The Inheritance (38 page)
What would happen if she lost Emma? If, for some reason, the judge awarded not only the ranch to Harrison Talbot, but Emma as well? The floor beneath her suddenly felt like a thin sheet of ice which, with the slightest movement, would splinter into a spiderweb of cracks and send her plunging.
She was weary on the inside and out. She’d spent so many years working to keep the family home in St. Joseph, and the livery business her grandfather had built and her father had continued. Only to lose it all—in a blink. Her whole life, she’d grappled and clawed her way, struggling to provide security for Robert and herself.
But as it turned out, security was a fickle mistress. And was, at best, an illusion.
Emma hugged her neck and McKenna held on tight, realizing that the ranch meant nothing compared to what she held in her arms. But if she lost the ranch, where would they go? How would she provide for Emma, and keep her promise to Janie? Everything rested on the meeting with the judge. She had no idea how to prepare for the appointment, but hoped Wyatt would. She planned on asking him during dinner. Surely a U.S. Marshal had experience with such things.
While Mei’s bread cooled on the counter and McKenna’s waited in a slop bucket to be fodder for pigs, Mei served them warm rolls with a kind of fruit jam. Realizing what trouble Mei had gone to, McKenna summoned a cheerfulness she didn’t feel, and they sat at the kitchen table eating, laughing, and practicing Mei’s English.
Until Chin Li walked in.
Their laughter dissolved. Chin Li’s stern gaze brushed the three of them before coming to rest on the open book and strewn papers atop the table, then fell hard on McKenna. Mei immediately rose and bowed before her husband. He spoke to her in his regular clipped tone.
While McKenna didn’t know what he’d said, she didn’t like how Mei jumped every time this man walked into the room. And she didn’t like his tone. She looked up to see an elderly gentleman tottering along behind Chin Li with the aid of a cane. Chin Li turned as though following her line of vision. He immediately reached out and took hold of the man, steadying him. He spoke to Mei over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.
The front door opened and closed, and Mei took her seat once again and started eating, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
McKenna leaned forward. “Should Emma and I go?” She motioned toward the door.
Mei frowned. “Why . . . would you go? We still have lesson. And bread.” She held up a roll.
McKenna busied Emma with pencil and paper, and chose her words carefully, not wanting to offend Mei. “I wasn’t sure if your husband appreciates our being here.” Seeing Mei’s expression cloud, she tried again. “Perhaps Chin Li does not like me coming to see you.”
Mei smiled briefly. “Chin Li is . . .” She lowered her eyes. “Careful for me.”
“Careful for you?”
“He no wish me . . . to be sad.”
“To be sad,” McKenna repeated, not understanding.
Mei nodded.
“But why would being friends with me make you sad?”
Mei kept her gaze confined to her lap. “Not all people in Copper Creek be . . . kind . . .” She peered up beneath dark brows. “Like you, McKenna Ashford,” she said softly.
Liking the way Mei said her full name, McKenna let what she’d said sink in. “Have people treated you badly here?”
Mei didn’t respond, but McKenna sensed she wanted to. In watching the way Mei knotted her hands in her lap, the way she pressed her lips together, McKenna wondered if the woman’s genteel manner prohibited her from saying anything further— or perhaps it was Chin Li who prohibited his wife from saying anything. Perhaps Chin Li only told Mei that because he didn’t want her having friends for another reason . . .
A flurry of possibilities entered McKenna’s mind—all casting further doubt on Chin Li—and a wave of protectiveness swept through her. She touched Mei’s arm. “Is your husband unkind to you?”
Mei’s head came up. “Unkind to me?”
McKenna nodded. “Is he ever harsh with you?” Already knowing the answer to that question, she grew more hesitant, not wanting to overstep her bounds. But her concern for her friend urged her on. “I hear the way he speaks to you, Mei. It makes me sad inside to think he might be hurting you in some way. I want you to know that if you ever need to—”
Mei giggled. Her shoulders started to shake. “You think . . .
Chin Li speak harsh to me?”
“Well, yes. I just heard him say something to you a moment— Are you laughing at me?”
Mei covered her mouth. “I sorry. I no laugh at you, McKenna. I laugh at you think Chin Li is harsh man.” Her laughter quieted, and her features softened. “In my country, parents choose who children marry. First man who wanted me as wife was poor. He was a . . .” She wriggled her hand back and forth in front of her like a trout running upstream.
“Fisherman?” McKenna supplied.
“Yes, fisherman. His family was fisherman too.”
McKenna quelled a smile.
“But my father say no to this man. In harsh way.” Mei shook her head. “The man no good for his daughter. My father want better man. Rich man. My father say this to him and hurt him. Disgrace him, very bad. So the man go away.” She bowed her head. Seconds later when she looked up, her eyes held tears. “But he not stay away. He say he want my father’s daughter, and he will go to America to make business so he be good husband to her. He send money back to father to pay for her.”
McKenna saw the love in Mei’s expression, and sensed what Mei was telling her. “That man was Chin Li,” she whispered.
“That man was Chin Li,” Mei repeated softly. “He send money for her to come, and for her father.” She leaned forward, her gaze earnest. “At first when I meet Chin Li, I think him unkind, as you say. But it not true. He only want to guard me. So you see, he is good man.” A coy smile tipped her mouth. “Like your Marshal Caradon.”
