Thing With Feathers (9781616634704) (34 page)

He patted her shoulder. “It looks and smells delicious.” He pulled the coffee pot toward him and poured three mugs of steaming, robust Columbian roast.

The three friends had thought they would need to force themselves to eat beyond a single bite of food, but they fairly gorged themselves on Lorette’s oven-baked French toast. They finished planning the arrangements for Will. The family plot was in the old Cloverdale cemetery, purchased years earlier. Lorette and Rebecca would do the inviting, the cooking and the readying of the Marshall home for guests after the burial. They alternately laughed and cried all the while they planned, but they finished the sad business. Lorette immediately got busy with her duties, grateful for the distraction, and Rebecca departed for her home, to write announcements and such. Ellie Tjaden’s husband and older children were seeing to the livestock for Sean. He was left alone in the big house, and the quiet absence of his brother really hit him. He pulled a chair in front of the parlor window and watched the lazy cows and the occasional Red Tail Hawk as he sipped another cup of coffee and remembered better times, with Will.

Chapter 75

H
e noticed a nice town car motoring around the great curve of Highway 101—probably someone coming to stay at the Tjaden bath houses. The family still ran the business, but it was a much smaller operation these days. They called it a ‘spa’. Sean was startled when the town car pulled into the Marshall house’s driveway. He stood and walked across the dining area to the glass front door and was about to open it when the driver opened a rear door for his passenger, and she stepped out.

“Blair,” he exclaimed through a quick exhale of breath, and then he couldn’t replenish it. The air was knocked out of him. His enamel-ware coffee mug dropped and clattered noisily. For a moment time stood still. When it started up again, the syncing was off and so were his movements. He grabbed his heart with one hand, then he ripped the door open and stumbled down the steps, starting across the lawn, half-running. She saw him, dropped her bag and closed the distance.

“How? How can it be you? I thought…after all of this time. We thought you were dead.”

“I was, Sean. Or, more precisely, Cindy was. Oh, Sean, I only found out about you and Victor being separated a short time ago, and on that same night I suffered an accident. I have been recovering ever since.” She looked from him to her cane. “I came as soon as I could.” She searched her husband’s face as she spoke her next words. “I understand if it has been too long, Sean. I will understand if you want me to go away.”

“Go away? Oh my, Blair, I have missed you so much.” He grabbed and hugged her, kissed her. His emotions were scattered. Will was gone, and Blair was home. He’d just kissed her! She was really there! It was all so surreal. “It’s really you? Blair, where have you been?”

“I will tell you everything, Sean. But, I didn’t know if I should let the driver go or…I didn’t know if you were…remarried.”

“You can let the driver go,” he smiled happily.

She turned and waved him on. As she followed Sean into the kitchen and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee, she noticed for the first time how thin and haggard he appeared. “You never married again, Sean? You really waited all of this time?”

“I never remarried. I have been trying to get Victor back, but I had no legal standing where the boy is concerned.” He looked down, “I did wait, Blair. I waited all this time, until last night.” When he looked up and met her gaze his eyes were teary. It was so hard for him to say aloud. “Will died. Yesterday.”

“Oh no, Sean. Oh, no.” Her eyes immediately filled with water and her balance teetered. She sat at the table. “What happened? Can you even talk about it?”

Sean shrugged reflexively. “It was an accident. He hit his head with a grinding stone and passed away in his sleep.” Sean’s eyes spilled over. “I was so sorrowful, so lost. And then Rebecca came and gave me comfort and, and something…happened. I needed…one thing lead to another; I don’t ever want to lie to you, Blair. It was just comfort Rebecca was giving me. She’s going to marry Elrod’s younger brother, Evan, in the spring.”

“I have much to share with you Sean. The one thing I need to tell you right here and now is that I never stopped loving you. I have confessions of my own. So many that I pray once I tell you all of it, you can still find a scintilla of affection for me.”

He lifted her out of her chair and squeezed her tight. Perhaps a tad bit too tightly, but she was content to endure it. “Lord, Blair, if only you knew how much I love you. I know what worries you. Will and I went to Chicago to look for you after you left. I, we, ran into someone who knew of you, and he told us how you made your…well, it didn’t matter then and it doesn’t now. We all do what we have to do to survive. I mean, I believe God expects us to fight for our lives, don’t you?” He released his embrace and held his wife’s shoulders at arm’s length so he could see her face. She nodded to him shyly.

“And that’s all you did, Blair, circumstances bein’ what they were. You don’t have a worry, Blair. I don’t blame you for a thing. And I never stopped loving you, either.”

Somewhere deep within Blair’s soul, a feathered-thing tweeted. Sean dropped his arms. “But, I failed you, Blair. The preacher took Victor away from me. I lost him in court.”

“I learned about it, darling; it’s why I am here. Someone told me. I’m here to get my son back for us, Sean. I have already sworn out warrants against the preacher and submitted documents to the court in Tillamook to reverse Victor’s custody to us, immediately. The preacher will be getting a visit from the authorities any day.” Blair did not tell Sean the preacher would be getting a visit from her on that very afternoon. She kept that to herself. “I just need to see a local attorney who I can put on record as my pleader for the formal Hearing, once scheduled. I was hoping you could recommend one.”

“I sure can. I’ll take us down there right now.” It was as hopeful as Sean could muster in his current state of grief.

“Oh-no-no-no. You’ve been through enough, what with Will and all. If you can call your Counselor for me and allow me the use of your car, I could deliver a retainer fee and legal documents for his signature, and return within just a couple of hours. We could have Victor under our roof by this evening. Sean, I want to hold my son so badly it hurts.”

