Or maybe it had been like this most recent storm. Kelly said it hadn’t been predicted to come this far north. Somehow Gus knew that Jamie Long had listened to the weather report before she left-for all the good it did her.
Gus walked through the house. Faded wallpaper was peeling from the walls, and tattered remnants of curtains hung from some of the windows. Mrs. McGraf had tried to make the place pretty.
He needed to stop thinking about the McGrafs, though, and focus on Jamie Long. Judging from the pile of ash in the fireplace, she had gathered a lot of wood and been here for a significant period of time. Right under Kelly’s nose. Once again he was all but overcome by the urge to blame Kelly. To berate her.
But he didn’t want Kelly going crazy like Montgomery. He needed Kelly to keep things going at the ranch now that Montgomery was gone.
He walked into the larger of the two bedrooms. Had Mr. and Mrs. McGraf been happy in this room, he wondered.
And he wondered how tall a man Mr. McGraf had been.
With all his riches and power, Gus had never experienced true love and joy with a woman. But he had experienced something just as precious when he was with Sonny. A pure, unselfish love that went all the way to bedrock.
He hadn’t kidded himself into thinking that he was going to love Jamie Long’s baby with anything close to what he had felt for Sonny. Every time he saw the baby, he would think of what he’d had to do to the kid’s mother. But he wanted his sister to have Sonny’s baby to love and raise and to pass off as her own if that was what she wanted. And human nature being what it was, Jamie Long would not have been able to resist blackmailing Amanda or selling her story to the highest bidder.
The closest thing to joy he was going to have for the rest of his days was making Amanda happy. If there was a hell, he already was going to burn in it. One more major sin wasn’t going to make it any worse. What he had to do now was figure out how to find Jamie Long and Sonny’s baby.
“We checked all the hospitals within a hundred-mile radius,” Kelly told him. “And I swore out a warrant with the county sheriff accusing her of stealing money and jewelry.”
“Call the sheriff and tell him that you were mistaken,” Gus said. “I will handle the search-privately. As far as anyone on this ranch or in this county is concerned, she left and was never heard from again.”
What he needed to do now was crawl inside the girl’s head. What were her needs?
Gus took one more look around the pitiful little dwelling, then walked out onto the porch and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. The message on the tiny screen informed him that service was not available. Which irritated him. Even if the population density in Marshall County wasn’t significantly higher than that of the moon, it was ridiculous not to have reliable cell-phone service.
He motioned to Kelly and headed for her vehicle.
After she dropped him off at the ranch house, he went straight to his bedroom, where the phone line was secure.
A man’s voice answered.
“I’m at the ranch,” Gus said. “I need you to come right away.”
“Is this official or unofficial business?”
“Unofficial,” Gus said.
Then he sat staring at nothing.
Montgomery. It was hard to believe that she was really dead. She had always been there for him. Always. He shouldn’t have yelled at her. He’d been yelling a lot lately. The pompous, swaggering ignoramus they’d put in the White House thought that he should actually be in charge. If Gus hadn’t been so aggravated with him, he wouldn’t have lost his temper with Montgomery.
Gus did not allow himself to peer over the edge of the open casket as he lit the candles placed around it. With the flickering candlelight penetrating the shadows in the vaulted hall, he brought the stepping stool from the library. Without it, he would not be tall enough to kiss Montgomery’s cold dead lips. And he needed to do that. Not for Montgomery, but for himself. Maybe such an act would make him feel better.
She looked ghastly.
He touched her cheek. It felt like cold rubber.
He sucked in his breath and bent forward to plant a kiss on her lips. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.
Now the only person in the whole world who loved him was his sister.
He had waited until right before he left for the ranch to tell Amanda. She was still in bed, a coffee cup in her hands. Gus told Toby he needed to talk to his sister alone.
Amanda took one look at Gus’s face and put the cup on the bedside table. “What is it?” she asked, patting a place on the bed beside her. The bed was low enough that he was able to seat himself next to her with some degree of dignity. He took her hand in his and kissed it.
He didn’t believe in euphemisms. People did not “pass away” or “depart this earth.” But he could not bring himself to say the d word. He took his beloved sister in his arms and whispered to her, “We’ve lost Montgomery.”
Amanda gasped and pulled away, her eyes wide as she stared into his face. “She’s not…”
Gus nodded.
Amanda screamed and began pulling at her hair and clawing her cheeks, leaving angry red marks. Toby came rushing back into the room. “Get the hell out of here,” Gus yelled, grabbing his sister’s hands. He couldn’t stand to see her like this. “No, my darling, please don’t do that to your beautiful face. We still have each other. We will always have each other.”
Finally she calmed herself enough to ask how Montgomery had died. Gus considered lying to her but decided that she would discover the truth sooner or later and said, “She went out to the cemetery in the middle of a snowstorm wearing only her nightgown. They found her next to that little tombstone where a stillborn baby is buried. I think the baby must have been hers and Grandpa Buck’s.”
That had set her off again, with anger creeping into her tirade. How could Montgomery do such a thing at a time like this? “I need her to help me with the baby,” she wailed.
Gus didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jamie Long had disappeared. He would let her digest Montgomery’s death first.
At first Amanda insisted that she was coming with him to the ranch so they could bury Montgomery together. But he reminded her that she supposedly was in the final weeks of her confinement for what had been billed as a difficult pregnancy and it would seem irresponsible if she did such a thing. “But it’s Montgomery,” she wailed.
Before he left Victory Hill, Gus had informed Toby that he was under no circumstances to allow Amanda to come to Texas and that he would find himself divorced, penniless, and minus some body parts if he did.
Gus took one final look at Montgomery’s lifeless face, then climbed down from the stool, sat down on it, and buried his face in his hands.
“I am so sorry,” he said again. “So very sorry.”
The crying was less satisfying than he wanted it to be and it was chilly in here, so he blew out the candles then climbed the stairs and headed for the tower door.
He wanted his mother to put her arms around him even if he had to beg her.
After leaving the midwife’s house, Jamie drove to the local Wal-Mart and, with Billy in the carrier and the carrier in a shopping cart, hurried her way through the store, trying to remember all the items on her mental shopping list. She selected assorted articles of baby clothing and a couple of packages of receiving blankets and wash cloths. Then she spotted a cloth sling designed to carry a baby across an adult’s tummy and tossed it into the cart. She found a knitted cap for herself, selected a couple of nursing bras, then headed to pharmaceuticals for the bottle of rubbing alcohol and cotton balls she needed to clean the baby’s cord stump. Next she located the hair dye and selected a shade called “burnished chestnut.” Last she selected a pair of scissors suitable for cutting hair. Her long blond hair and height were the two most noticeable things about her appearance. She couldn’t do anything about her height, but as soon as she had a chance, she would do something about her hair. In the meantime, the cap would have to do.