Angel

Chapter 28

Cassie never did find out what happened between her parents in the barn that night— or if anything did happen. Her mama simply wouldn’t talk about it. Her papa just teased her, saying they’d stopped acting like children, whatever that meant. But they did seem to have a truce of some sort going on. At least they continued to talk to each other. Nothing of a personal nature, at least not that Cassie heard, but it was communication: cautious, hesitant, as if they’d just met each other for the first time, but definite communication.

Catherine even insisted on holding off her and Cassie’s departure until after the holidays, so for the first time in ten years, Cassie got to spend Christmas with both of her parents. And she got to see Jenny once more at church services. Jenny had already moved in with her husband — R.J. had gotten his way in that — and she claimed the MacKauley men were treating her like a queen. It had been quite a few years since a woman had ruled the roost in that household, so things promised to be interesting there for a while.

Of course, R. J. and Dorothy were presently the talk of the town. Mabel Koch stopped by to tell Cassie, in case she hadn’t heard, about their being seen having dinner together, and that they’d stayed so late, they hadn’t gone home that night. They’d taken two rooms at the hotel, but Mabel insinuated only one had been needed.

Catherine had laughed for a half hour after hearing that. With all Cassie had been through, she hadn’t found it so funny herself. But ironically, the neighbors weren’t mad at her anymore. R. J. even sent by a brief note. “Feel free to meddle in my town anytime.” Cassie didn’t find that funny, either. The fact was, she wasn’t finding humor in much of anything these days.

She missed Angel.

When Catherine caught her seriously moping about it, she decided they’d go on a shopping spree back east before returning home, maybe all the way to New York this time.

“Let’s make it St. Louis instead,” Cassie impulsively suggested.

“Whatever you like, baby. And we can see a lawyer about filing for that divorce while we’re there. No point in letting all of Wyoming know about it if we don’t have to.”

Cassie said nothing to that, but she’d felt like asking, “If you’re so divorce-happy, how come you never got one for yourself?” But that wouldn’t have been very nice — sometimes she wished she weren’t so nice. A little mean streak could come in handy when dealing with certain overbearing people.

Her mama meant well, of course; she just had a longtime habit of overprotectiveness and making Cassie’s decisions for her. Cassie had never protested because Catherine was happiest when she was controlling things. But it was time Cassie started making a few decisions on her own. Going to St. Louis was one, even if it was spur-of-the-moment.

Sending off a telegram was another, and something she didn’t bother to mention to her mama. But she’d had Angel on her mind so much, the idea had just sprung up and wouldn’t go away. So she sent off a request to have a Pinkerton detective meet her in St. Louis to find out what, if anything, could be done to locate Angel’s parents. She didn’t think he’d ever try again himself, after all, and it was just the sort of thing that appealed to her meddling nature, the reuniting of a long-lost family.

Cassie and Catherine left Caully a few days after the new year began. With everything turning out so surprisingly well where Charles’s neighbors were concerned, Cassie knew she could come back for another visit next fall if she wanted to. What she hadn’t expected was her papa’s parting remark, that he’d probably be coming north himself for a visit in a month or two — and her mama’s secret smile when she heard him say that.

Obviously, something had happened in that barn. And unraveling the mystery of it was just what Cassie needed at the moment to take her mind off Angel. Not that she had been successful so far in getting any information out of her mama. Perhaps she’d just been going about it the wrong way.

She remembered being so amazed when she’d first realized that the Catlin and the MacKauley children didn’t know what had started the feud they were so deeply involved in. But Cassie was so used to not meddling in her parents’ lives that it hadn’t occurred to her at the time that she was just as ignorant of what had caused her own parents’ rift. She decided to start with that.

But a crowded stagecoach was no place to have a private discussion, so Cassie waited until they reached the rail lines farther east, which offered much more comfort in traveling and some relative privacy. In fact, she began her conversation in the dining car their first day on the train, deliberately lingering over dessert and coffee until the tables around them had vacated.

By then, more than a week since leaving Caully, Cassie was eager to try out her new strategy. Innocently she asked her mother, “How come you and Papa stopped loving each other?”

Catherine nearly choked on her last bite of cherry cobbler. “What kind of question is that?”

Cassie shrugged. “Probably one I should have asked a long time ago.”

“Your little party in your papa’s barn that night has made you bold, Cassie — or should I say impertinent?”

“Do you think so? I do try—”

“Don’t you dare be catty with me, young lady.”

“Then don’t be evasive, Mama. It was a simple question, and one I figure I have a right to ask.”

“It’s too… personal.”

Catherine was still evading. Cassie knew the signs. She wasn’t giving up this time.

“I’m not some nosy neighbor. I’m your daughter. He’s my papa. I should have been told a long time ago what happened, Mama. Why did you stop loving him?”

Catherine looked out the window at the dull winter landscape that held little of interest. Cassie knew from experience that she wouldn’t get another word out of her. That was her mama’s way. If she couldn’t intimidate people to end whatever they were doing to bother her, she simply ignored them.

So Cassie was amazed when a few moments later her mama said, “I never stopped loving him.”

Cassie could have imagined a dozen answers. None of them would have been that one. In fact, she was so incredulous, not a single reply came to mind.

Catherine was still looking out the window, but she could guess at the shock she’d just caused. “I know it probably never seemed that way,” she said.

“There’s no ‘probably’ about it. There isn’t a single person who knows you, Mama, who ever doubted how much you two hated each other. I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t. I don’t, either, to tell you the truth.” Catherine sighed. “Anger can be a powerful thing. So is fear. Both can make you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. And both had control of me for a long time.”

Cassie couldn’t accept that, either. “Fear, Mama? We’re talking about the woman who stood out in the middle of the street in Cheyenne, without cover, with bullets flying every which way, and shot two out of four bank robbers, one of whom happened to be holding the money they’d just stolen. You can’t tell me you’re not one of the most fearless women I know.”

