When he stood up, her stomach dropped. She’d forgotten he slept in his briefs. She’d forgotten a lot of things that came back with a rush. “All right.” She would have agreed to anything at that moment just to get out of the bedroom and away from him and the feelings he could still arouse in her without even trying.
“Wait here.”
“I’ll wait in the kitchen.”
She searched his cupboards until she found coffee. Her hands were shaking as she made it. She expected to have more time, but he came out a few minutes later, wearing sweats and raking his hand back through his wet hair. He looked handsome even with a hangover. Looking at him, she felt depressed. She was never going to get over him. Never.
“Gracias,” he said when she slid a mug of hot coffee across the breakfast bar to him. She had to have something between them, something to fill his hands, something to fill hers. He took a sip. She had the feeling he was bracing himself. He finished the whole cup of coffee before he looked at her. “You’re still my wife.”
She felt the blood drain out of her face as she stared into his dark eyes. Panic set in. “No, I’m not. I did what you asked. I signed the papers. I gave them to you so your attorney could—”
“We’re still married, Sierra.”
“Maybe. For a few more months, until the divorce is final.”
“Nothing’s final, and it won’t be. There’s not going to be a divorce unless you file against me.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, confused. Hadn’t he told her over and over how much he wanted a divorce? “I did what you asked.”
“Yeah, but I changed my mind. I didn’t give the divorce papers to my attorney. I put them through the shredder at the office.”
“You what?” she said faintly.
“I shredded the divorce papers.”
“I heard you the first time, but why? Just so we’d have to go through all this misery again?”
“I don’t know why I did it at the time, but it turned out to be a good idea.”
“A—a good idea?” Did he think he could waltz back into her life and pick up where he left off? Or leave her dangling while he enjoyed himself? She wanted to throw the hot coffee at him. Instead, she slammed her cup on the counter and headed for the front door.
Alex caught hold of her halfway across the living room and swung her around. “I never loved Elizabeth the way I love you, Sierra. I knew it’d lead to disaster the first time I touched her.”
She hit him, a hard right hook square to his jaw, knocking him back two feet. Rage and hurt filled her. She lost control completely and attacked him again. Lunging at him, she pounded at his chest until she realized he was standing and taking it. With a sob, she gave him a hard shove over the back of his leather couch. Grabbing the back of her sweater, he dragged her along with him. They bounced, arms and legs tangling, and rolled onto the floor.
“You jerk!” She clambered to her feet, trying to get to the front door again. Alex was faster. He swung himself over the couch and planted himself in her path.
Spreading his hands, he presented himself. “Go ahead. Hit me again. I deserve it.”
“Get out of my way!”
“I’m not finished.”
“I am!”
“You’re still in love with me, Sierra.”
“I’ll get over it!”
“No, you won’t. And neither will I. Not ever.”
She drew in another ragged sob. “Do you think it makes me feel better to have you say you didn’t even love her? Do you think it helps to know you threw our marriage away for a fling?”
“It wasn’t a fling.”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Alex. Don’t give me the gruesome details. Just get out of my way!”
“Sierra—”
“Let me out!”
He caught hold of her shoulders. “My affair with Elizabeth had a lot to do with what you said. I wanted to feel I’d made it. Education hadn’t done it for me. Neither had money. Daughter of the American Revolution, you said. Remember? A trophy I could hold up to the world to show them Alejandro Luís Madrid was more than a wetback’s son!” His eyes were wet, tormented. “You knew me better than I knew myself, Sierra. Until Connecticut. I got a good look at myself there, and I wanted to vomit.”
“Don’t you dare call your father a wetback!”
His face softened. “Te amo.” He cupped her face. “Te amo muchísimo.”
She used her knee this time and caught him low and hard. Shoving him back, she made it to the door. “I’m not going to love you anymore, Alex,” she said, sobbing. “It hurts too much!”
Yanking open the front door, she fled.
My lying in time is drawing near.
The weight of the baby presses down. I have made what preparations I can and have explained to Beth what she must do to help me. She is younger than I was when Joshua was born, but she is a calm and willing girl and a great comfort to me. I hope she will be strong for whatever happens.
Lord, I am afraid for all my children. Please bring this baby into the world without taking me from it.
I know you sent Kavanaugh to me, Lord, and I thank You that he was obedient and arrived in time. I am sure I would have died otherwise. Joshua had gone off to find Koxoenis and ask if his wife could help me. I was praying for deliverance when someone opened the tule mat cover over our doorway. I have never been so glad to see anyone as I was to see Kavanaugh. He put his knife in the fire and then cut me. When that was done, he pulled me up so I was squatting. The baby came quick and easy after that. By the time Koxoenis, his wife, and Joshua arrived, my new daughter and I were asleep.
Kavanaugh told me today he will not leave again unless I tell him to go. He did not say more than that, but his meaning was clear. I think I have known he wanted me since the day he looked at me in the mercantile back in Independence.
I have named my baby daughter America Farr. Beth is taken with her and a great help to me. I am slow in mending and still weak. Kavanaugh is tender with me and firm in organizing the children. They do not mind. They have always held Kavanaugh in awe. Especially Joshua, though I sense tension between them now.
