Galveston: Between Wind And Water (A Historical Literary Fiction Novel Filled with Romance and Drama) (27 page)

Caden yanked open the door and stepped outside. “Save your breath and relax, my friend.” He turned to look at Bret one last time. “You will have all of eternity when you join them.” 

He pulled the heavy timber door shut and pushed across the dead bolt. Caden walked back up the stairs leaving the pathetic, trapped creature below to the unforgiving, wretched howls of his cursed conscience and fate.

CHAPTER 21

Saturday, September 8, 5:00 a.m.

The knock against her bedroom door startled Gabrielle. The door creaked open on its hinges and she turned, fully dressed in her brown riding pants and shirt, to see her father standing with his walking cane staring at her with bleary, drunken eyes. 

“What in the name of heaven do you think you’re doing, Gabrielle? You should be sleeping.” He jabbed his cane at her. “I know what you’re doing and I won’t allow it. The rain will pass in a few hours and we can enquire at the police station first thing in the morning.”

“I can’t wait. I won’t desert Bret like this. I have to know if he’s all right.” She finished lacing and tying her riding boots.

Her father tapped his cane on the floor. “Caden assured me the police will be there first thing this morning after the rain stops. He is safe and secure for the night.” 

He stepped across the threshold, blocking the entrance with his body and cane. “Please, my dear. I must insist. We’re all shocked and appalled by what he did to poor Timothy.” 

Her father’s vague self-assurance echoed his ominous insistence of remaining uninvolved. Still, it was as impossible to stay silent and do nothing. Every minute she hesitated made her feel cramped and sick of this mansion as if its expansive walls were contracting against her in breaths inhaled from the rising wind outside. Gabrielle rose, gathered her riding jacket and gloves, and stepped toward her father.

“I wish that bastard had been the one killed. Tim was a good man.” He raised his cane to block her way. “After the way he left you . . . the shame and the embarrassment he caused us, why would you want to help a man like Bret McGowan?”

Gabrielle stopped to gather her strength. She wouldn’t be worn down like this, not by fear of his rigid contol, or the weight of the past that had held her powerless to escape. 

Determined to do what she must, she stared at him with ever once looking away. “Neither one of them deserved what happened even if they brought it upon themselves.” Gabrielle stood in front of her father’s raised cane. “We can’t help Timothy but Bret deserves at least a sympathetic friend who will listen because I know, in my heart, he would do the same for me
.
” 

Gabrielle tried to find courage in her own words yet above every other hope there rose the cold, suffocating fear that she would see Bret suffer—perhaps hung if he was guilty—as her father had watched Bret’s father, William McGowan, so many years before.

The cane shook in his grip. “Bret’s father, William, convinced us all; Colonel Hayes, old man Foster and Dawson. Many families owe their fortunes to William McGowan. He owned two topsail schooners in the opium trade—one from India and one from the orient—made us all quite wealthy for such young bucks and it gave us the seed capital for our businesses.” 

He lowered its ivory tip to the floor and stared off as though seeing a long, lost friend suddenly appear in the distance. “Yes. We owe William and his family that much . . . if the dark truth ever be told.”

Gabrielle paused and stared at her father.

“But when I watched William hang . . . I was glad.” His arm slackened and dropped to his side. He stared at the floor. “They were all traitors and they deserved it.”

“And is that what Bret deserves? The same justice you showed your good friend, William?”

Gabrielle and her father stared at each other. The night air had become uncomfortably clammy and still. Suddenly, a light rain fell pitter-patter on the window.

“I . . . I never told your mother where I got the money . . . and after William died, she never asked.” Her father wiped the sweat of his brow and stepped aside, seeming more astonished than Gabrielle by how his guilty heart had betrayed and shamed him. 

He leaned forward, grasping the cane handle with two hands and sighed as if it was the only thing preventing him from falling to the floor. “He’s . . . in the cellar at the back of the Society building, unless the police have already arrested him.”

Far off, over the Gulf, a thunderbolt cracked and lit up the sky over the water with a dull rumble. Gabrielle brushed past her father, leaving him slumped and shrunken against the door, lost in the unconscionable regret of his own troubled memories.

