Love on the Range (Brothers in Arms #3)(20)

“Questions about your father and his unpleasant history with women.”

Win nodded. The tiniest nod, the most reluctant show of agreement Molly had ever seen. Still holding tight to Kevin’s hand, Win walked to the table and sat rather heavily in a chair.

“Supper’s ready.” Molly thought eating might as well go on. “There’s plenty for you, Rachel, please join us.”

Honestly, Molly would have preferred to boot her out of the house. But Rachel had a stubborn look about her.

Molly figured the woman was here to stay.

Another plate was added to the table, and Molly swiftly set out platters and bowls. Then they all sat down, said a prayer, and Molly braced herself for talk of murder.





Ten




I need to ask you questions about your father, Winona.” Hobart picked up the platter of sliced chicken, served herself, and passed it to Wyatt, who sat at the head of the table.

He felt like he needed to guard his family from her. Protect Win, protect everyone.

Taking the chicken, he added it to his plate with some stuffing. Just the smell made his mouth water. He was sure Molly had again prepared an unusually delicious meal.

“I suspect your father of being a murderer.” Hobart picked up the bowl of glazed carrots. “I think he killed your mother.”

Molly’s quiet gasp drew Wyatt’s eyes. He handed her the chicken platter. And he had to hold it for too long. She wasn’t paying attention to anyone but Win.

Kevin’s arm came around Win. He said fiercely, “You don’t have to talk to her, Win.”

The way Kevin said it sharpened Wyatt’s attention. From his earliest memory, Win had always stayed here. A little, motherless girl, then she’d vanished off to boarding school for years and never once came home, even for summers. When she had finally come home, she spent her free time here, not at her pa’s house. Wyatt had never considered why. He didn’t care much for Hawkins, and he just accepted that Win preferred the company of Cheyenne, her childhood friend, to her loud, lazy father.

Now he asked himself if there was more to it than that.

He wondered at Molly’s reaction, too. It was a shocking statement by Hobart, but Molly seemed to be struck hard.

“I am blunt, Winona. I don’t apologize for it. Yes, your husband is right, you don’t have to talk to me. But I traveled to Chicago to find background on Hawkins. I couldn’t find much before he married your mother. He was untraceable, and I’m good at tracing. I suspect he isn’t using the name he was born with and most everything your mother knew about him was an invention. There were people willing to share suspicions with me—old friends of your mother and your grandparents. Their suspicions, combined with his treatment of me and Amelia Bishop, made me wonder. I looked closer and found two former housekeepers that disappeared. Can you remember when your mother died?”

Win closed her bright blue eyes and drew in a long, slow breath, as if gathering herself. Kevin pulled her closer.

Win’s hand went to where his rested on her shoulder. She said to him, though not so quietly the whole table couldn’t hear, “I need to tell her.”

Kevin slowly, reluctantly, nodded.

“I-I sh-share your suspicions, Mrs. Hobart.”

“Please, it’s Rachel. No missus. I told your father I was a widow when I took the job.”

Nodding, Win said, “I don’t remember anything that will help you. I was told Ma died birthing a child. I remember no one had said that there was a baby on the way to me. It was a complete shock. The news of a child lost. The news of my ma dying. I got sent over here. Katherine, Wyatt and Cheyenne’s mother, had come over and offered to take care of me.”

“What about your father? He does no work that I could see. It’s not like he was out laboring on the range every day.”

Win shook her head, such a tiny motion . . . Wyatt could barely tell she heard and reacted.

“I guess he felt he wasn’t up to caring for a child.”

No one mentioned that she wasn’t an infant. She didn’t need care so much as love. Wyatt was glad she’d come over here where she had a chance to find it.

“I stayed here for a few years until I was old enough for boarding school.”

“In St. Louis, not Chicago. That struck me as strange,” Hobart said between bites of stuffing. “Why not send you back to the town where you were born, where your parents were from? Hawkins could have much more easily contacted someone there to ask about schools.”

“I have few memories of my grandparents, but I met an elderly lady in St. Louis who’d known them. I found out they were wealthy, influential people in Chicago. They were completely against my parents’ marriage. My ma, my grandparents’ only child, had been a bright, socially active woman who loved people and dancing and pretty gowns. After she married, she all but vanished from society. She had a child, and people didn’t think it was so strange that she’d stay at home for that. But then there were rumors that she’d become frail. Melancholy. After my grandparents died, my parents moved out here. This woman in St. Louis was a good friend of my grandmother. She still carried all the worries Grandmother had shared with her around like weights.”

“I should have looked into the circumstances of their deaths,” Hobart muttered to herself.