The Rustler by Linda Lael Miller Page B

torn her still-beating heart from her bosom and handed that over, too.
    She’d survived, somehow, doggedly arising in the morning, doing what was at hand to do, enduring more than living. She’d worked hard at her lessons, gotten her degree in music, and returned to Stone Creek just in time to attend her mother’s funeral.
    Nancy Anne Tamlin had never known she had a grandchild, nor had anyone else in town, except for Ephriam, of course, and possibly his best friend, Doc Venable.
    Now, ten years later, miraculously, impossibly, that boy was right downstairs, in her own kitchen, helping with the dishes.
    â€œSarah?”
    She looked up, startled, and saw Ephriam standing in the doorway. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew by the way he’d spoken her name that he was enjoying one of his brief, lucid intervals.
    â€œThat boy I saw tonight. Is he—?”
    Sarah felt for the book of lies, nesting, as always, in her skirt pocket, clenched it through the fabric. She swallowed, then shook her head. “No, Papa. He’s just visiting.”
    â€œHe looks like your mother’s people,” Ephriam said. “What’s his name?”
    â€œOwen,” Sarah allowed, after swallowing again. “He’s Charles Langstreet’s son. You remember Mr. Langstreet, don’t you?”
    â€œNever liked him,” her father replied. “Pompous jackass.”
    She saw a change in Ephriam’s bearing, something too subtle to describe, but there nonetheless.
    â€œGreat Scot,” Ephriam gasped. “It was Langstreet, wasn’t it? He was the one who led you astray!”
    â€œPapa—”
    â€œAnd Owen is my grandson,” the old man persisted, sounding thunderstruck. Of all the times he could have recovered his faculties, it had to be now, tonight, when keeping the secret was more important than ever before.
    Sarah simply could not summon up another lie. She felt drained, enervated, as though she’d relived her affair with Charles, her sad, scandalous pregnancy, the birth itself, which had been torturous, and, still worse, watched as Charles’s lawyer carried her newborn son out of her room in the college infirmary. She’d been permitted to give him only one thing: his first name.
    And she’d never expected to see him again.
    â€œYes,” she said weakly. “You’re right, Papa. But you mustn’t let on. Owen doesn’t know who I am. He calls me Aunt Sarah.”
    Ephriam pondered a while, silent and brooding. “I’d have killed Langstreet if I’d known,” he said. “I suppose that’s why you didn’t tell me.”
    Sarah closed her eyes for a moment, summoned her will, and stood. Doc and Owen had probably finished washing the dishes by then, and they’d be wondering what was keeping her.
    She stood before her father, still looming in the darkened doorway, straightening the front of his long nightshirt as though it were one of the day coats he wore to the bank.
    â€œOur secret, Papa?” she asked.
    â€œThere are too damn many secrets in this house.”
    â€œPapa—”
    â€œAll right,” Ephriam said. “But I don’t like it. And I’m taking that boy fishing at the creek tomorrow, with or without your say-so.”
    Sarah’s eyes stung, and she smiled. “Fair enough,” she said.
    She walked her father back to his room, tucked him in like a child. Kissed his forehead. Still under the effects of the laudanum Doc had given him earlier, he dozed off immediately.
    When she descended to the kitchen, via the rear stairway, Doc and Owen were sitting at the pedestal table in the center of the room, playing cards. The pot was a pile of wooden matches.
    Interested, Sarah stood behind Owen’s chair and assessed his hand.
    â€œFive card stud,” Doc said. “Care to join us?”
    â€œI never play poker,” Sarah said. The little book in her skirt pocket