Wildwood Creek Read online

  © 2014 by Wingate Media, LLC

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6355-1

  Cover design by Andrea Gjeldum

  Cover photography by Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images

  Author is represented by Sterling Lord Literistic.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Books by Lisa Wingate

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Prologue

  BONNIE ROSE

  FEBRUARY 1861

  I imagine the words as he’s lookin’ at me, hear the echo as he spies Maggie outside the door. It troubles me not so much for myself, but for my sister. . . .

  She’s little more than a babe, Maggie May. Just nine and a mite, yet she scarce remembers when the words were angel, sweet one, daughter, not whore, burden, soiled one.

  How can a fallen woman be just a child? A wee girl, like Maggie May? Small for her age, arms thin as if they might break in a stiff wind. But she’s stronger than they know. I must take her from this place, if there is a way.

  He could be the way, this man.

  But then come the words—those he speaks only with his eyes, with an upward tilt of chin, a slight pullin’ away, as if the air’s gone foul.

  It’s something I know, how they place the words on me. But how can they set them upon a child? None of it was Maggie May’s doing. It was I who cut off the road to slip home through the trees. Who said, It’ll be shorter, Maggie May, come along. I thought I’d such knowledge of the dangers, after only weeks in Texas. No longer did the Comanche maraud so far east. They’d been kept away by the tide of folk settlin’ west of Fort Worth and on the winding Trinity River. Or so I’d been told.

  It was I who decided all of it, not Maggie. Not Ma, or Da, poor little baby Cormie. My thinking brought the raiding party down upon us. My choice caused the shame, and the scars, and the pain, and the loss of all but little Maggie May and me.

  Now this man . . . he knows of our shame as well. Stories travel like chaff on a bad wind here where we’ve refuged the four years since our ordeal, our story reaching as far as Elkhart and Crockett, seeming to find every plantation, settlement, and ferry landin’ between here and Houston City.

  He’ll not be choosing me for the position, even though the good reverend and the missionaries have sent me here with a fine reference. I see the truth as the man slides his fingers over the silken collar of his jacket, rubbing long, slow. His eyes are dark, deep. Cold as the winter nights in Chicago before Da brought us away from the little Canaryville tenements. A better life is what he said we’d find in Texas. But instead, there was only death. Quickly for some. A shred at a time for Maggie May and me.

  The man’s eyes comb over me now, scratching in like the teeth on a garden rake sharpened for planting. They tell me, as if I knew it not already, he owns things. People. The whole of a town. He sees in me a whore in his saloon, not a teacher for his school. It matters little what the missionary or the reverend have said to him about the plight of Maggie May and me. There is none of the grace of our Lord in this man. Or if there is, it’s too spare to cover my sins.

  His hands fall together on the desk, intertwine. In his chair, he leans away, watching me with the sad sort of curiosity I’ve come to loathe most of all. Never do I turn a corner here that the shame isn’t walkin’ before me.

  “You seem very young,” he says.

  I rise a bit straighter in my chair, clutch my hands in my lap, the good fingers covering over the two that healed crooked. I’ve forgotten my gloves in my rush today, and I’m cursin’ myself for it now.

  I say, “I am eighteen, sir. I’ve taught two full terms at the mission school for orphaned children. I am qualified, I assure you.” I speak the words very plainly, as I’ve practiced at the mission school. Not a hint of Irish, if I can help it. I have enough logged against me already. I fasten my gaze to this man very directly, and for a moment he’s surprised by that. He blinks. His lips twitch slightly, but I cannot say whether toward a smile or a frown. “I am quite good with children, sir. My recommendations are there in the parcel.” I nod toward the wrapper on his desk—unopened, as far as I can see.

  Leaning slightly, he peers into the hall, where Maggie May waits on the bench, quiet and meek. “And how old is she?”

  “Only nine, sir. Just a child. We have none but each other.”

  This pleases him, if pleased is a means of describin’ his expression. Perhaps it is more satisfaction than pleasure. No joy is in it, but I feel I’ve crossed some barrier I cannot see.

  “I had the finest education at the mission school after . . .” They dangle like a hangin’ noose, the words, quickly sliced through. Too late, I know where they were leading. All of life is before, then after. Before the shame. After the shame.

  Two fingers straighten as he raises his hands, making the steeple on the church in a children’s game. The fingertips are the folk inside the buildin’. Da played this game with us when we were small, and the remembering skitters through my mind like a dragonfly. It leaves a lacy shadow. Da’s hands were big, his fingers a sturdy roof and steeple. A shelter.

  The man trails the steeple along his bottom lip. “Yes,” he says quite slowly, thinking the words in the speakin’. “Yes, you will do nicely, I believe.” Again, a sentence drifts away between us, unfinished somehow.

  I’m feeling there’s more unspoken than’s been spoken. I wish I could be asking, Nicely . . . for what purpose? But I’ve been warned. I’ve been warned to take care. By its nature, the position he’s offering is one of few a girl soiled as myself might be considered for.

