Mary Read online

  “I caught Sarah and Angus in the barn . . . together.” She let her words hang in the air hoping her companion would relax a bit if the attention was shifted somewhere else. She was happy when it worked.

  “Really? Sarah and Big Angus? I’m surprised and yet I’m not sure why? They’re both genuinely good people. They are both about the same age and they are both single. Hmm . . . I hadn’t seen that coming,” he commented and took another bite of the roast beef.

  “Why, because Sarah is sweet on you?” she teased hoping to lighten his mood even more.

  “What makes you think Sarah is—”

  “Oh, don’t even try to deny it. Anyone who isn’t blind can see she nearly swoons when you walk into the room. And she’s very attentive to you, practically tripping over her own feet to make sure your every need is met. And that makes me wonder . . . why haven’t you made a gesture towards the woman?” she boldly asked.

  “I’m not the marrying kind.” His voice trailed off and his tension returned.

  “Ah, yes. I’ve heard about the marriage-minded mommas who’ve practically hog-tied you in hopes of slowing you down long enough to allow their daughters to catch your eye.”

  “Who told you?”

  When she didn’t answer, he grimaced. “Hope. She told you.”

  “I can’t remember who told me, but I am curious. With so many women dogging your trail, why would you run so fast? I thought every single man wanted a good wife to prepare his meals, wash his clothes, and keep his bed warm,” she teased. “What happened to sour you on marriage?”

  He bolted up, knocking his food to the ground. “Death happened. Isn’t that enough?”

  Surprised at his emotional outburst, she rose and placed her hand on his arm. When he turned away, she held on tight, her fingers biting into his forearm. He looked down where her fingers pinched into his arm. There was no humor in his gaze or his words. “I’m asking you, as my friend, to let it go. I’ll take you back to town and we can pretend this never happened.”

  She pinned his dead stare with one of her own full of meaning. “As your friend, and someone who has grown very fond of you since we met, I cannot do that.”

  His jaws clenched. “You can and you will.”

  “I’m sorry. I tell you I will not, for it is my duty, and honor, to open your wounds so that they may heal.”

  Mary thought he was going to rip his arm from her grasp. Instead, he spoke to her between clenched teeth. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She could tell he was very angry, but she knew his anger against her was a shelter against his hurt. “Let me help you lay to rest the ghosts of your past. Let me help you reconcile your past with your present and to show you that you can find purpose in death, even an unjust death. Because to not look for meaning is the ultimate disrespect to those who have passed on. That is the Ute way. And you cannot deny your heritage any longer now that I see you.”

  “I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help. There isn’t anything anyone can do to change the past. You of all people should know that.”

  “I don’t ask for change. I ask for clarity in understanding. That is the only way you will heal these wounds.”

  As soon as her words fell upon his misery, he crumbled to his knees. She fell with him and wrapped her arms tightly around him pulling him into her understanding embrace. He buried his head against her chest and sobbed as if his heart were made of glass and had shattered into a million shards.

  Mary held him tight against her long after she could no longer feel her legs beneath her. She pulled him tighter . . . closer . . . and she would hold him as long as he needed her.

  Doc lay in Mary’s arms pulling strength from the beautiful woman who had known so much misery in her life. He had somehow known she would learn his truths despite his determined efforts to keep her at a distance.

  He felt her strong fingers combing through his hair to comfort him. He felt safe and yet he didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to tell Mary what a coward he had been all these years, but she had gotten past his defenses. He felt the chill in the mountain air brush against his arms. It was getting late and he needed to get Mary back to town. Everyone would be worried if they didn’t return before nightfall.

  He pulled away from Mary refusing to look at her. His emotions were too raw to expose them to her intuitive scrutiny.

  “Doc, please don’t turn away from me. We are connected, you and me. Let me be the nan-kub-vah for your sorrows. We can purge them together on the fire of Legends. Then you can start anew.”

  He shook his head in denial. “But I don’t want you to be the ear for my sorrows. I can never—”

  Mary tried to stand, but her legs had grown limp under his weight. He reached out a hand and helped her to her feet, holding her up until her leg strength returned. “Doc, do you think you are the only one to make mistakes? Do you think you are the only person to be haunted by ghosts from their past?” She pulled on his shirt to get his attention. When he looked down at her, he saw unshed tears pool in her beautiful blue eyes. He was touched. She was crying for him. But she shouldn’t be. He didn’t deserve her sympathy.

  “I see your tears of empathy, Mary. I felt your kindness in your touch as you held me, but I’m not like you. Where you are brave and courageous, I’m a coward.”

  “The man I see before is not a coward. People who know you do not say you are a coward. Why do you think you are a coward? This is what I must know.”

  “Because I left my mother to die without lifting a finger to help her. I didn’t even go back to bury her.”

  Chapter 13

  Mary could tell Doc’s blunt words were said to shock her and stop her from pushing him for answers, but she was too close to the truth and the wounds that had festered for so long.