Sean understood. “I have missed
you
that much. I hate to have you leaving me right away. But, yes of course, if you must see an attorney today, you may borrow the car. I will call my man, Charles Reynolds, for you.” A wry grin crept into the corners of Sean’s mouth. “I wish I could see the preacher’s face when he learns you’re alive and his bucket’s about to hit the wall. His precious
almost
-title will be dragged through the mud…I’m sure glad you’re leaving this business to the authorities. If preacher ever got his hands on you, he might try and wring your neck.”

“He’s already tried to kill me, Sean. That’s how I earned these scars.” She pulled her blouse away from her right shoulder and gave him a glimpse of the many raised scars left by Chester Lasley’s whip. “Let him try again. I am ready for him this time.”

Chapter 76

September 1, 1941

Cloverdale, Oregon

“T
here’s a black wreath on the Marshalls’ door, Victor. I guess he’s departed. He’ll bother us no more.” Preacher Bowman seemed truly joyous.

“He didn’t bother me none,” Victor murmured. Victor had already heard about the wreath, and he had not been able to shake a profound sadness that had enveloped him ever since. He hadn’t been able to forget the words Will Marshall had hollered to him in the dark night, weeks earlier. “I bothered him mostly, as I recollect.”

“Bah!” At times, Victor’s lack of reason revolted the preacher.

“It’s the truth, old man!” Victor jumped up from the chair he was lolling in. “Every word, and you know it! You know, he tried to do a hell of a lot more for me than you ever did!”

He was mad at his grandfather. He knew there was no love lost between him and Sean Marshall, so of course he’d be glib about Sean’s passing, but it angered Victor just the same. Victor was feeling cheated of something. All he knew was that he despised his grandfather more than usual at that moment. He lashed out.

“He never stuck me in no gall-danged bug-ridden box! He never left me alone for days without food or warmth to go off on drinking binges, or whatever the hell it was you were doing. He didn’t even refuse me the money I needed to save my butt, which, as I recall, you did!”

“That’s right, ‘cause I had no money to give ya. Now Sean Marshall, there’s a man who has plenty to give to ya. He won’t be needin’ it where he’s headed. Ya know what? I’m gonna phone up an old pal—he’s got a law degree—an’ see if he can assist you with your claim.”

“What claim? Don’t you understand nothing, you old buzzard! Sean Marshall doesn’t owe me anything! He tried to give me it all, an’ you wouldn’t let me take it. Why was that, Grandfather? Why couldn’t you ever show a feeling for me? Why is it you wanted me so badly in the first place, just so’s you could treat me so poorly in the second place?” He flipped his head sidewise toward the swollen girl on the couch, indicating abhorrence. “And Sean Marshall sure as heck wouldn’t have forced me to marry a filthy Goat-girl, who’d lift her dress for anyone holdin’ a quarter. That kid ain’t mine, either, ‘cause I ain’t touched her. Maybe you could force me to marry her before I was an adult, legal, but you can’t make me stay. I’m leaving. You want your stupid surname to continue on so bad, you parent the little bastard. I’m outta here, and you can keep that squalid cow for yourself!” He stormed out the door, slamming it behind him so hard that it popped right back open again.

“What the hay got into him?” the preacher asked, truly perplexed. He looked at the girl. She sat wide-eyed, chewing fervidly at the skin of her filthy thumb.

Victor approached the house slowly, noting that the doorstep did indeed hold a large black wreath. He bowed his head in respect and knocked.

Lorette answered the door with eyes red and puffy, her disdain for Victor immediately evident. “You again! It’s no use, Victor Bowman. You won’t be getting any of his money today.”

“I figured.” He nodded to the wreath. “I mean, I jus’ came to pay respects, ma’am.”

She snorted. The little crapper had things mixed up. He thought Sean had passed. “A little late for that, isn’t it? Ya didn’t show ‘im none when he was alive. Broke his heart, you did. An’ all he did was try to be a father to ya, although I can’t for the life of me figure why. You ought’a be ashamed of yourself.”

“I am. I truly am.” And he did look properly contrite.

Victor tried to think of something more to say, though he couldn’t even figure why it was important for that woman to realize how regretful he was. He hadn’t come for money. When Will chewed him out following the break-in, he’d told Victor things he hadn’t known or had failed to remember. He’d been thinking a lot lately of how Sean Marshall had tried to reach out to him. He vaguely recalled looking out the window of his grandfather’s house when he was a small boy and seeing his grandfather pull a rifle on the Marshall brothers. He remembered a picnic where Marshall had told him how he loved him. Victor couldn’t ever recall his grandfather uttering those words to him, not ever. And lately, whenever he conjured those fuzzy recollections, some invisible fingers flicked his heart, and it hurt—physically hurt. Victor knew without a doubt that he’d been a fool.

But how can I make this woman understand? And why should I care to try?

He bowed his head at the woman, squeaked out something in the form of a sorry and good-bye, and turned to walk away.

Lorette was fine to allow Victor to leave the doorstep believing it was Sean who had passed. She didn’t trust herself to utter the awful truth of Will’s death, and besides, maybe it would keep the wretched little beggar away and leave Sean in peace for a spell.

Sean heard Lorette conversing with someone and thought Blair may have returned from her appointment with the attorney. She should have been back some time ago, and Sean had been worried. He’d phoned Charles’s office and was told Blair had concluded her business in no time at all and had left for home more than two hours earlier.