The River Widow(43)

“Nowhere,” she answered and then changed her tone. Jack had been nothing but kind to her, and yet she still disliked revisiting her past. “Back East, originally.”

“What did you do before you married Lester Branch?”

“I was a reader. Of the tarot cards.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Interesting.” He paused. “Do you still do it?”

“No. After I got married, Lester disapproved and took away my cards.”

He paused, digesting that information. “Interesting,” he said again.

The woods seemed to release something in Jack; he wanted to tell her about himself. He said he was born in Galveston, Texas, just before the infamous 1900 storm virtually washed that city away. His father, an oysterman, had been aboard a boat and had never been found.

“I’m so sorry,” Adah said.

He shrugged as if it were something long gone and no longer felt, but she could see the leftovers of that old pain in his eyes. “Not your fault.”

“Do you remember the storm?”

“Barely even remember the sea. My mother left those parts right after it for Lubbock, where she remarried a man who worked at a bank.”

“Was he a good stepfather?”

He laughed dryly. “Hardly know. By that time, I was already running crazy wild, getting into trouble, then getting into rodeo. That’s where I fell in love with horses. I didn’t go back home until tuberculosis took my mother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wanted to fight in the Great War, but they wouldn’t take me on account I’m color blind.”

“Really?”

“I can see some colors, but not all of them.” He glanced at her. “But I see that your eyes have some green in them.”

She looked away, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear, more questions falling into her mind, and a sense of something unspoken, something unknown, tilting her off guard. “That problem, the color blindness, it might have saved your life.”

He said, “Maybe.”

She glanced at him. “How did you end up on the river?”

He gave off a shrug and a half smile. “When I was making my way around the country, I made a buddy who got me on a boat, then I worked my way up.”

She could almost see him now, the younger Jack Darby—cocky, confident, tackling the world on his own two feet, much as she had been at one time. The things that mattered to independent, self-reliant people like Jack and her had to be as real as the light that shone on them now and the earth beneath their feet.

“The river saved me in more ways than one.”

Adah was puzzled. “How so?”

“I’d finally found something I wanted, and so I gained focus. Learned. Became good at something besides being a reckless young man and . . .”

“Catting around?” Adah asked and watched his face fall a bit. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to mince words around me.”

“I fell in love with the woman a river is, complete with curves and changes of mood, and always in motion.”

“How else did it save you?”

“It’s confining, made sure I stayed within proper bounds. Sure, I moved up-and downriver, but I couldn’t ever stray very far from the water’s edge. I couldn’t leave my woman.” He winked.

Adah blinked up at the sky. Jack was far more complex than she’d first thought him to be. More confounding. She found herself wanting to know more. “So why now, a farm?”

“Why not?”

Adah shrugged.

“I started out near the sea, then spent most of my life on the river. Figured I’d find my own little piece of land and put down roots for the first time in my life. You probably noticed I don’t grow tobacco—too much work. Just some corn, and I’ve bred some horses, including that chestnut with socks they claim killed Betsy.”

“So . . . you’ve found a real home.”

“Something I’m guessing you’ve never done.”

She made the corners of her mouth lift upward as she lowered her gaze from the sky to the woods. A clearly half-hearted smile. “I guess you’re right about that. For a moment, I thought we were alike, but even though I want it, I don’t imagine I’ll ever find a home.”

Jack pulled in a deep breath, as if inhaling the moment with her. “It’s a good feeling, having a place of your own. I was once like you—full of doubts. But this place has been good for me. It takes all my thinking and keeps me from drifting.”

She turned to face him. “Why do you need that? What are you afraid of?”

“Now?” He glanced away quickly and didn’t answer. Adah realized Jack wasn’t scared of much, but perhaps the possibility of being alone for the rest of his life kept him up at night. What was his secret? She had the urge to ask him if the land was his woman now, but she hesitated. She didn’t know him well enough yet.

Instead she said, “So you’re here now, but you’ve led an interesting life. You haven’t stayed in one place. And I bet you have stories. Many good stories. Maybe some secrets, too.”

“I bet you do, too.”

She trembled against the image of Lester sprawled on the ground after she’d killed him. For a moment, she struggled for air. “Not so much.”