands despite the bonnet she wore, and squinting against the sun had left tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. Despite regular treatments of lemon juice, a faint spattering of freckles dotted her nose.

Age and Danny’s birth had added a few pounds, but according to her father, it was weight she needed. Strangely, her face was thinner than it had been nine years ago, refined by age and life.