Firefly (20 page)

"But she loved you, didn't she."

"Yes, she did.  And I loved her."  He stared down at the portrait again and shook his head.  "Or at least I thought I did.  But how can a man love a woman and then bring her out to a place like this to die?  I should have stayed in Cincinnati, let her father put me in some silly office in the bank, and Amy would still be alive, still be happy."  He sighed, but none of the anger left him.  He picked up the whisky bottle and flung it across the room.

Glass shattered and sparkled, but neither the man nor the woman moved.  When the last little twinkling had faded, Julie turned to leave.

"No!" Morgan shouted at her.

She froze.

"You wanted to hear this; now you're going to listen. And look at me when I'm speaking to you!"

Julie was thankful for the thick adobe walls.  If this had been an ordinary frame house like her father's, every word of this conversation would have gone through the walls.  Here, the secrets remained.

"Amy died out in the street, right in front of your house. Some miners had just come into town after hitting a big strike and they were celebrating, dancing, shooting, not hurting anything.  But some fool kid on the stage thought it was a hold-up.  They said he thought he would be a hero and save the town from the robbers.  Truth is, it's just sheer damned luck when a marksman can hit anything but air when he fires from a moving vehicle, but this kid acted like it was the first time he'd ever held a gun in his hand.  He shot twice.  One of those shots hit Amy."

"No, no more," Julie pleaded.  "I can't stand it, and neither can you."

"Can't I?" he asked, his voice gentle now and quiet. "I've been standing it every day, every second, for damn near six years.  I was sitting in front of McCrory's, waiting for her, watching her come towards me.  She just crumpled like a puppet whose strings have been cut.  I ran to her, even though I knew I couldn't do anything.  I don't think--and I've prayed a million times that I was right--that she felt anything.  I'm sure she was dead before she fell."

Julie didn't think; she couldn't.  Pain and memories of her own welled up in her chest and spilled over with a harsh cry.  She could see the street, the dust and the sun and Amy Morgan lying in her blood with her husband kneeling beside her.  It hurt too much to bear.

He was warm and he was strong and he was shaking when Julie's arms went around him, drawing him into an embrace she could not prevent.  Where his shirt gapped unbuttoned, her cheek rested against his bare chest, the dark hairs coarse and irritating on her skin.  But she felt only the essence of the man, not the small elements.

"Amy was eight months pregnant when she died.  I carried her to the surgery myself, not trusting anyone else, and I tried for two days to save the baby I had taken from her body.  I couldn't even go to her funeral because I was trying to keep that tiny bit of her alive, but in the end I failed.  I buried him myself.  I opened up her coffin and put him in her arms."

Chapter Thirteen

He could not weep, as if all the tears had finally been shed and there simply were none left.  Only the sharp pain remained, and even it seemed to have lessened.

He held her, not remembering when his arms had circled themselves around her slender body and drawn her to him.  He rested his gaunt, rough cheek against the smooth silk of her hair.  He felt no stirring of forgotten emotions, no rising of lost hungers, only the warm comfort of the girl's nearness and her tears on his chest.

For whom do you cry, Julie?
he wanted to ask, but he knew no words would come from his constricted throat.

When her sobs subsided and her tears slowed to a mere trickle, he loosened his embrace and gently freed himself from hers.  He shivered, deprived of her warmth.

"I never told anyone before," he said.  "And I thought you knew."

She shook her head slowly.

"I wanted to ask you, but I didn't want to pry."

Her voice, like her embrace, was soft, and kind, and comforting.  When she looked at him, which she did only cautiously, he saw how deep the pain ran in her eyes.  Tears had darkened her lashes and stuck them together in long, thin triangles above and below those brown eyes that reminded him so much of a terrified deer.  Yet Julie Hollstrom hadn't run away.

He wondered again what she was so afraid of.

He lifted a hand with intentions of wiping away the last tear that slid down her cheek, but he thought better of it.

"You go downstairs and pour us both some coffee while I get dressed a bit more decently," he suggested.  "Then we'll go over to Horace's and get to work, all right?"

In the kitchen, Julie found cups and saucers and poured the black bitter coffee into them.  It was far too hot to drink, but the act of holding the cup and blowing gently on the mirrorlike surface calmed her.

She could think clearly now, without clouds of memory to obscure her rationality.

The senseless waste of Amy Morgan's death would have driven another man insane.  Julie considered it a mark of Morgan's strength that he had merely turned to drink.  Under the circumstances, madness would be expected and suicide hardly surprising.  She remembered his words about being unable to accept death, and perhaps that was what had kept him from more disastrous reaction to losing Amy.

"Yoo-hoo, anybody home?"

Julie jumped at the sound of Winnie's voice.  Before she could call a greeting and invite the neighbor in, Winnie had already walked through the house and entered the kitchen.