Gabrielle rode her favorite brown stallion, Chestnut, at a steady gallop down the crushed shell streets leading to the Society hall. His hoofs splashed through the scant inches of sea water that seemed to be everywhere, covering city streets several blocks in from the beach. 

Still no reason to be alarmed but people had to be more cautious when riding or walking. This had happened before and the water would recede with tide.

The first glimmering light of dawn would not be clear on the horizon for some time now. Gabrielle shuddered, her heart chilled by her father’s dark words and her growing worry about what was happening to Bret.

Father was wrong.

Bret was capable of doing many stupid things—visiting Ichabod Weems’s, throwing his money down empty oil wells, but murder was not one of them. Killing Timothy over her? No, that was impossible. Bret was too proud, too confident, even when under the influence of his bottled demons, to let himself be so fatally provoked.

Poor Timothy. God rest his soul. Something else happened to him. Robbery, business debts . . .
something,
but not Bret killing him in cold blood.

The men were wrong. They had to be.

Gabrielle rode past several buggies filled with families and small belongings, being pulled toward the western boundary of the city and Galveston Island. There, the longest wagon bridge in the country connected their city with the Texas mainland. 

Some people never get used to the flooding. Come daybreak, the trains and hotels would be busy with nervous vacationers heading back north.

“Good boy, Chestnut.” Gabrielle gave the horse a slap on the flank and pulled at the bit a little more. “That’s it boy! Faster now! We’re almost there!” 

She felt the muscles of the young stallion tense between her brown suede riding chaps. The horse picked up its pace, kicking up bits of white and pink shell, and sending the wind rushing by Gabrielle’s cheeks, streaking her tears against her skin.

CHAPTER 22

Saturday, September 8, 6:37 a.m.

Angry and sweating after arguing with her uncle, Rebecca had been unable to sleep. She rose and crossed the floor to the open window overlooking the garden. 

After the brief rain shower, the oppressive humidity still clung to its muggy grasp and there was no relief in the dark, airless calm outside. 

She knelt in her muslin nightgown, the thick braid of her hair across her shoulder, brushing her cheek, with her arms propped on the ledge.

How corruptible was a dream once it assumed a tangible shape. It was as if Bret’s troubled spirit had finally withered and dissolved, blown away by the rage of his own secret storm.

And her uncle had warned her of its coming.

It had been impossible to remain in the Society building after the incident with Bret. The long walk along the boardwalk allowed her to weep alone and accept the painful reality that he was lost to her forever. 

On the beach she had encountered a small group of night revelers who invited her to finish up their vacation party with an early morning clam bake around their roaring bonfire. 

Staring into the shifting flames, the wavering hues seemed to illuminate her thoughts, making them blaze forth with the intolerable glare of conscience.

Rebecca accepted a glass of wine, then another, hoping to find the strength to return home and finally do what she knew was right.
“Please forgive me, Bret,”
she said to herself between sips of her wine,
“I never knew he wanted it to turn out like this.”

The rising wind from the north had unfurled Rebecca’s long red hair from the shoulders of her emerald green blouse, blowing the strands back, then forward in its curling gusts.

Low tide. That’s what the man said should be happening. But it wasn’t.

At first, everyone thought he was a policeman. Just after five o’clock in the morning, the merrymakers were approached by a Mr. Isaac Cline, who introduced himself as the chief of the city’s Weather Bureau Office.

The tide was over four feet above normal, he said.

He was advising homeowners to move to higher ground and vacationers to go home. Those who had experienced the many whims of the water begged the others to stay, laughing at Mr. Cline’s warnings and trying to assure all that this would pass within a few hours. Their drunken cajoling did not prevail and the fire was doused shortly after the first vacationing couple left and hurried back along the beach toward their hotel.

Rebecca hummed the refrain of ‘Lorena,’ enjoying the flushed warmth in her cheeks and the return of her faint, indefinite hopes as she hurried back to the safety of the Society’s brick walls. 