Kavanaugh is building us a cabin. He has set the boys to gathering stones for the foundation while he cuts timber. Joshua has not had much to say about anything lately. Something is eating at him and he will not say what. Hank and Matthew and Beth do all the talking.
The rains have been coming down steady for a week, but Kavanaugh and the boys continue to work. The rock foundation is complete and the sills set. Kavanaugh and Joshua work on notching the logs to build the walls.
This evening, we are all sitting around the pit fire. Hank, Matthew, and Beth are about their lessons while Kavanaugh whittles. He will teach the boys when they finish their reading and exercises. I am glad my boys do not fight learning like my brothers did. They must take after Mama. They can all read and write better than my father and brothers ever could, but they are far from Educated by Aunt Martha’s standards. I wish I had not been so foolish as to say I did not want to have a Bible in my possession.
Kavanaugh and Joshua have had a Falling Out. Joshua was swinging at Kavanaugh with all his might, but Kavanaugh blocked aside each blow. I kept screaming at them to stop, but Joshua would not listen. Kavanaugh unbalanced Joshua and took him down on the ground and held him there while trying to talk reason to him. Joshua was in no mood to be reasonable. When Kavanaugh released him, Joshua jumped up and spit on him. I could not believe he did such a thing and thought Kavanaugh would kill him sure. He did not have a chance to do anything because Joshua got on his horse and rode off. I ran after him and asked what had happened, but he would not say. He was crying and said he would not come back until Kavanaugh left.
Joshua has been gone for three days. My heart aches so I can not even eat. It did not take five minutes for me to find out what set Joshua on such a rampage. Kavanaugh wants to marry me. He asked Joshua for permission since he thought he was the firstborn
son. Joshua said he saw the way of things and accused him of using him to get close to me.
Kavanaugh and I have had much time to talk about many things. I thought I would be with James all my life. I did not expect to lose him. Yet I know I can not manage on my own out here. A woman with small children can not build a homeplace and plant crops all by herself. And going back home to Illinois is impossible.
I know too that Joshua will not stay with us for long. His leaving us will have little to do with Kavanaugh and all to do with his own nature, though he may be contrary and stiff-necked enough to use Kavanaugh as an excuse. Each time Joshua goes away, he stays away a little longer. He has the same hunger to see the world that James had. I am afraid it is the kind of hunger that will drive him before the wind all his life unless he faces the Almighty and comes to himself. I grieve knowing James never did. It must be in the Farr and McMurray blood to contend with God and everything else. We either see the light or die looking for it.
I have peace now I never thought to have and wonder often why I fought so hard in receiving it. Coming to the light does not mean it is easy watching Joshua wandering in darkness. But telling him about You does not seem to get his Attention. I guess I can not expect words to do it. Mama and Aunt Martha talked to me plenty and I never saw the Truth in what they were saying.
I have learned a little more about Kavanaugh over the past days. His full name is Hamlet Bogan Kavanaugh. He is twenty-eight years old and can read and write. He was born in Boston to a blueblood father and an actress mother who thought naming him after a Shakespearean character might lend him some dignity. He did not think much of the name she gave him. Despite the fact his mother never married, she made sure his father paid for an Education. His father agreed to pay for tutors if she promised to leave him alone. She kept her part of the bargain. Kavanaugh is his mother’s name. She died when he was thirteen. He went to his father then, was given fifty dollars and told to leave Boston and never darken his father’s threshold again. He did and has never been back.
I told Kavanaugh he did not have to tell me such Personal Business, but he said I should know he was born on the wrong side of the sheets before we get married and start bearing children together. I became Flustered when he said that. He seems to have things all worked out in his mind about the way things will go between us. I asked him what he would have done had James not died of a Thursday. He said he would have waited however long it took. I asked him how many children he expects to have and he laughed and said one at a time, Mary Kathryn, and gave me such a look I felt it down to my toes.
He is gone now and I can breathe freely without the wild drumming of my heart to get in the way of my head. I sent him away so I could think things through. I was surprised he did not try to talk me out of my solitude. He is a strong man, stronger than James in many ways. But there is not the hardness in him I expected. James ran roughshod over my heart. There was a wildness in him that could never be tamed. It seems so odd now I think about it. James, the farmer, the wild one, and Kavanaugh, the mountain man, so settled inside himself. For all his buckskins and long hair, Kavanaugh is a gentleman who will not take advantage.
I do not want him here when Joshua comes home. My son and I have things to settle between us before I say yes to Kavanaugh.
You do not make things easy, do You, Lord?
Joshua is gone and I sit here wondering if I will ever see him again. My heart aches so, and yet I knew this would come. I have been fighting against it for two thousand miles and it is no use fighting it anymore. He thinks he is a man and he has made up his mind to go his own way. At least he no longer believes Kavanaugh used him to get close to me. Kavanaugh likes Joshua for himself and understands the restlessness in him. Maybe knowing that will bring him back again someday. He made no promises.