"I saw you come up here a little while ago, but I was in the middle of making beds or I would have come sooner.  Oh, good, the coffee's hot.  Don't get up, Miss Hollstrom, I know where the cups and the sugar are.  Dr. Morgan takes his black, but he makes it too strong for me.  Or did you make this?"

"No, he did." Julie sniffed as quietly as she could and hoped Winnie didn't notice.

Winnie took a sip of the coffee and laughed, "I can see he did!  I think I could write a letter to my sister with this!"  She pulled out the other chair and sat down across the table from Julie.  "Sure was a shame about that old miner dying yesterday after you worked so hard to keep him alive.  No wonder Dr. Morgan took to his bottle again last night."

"How did you know that?"

Before Winnie could answer, both women's attention was drawn to the footsteps coming down the stairs and toward the kitchen.

"Because she came over with my supper and found me sprawled on the floor," Morgan answered with a smile.  If his head still throbbed, he showed no sign of the pain.  "Good morning, Miss Upshaw.  Is that my coffee you're drinking?"

Winnie vaulted to her feet with a furious blush on her round cheeks.

"Oh, I'm sorry.  I'll get yours right now."

As serious as a clerk, she filled another cup and set it down in front of him.  He took the seat she had vacated and sipped the coffee.

Then he looked up at her with equal seriousness, but there was a hint of humor, too, in his voice.

"I think now would be as good a time as any, Winnie." She stood at attention, waiting for his next pronouncement.  "Would you like the job of housekeeper here?  Not full-time, because I know you have your sister's family to take care of, but I'd like you to come in once a week, regular, and give the place a good going over."

She beamed, like a child who has just been handed a nickel outside the candy shop.

"Starting when?"

"As soon as Miss Hollstrom and I finish our coffee.  We'll be over at Horace's most of the day."

"You want me to cook, too?"

Julie imagined Winnie would have licked his boots and been delighted to be of service.

"No, I don't think so.  And I can only afford a dollar a week."

The nickel had become a small fortune.

"I'll get started right away." She gulped the rest of her coffee, ignoring the way it scalded her mouth, and bobbed her way toward the door.  "I'll do the laundry first, and then the floors, and I'll have all the windows sparkling, and I'll fill the lamps, too."

They could hear her mumbling to herself even after she had gone outside and was scurrying toward her sister's house two doors away.

When she had gone, when the silence had fallen again, Morgan looked across the table at Julie and said, "They say that sorrow shared is sorrow halved.  Maybe I needed to tell someone.  Maybe I should have done it a long time ago."

She didn't answer, having no words to match her feelings.  And she wished he wouldn't talk about it.

"I feel better now, Julie.  I don't think there will be a repetition of last night."

The old prospector's death, the revelation Morgan had been forced to give Hans, the lack of sleep: no, that combination would hardly come again, Julie knew.

"And I intend to see that it doesn't," she resolved, sticking an extra firmness into her tone.  She swallowed the last few drops of coffee and set the cup down with a thump.  "I believe we've been here long enough.  We have work to do."

"Yes, we do.  Oh, here, I almost forgot." He pulled her spectacles from his pocket.  "You must have dropped them again.  I found them on the floor."

He handed them to her, but it was a moment before she could bring herself to reach for them.  With the table between her and Morgan, however, Julie withstood the shock brought by the simple touch of his fingers on the palm of her hand as he dropped the glasses onto it.

*   *   *

They kept themselves occupied and out of each other's way for most of the day.  Julie concentrated her efforts on the kitchen, which Horace had used rarely but never cleaned, and Morgan set himself to the obnoxious task of sorting the late Dr. Opper's collection of unlabelled bottles, boxes, and jars of medicaments.  An empty nail keg was used for the discards, which far outnumbered the supplies Morgan deemed fit for use.

On her hands and knees, with a bucket of hot, soapy water and a stiff-bristled brush, Julie listened to the muttered curses and snorts of disgust that accompanied the crash of glass containers into the keg.  Morgan had clearly lost himself in his work and his mind was on it entirely, whereas hers kept wandering despite her most strenuous efforts at control.

"What a mess you've got yourself into now, Julie Hollstrom," she scolded with her teeth clenched tightly together.

She scrubbed at a particularly nasty spot until the substance
B
something totally beyond recognition
B
came loose from the floor and could be picked up and dropped into the bucket.   Breathless from the exertion, she swept the back of a wet hand across her forehead.  Her hair had come loose from its tight coil at the back of her neck and now a thick braid hung over one shoulder to trail a bedraggled end in the dirty soapy water on the floor.  Sweat dripped off the end of her nose.

The glasses slid back down as soon as she had pushed them up.  No sooner had she thought the word
nuisance
than her conscience seemed to say, "But you've known from the beginning that this was bound to happen sooner or later."

"I didn't!"  She resumed a rhythmic circular scrubbing to discourage the mocking voice.  "Next thing, you'll say it's all my fault."