McKettrick's Choice. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ of its finely chiseled face and the folds of its flowing gown gave it an eerie dimension.

      Lorelei kissed the tips of her fingers and set them against the S in her mother’s name. A gentle breeze wafted through the cemetery, cooling her scalp.

      She searched her mind for even the ghost of a memory of her lost mother and waited, but nothing came.

      William’s grave was more modest, with a smaller angel to oversee it, but the words carved in the granite base had a poignancy that Selma’s lacked.

      BELOVED SON OF ALEXANDER FELLOWS MY SOUL PERISHED WITH HIM.

      Lorelei pulled out her handkerchief, for the second time that morning, and touched it to her eyes. The judge had stayed drunk for a solid month after William’s funeral, night and day. She remembered his ragged beard, his unkempt hair, standing up in ridges from the repeated thrust of his fingers. The sweat-and-tobacco stench of his clothes, underlaid by the subtler smell of despair.

      “You,” her father had muttered once, when she’d crept into his study and tried to crawl into his lap. He’d pushed her away with a rough motion of one hand and a surly, “If one of you had to die, why did it have to be him? My only son. My only hope.”

      Lorelei wrapped both arms tightly around her middle and lowered her head, remembering. That day, in the space of an instant, Alexander Fellows had stopped being “Papa” and become the Judge. They’d been on opposite shores of an invisible river ever since, and if there was a ford or a bridge, Lorelei had yet to find it.

      Except for Angelina, and a few school chums and faraway cousins, she’d been alone ever since. Until Michael had come along.

      A sob rose in her throat. She swallowed it with a painful intake of breath.

      Determinedly, she pulled herself together. There was no profit in weakness, no value in looking back.

      Michael was buried in the Chandler plot, among his own people—parents, grandparents, a sister who’d died in infancy, numerous aunts and uncles.

      Lorelei made her way to him and sat down on a bench nearby. Michael’s final resting place was a simple one, with only a stone cross to commemorate him.

      In the depths of her heart, Lorelei thought she heard him speak her name.

      CROUCHING, Holt laid Lizzie’s flowers within the circle of white stones enclosing Olivia’s gravesite. A slab, long-fallen and half-covered by the encroaching grass, bore only her first name and the date of her death.

      The flowers were yellow roses, heady with scent. He’d seen them from the street, flourishing in a garden, shortly after leaving Lorelei under the oak tree, and stopped to knock on the front door of the house and ask if he might buy a dozen or so.

      The old woman who’d answered had regarded him solemnly. “Are they for a lady?” she’d asked, when she was through sizing him up. He was glad he’d shaved and put on good clothes.

      “Yes,” Holt had said, without hesitation, for Olivia had been a lady, in every sense of the word. And she’d given him Lizzie, the single greatest gift of his life.

      “Reckon she must be right pretty, if a fellow like you wants to give her roses.”

      Holt had smiled, albeit sadly. “She was,” he said. “Prettiest woman in San Antonio. Olivia died of a fever a few years back.”

      Lorelei had slipped into his mind then, out of nowhere, but he’d set her firmly aside.

      “I’ll cut them for you,” the woman said.

      Holt had reached for his wallet.

      The old lady shook her head. “It’s a sorry day when I have to take money for a few flowers,” she said. Then she’d slipped back into the cool dimness of the house, returning momentarily wearing a sun bonnet and carrying a pair of shears.

      Now, in the graveyard, Holt arranged the flowers with distracted care.

      Lorelei was seated on a bench, not twenty yards from him, her hands clasped in her lap. The breeze danced in the tendrils of dark hair curling at her nape.

      If she saw him, she’d think he was following her. Probably go straight to her father, the judge, and lodge a complaint.

      He might have smiled at the image if he hadn’t been putting flowers on Olivia’s grave, and if Lorelei hadn’t looked as though she might splinter into tiny shards at any moment, like a vase irretrievably broken, caught in that tenuous place between wholeness and utter disintegration.

      He lowered his head, laid a hand on Olivia’s stone. I’m sorry, he told her, in the privacy of his mind. I’d have come back for you, if I’d known about Lizzie. Wouldn’t have left in the first place, if I’d had any sense.

      His eyes took to burning, and he rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger.

      Some sound, or perhaps a scent or a movement, made him look up.

      Lorelei stood opposite him, surveying him with a slight frown marring her otherwise perfect forehead.

      “You loved her,” she surmised.

      He nodded. “Not enough,” he replied hoarsely.

      She bent down, peered at the marker. “Olivia,” she mused quietly. “I knew her. She was a fine seamstress.” Their gazes met across the narrow circle of stones. Lorelei looked thoughtful. “She had a young daughter. Lindy? Libby?”

      Holt got to his feet. He’d left his hat with the horse, perched on the saddle horn, but he reached up as if to touch the brim before remembering that. “Lizzie,” he said.

      Lorelei absorbed that. “Yours?” she asked, very quietly, and after a very long time.

      Holt nodded. He would have told just about anybody else that it was none of their business who had fathered Lizzie, but it seemed a natural question coming from Lorelei, though he couldn’t have said why.

      “I see,” Lorelei said, and Holt feared that she did see, all too clearly. Olivia had had to make her own way in the world, and Lizzie’s way as well, with only the help of her sister, Geneva. After Olivia’s passing, Geneva had managed to track Holt to the Arizona Territory, and she’d been on her way to Indian Rock, the nearest town to the Triple M, to leave Lizzie with him, when Jack Barrett had come upon their stagecoach, broken down alongside the road, and decided on robbery. In the course of that, he’d killed both Geneva and the driver. Holt’s brother, Jeb, and the town marshal, Sam Fee, had come upon the stage the next morning, and found Lizzie there, alone and scared.

      Holt set his back teeth. It had fallen to Jeb to deal with Barrett, when the time came, but every time he thought of that night, Holt wished he’d been the one to put the bastard out of his misery.

      “I won’t keep you, Mr. McKettrick,” Lorelei said, and by the look on her face, he knew she’d judged him and found him wanting. He’d left his woman and his daughter to fend for themselves, that was the fact of the matter. There wasn’t much he could say in his own defense.

      He simply nodded, and watched as Lorelei turned and walked away.

      He СКАЧАТЬ