Jarrod poured himself a glass of whiskey and turned to his mother. "Sherry?"
"Yes, thank you." She took the proffered glass and sat holding it and looking into the fire.
"A penny?" Jarrod said as he sat down beside her on the settee and took her free hand in his. "You've been a thousand miles away ever since Howard left. Is it the cowboy upstairs?"
She smiled at her oldest son's perception and squeezed his hand but kept her eyes on the fire.
"Did he say something to upset you?"
"No. No, not that. He's just a boy, a sick boy at the moment. There was a lot of infection in that wound. Did you know Nick had him digging irrigation ditches all week with that hole in him?"
"Nick had no way of knowing. He sure is modest." Jarrod sipped the whiskey and smiled wryly at his mother.
"I'm not sure that was it. He was fine when I went in to help Howard. I gave his clothes to Silas to go in the washing."
Jarrod looked at her strangely. It wasn't like his mother to talk to him about daily domestic occurrences of this nature. He wondered if this was a cause or a symptom of her distraction. Now that he had her talking, he waited to see where she was headed with this line of conversation.
"I emptied his pockets."
Jarrod saw now that she was holding something in her other hand, her fingers playing with a thin silver chain.
"The first time I saw him. I think I knew… I just couldn't…" She was silent again, her eyes having never left the fire. "What do you know about him? Where is he from?"
"Nothing, Mother, just another drifter. Came in looking for work and when he's able he appears eager to drift out again."
"Yet, he's been here a week and he's already probably saved your life and Audra's." Now she looked directly at him, her eyebrows raised in question.
"Yes." Now it was Jarrod's turn to look thoughtful. "I believe he did, if not save my life, he certainly saved me from being more seriously injured than I was."
"Why? Why would he allow three men to beat him to save Audra? Why was he at Sample's at all, let alone, as Nick said, covering you the whole fight?" Her fingers continued to caress the chain in her hand.
They were both silent, thinking about the events of the past day and night. Audra's tearful confession when they had gotten home last night, this morning's fight at Sample's and now this evening's fight in the sitting room.
"Do you remember when your father went to Strawberry? When he was gone for those months and came home so changed?" Now she was looking at Jarrod and it was his turn to look into the fire and remember.
He had never forgotten that time. The months when his father was just gone and no one knew where he was and his mother wouldn't say. The ranch hadn't been anything like the huge concern it now was, but it had been big enough. McCall had taken care of the ranch. And his mother… His mother had mourned the death of a baby and the disappearance of her husband. It had been an awful time for him. His world coming apart, his father gone, his mother there but somehow not.
It had been he and Nick. He thought now that was when they had found a closeness that had transcended the fighting of young boys. It was the beginning of the closeness of two brothers who could always count on each other.
"I remember." He remembered again the joy of that homecoming, the euphoria of his father's return. Their father had returned but it had been a long time before all was as it had been. There had been a coldness in their home that had never been present before. He had been wrapped up in his own adolescence and had missed some of the tension, but no one could miss all of it, not even a twelve-year old boy trying to find manhood. "It was a hard time."
"Yes. It was. We very nearly didn't come through it as a family. I almost returned home back east. But I couldn't, we had you and Nick. We had to find a way to come together again." She took Jarrod's hand in hers and smiled at him. "You and Nick saved us. Reminded us that we had a family and that we had love."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"While your father was gone, he met a woman." She turned away again to the fire. "They lived together for a time."
Jarrod said nothing, didn't know if he could say anything. He'd always viewed his parents as two parts of the same entity. They were his parents. He knew on an intellectual level that they must have had lives beyond their marriage, a time when they weren't married even, but he had never considered it.
"We were going through a hard time with the ranch and then the baby died. It all seemed to fall apart. I was angry with God I think now, for taking my baby. But your father was closer than God and he bore the brunt of my anger. That's why he was away. Looking at mining properties, but also just being away from me and my anger." She squeezed his hand and smiled at him reassuringly. "We're just human too, Jarrod, things happen. People marry and then they change."
"I just never thought. I never knew why he went away. You said to look at mines. I never wondered why he was gone so long." Jarrod wondered now at his youthful self-absorption that allowed a parent to disappear for months and him never to really wonder at it.
"He told me about her when he came home. Told me what happened. Oh, I was angry, hurt and… remorseful. I had told him to go, to leave me alone, and he went. It took us a long time to work through that anger, but we did. I think our love was stronger for our having stopped to look at it and deciding to go on together." She turned Jarrod's hand over and dropped the silver chain into it. At the end of the chain was a round disk.
"I just never thought whose life that time might have affected besides your father and I and you two children. We found our love again. We remembered why we married, why we came to California. Tom promised to never see the woman again and we went on for another twenty years," Jarrod could see tears in her eyes now. "Audra was born and we were so happy. The Strawberry mine returned a huge profit. It was as if that time remade our lives. We didn't consider who else's life that time might have made."
