Sitting on the porch swing with a lump in her throat the size of a rolled-up pair of socks, she looked away from her sister and counted backward. Six weeks. The first snowdrops had already started appearing on the hills outside of town the week they’d lost first their mother, then their father two days later. Her entire world had turned itself inside out within six short weeks. And now this.
“When?” she asked Kate, forcing the word out and avoiding her sister’s eyes.
Kate’s voice was almost inaudible. “Well, it’s nine months, right? That would make it sometime around Christmas.”
“Some Christmas present, huh?” Jennie tried a smile, but her lips threatened to quiver, so she tightened her mouth again.
“Oh, Jen, I’m so very sorry,” her sister murmured.
Jennie’s unshed tears drained back down her throat as she looked up to see Kate’s eyes filling. Jennie reached to take her younger sister’s hand, then changed her mind and slid across the wooden slats of the swing to enfold her in her arms.
Kate put her head down on Jennie’s shoulder and began to sob. “I never thought I could be so wicked, Jennie,” she said, taking big gulps of air. “It almost makes me glad that Mama and Papa are gone.”
Jennie straightened up at that and took a firm grasp of her sister’s shoulders. “That’s nonsense. You’re not wicked and you’re certainly not glad that our parents are dead.”
Kate gave a little jerk at the harsh sound of the last word. “Can you imagine what they would have felt, Jen? What would they have said to discover that their unmarried daughter was about to have a child? I was always supposed to be the perfect one, you know.”
Jennie gave a sympathetic nod. Her sister’s bright blue eyes were full of anguish. And she was right. Their parents would have been devastated by this news. Jennie had always been headstrong, allowed her stubborn ways and occasional childish tantrums. But Kate had been the perfect one.
Well, nothing was perfect anymore.
“Isn’t there some way you can contact him?” she asked.
Kate looked up in horror. “To tell him about the baby? I wouldn’t even think of trying. He left me, Jennie. Without so much as a goodbye. You can’t know what that means after you’ve…you know…given yourself to a man…”
Her voice trailed off and the tears started flowing again. Jennie gave a deep sigh. She would not be afraid to confront the blarney-talking Irishman who had swept in and out of town like a cyclone, scattering her sister’s reputation and pieces of her heart in its wake. But perhaps this wasn’t the moment to pursue the subject. “I suppose this is a silly question, but…are you sure, Katie? You haven’t been to see Dr. Millard.”
Kate moved away from her sister and set the swing in motion with a push of her heel. “I’m pretty sure, Jen. I haven’t had…you know. And it was always every fourth Sunday…like clockwork. Now I’ve missed twice. And I’m…ah…tender up here, like the womenfolk say.”
Jennie nodded, miserable but not embarrassed by her sister’s frank description. She and Kate, just sixteen months apart in age, shared even the most intimate details of their lives with each other. At least, they used to share, Jennie amended, until Kate met up with that scoundrel. “Well, the first thing is…you have to see the doctor.”
Kate took a deep, jagged breath. “I’d die first. It would be almost as bad as telling Papa.”
Gentle Dr. Millard had taken care of their childhood hurts and illnesses since they were born. The week her parents had died, he’d stayed at the Sheridan house day and night, even though there were other influenza cases in town. “Sweetie, you have to tell him,” Jennie said. “You’ll need him to take care of you and…and the baby.”
Kate looked down at her lap and shook her head firmly. “I’m going to take care of myself. Mama had us without any doctor helping.”
“But only because they were living up in the mountains then. And besides, she had Papa.”
“Well, I have you.”
“Kate Sheridan, I don’t know the first thing about babies.” Jennie tried to keep her tone free from the desperation that was creeping over her.
Kate set the swing rocking at a more frantic pace. “Well, I don’t, either. But I’m afraid we’re both about to find out.”
The tears had ended, and suddenly there was determination in Kate’s tone. Jennie let out a long stream of air. Together they could do this. No matter how bad it got. They had always supported each other, and since the deaths of their parents, it had become something like a sacred pact between them.
When Kate had broken down at their dead mother’s bedside and refused to leave, it had been an equally heartbroken Jennie who had pulled her away and tucked her into the bed Kate hadn’t slept in for the previous five nights.
When Harmon Wentworth, the banker, had told them that their parents had left them virtually without funds, it had been calm, logical Kate who had kept Jennie from total despondency. They were capable, able-bodied women, she’d insisted. Not girls any longer. They would find a way.
Now it was Jennie’s turn to be strong again. And this time it appeared she’d have to be strong enough for the both of them.
August 1881
“I’m sorry, ladies, but I don’t see how that particular task falls under my jurisdiction,” Carter Jones said crisply. “It’s a job for the sheriff.”
Mrs. Henrietta Billingsley, Miss Margaret Potter and Mrs. Lucinda Wentworth stood before him in a row, shirtwaists billowing. Carter looked down at the papers on his desk and shifted uncomfortably, creaking the leather of his chair.
“Sheriff Hammond won’t be back from visiting his sister in California for another three weeks, and by then that…that person’s shameful condition will be apparent to God and every man wearing trousers in this town,” Mrs. Billingsley insisted.
Carter looked up at the florid face of the town’s leading matron. “I reckon God’s aware of the problem already, Mrs. Billingsley. After all, isn’t he the one responsible for creating a new life?”
“Not this life, Mr. Jones. This was the devil’s work, pure and simple.”
Carter sighed. “Sheriff Hammond left your son, Lyle, as deputy, Mrs. Wentworth. You could get him to serve the papers.”
Margaret Potter stared down her long nose with a look that had been known to freeze truant students twice her size dead in their tracks. “He refuses to do it, Mr. Jones. He says we have to wait for the sheriff. Lyle has always been a difficult boy. And everyone knows he’s always been sweet on Kate Sheridan.”
Lyle Wentworth may be difficult, but he wasn’t a boy. He had to be at least, twenty-three, Carter reckoned. But in the few weeks since he’d arrived in Vermillion, he’d realized that Miss Potter continued to treat her former pupils as recalcitrant adolescents even though some of them had begun sprouting gray hair.
“Lyle’s not difficult.” Lucinda Wentworth defended her son in a voice so small it sounded as if she hoped Margaret Potter wouldn’t actually hear her.
“Sounds to me like Lyle has the right idea,” Carter said. “Let’s just wait until Del gets back to handle this.”
“Delbert Hammond will be no more eager to serve these papers than Lyle,” Miss Potter said with one of her chronic sniffs. “It’s your responsibility representing