Why hadn’t the police or the sheriff’s deputies arrived? Were they waiting until daylight and the flooding to subside before arresting Bret? Very well. She would wait until morning to give her statement.

Then tell Bret about the letter.

Rebecca repeated the essence of her confession to herself and was glad that she had kissed her signature and made sure her red lipstick imprint was permanent.
Surely, Bret will understand when he reads it. I know he didn’t kill that man . . . and I will tell them so tomorrow.

Then she would leave Galveston forever.

For that reason, she couldn’t risk that her uncle would find the letter now, and there was only one safe place that she could think to hide it that was close by.

Rebecca rose and dressed quickly. She paced the length of her room several times, then walked to her open window and looked out toward the darkening gulf. Her determination teetered and rocked, feeling torn from the promises she’d made to both her uncle and herself.

And what of Bret? What of the promises she made to
him?

He had suffered enough and she was the one who led him into it, yet he never accused her of betrayal, or made threats. 

There was only a profound sorrow in his eyes. When she could bear to meet his disturbing gaze it was as though he was bracing himself with whatever raw, unfettered masculine determination and fortitude he still had remaining all in preparation for his final battle against fate. 

The mere sight of him in this state made her heart race and she had to leave his unsettling presence at once.

No. She would have no more part in this. There was a demon in that brown bottle to be sure, but it had to be the lesser evil compared to the hideous thing possessing him now. A man in his condition might die if he didn’t have the proper medicine to stop—

Rebecca covered her mouth to stifle her outburst. The lofty presence of Uncle Cade, dressed in his long, black walking coat, stood across the darkened threshold of her room, a lean smile pulled tight across his gaunt face.

Uncle Cade gestured toward her open suitcase on the bed. “Rebecca, my dear, you should be already packed.” His voice was steady, without a hint of alarm. “The train leaves at nine o’clock for the mainland. I would feel better knowing you were on dry ground until this overflow recedes. Edward will escort you.”

Rebecca lifted her chin and stared at him. The gulf had opened so wide between them now that she could no longer see the other shore. All she longed for was the clean, wind-swept deck of a ship to carry her across the water, away forever from this dank, damp building with its suffocating regimen and creed.

“And what were you going to do with Bret?” She brushed by him into the second floor hallway. “Leave him shackled to the bed as the water rises? Why haven’t the police taken him?”

“Please, Rebecca, I know that you must be very upset.” He placed his firm hand on her shoulder. “I sympathize with your confusion and anxiety, but I’m only trying to protect you.”

“Your uncle is right, Rebecca. You should listen to him.”

She spun around.

Edward, wearing his dark gray Inverness coat, stood between the banisters. He stepped closer, blocking easy access to the stairs. “Mr. McGowan is in very serious trouble despite all your uncle’s efforts to help him.” 

He draped the cape over his head as a hood, almost concealing his face. Rebecca was surprised to see the sudden change in Edward’s appearance. His fiery gaze fixed on her and held firm.

“I don’t believe you.” She folded her arms across her bosom. “The police should have been here by now.”

Uncle Cade held out hand as if to console a woman in emotional distress. “Bret McGowan is not the man you think he is,” he insisted, still maintaining an unusually calm tone. “His travels and experiences have changed him, exposed him to foreign vices that have contaminated his spirit and ruined his moral character.” 

He lowered his hand. “All of his friends have noticed the drastic change in his behavior since his return but you . . .” Uncle Cade smiled as if calming her when she was a child. “You’ve already witnessed the remorseless destruction he is capable of, yet you are still so easily swayed by his devilish charms.”

Rebecca unfolded her arms. “Uncle,” she said, resting her hands on her hips. “I respect that you don’t want Mr. Caldwell and his friends involved in this any more than they need to be, but please.” 

She turned, looking down the stairs to the main floor. “We can help Bret if we speak up and tell what we know to be the truth. Whatever happened to Mr. DeRocha, you both know as well as I do that he was dead before Bret arrived.” Rebecca took a step toward the first stair. A moment later she felt a hand on her elbow.