The Hunger(65)

They walked slowly for a few more minutes, listening to the gentle sluice of the creek and the far-off noises from camp. He squeezed her hand and she liked how it felt, the strength in his fingers. Strength she could depend on.

“There is something more than the loss of her, and the horrible manner of her death, that haunts me, Mary.”

She waited.

“I had no money, and nowhere to go when all of this happened. My reputation had been destroyed, I couldn’t get a lick of work, and I was cast away by my own family, you have to understand. But still it’s no excuse for . . .” He trailed off, squinting at the fading sun. It had been setting earlier and earlier, Mary noticed, and she shivered at the knowledge of autumn’s descent, and of their limited time.

“No excuse for . . .” she prodded, both dreading to hear it and needing to, needing to understand him, to know him. And, she sensed, Stanton needed to be known by her.

“For accepting his help.”

“His?”

Stanton sighed. “Lydia’s father gave me the sum of money that got my life started. He was paying me off, you see. Paying me to leave, to help make the whole tragic incident go away. His money got me all the way to Virginia. When the law office no longer suited me, I went off to war in Texas. But then I found I still had nothing to return to and nowhere to start. With what remained of his . . . charity”—he seemed to choke on the word, but pushed on—“I was able to set up a shop in Springfield. I thought with the last of Knox’s money finally spent, the past was good and dead, then. But it wasn’t. Knox ran into difficult times of his own, and called on me to repay my debts to him. He was very demanding, and I, well . . . I couldn’t say no to him, Mary.”

She felt a chill; darkness was descending and she wanted to beg him to stop here. She didn’t need to hear more. She knew men could do desperate things for money. Her own family had certainly tried everything to change their own circumstances. It had always been up to Mary to take care of her family, and though she resented it, she understood it, too.

“Don’t you want to know why I couldn’t refuse him, Mary?” he said, his voice guttural and low.

“You felt guilty. Anyone would have.” A bird cawed overhead. She couldn’t make out what type in the silvery dusk.

“But I was guilty. Don’t you see? Not of Lydia’s suicide, but of other things. Knox knew . . . he’d discovered the affairs I’d had since.”

Affairs. Mary felt heat rise to her face. She slipped her hand out of his. So Lydia’s father had, in a word, blackmailed Stanton.

Which meant that whatever his indiscretions had been, they’d been reckless—and there’d been many of them.

Stanton sighed. “I knew Donner was an old friend and business associate of Knox’s. He was, in fact, most likely one of Knox’s primary informants. But when I heard the Donners were heading west, I sold everything to join them. I hated George Donner, but I hated Knox more. I needed a way out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But I’ve learned better now, Mary. I see now that there’s never a way out from the past.”

Mary sucked in a breath. She had no idea what to say to him, what could take away this kind of pain—the grief and shame he had carried for so many years. She’d thought she’d understood what had plagued him but was beginning to see that the secrets of Charles Stanton’s past were layered over one another, folded in on themselves, and unfolding still, into the future.

He lifted his gaze to her: sorrowful, but did she see the slightest glimmer of hope? “That’s why I’ve been trying to avoid you, Mary. It’s for your own good. I don’t deserve your trust. You deserve someone better than me.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn’t trust him. Maybe he didn’t deserve her help after all. But then, didn’t all men deserve a second chance?

“How can I help you, Charles?” she asked quietly, unable to meet his eyes, but feeling the boldness of his first name on her tongue.

His voice came to her, low and crushing. “You can’t. Don’t you see, Mary? My heart died long ago, frozen over in that river. There is nothing of me left to save.”

But Mary was not one to be so easily swayed by melancholy words. She took his hand again, and even though he wouldn’t look at her, she kissed his knuckles. “I don’t believe that,” she said.

And her words were a promise.

She had thought she wanted to love Stanton, not to save him—but now she saw that the two might be one and the same.

Still, as she walked away from him, she remembered that there was one person who would never be saved. So that night, Mary said a quick and silent prayer for Lydia, the poor beauty frozen forever, and the unborn child within her, who was never to be known.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT





The early fall heat had finally broken, releasing refreshing winds from the north, blowing clean the sheets and wagon covers, breathing renewed energy into the party. Stanton had found them and supplies had been distributed. Tamsen should have felt better. The others only met her gaze fleetingly these days, with a kind of heat and disgust in their eyes, but she could live with that. She didn’t mind being ostracized or hated, so long as she had her children.

The haunting nightmares full of men with caked, chapped, inhuman skin, burning alive—of sweet Halloran turned ugly and foul, grasping at her, hungering for her—should have subsided. They hadn’t, though. She didn’t know what to believe, whether the threat she had witnessed—the creeping, dancing shadows—had been real or the mad invention of a mind corrupted by a terrible secret, something almost as hideous as the creatures she thought she’d seen.