Joe's Wife. Cheryl St.John
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took his hand, and her skin felt powdery smooth against his palm, her fingers thin and bony. “God, you feel good. You look good. You look older. Not a bad look, mind you, just older.”
He perched on the edge of the bed. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while, Lottie.”
“Yes.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “We had some good times back then, didn’t we?”
They’d kept each other company for a while, was all. But he wouldn’t spoil her enhanced memories when she had so few and no time left to make more. So he nodded. “Yes.”
“Where were you?” she asked. “During the war. I mean.”
“I was with General Thomas.”
She frowned as if she were trying to remember. “Chattanooga?”
He nodded. “And Chickamaugua. We held off Braxton Bragg’s army.”
“I knew you’d be one of the strong ones who came home.”
“How did you know that?”
“I don’t know. I just did. You’re a survivor. Strong inside, where it counts.”
Lottie’d always seemed strong, too. Full of life and energy and big plans for the future. The antithesis of the ghostly pale woman in this bed before him. Life sure took some unfair twists. “I thought you’d have found a man by now. Be living in the city in that big house you wanted.”
“Yeah, well...” She gave him a sad-sweet smile. “I had hundreds of offers. Just that nobody ever measured up to you.”
She was teasing him. Theirs had never been a passionate relationship. She’d had plans for a rich man and a house in the city. He’d wanted a patch of ground and some livestock to call his own. He gave her a warm smile.
“I’m not here for much longer,” she said simply.
Tye didn’t know how to reply.
“I need you to do something for me,” she said tentatively.
“You know I will.” He leaned forward, and she placed her palm on his chest as though touching him gave her strength. “I’ll do anything you ask.” Did she have last-minute debts to repay in order to go to her resting place in peace? Damn! He couldn’t help her if she needed money. “What is it?” he asked.
“I have a child,” she said, and tears welled in her eyes.
“You do? Where is he? Do you need me to go get him for you?” Perhaps she needed to say goodbye.
“No. She’s here. What I need you to do is...”
“What?”
“I need you to take care of her for me.”
Tye stared at her. “I don’t have much, Lottie. I can help, but—”
“Not money,” she interrupted. “I mean take her. After I’m gone,” she clarified, and blinked back the moisture in her eyes. “Raise her.”
Was she all right in the head? Had her sickness gone to her mind? Tye glanced behind him but Rosa had left them alone. Lottie was asking him to take responsibility for a small person! A kid he didn’t even know. “I don’t know the first thing about a kid. I’m sure she’d be better off with someone else.”
“No!” she said firmly. “She wouldn’t. Nobody else would have her, you know that. She’d end up in an orphanage or worse, and I can’t die afraid of that happening to my Eve.”
“What about Rosa?” He glanced over his shoulder again, as though he could conjure up some help.
“No. She’s getting married. Emery Parks has a brother-in-law whose wife died, and Rosa is marrying him. He already has five children. He wouldn’t take another one.”
“Well...” Tye glanced about the room helplessly. “Surely there’s someone.”
“That’s what I’ve been believing all along. I’ve been praying that someone will want her before it’s too late. Before she goes to an orphan asylum.” She pierced him with a steady gaze. “She’s a child born out of wedlock, Hatch. Folks consider her trash, just like they do me. She’ll grow up just like me, too...unless somebody takes her. Unless you take her and give her a different life. And a name.”
She knew exactly what she was saying to him, and exactly how he’d react. Tye’s own father had been a rancher right here in Colorado. He hadn’t married Tye’s mother, and he hadn’t claimed Tye as his son. More than anyone, Tye knew the stigma of being a bastard. And Lottie was using that against him.
“Nobody’d want my name, Lottie,” he argued. “My name’s no better than hers would be.”
“At least it would be somebody’s name,” she said, her voice stronger than her appearance dictated. “It would show that somebody wanted her. That you wanted her. You’re a good man. I know you’d take care of her, and you wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
Her urgent pleas hung in the air like the unpleasant smell of sickness and the cloying scent of wax.
“You said you’d do anything for me,” she said softly. Unfairly. And she knew it. But she was dying, and she had a child to look out for.
A trapped sensation made him want to bolt for the door. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. She had to have been desperate to have called on him.
“Go see her,” she urged. “She’s in the room next door to mine.”
He stood slowly, releasing her hand. Her eyes held so much hope. So much fear. So much love for her child. With uncertainty bombarding his mind and a sense of human duty harping at his conscience, Tye walked out of the room to the next one like a man walking toward an uncertain fate.
He took a deep breath, his head not understanding why his feet were going ahead with this monstrous demand on the rest of his life. He didn’t know the first thing about a kid. Sure, he wanted one or two someday, but not until he had a place to live and a wife to give him his own.
What if he didn’t even like her? The door stood ajar, and he tapped his knuckles against the wood.
He didn’t know what he was expecting. Certainly not the fragile, dark-haired angel who sat beneath the window holding a rag doll and looking for all the world like a porcelain doll herself. She raised wide eyes the shade of deep blue pansies and blinked.
Something in Tye’s chest contracted painfully. She looked so small and helpless. “Eve?” he asked softly.
She nodded, and her midnight black ringlets bounced against shoulders he could span with one hand. “Are you Mr. Hatcher?”
“Yes.”
She merely stared at him.
What should he say to her now that he was here? He didn’t have any experience with kids. “Did your mother tell you I’d be coming?”
She nodded again. “I stayed clean till you got here. Me an’ Molly was getting kind of tired of staying clean an’ all.”
“Well, you look very clean to me.”
“Thank you. You look clean, too. Them’s my manners and Mama said I best mind ’em.”
Her piping voice and serious expression enchanted him. He found himself wanting to hear her say more. “How old are you?”
“Five and a half. My birthday’s behind Thanksgiving.”
“Oh.”
The tiny creature hopped to her feet and placed the doll on the bed. Her wrists and hands were as delicate and frail-boned as anything he’d ever seen. A stiff wind would blow her clean to Texas.
He crossed to sit on the corner end of the mattress, wondering what to say next. He glanced at the cloth