Catherine finally looked across the table, her lips turned up in a half smile. “I had a lot of money in that bank. I wasn’t going to see it ride out of town if I could prevent it. But I never said I was afraid of dying.”

“Then what were you afraid of?”

“Cassie—”

Cassie knew that tone and quickly said, “You can’t stop now, Mama. It’ll drive me crazy if I don’t hear the rest of it.”

Catherine gave her an exasperated look. “You get that stubbornness from your papa.”

“I get it from you.”

Catherine sighed again. “All right, but first you need to know how much I wanted children. After your papa and I married, I used to cry every month when — when I knew I wasn’t pregnant yet. Then when it did finally happen, I was the happiest woman alive. I think I went around with a smile on my face those whole nine months.”

Cassie found that hard to believe, too, since it was rare that her mama ever smiled. “What’s that got to do with being afraid?”

“That came after. You see, I didn’t know what it was going to be like, the birthing. My mama had died when I was young, so she never told me. Your papa and I had only just moved to Wyoming, so I didn’t have many women friends who might have warned me. And I’d never witnessed an actual birthing. I was so ignorant, I thought I was losing you when my water broke. But then the pain started.

“You wouldn’t know it to look at you, but the doctor told me afterward that you were one of the biggest babies he’d ever delivered. It took nearly two days. During that time, I thought I was going to die at least a dozen times. Fact is, I wanted to. Even the doc gave up on me at one point, I got so weak. But somehow you got born. I don’t remember exactly how. I was out of my mind with the pain by then.

“And there were complications after. I’d been pretty ripped up. The bleeding wouldn’t stop… now don’t look like that.” Cassie had gone quite pale. “It wasn’t your fault. If you want to know the truth, I wouldn’t have fought to recover if it weren’t for you.”

“But, Mama—”

“No buts,” Catherine interrupted sternly. “You see now why I didn’t want to tell you? But it certainly wasn’t your fault, and you have to believe me, baby, I never once blamed you. I did, however, blame your papa. I know I shouldn’t have. Things like that just happen. It’s no one’s fault. But that’s not the way my mind was working back then.”

Catherine suddenly laughed, though it was a bitter sound. “To this day I wonder if things would have been different if what I’d learned afterward would have come my way just a little sooner. My, how quickly ignorance can end, whether you want it to or not.

“It’s amazing. Another woman sees you with a baby, even one who doesn’t know you, and they start telling you all about their own birth experiences. All the things I should have been warned about beforehand that might have prepared me better, I was told about after, that the first baby is always the hardest, that the pain is soon forgotten, that women with narrow hips like me usually have an even more difficult time of it — things like that, and, unanimously, that it’s worth it.

“I agree wholeheartedly with the last. I’ve never regretted for a minute having you, Cassie. But after what I went through, I wasn’t going to have any more children if I could help it, and I could. I told your papa I’d shoot him if he even thought about climbing into my bed again.”

Cassie’s eyes widened. “I don’t suppose he took too kindly to that?”

“I reckon be didn’t.”

“And that’s it?”

“Only what started it. You see, I didn’t ask him to give me time. I said flat out never again. And he was extremely patient in the beginning, thinking I’d change my mind. I might have — the memory of that pain really does diminish. But eight months went by and he finally blew up about it.

“I suppose I can’t blame him now, though I sure did at the time. I don’t know. I guess the way I was thinking was that if I was never going to make love again, he could damn well abstain, too. That was unrealistic of me, I know. But I was young and emotional, and like I said, my mind wasn’t working quite right back then.”

“Then that’s what did it, his getting angry?”

“No, what did it was my finding out he went to Gladis’s place.”

Cassie knew about Gladis’s place. It had burned down about seven years ago and Gladis had moved on to some other town. But in its day it had been one of the finest whorehouses in Wyoming. To this day men still talked about Gladis’s place — and Cassie just couldn’t picture her papa going there.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“ ‘Course I am. You don’t think I’d end a marriage on mere suspicions, do you? There was this man lived in Cheyenne back then. I don’t remember his name now, but he’d taken a fancy to me and was always teasing me about when I was going to leave your papa for him. He even pestered me when I was full-blown pregnant. Well, he figured he was doing me a favor by telling me that half the town had seen Charles visiting that brothel.”

“Some favor,” Cassie remarked dryly.

“I agree. If I recall right, I think I broke two knuckles on his jaw to thank him. And I never did see him again. But anyhow, I was mad enough when I confronted your papa and he admitted it that I told him to get out. He wouldn’t. So I told him never to speak to me again.”

“And he didn’t — nor did you.”

“I can’t help my temper, Cassie,” Catherine said defensively. “I’m an unforgiving woman. I know it. What that Dotty woman said is perfectly true. Your papa’s lucky I didn’t shoot him for what he did. I did go to Gladis’s late one night to find out who he was visiting there. Her I would have shot. But Gladis protected her girls real good. She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yet you say you never stopped loving him,” Cassie reminded her.

“I can’t help that, either. And I know that I drove him to it, but I just couldn’t forgive something like that. The fear and the anger— they’re a terrible combination. Don’t ever let them get hold of you like they did me.”

Cassie shook her head in bemusement. For it to have been something as simple as jealousy. She wished she didn’t sympathize with both sides, but she did. There were simply no winners in that sort of situation. Yet they were talking now, she reminded herself. Something had gotten them beyond that long bout of anger.

“Mama, what happened in the barn that night?”

“None of your business.”

After everything Catherine had just revealed, Cassie had to laugh at that answer. And she retained her good humor until a few hours later. It was that evening when she discovered that she had no reason to deny Angel his divorce. She wasn’t pregnant.