  “Tell me the story, Doc. Tell me all of it and when you are done, I will decide if you deserve to be called a coward. I will not leave this forest until you have told me all of it and we both know you won’t leave me here alone.” She returned to the big rock where they shared their lunch, sat down and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what I wish to know and as you can see the sun is dropping low behind the mountains.”

  “You are as adept at surviving out here as I am. Why would I hesitate to leave you here?” She knew he was bluffing. “Because I know you won’t go back without me. If you did, you would have to face my brother’s anger. And we both know he is a force to be reckoned with.”

  She saw his shoulders droop in resignation. Her pulse raced as her anticipation grew.

  “You think you want to know why I call myself a coward. You think you want to know why I refuse to get close enough to anyone to get married. You think you want to know, but you don’t. Why can’t you just trust me on this, Mary? Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because I care about you and I want to know what is causing you such pain. Tell me.”

  He shook his head and for a moment, she thought he would indeed leave her behind in the forest rather than share with her what she wanted to know. She held her breath and waited.

  Minutes passed and the only sounds to be heard were birds and other creatures of the forest. She watched him until she saw his shoulders sag and she knew he had surrendered to her will.

  “You want to know my past. I’ll tell you every ugly, sordid detail and you’ll be sorry.”

  Mary shook her head with certainty. “No, I won’t. Now come sit next to me and tell me what it is that has caused you such pain.”

  He refused to make eye contact, but he did as she asked although he sat some distance away to prevent physical contact. It was as if he couldn’t stand to be touched and she would honor his wishes.

  “Very well. Where would you like me to start?”

  “Start at the beginning. Tell me about your childhood.”

  “I had a wonderful childhood in the beginning. I lived with my grandparents and my mother and we spent many
years enjoying our time together.”

  “Go on.”

  “That happy life ended just after my seventh birthday.” He hesitated and she didn’t rush him.

  “That was the day my family was murdered, and my village burned to the ground.”

  It took Mary a minute to catch the word in context. “Village? As in__”

  “Yes, as in Indian village. A Ute village to be exact.” He turned angry eyes on her. “You were right when you guessed I am Ute, or at least half Ute.”

  She remained silent hoping he would continue. He did not disappoint her.

  “After I witnessed the carnage, I ran, but it didn’t take long for a rider on horseback to chase me down. He was ready to kill me too and would have if—” When he hesitated too long, she reached out her hand and squeezed his arm. “If what, Doc? What happened to make these murderers spare the life of a little Ute boy?”

  “I told the man I had been kidnapped by the Utes and that my father was a very important man in the United States Army, and he would pay a great deal of money for my return. At first, he didn’t believe me, but then one of his accomplices joined us and decided it was worth the gamble to find out if I was telling the truth.”

  “I know what that kind of terror feels like and it paralyzes your mind. That was a very ingenious plan for a terrified seven-year-old to come up with on the spur of the moment. Quite remarkable, in fact, especially after witnessing everyone you cared about murdered in front of you,” she told him.

  “Not so ingenious because it was the truth. My father was a colonel in the Army. I wasn’t certain he would pay the ransom for I wasn’t sure he would even acknowledge me as his son, considering my mother was a Ute, but it was the only chance I had and so I took it.”

  “Good for you, Doc. You survived. Just like I did. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “No. I should have stayed with the few other survivors of that day and helped bury my grandparents and my mother. Instead, I sat on the back of their murderer’s horse as he and I rode through the village passing the bodies of my mother and her parents, leaving them behind as if they were rubbish.”

  She heard the bitterness in his words and knew she couldn’t change how he felt so she changed the direction of his story. “Do you know how your father came to meet your mother?”

  “I do. It was a story my mother told often. I could see she missed my father and he had promised to return, but he never did. As I said, my father was in the Army and one day my mother found him wounded on the trail near our village. She brought him back and nursed him to health. My mother was the village shoot-coop pe-adze—”

  “Is that’s how you know so much about Ute medicine? You learned it from your village’s medicine woman who just happened to be your mother? But, you would have been so young then.”

  “No, it was only after I finished my medical training and left my father’s home in Boston that I returned to my mother’s people to learn about the Ute way of healing.”

  “So you did find your father and he took you in. That must have been a relief.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Tell me about your pe-adze and moonch. They fell in love?”

  “Yes, my mother nursed my father back to health, and he stayed for many months, but then one day a column of troops rode into our village and saw him. They told him the Army had given him up for dead.”

  “So he left your mother and returned to the Army? Was it because he had to?”

  “My mother said he had to go, but he promised to come back as soon as he could. He left not knowing my mother was expecting me. Perhaps if he had he might have come back. Or not. Anyway, once he was gone, my mother gave birth to me and she named me N amp-par-way Katz-tin-qeer.”

  “Walk soft. That’s a fitting name for you, isn’t it? She sensed you would be a peacemaker walking between the two worlds of your mother and father.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “So, your father never returned. That must have been hard for a little boy to deal with.”

