Nobody's Darling

Billy noted that this time Bart didn’t stammer an excuse or hang his head. He met his sister’s gaze dead-on. “I was thinking what a pitiful excuse for a man I’d been. I was thinking about how I let you sacrifice everything for me, including your own childhood. I was thinking that even if I went to college like you wanted me to, it would be years before I could afford to buy you the things you deserved.” He caught her by the shoulders. “Don’t you know that it drove me half-wild with shame to see you wearing Mama’s mended dresses while you taught those spoiled little merchant’s daughters in their Worth gowns and diamond pinkie rings?”

Tears glistened in Esmerelda’s eyes. “But I never wanted Worth gowns and diamond pinkie rings! All I ever wanted was children of my own and a decent man to love.”

Billy flinched. Her words cut to the bone. Decent wasn’t a word he’d ever heard used to describe a Darling. Decent was some store clerk or lawyer coming home from the office every day with his leather satchel tucked beneath his arm. Decent was Esmerelda greeting her husband at the door with a tender kiss, her apron smelling of fresh-baked peach pie. Decent was a batch of laughing, brown-eyed children gathered around a piano while Esmerelda sang shrill Christmas carols. The image made him feel funny—sad and mean all at the same time.

Half afraid of just what else he might hear, Billy gruffly interrupted. “What’s done is done. There’s no point in arguing about it. I can drop off the gold at the bank in Eulalie for safekeeping on my way back to Calamity. I’ll telegraph the marshal in Albuquerque and let him know it’s there. He’s a good man. He’ll see to it that Winstead doesn’t prey on any more tenderfoots like young Brat here.“

Their own quarrel forgotten, brother and sister both swung toward him and said in unison, “Bart!”

He simply shrugged.

“Isn’t that wonderful?” Esmerelda exclaimed. “Mr. Dar”—she slanted him a shy glance, plainly deciding that the delicious intimacies they’d shared at least entitled her to call him by his Christian name—“Billy will return die gold and you’ll be free to return home.”

Bart stiffened. “I’m afraid I won’t be returning to Boston.”

“Why, of course you will! It’s where you belong.”

Billy cleared his throat. This was the moment he’d been dreading. “Your brother’s right. He can’t go back. At least not yet. I can look after myself and you, but until Winstead and his men are behind bars, he won’t be safe.”

Bartholomew clasped his sister’s shoulders again, more gently this time. “You can’t keep me in short pants forever, Esme. It’s time for me to make my own way in the world.”

“But what about Boston College? Mama and Papa always dreamed you’d attend university and become a journalist like Papa.”

“Mama and Papa are dead,” he said softly. “I have my own dreams now. I don’t want to spend my life writing editorials and obituaries for people to read over their morning coffee. I want to write stories that come from my own imagination. I want to make people laugh and cry. I want to make them dream.”

“But where will you go?”

He looked toward the far horizon, the twinkle in his eye sharpening to a dreamer’s glint. “I always thought South America would be a lovely place to write my first novel.” He chuckled dryly. “I’ve certainly had ample inspiration in the past few months.”

Billy reached into the pocket of his trousers and drew out a wad of money. Instead of peeling off a few bills, he handed Bart the entire thing. “Winstead paid me this to kill you. It seems only fitting that you should use it to start a new life.”

“I’m in your debt, sir,” Bart replied, offering him his hand. “I won’t forget it.”

As they shook hands, man-to-man for the first time, Esmerelda stood blinking in bewilderment, as if everything was happening too fast for her to comprehend. Billy felt a twinge of pity. He knew exactly how it felt to be the one left standing outside when the door slammed.

Hoping to earn her some time to get used to the idea of losing her brother a second time, he nodded toward the house. “I’m sure Ma would be glad to fix you something to eat before you go. She seems to have taken quite a shine to you.”

Shooting the house another fearful glance, Bart reached up to massage his throat. “I believe I’ll just be on my way. I’ve got a long trip ahead of me. I can stop for supplies at the next town.” He turned to Esmerelda, drawing her limp body in for a swift, hard hug. She hung like a rag doll in his embrace. “I’ll write you, Esme, just as soon as I get settled.”

It wasn’t until he was striding toward the dun gelding that stood grazing on a sparse patch of grama grass halfway down the hill that she snapped out of her daze.

“Bartholomew Fine, you get back here this instant!”

He paused for a nearly imperceptible second, then resumed walking.

“Don’t you turn your back on me while I’m talking. I won’t tolerate such impertinence!“ Her voice broke on a quavering note.

Her brother was already throwing one leg over the saddle and turning the horse south.

Esmerelda caught Billy’s arm in an imploring grip, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I just found him. I can’t lose him again! Please, Billy, you have to stop him!”

He caught her shoulders in a grip as fierce as her own. “I’d shoot him in the leg if I believed you both wouldn’t hate me and each other for it later.”

“I don’t want you to shoot him. I just want you to talk some sense into the boy!”

He deliberately gentled both his grip and his voice. “He’s not a boy any longer, Esmerelda. He’s a man.”

Sobbing with frustration, she wrenched herself out of his grasp and went tearing down the hill. Bart had already kicked the horse into a canter. Soon he would be nothing but a puff of dust on the horizon.

Esmerelda must have realized it, too, for halfway down the hill, she stumbled to her knees, her shoulders crumpling in defeat.

Although Billy ached to go to her, he’d had plenty of practice biding his time. He leaned against the buckboard until the sun began to climb in the crisp blue sky. Until even the puff of dust had been scattered by the wind.

Only then did he start down the hillside. The brittle grasses crackled beneath his bare feet, warning Esmerelda of his approach.

She sat with one leg drawn up to her stomach, her mouth pressed to her knee. Her tears had dried to dusty streaks on her cheeks. Billy yearned to draw her into his arms, but she looked too brittle—as if one touch might scatter her on the wind as well.

He sank down on the hillside as near as he dared, leaned back on one elbow, and tucked a hollow blade of grass between his teeth. She surprised him by speaking first.

“Bartholomew’s little heart was broken when Mama and Papa died. I tried to make it up to him, but I guess I never did.”

Billy frowned, pained by her choice of words. “Hell, Esmerelda, you didn’t kill them.”

She turned to look him straight in the eye. “Oh, but I did.”

When she returned her gaze to the empty horizon, Billy could only stare at the bleak curl of her mouth. “I once had a friend named Rebecca. I was always a little shy and I didn’t make friends easily, so Becky was very precious to me. One evening, I overheard Mama and Papa whispering that she was sick. I begged them to let me go visit her. Mama turned white and Papa, who had never once raised his voice to me, shouted that I was to do no such thing and I must go to my room immediately.

“I ran up the stairs, crying. I rarely disobeyed, you see. I was a very good girl.” She slanted him a mocking smile, giving him a glimpse of the mischievous little girl she would have liked to have been. “But this time I managed to convince myself that my parents were just being selfish and mean. I knew I could make Becky feel better if I could only see her. I made her some roses out of yellow tissue paper.”

Billy knew what was coming next. He couldn’t begin to number the muggy summer nights back in Missouri when he’d crept out his window, shed his drawers, and plunged butt-naked into the icy cold waters of a nearby spring.