Ashes and Memories (35 page)

But he was not his father, and he was not his grandfather. He was Reece MacBride, and he wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, not anymore. He’d lost himself again, and the one person who might have been able to help him find himself was gone.

A familiar pain enfolded him, the same paralyzing pain he’d felt that hot July afternoon when he’d come to stand before the ruins of Longwood. Broken, battered and defeated, he’d stood there while his mind fought to deny the reality before him. And after the denial had come fury, a raw burning rage that had nearly devoured him. Acceptance had followed and then hopelessness, the hopeless grief that comes from losing everything, everyone. He’d even lost himself, and he’d recreated himself in a slow, torturous procedure. He didn’t know if he could do it again -- not without Emma.

He had to go after her, there was no other way. He had to find her, but how could he when he didn’t know where to begin? He didn’t even know when she’d gone, much less what direction she’d taken. He had to think, he couldn’t let the blinding panic rob his reason. If there was anyone in this town who would know when and where she’d gone, it was Thaddeus Stevens.

Reece closed his eyes against the memory of the doctor stepping forward to challenge him at the gallows. It was the first time Stevens had ever stood up to him, but Reece knew  Stevens had never approved of him, and he was in love with Emma. Even a fool could see that, and Reece felt like the biggest fool in the world right now.

What if the doctor refused to tell him where she’d gone? He would deal with that when the time came, he decided, marching from the office and down the stairs. Come what may, Doctor Stevens was still his best chance, his only chance.

A light glowed in the doctor’s office. Reece stood at the bottom of the stairs gazing up at the closed door, trying to formulate what he would say. He hadn’t tried to explain himself to anyone in a very long time, and he wasn’t sure where to start. Always before he’d used persuasion and charm to get what he wanted, and if that failed he would use force if necessary. But suddenly violence didn’t seem to be an option any longer, and he would never charm the doctor into divulging anything. Doctor Stevens knew him too well. Only a straightforward approach would work in this case, and Reece only hoped he could find the right words to convince Stevens to help him. God knew there was no reason on earth why he should.

Reece climbed the stairs slowly and opened the door without preamble. Doctor Stevens turned, his expression startled. He cleared his throat and turned back to the washstand, retrieving a towel and drying his hands, his back still to Reece.

“What brings you here?” he asked sharply.

“Where is she, doc?” Reece asked. There was no reason for small talk, no reason to put off revealing his purpose.

“Who?”

Reece didn’t answer. Both of them knew exactly who he was talking about.

Stevens turned to face him. “Even if I knew where she was, I wouldn’t tell you. She left here to get away from you.”

Reece staggered under the truth. “I know that,” he said, struggling to recover. “I just need a chance to talk to her.”

“What if she doesn’t want to talk to you?” Stevens opened his medical bag and began placing instruments inside, drying them one by one as he did.

“That’s a chance I have to take.”

Stevens hesitated, refusing to look at him. When he spoke, his voice was soft and cold. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

 Reece ran a hand through his hair, taking a moment to get control of his anger and hopelessness before he did something he would regret, like tearing Stevens’s head off. “Emma’s happiness is the most important thing in the world to me,” he said finally, the words ripped from his very soul.

Stevens looked him up and down, his expression disdainful. “Why don’t I believe that?”

“Look, I don’t blame you for --”

“The trouble with you is that you are incapable of putting yourself in anyone else’s place and imagining how they feel. Emma needs someone who is capable of loving her, who knows what it means to put someone else’s happiness before their own.”

“Someone like you?”

Doctor Stevens winced, his eyes filling with pain, and Reece regretted his words.

“Emma doesn’t love me,” the doctor said softly. “I have accepted that.”

For a moment Reece didn’t speak. He watched Stevens collect himself with a deep breath. He closed his medical bag and dropped it into a chair, turning finally to look at Reece, his eyes filled with resentment.

“Look, I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me,” Reece said. “But people can change. I’ve changed.”

“You’re like a tornado, you know that?”

The venom in the doctor’s words surprised Reece. He opened his mouth to reply but the other man continued.

“You go through life destroying everyone and everything that gets in your path and you just keep on going.” The doctor’s ire increased with every word he flung at Reece. “You don’t deserve Emma. She’s better off without you.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Reece said softly. “But don’t you think she should make that decision?”

“She has made it,” the doctor said emphatically. “She left town.”

Reece started to grab the other man. He wanted to shake him, to force him to tell him what he wanted to know. Instead he took a deep breath and dropped his arms at his side, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Listen to me. You’re right. You’re right about everything. I don’t deserve her. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the way my actions effect other people, but.... All I’m asking for is another chance. If she asks me to leave her --”

“You know she won’t do that.” Stevens paced back and forth, gesturing angrily as he spoke. “She believes she’s in love with you. You weren’t here. You don’t know how hard it was for her to leave.”

“But that’s why you have to help me,” Reece reasoned. “I know she loves me, though I can’t for the life of me understand why.”

“That makes two of us,” Stevens agreed, leaning back against a table and folding his arms over his chest. “She waited, hoping you’d come back. All day yesterday she watched for you.”

“She just left today?” Reece asked, hope swelling inside him. If she’d just left this morning, he might be able to catch her tonight on horseback.

“I shouldn’t have even told you that much.”

“I love her, too,” Reece admitted, and once the words were out, the fear of them and everything they represented evaporated, leaving Reece feeling oddly peaceful.

The doctor remained unmoved, and Reece released a sigh of defeat. It would take longer, but he would find her with or without the doctor’s help. He’d find her if he had to search every town in Montana Territory.

His heart in his throat, Reece turned to go. He no longer feared caring. What was the use? He did care, he loved her. But that fear had been replaced by a new one. What if he never found her? What if he spent the rest of him life searching and never found her. He turned to go, but the doctor’s voice halted him.