  His gaze lingers there on my cheek, skimming as light as grass-feathers ’cross my ear, touching the skin at the edge of my collar. I finger the cameo locket the good reverend’s wife has given me, then I tug the new bit of ribbon we’ve strung it on. I wonder if the scars show, red and anger-filled.

  “You are not afraid to go into the wilderness?” he asks.

  “I see no point in it,” I say. “Fear changes nothing. A circumstance is still a circumstance.”

  “Fear motivates. In fact, I find it to be the most certain motivator of all.�
�� His long, thin fingers take up the pen and into the ink he dips, then signs a paper before pushing it my way. He turns the pen in his hand, extending it. “Sign here. I assume that you have no problem in working with Irish. Many of my laborers are Irish, which of course means that the whelps are Irish as well. The remainder in the settlement are Germans, for the most part.”

  “My parents were Irish. I was born there, but I do not remember it well,” I say, though to be sure, he’s seen it in my surname and in the look of me. It can’t be missed.

  I take the paper, begin to pen my signature.

  After my first name and my middle adorn the paper, he stops me. I’ve lifted the pen to dip the ink. “That will do,” he says. His lips curve again, and I feel that we’re sharin’ a secret together, but I’ve no way of knowing what it is.

  “It is Bonnie Rose O’Brien, sir,” I tell him, reaching toward the well of black liquid again.

  He touches the pen to take it from me. “It is Bonnie Rose now.” His flesh meets mine. Our eyes tangle. He is young to own so much. “It is better this way, don’t you think?”

  Suddenly, I’ve an understandin’ of it.

  I open my hand, let the pen slide through my fingers. A drip slips ’cross my skin, to splash on the desk. He takes a kerchief from his breast pocket. It’s clean and white. Without a thought, he soils it beyond repair. The blackness seeps through and spreads as he strokes the linen over my palm. I can’t help watching it.

  He, instead, is watching me.

  My wits gather up, and I look at him, then lose my composure at the meeting of our eyes. I’ve been offered something, but I neither know what it is, nor understand the terms of it. Anonymity? Absolution? A future for Maggie May?

  What price does he ask to purchase it?

  He smiles then, and this time I find some warmth in it. Or am I only seeing it because I need it to be so?

  “I will expect you to be prepared for travel by the first day of the coming month,” he says. “Arrangements will await you at the river port. I have ownership of a stern-wheeler that has made the run up the Trinity as far as Porter’s Bluff thrice this winter, bearing both passengers and freight. You will travel with the New Ila as far as Trinidad, then overland with the ox freighter who transports my supply shipments.” He rises, and I bolt from my seat, afraid even of smoothing my shirtwaist as he speaks.

  “Set your affairs in order, Bonnie Rose. Pack well. It is a long journey to Wildwood.”

  Chapter 1

  ALLIE KIRKLAND

  FEBRUARY, PRESENT DAY

  Even as a child, I was fascinated by my father’s ability to create things that never were.

  I’d forgotten so much about those little-girl years out in LA, my mother playing a bit part in the weekly soap opera, and my father working his magic. When the past is an amalgam of the painful and the sweet, sometimes all the mind can do is let the details fuse and blur. Maybe remold history a little, over time.

  But somewhere in the muddle, there was always the indelible feeling of sitting on my knees in my dad’s canvas chair, looking through camera lenses and realizing he was willing to keep the whole world waiting while he explained shooting angles, and boom microphones, and lighting to an eight-year-old. Every little girl should have that moment with her dad, and no little girl should be forced to tuck away the crisp details of it. No little girl should be told she’s better off ignoring the evidence in the mirror—her father’s brown eyes, his penchant for daydreaming at inopportune times, the overwhelming hole where he promised he would be. Always and forever.

  But some things just are what they are, no matter who tells you to overlook them. Along with the brown eyes and double-jointed elbows came my father’s passion for all things related to film and live stage production . . . which made it hard to understand why the hairs on my neck stood up when I first walked into the old Berman Theater, just a few blocks off the University of Texas campus in downtown Austin. I couldn’t pin the disquieting feeling on any one thing.

  The building was cavernous and shadowy, rife with gold leaf and elaborate cornices, draped in heavy velvet curtains and gilded balconies, the frescos fading like an old woman’s makeup slowly disappearing into aging skin. It seemed the sort of place where ghost hunters might come to do a show. The uneasiness it stirred in me was just a vague sense, like the one you get when you walk out the door in the morning, and the barometric pressure has dropped, and without ever having watched the weather you know a storm is coming.

  I felt something . . . happening, but I didn’t know what.

  The sensation had been with me all day. My redheaded grandmother, who’d hauled me off to church every time she could wrestle me away from my mother and my stepfather and bring me to Texas for a visit, would’ve called it the brush of angel wings. To Grandma Rita, everything unexplained was either the brush of angel wings, or the touch of divine appointment.