Jarrod looked down at the disk and chain in his hand and his breath caught in his throat. "My God."
"You remember it then?" She touched the disk with the tip of one finger where it lay in Jarrod's open hand.
"It's Father's Portuguese Real." He turned it over. "There's the T on the back surface." His throat suddenly dry, he asked, "Where did you find it?" He feared that he knew the answer to that question already. He thought he now understood this whole conversation about laundry and missing husbands, but he needed to hear it all, to keep his witness talking while he worked his way back through the entire testimony.
"It was in the pocket of the boy's pants. The pocket of that young man with the blue eyes and the blond hair who looks to be about twenty years old and has appointed himself guardian of the children of Tom Barkley." The look she gave him now was a challenge, her chin tipped up her eyes looking directly into his.
Jarrod stood up, walked back over to the liquor table and then saw that he hadn't yet touched his drink. He set the glass down and walked over to the big French doors, open into his mother's garden at the back of the house. He stood in the cool evening air, looking out toward the corrals, seeing nothing, unable to think, his breath caught in his throat at what his mother was saying. How could she even be thinking such a thing?
"That's a very big leap," he said finally, "from Father's coin to Father's…" He couldn't say the word. "The boy could have found it, been given it by someone. I don't know, so many ways he could have come by it."
"Have you looked at him, Jarrod? I mean really looked at that boy?" There was a tone of anger now in his mother's voice. He knew there had to be anger in there somewhere, how not, anger at something, to be even thinking this, and if true, how much more anger?
Jarrod looked at the boy again in his mind, the blue-eyes, the half smile, that sardonic sense of humor, the way he had leaned forward on the horse looking at them that afternoon on the porch. Oh, God. It just wasn't possible.
"Do you know the woman's name?" he asked.
"No. We spoke of it only once and then in no great detail. He just said he had met a woman but realized his place was here, with his children, his family. That he loved us too much to leave and that he was sorry that he had even thought of it. I didn't really want to hear even that amount." Now it was Victoria's turn to rise and walk to the window, taking Jarrod's arm in hers, needing to feel his forgiveness as a physical thing. "I was a coward. I never asked for more. Never asked what he knew of the woman. How he left things with her. I never dreamed…"
The room was silent, both lost in their own thoughts, studying the ranch out the window, their legacy from the man who might have left them even more than they had thought.
"You knew your father. He would never have left a child if he had known." She could say this with total conviction. She had known Tom Barkley almost all of her adult life. He would not have abandoned a woman and child in some mining town. "Perhaps, I'm wrong. He would never have just left her with a child."
"If he knew. Did he ever go back?"
"I don't think so. He promised he never would. I believed him. But I never would have thought in the first place… I don't think so." She was suddenly so unsure of so much she thought she knew. "I don't know, Jarrod. I don't know what to do." This came hard to her. She hadn't felt this unsure since the day twenty years ago Tom Barkley rode away from their little house without saying where he was going or when he would be back. "I feel a sudden need to polish silver," she said, trying to lighten the mood.
Jarrod smiled at her. He loved this woman very much. He loved her because she was his mother, but he thought he would have loved her in any case. She was so strong and sure in her beliefs, and so compassionate toward those who couldn't quite live up to her ideals. He didn't think he had ever met a woman who could stand in her home and discuss her husband's possibly bastard son with such composure. "I do know if that's your father's son up there, we need to some how make things right with him."
"Yes, or a drifter with a lucky coin he found in some mining camp, or worse yet, some con man trying to worm his way into one of the richest families in California." He ached for her pain and uncertainty. "We need to know more."
"We need to do right by that boy up there." This tone of certainty Jarrod recognized. This was the compass of confidence and moral certainty that had set his course in life. "Someone needs to go to Strawberry. Find out if there is anything we can learn there." Yes, this was the mother who always knew what to do.
"Yes, of course, I don't even know where this boy is from. He maybe from somewhere else entirely." Jarrod temporized, fearing a trip to Strawberry would mean nothing.
"It started in Strawberry. If he's not from there… ask there. If he's not from there, we'll have to think on it again. I can't ask Nick to do this, Jarrod. I'm sorry. It's going to have to be you."
Jarrod nodded and gave his mother's hand a small squeeze where he held it, her arm through his. "I'll go in the morning… I don't think he's a con man. He was awfully anxious to get away from here." Much as he hated to say that, he had been raised by this woman and could be no more than honest with her and himself. "Are you going to tell Nick?"
"I have nothing to tell but imaginings and wonderings. Go to Strawberry. See if you can tell me something for sure. If he's not from there, well, then we rethink what we know. See what happens." She patted his hand reassuringly and disengaged her arm. "It's late. I'm going to bed and you should as well it's a long ride and you'll want an early start."
He laughed and gave a small moan. "I hate early starts."