“Reece.”

Reece turned to face the man who had spoken.

“You’re not going after her like that, are you?”

Reece looked down at the mud and blood that covered his clothes, then up at Stevens who gave him a resigned smile. Reece smiled in response, his body numb with relief.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He found her early the next morning where he’d seen her for the first time -- her father’s grave. She’d obviously camped there the night before and now she was paying her respects for the last time before moving on.

Reece sat for several minutes watching her, the woman he loved, the only person in the world who could save him. God how he needed her, wanted her. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. He still might lose her. If he couldn’t convince her to give him another chance, he would lose her.

The doctor had said she’d lingered in town for a day hoping he’d come back, so she still cared. That was something, enough to keep him going through the night when he feared he might collapse in the middle of the road from fatigue.

He tried to dismount quietly, but Emma heard his saddle creak as he shifted his weight and she turned to look at him. The alarm in her eyes turned to relief and then anger as he strode toward her.

Her gaze swept him from head to foot, and he wondered what she must think of his appearance. He’d changed his shirt in deference to the doctor’s comment and he’d washed up, but he hadn’t taken the time to bathe and dress properly. He’d been too anxious to find her.

“Dr. Stevens must have told you,” she said as he came to stand close before her.

“He told me you were headed for Bozeman and what time you left town.”

“What did you do, threaten to hang him?”

Taken aback by the strength of her anger, Reece couldn’t speak for several moments. “I convinced him to give me a second chance.”

“What did you think?” she asked. “Did you think you could just go off and do whatever you wanted and that I would be there waiting for you when you got back?”

“I suppose I did. I guess I thought I could make it up to you, make you understand.”

“I understand, Reece,” she said sharply. “That’s the problem. Nothing’s changed. I still can’t stand by and watch you destroy yourself.”

Her voice broke at the end, and Reece fought the impulse to take her in his arms and tell her he was sorry. Sorry was such an inadequate word.

“Everything has changed,” he countered. “That’s why I’m here. I need....”

“What do you need Reece?” she asked, wiping angrily at a tear that coursed down her face. “Me? You don’t need me. You’ve got your anger to keep you warm.”

She turned back toward the grave, trying to ignore him and the erratic beating of her heart. She had to admit a part of her had wanted him to come for her, but now that he had she didn’t know what to do.

“No,” he said softly. “That’s just it.”

Something in his voice made Emma turn to face him in spite of her efforts to remain unaffected, something she’d never heard before. Was it humility?

“I don’t have anything,” he went on. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. You once told me you believed in me and I need you to believe in me now more than ever because I’m not sure I even know who I am.”

Her heart constricted at the pain she glimpsed in his eyes. She couldn’t look at him without remembering the last time he touched her, kissed her.

Leaving Providence had been the single hardest thing she’d ever done, and now that he’d found her, she would have to endure that pain all over again.

“Reece, I’ve told you who you are in every way I know how,” she said sadly. “I’d hoped -- well, it doesn’t matter now.”

She stalked across the road and began plucking wild flowers from the ground. She had to finish what she’d come here for and get away from him. She couldn’t bear this. She wasn’t strong enough to listen to his pain and remain detached, but there was nothing else she could do for him.

Clutching the flowers, she started back toward the grave when Reece reached out and grabbed her arm, stilling her.

“Help me,” he said.

The desperation in his voice penetrated her heart and stirred all the emotions she’d been trying to bury. Maybe she would become like Reece. Maybe the only way she would ever get over the hurt of losing him was to forget, to harden herself to life. For the first time, she could truly understand why he’d chosen that path.

“I... I can’t,” she said, her heart breaking all over again. “Please don’t ask me to. It hurts too much. I’ll tell you who you are. You’re a man who has locked himself away from the world, a man I can’t reach. And I can’t stand by and watch you become the monster you think you are.”

She knelt before the grave, carefully arranging the flowers beneath the marker. The sound of something hitting the ground drew her gaze. A war medal lay next to her hand. She reached out, her fingers closing around it.

“I couldn’t hang him,” he said so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.

Emma rose slowly. The agony in his expression tugged at her heart and made her want to reach out to him despite her resolve.

He laughed bitterly. “I’ve passed sentence on dozens of men over the years and I’ve watched them hang. I never enjoyed hanging -- killing. I just did what I felt had to be done. In order to make it in this world, you have to be able to do the really hard things. You have to be willing and ready to repay brutality with brutality. I understood that and I accepted it. But yesterday when I stood there watching Garrett slowly choking to death.... I just kept thinking about what you said... about silencing the screams.”

She made a move toward him, intent on offering whatever comfort she could, but he raised a hand, warding her off before she could touch him. He looked so tired, so lost, so tormented.

He swallowed hard. “I realized I didn’t need to kill Garrett to silence the screams. You’d already done that by loving me.”

She was crying openly now, moving slowly toward him, touching his chest tentatively. He caught her hand and raised it to his lips, closing his eyes against the pain she could almost feel inside him.

Through her tears she gazed at the medal in her hand, a Confederate Medal of Honor. “This belongs to you,” she said.

“No, this one’s your father’s. I picked up that day because I knew that someday you would regret leaving it behind.”

“I wish he could have met you. Maybe you could have reached him where I could not.”

Reece laughed without humor. “I don’t know what I could have offered him.”

“You really don’t know yourself, do you?” She looked into his eyes, and his expression told her just how lost he was right now. “You could have taught him how to survive. Maybe you could have given him the courage to go on.”

“I sometimes think what your father did took more courage than anything I’ve ever done.”

“No,” she said emphatically. “It always takes more courage to live. The war destroyed my father, but you survived. If you hadn’t I never would have met you.”

He smiled wanly, his hands resting on her shoulders. “Then I suppose it was worth all the misery.”