The Hunger(62)

Edward had even mentioned the possibility of the two of them running away together. Going to California to start a new life. Reed could let go of all his responsibilities: Margaret and her brood, his business, his large house and grounds! Sure, he’d worked hard for these things but did he really want them? Didn’t he want freedom instead?

Reed had been a striver all his life, desperate to leave the poverty of his youth behind. And yet he could not choose freedom. It didn’t seem real. It seemed an illusion. And he couldn’t bring himself to leave his family behind. It was something he simply could not explain to Edward, who had no family to speak of.

You’re afraid to be happy, Edward said to him reproachfully. You don’t trust me.

But Edward was wrong. Reed did trust him. Far too much. And that was the root of all the trouble.



* * *



? ? ?

REED HADN’T BEEN ABLE to see then what would follow in the years to come. The gradual frustrations that would arise between them. The aching and uncontrollable jealousy, the suspicion that McGee had transferred his affections to other men. Reed didn’t know then about the accounts, either. It would still be several years before Fitzwilliams started pointing out the irregularities—insisting there could be no other explanation but one: Edward had been stealing from them, slyly and steadily, for years.

How could Reed have known then that when he would later confront the young man, McGee would threaten to tell the whole world what had been going on between them, would demand hush money—a large sum immediately and a regular annuity on top of it? That McGee’s demands would threaten to ruin him, ultimately leaving Reed no other choice than to flee Springfield?

How could Reed have known that the Donners’ plan to travel west would ultimately save him?

He couldn’t have known, of course. He couldn’t have known any of it. And maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had. Because the slant in Edward’s smile had snagged in his heart like a fishing hook. The loneliness in Edward’s dark eyes—that had been real, Reed was sure. It had called to him, had echoed his own, had rendered him powerless. The boy’s touch had brought him to life. There could be no helping it. What would come, would come.





OCTOBER 1846





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN





At first, when Mary Graves saw the rider in the distance, she mistook it for a long shadow. They had left the arid basin the day before; the last hundred miles of the trek had been a long uphill climb, and they’d come up over the ridge to see a valley of wildflowers and pine grass, sweet-scented and pale green, that nearly startled Mary into crying. There were pine trees to be split for firewood. And a river: shallow but wide, throwing off a dazzle of light.

Mary watched the shadow lengthen and materialize on the horizon: a horse, liver chestnut, the color of Charles Stanton’s mare.

Her father, walking beside the oxen with a switch, lifted his head and brought a hand to his eyes. “He’s back,” was all he said.

Stanton had two young Indian men with him, Salvador and Luis. The Murphys, Graveses, Reeds, and Fosters rushed him; the other families had pulled ahead on the trail. The children came running at the shouts of joy and laughter as he unstrapped his packages, sounds long unfamiliar to the wagon train. Stanton smiled at everyone, and tried to calm them, too, as they grabbed for his supplies.

And yet Mary, who had begun to dream of his return, to think of him less as a man of mystery or some sort of savior and instead as a touchstone of reality—a person, perhaps the only person, whom she could trust—Mary, who had so many times glanced up to see a floating mirage in the distance and felt her heart leap at the sight of him, found that she was too shy to come forward now, and instead hung back.

“Everyone’s near to starving,” Bill Foster, Lavinah’s son-in-law, said bluntly. But it must have been obvious. Mary saw him as Stanton must: a scarecrow in clothes now too big for him, shirt bloused around his waist and skin-thin arms, pants held up with a length of rope.

“I ran into the Breens and Eddys up the trail. They told me how bad things have gotten,” Stanton said. “But I’m back with enough to last us a while.”

“I hope you brought bacon,” Mary’s little brother said, running up to him. “We ain’t had bacon for weeks.” How gaunt his face had gotten. Five years old and Franklin looked like a little old man.

“We should have a big feast to celebrate, like we did at the parting of the ways,” Virginia Reed said. Her eyes were feverishly bright. The children were turning into strange, stalky insects, all eyes and spikes and desperate twitches.

Stanton, in comparison, looked like a man in color among a wash of wraiths even after weeks in the saddle. “Now, hold on there,” he said easily. But she noticed he stood between the settlers and his mules. “We’re not out of the woods yet. Take it easy with these provisions. We’re a long way from Sutter’s Fort.”

Amanda McCutcheon pushed her way through the crowd. “Where’s my Will? Isn’t he with you?”

Mary’s heart hollowed. In her excitement, she hadn’t even noticed that McCutcheon was missing. She doubted the others had remarked on it, either. They were too hungry to think of much else.

“He took ill on the trail,” Stanton said quietly. “But don’t worry; he made it to Sutter’s Fort and that’s where he’s resting. He’ll be waiting for you there.”