  “No, he did not. I didn’t even know what my father looked like until the men who murdered my mother took me to him. Yeah, it was hard.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Perhaps he had a good reason why he couldn’t get back to you and your mother.”

  “After seven years?” She heard the bitterness in his words.

  “Did he ever give you a reason later, when you went to live with him, why he didn’t come back?”

  “Yes, he said his duty to country prevented it.”

  “I see.” It was all she could think of to say to such a statement.

  “Well, I take it life with your father was tolerable?”

  “Yes. Not long after he learned of me, and paid the ransom to my mother’s murderers, he left the Army and returned to civilian life. We left the mountains and went to live in my father’s family’s home in Boston. That’s where he dressed me in white man’s clothes and sent me to white schools. I graduated from medical school near the top of my class. Life should have been much improved by then. But it wasn’t.”

  “Why? Did your father treat you badly?”

  “No, he treated me with indifference. It was his family that treated me cruelly. My grandmother resented me because it was a reminder of how low her son had stooped when he could have married someone with money and social standing.”

  “That must have been really hard on you as a young boy. Did things change when you grew into manhood?”

  “No, it only grew more insidious and subtle. My torment didn’t stop with my family.”

  “What happened?”

  “I made the mistake of falling in love with Miss Rebecca Lancaster. She was a beautiful young woman who lived close to my father’s home. I was secretly in love with her and I kept that to myself until I graduated medical school. I thought then that I could make enough money to provide for her, I would be accepted in my father’s world then. I thought she cared for me too. but I was very naive for such an educated man.”

  “Did she break your heart?” Mary wanted to know.

  “Yes, she broke my heart, but even worse than that, she humiliated me.”

  “How?”

  “I waited until my graduation night from medical school to ask her to marry me. Surrounded by people who I thought were my friends, I asked her to marry me.”

  “And she said no?”

  “If she had simply said no, I could have lived with that. But she got great joy out of making my proposal a spectacle where everyone laughed at the notion that someone like me would ever be acceptable to someone like her?”

  “By someone like you . . . are you saying they knew—”

  “Yes, my grandmother had made it clear to her friends that I was a half-breed and the only reason she tolerated my presence was because she loved her son more than she hated me.”

  “Oh, Doc.” She couldn’t have imagined how tormented he was and now it all made sense.

  “Rebecca, all my classmates I had thought were my friends, and everyone who knew my family had known my secret all along. And it all came to light that night.”

  “I’m so sorry. People can be so cruel, in every corner. It matters not what color the skin is. What matters is the color of one’s heart and soul.”

  Doc sat beside her staring off into the distance. Even though he didn’t answer, Mary knew he’d heard.

  “I’m sorry your father and his family were not kind to you, but as you know, the world is not a kind place to people like you. Or me.”

  “I know that, but I think if my father had been consistent with his love and indifference, perhaps I could agree with you. On his death, he left me nothing from his estate, no money or property anyway. What I did receive was a handwritten letter from his solicitor. I can still see the scrawled words on the paper.”

  “What did it say?”

  Taking a deep breath, he recited it from memory.

  Dear Jonny,

  I probably should apologize to you for ma
king you a half breed, but I’m a selfish bastard and I wanted your mother so much, I could not stop myself from making her mine. I was a coward for leaving her unprotected and I’ll go to my grave knowing that I put my career and my reputation above you and your mother.

  I’m not able to leave you anything from my estate because my mother has outlived me and she forbids it, so all I have to give to you now is advice. Get as far away from Boston and this family as you can for they will never allow you to know peace here. And the second piece of advice I offer you is even more important. No matter where you go or who you believe you can trust, keep your blood heritage to yourself. Tell no one for they will only use it against you.

  Your father,

  Jonathan Carter Fitzgerald, II

  “I guess cowardice runs in my family.”

  Mary saw the pain in Doc’s eyes and wanted to console him. She stood and pulled him to his feet where she could wrap her arms around him and hold him close. She was sad to know the pain he had endured, but she was glad that now, this kind and generous man could heal his own wounds.

  Doc couldn’t believe he’d let Mary convince him to finally expunge every ounce of poison that had festered in his soul over the last twenty-three years. He found it odd now that he had a different perspective on the events of those years and how one’s mind could twist and bend the truth. He knew how Liam felt when he learned his sister had been alive all those years. That if he had just gone after her, things might have been different and all the misery, pain, and suffering Mary endured could have been avoided, but that wasn’t true anymore than his perspective had been all these years.

  Doc realized his perspective all these years had been through that of a child. And because his father was inept and ill-equipped to deal with such matters, he had convinced himself that he could have changed the outcome that day had he simply made different choices. He thought if he had admitted to his captors that he was Ute and his father was a colonel in the Army, he could have negotiated with them and saved his mother. But now he knew his revelation would have made no difference to the fate of his people. It would have only gotten him killed too. And look at all the good he had accomplished in his lifetime. The lives he’d saved. The pain and suffering he’d relieved through his skills as a doctor, because of both white and Ute medicines.