  The Berman Theater didn’t feel like either one.

  From the center aisle my roommate, Kim, sent a little finger wave my way, then nodded toward the balcony. The casting call line moved forward and Kim shuffled along with it, and I lost sight of her perky head. Goose bumps traveled over my arm and ran up my neck and into the little red curlicues that were probably sticking out of my ponytail by now. Luckily, I wasn’t here for the casting call, but for another reason, and movie star hair wasn’t necessarily required.

  I slid into a theater seat near the wall, feeling conspicuously out of place. If I had to explain to one more person that I was allowed to be here, and that I was waiting exactly where the big, burly security guy had told me to wait, it was entirely possible that I’d cave in and abandon this crazy plan altogether. If there was anyone else here seeking the production assistant’s job Kim had told me about, I hadn’t crossed paths with him or her. While Kim’s line was progressing, mine didn’t seem to be forming anytime soon.

  Tucking my backpack in beside me, I looked for Kim again, but she’d been permanently absorbed by the crowd. Sooner or later, she’d make it to the front table, where hopefuls were turning in one-sheets, modeling cards, and eight-by-ten glossies that ranged from professionally produced to snapped in the backyard and printed on an inkjet. Tonight, when all the files were compiled, Kim’s application and mine would mysteriously be moved to the top of the pile by a friend she had in the production company—at least, that was the plan.

  My phone chimed in my pocket, and I scrambled to silence it before reading the text. People in the casting call line glanced my way.

  The text was from Kim, wherever she was now. Whoa! You see him up there? IDK, but think he’s watching you . . .

  I looked for her again, then answered, Who? Where? R U close to the front yet?

  Kim only responded to part of the question. Typical. Kim’s train of thought ran on several tracks at once, jumping back and forth with no operator at the switchboard. Look up in the first balcony! That’s him, I think.

  I lowered the phone, peered upward, and made out a form. A man. Dark hair. Tall. Thin.

  With the long coat cloaking his profile, he looked like Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. His face was hidden, but he was leaning slightly forward, watching, seemingly with curiosity, the activity on the floor below. For a moment, I had the strangest feeling that his eyes were locked with mine, as if through the darkness I could somehow see them. The uneasiness walked across my skin again, and I turned away, slouching over my phone.

  Who? I texted.

  The answer came quickly. Singh. Rav Singh.

  Kim’s friend, who was only a paper-shuffler from a temp agency, had heard that this casting call was related to Rav Singh—that he had signed on to produce the newest Mysterious History docudrama miniseries. It didn’t seem likely, considering that Singh was known for box-office films, not television. But the psychological elements of Mysterious History did seem to fit his profile.

  Singh’s projects were rife with dark psychological stuff that tended to explore the worst side
of human nature. He’d come from Mumbai and quickly made a name for himself in the American film industry. Maybe this was his way of capturing the American television market as well . . . or maybe the macabre elements of Mysterious History appealed to him. Along with taking a cast of modern-day adventurers back to a historical time period, Mysterious History projects always included a twist. For last season’s show, forty people had been sent to live in, and staff, an English manor house. The twist was only revealed after they arrived—Hartshorne Abbey came with a gruesome history and a plethora of legendary ghost stories.

  I glanced at the balcony again. The man was gone.

  Kim didn’t send another message. Apparently, she’d reached the front of the line. At least one of us might be getting a summer job today. As far as I could tell, I’d been completely overlooked. It was almost a relief. If I told my mother and Lloyd I’d found yet another way to prolong my impractical dream and avoid moving back to Phoenix to clerk in Lloyd’s law office, they’d probably lock the front gates and hide the security code. They were still livid that I’d used my small inheritance from Grandma Rita to start a grad degree in film production at my father’s alma mater, UT. I wanted to do what he had done—work my way up in the movie business. Austin wasn’t LA, but it was a growing hub. There were opportunities here.

  For Mom and Lloyd, the whole idea was ridiculous. Your grandmother never should’ve encouraged it. If it weren’t for that, you’d be on track right now, like your brothers and sisters. Lloyd delighted in pointing out that my three older stepsiblings, his kids, were tremendously successful people. Doctor, lawyer, engineer. Even the three Lloyd and my mother had together were science fair winners, kiddie chess champions, expert junior gymnasts. And then, there was me. It’s time to surrender this fantasy life you’ve created, Allison, and take up residence in the real world. . . .

  But that fantasy life, that universe within a story, was exactly what my father adored. Somehow, deep down inside, I couldn’t help clinging to the idea that he would have adored me, starry eyes and all.

  A shadow fell nearby and I looked up to find a woman there, her face rigid, exotic in some way, her dark hair slicked back in a bun so tight you could’ve bounced a quarter off it. A gray sheath dress made her thin frame look even thinner, and impossibly high heels gave her an imposing height. Standing up, I felt like a munchkin on the soundstage of Amazon Women on the Moon.