Surprised, McKenna felt heat rise to her cheeks. “He is not
my
Marshal Caradon.”
Mei’s brows shot up.
“He and I are friends. Like you and I are friends.”
A knowing look filled Mei’s dark eyes. “Chin Li and I were friends when we marry. Then we grow into . . . much more.” Mei spoke something in Cantonese, offering a smile. “That is what my grandmother once say. It mean, ‘The most fertile soil for love lies in heart of friend.’”
McKenna couldn’t imagine entering into marriage as Mei had. Not loving the man. Not even knowing him! But she wasn’t about to say that aloud. When she married—
if
she ever married—it would be for love. A love she’d not yet experienced, and wasn’t even sure existed.
“You think our way is foolish.”
McKenna’s face heated at Mei having read her thoughts so easily. “No! No, I never said that.”
“You no have to say. I see in your eyes.”
McKenna sighed. “I’m sorry, Mei. I just can’t imagine marrying a man I didn’t know, much less a man I didn’t love. Marriage seems hard enough as it is, much less with those challenges.”
“In my country, at young age, we teach that being right person is . . .” She frowned.
“As important?” McKenna said, guessing where she was going.
Mei nodded. “Is as . . . important as marrying right person.”
Understanding what she was saying, McKenna nodded, still grateful that she would be able to choose her husband. Then something dawned on her. “You said Chin Li sent money back to your father in China to pay to marry you, and so you could come to America. And that he also sent money for your father.”
“That is right.”
“So, is your father still living?”
Confusion clouded Mei’s face. “You know my father. He just here, with Chin Li.”
McKenna looked toward the next room where Chin Li—and who she’d thought was
Chin Li’s
father—had stood moments before. “That elderly man is
your
father?”
Mei’s smile was her answer, and McKenna could only stare. “But Chin Li is so gentle with him, so caring and attentive. Especially after how you described your father treating him.”
Unabashed pride shown in Mei’s expression. She reached over and, in an unaccustomed display, touched McKenna’s hand. “Now you see how kind a man my Chin Li is.”
McKenna covered Mei’s hand and briefly squeezed it tight. “Yes . . . I do.”
When she spoke again, Mei’s voice was soft. “When we first come here, people call us names. Unkind names. Many night, as young wife, I cry. My husband hold me and, at first, I . . .” She bowed her head, hands buried in her lap. “I no want to be wife to him.” She touched her chest, her lips trembling. “I hurt inside my heart. Deep. Even when he hold me, I feel all by myself.”
McKenna nodded, knowing that alone feeling, and knowing what it felt like to want more with a man. Whatever that
more
was.
A tear slipped down Mei’s cheek and she wiped it away. “But I learn, over many day and night, that Chin Li choose good life for us. Better life than my father’s daughter deserve. And he patient with me . . . in many way.” A blush crept into Mei’s cheeks.
McKenna nodded, understanding and, yet, at the same time, not.
“As long as Chin Li and Mei . . .” Mei seemed to struggle for the next word, then put her two index fingers side by side. “What is the word?”
“Together,” McKenna whispered, feeling more than a twinge of jealousy. “As long as you and Chin Li are together . . .”
Mei nodded. “Then we will be . . . okay.”
McKenna forced a smile on Mei’s behalf, wondering whether she would ever be
okay
herself again. The panic that so often awakened her during the middle of the night returned and crowded out what little confidence remained. God seemed to be stripping everything away from her—layer by layer, person by person, possession by possession—despite her best efforts to hold her world together.
And if she didn’t know better, she’d think He was doing it intentionally.
M
r. Wyatt will come. I know he’ll come.” On tiptoe, Emma peered out the front window. “He said he would.”
McKenna dished a piece of cold roast beef onto the child’s plate, followed by a dollop of stiff mashed potatoes. “It’s bedtime, Emma. You need to go ahead and eat.”
“But I’m waiting for Mr. Wyatt.”
“He’s not coming.” Finally, McKenna voiced what she’d known for the past two hours. “I’m sure something came up that he had to take care of.” She wanted to believe that herself.
“But I drew him a picture. And he promised he would—”
“People don’t always keep their promises, Emma!” Her voice came out harsher than she’d intended, and seeing the hurt on the little girl’s face, McKenna wished she could take back the words. She breathed in, held it, then slowly exhaled. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. About yelling and . . . about Mr. Wyatt not coming.” She felt her hands start to tremble. The lack of sleep was catching up to her, as was the realization that she had no “together” with anyone. Not like Chin Li and Mei had. She was alone. Again. “Why don’t we go ahead and eat something? We’ll feel better.”
An hour later, with Emma fed and finally asleep, she double-checked the bolt on the front door then snuffed out the flame on the oil lamp. Remembering that closed-in feeling she’d experienced in the bedroom last night, she opted for the front room instead and sat on the sofa in the darkness.
Even drifting off to sleep, Emma had never lost hope, saying that Mr. Wyatt
would
come. McKenna leaned back and closed her eyes, wishing she still possessed that kind of childlike faith, wishing life hadn’t snuffed that out for her. She draped a blanket over her legs, not faulting Wyatt so much as she faulted herself.
No matter how much a woman might prefer to lean on a man, to be protected or supported, she needed to make her own way through life. It was safer that way.