He said he is going to ride back to Sutter’s Fort and then head north to see what Oregon is like. After that, he does not know where he will go or what he will do.
I wept when he rode away. I kept thinking about those Israelites wandering forty years in the wilderness and dying within sight of the Promised Land because they were so Contentious. If only they had trusted the Lord, they would have lived out their lives in a land of milk and honey.
I hope it will not take Joshua as long as it took me to find his way through the wilderness to You.
I have been thinking about Aunt Martha so much lately. Sometimes I wonder if our thoughts touch one another across the miles. I wrote her a long letter yesterday, but I do not know when I will have the opportunity to send it.
I think Kavanaugh has changed his mind about marrying a widow with four children. He has been gone twenty-three days.
I have begun the plowing. Hank and Matthew are helping me while Beth minds America. Together we will get a small crop in.
It is Terrible Hard Work, but I think I can manage with the children. We have enough to eat. We have a cabin to keep us safe and dry. We have good land and seed to plant. And we have You, Jesus. Aunt Martha told me anything is possible with God. So I am asking You to help us in this Great Enterprise. We are stuck here, Lord. Help us make the best of it.
Chapter 24
Sierra didn’t see Alex the next day, and he didn’t call the children. She thought it was because of what had happened between them until Carolyn said, “I told Daddy we were in the church pageant tonight. He said he was going Christmas shopping.”
Then Clanton hit her with, “Can Dad spend Christmas with us?”
Sierra rebelled. “No, he cannot spend Christmas with us.”
“He’ll be all alone,” Carolyn said, clearly distressed by the idea. “He’ll be lonely. Couldn’t we ask him? Please?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said, hoping in the interim Alex would be run over by a truck or kidnapped by terrorists. “Right now, we have to get to church and into costume.”
During the next few hours, she relished being caught up in stage jitters and the excitement of getting ready to perform. Once in costume, the choir members gathered together and prayed that their performance would do more than entertain. They prayed it would open the hearts of those listening to the music and the reenactment of the birth of the Messiah.
Once the program started, her nervousness cooled. She had practiced so much, her part all came back the moment she moved onto the platform some parishioners had built to extend the choir loft. She gave herself up to the music, singing from her heart, feeling the joy of the Christmas story and its meaning to the world.
Joseph traveled from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, on one side of the church, to Judea, the city of David called Bethlehem, on the platform, where he registered himself and his young wife, Mary, for the Roman census ordered by Quirinius, governor of Syria.
“And it came about that while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
Clanton was one of the young shepherds who knelt before the angel Gabriel as he sang his solo announcing the good news of great joy: “For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” The adult choir joined as tiny pinpricks of light shone on the ceiling, and then the new, bright star appeared in the “heavens.”
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men.”
Joining Gabriel was the heavenly host of children in white, complete with wings and halos, their voices blending in sweet harmony. Among them was Carolyn. The music expanded again as the adult choir joined the children’s voices. Sierra’s heart beat fast as the crescendo came, filling the church to the rafters with praise-glory sounds for the newborn King. Jubilation!
Oh, Jesus, Jesus, would that I could feel this joy every day of the year.
Her whole body felt alive and warm with the love and excitement of the Lord’s birthday. She forgot everything else, especially what the Lord expected of her. br />
The pastor gave a prayer following the pageant, and refreshments were served in the social hall. The last person she expected to see was Alex. When she spotted him standing on the far side of the room, looking handsome in black slacks, a gray silk designer shirt, and black sports jacket, her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach and bounced up into her throat. He was talking with Dennis; it didn’t look like a casual conversation.
“Hey! Dad’s here,” Clanton said, still holding his shepherd’s staff.
“Yes, I see him.” The rat. The creep.
Deserting her, Clanton set his staff before him and parted the sea of choir members and guests to get to his father. Carolyn spotted Alex soon afterward and fluttered over in her angel costume.
Little traitors.
Sierra was still reeling from what Alex had said to her in his condo. “I never loved her the way I loved you.”
Yeah, right! If he loved her so much, why had he walked out? Why had he told her he despised her and couldn’t wait for a divorce? Why had he looked at her as though he hated her?
The way you’re looking at him right now, beloved?
She turned away, selecting a cookie from a large platter. Chocolate, her favorite. It tasted like dirt. All the joy she’d felt half an hour before while singing praises to the Lord evaporated, boiled away by resentment and anger.
He’s ruining my Christmas, Lord. Couldn’t You remove this ache I have when I see him? He cheated on me! The least You could do is give him some kind of awful disease.
“Daddy said he’s flying to San Francisco tomorrow,” Clanton said. “He’s spending Christmas with abuelo y abuela.”
Bitterness surged through Sierra. He didn’t even have the sensitivity to stay at home alone for Christmas and suffer! No. He had to go to Healdsburg and enjoy a wonderful Christmas with Luís and María.
Of course, she completely disregarded the fact that they’d invited her to come, too.
Carolyn sighed expressively. “I wish we could go.”
So did Sierra, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “We’ll go at Easter.”