in comparison.
Always strong and full of energy, but with the power of his businesses stripped from him, Papa’s health had quickly faded and his focus had shifted to his past. His mother had become his obsession. Her life in Oklahoma and his part in her death seemed to haunt him. He wanted to find where she’d been buried and ensure she’d received a proper burial. Although the rest of the family had pooh-poohed his request as just one more outrageous demand from a crazy old man, Callie had agreed to help him.
A tear streaked down her face followed quickly by another, then another, until her shoulders shook with sobs as she stared at the slab of granite. Guilt stabbed at her, for her reasons in agreeing to help Papa weren’t purely unselfish. Yes, she loved him and wanted to help him, but she’d also wanted to get out of Dallas, and Papa’s request for help had been the excuse she’d needed.
With the deadline quickly approaching for a signed commission sculpture she couldn’t seem to create, and Stephen’s and her mother’s constant pressure for her to set a wedding date, she’d needed to escape it all. In her mind, that put her in the same category as the rest of her family. Selfish, greedy and spineless. She’d thought she could locate the grave, take a picture for Papa and maybe find a few tidbits of information about his mother for him, then spend the rest of her vacation working out her own personal problems.
And now this.
Baby dropped down beside her, nuzzling his snout against her hand. Hardly aware of her movements, she shifted a hand to scratch his ears. He lifted his head and licked at the tears on her cheek, whimpering low in his throat.
“Oh, Baby.” Callie threw her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in his fur. “Now what am I going to do?”
“You can start by letting loose my dog.”
Callie opened her eyes to find a pair of scuffed boots planted not a foot from her knee. She raised her gaze, skimming it over jeans and a black duster until her eyes met the accusing ones of Judd Barker.
She immediately turned away, hiding her tears. Heat flooded her face as she remembered all too clearly the way she’d responded to him the night before. “I didn’t steal your dog,” she mumbled.
“Didn’t say you did,” Judd replied, although that was exactly the thought that had crossed his mind when Frank had told him he’d seen Callie drive away earlier that morning with Baby riding in the back seat of her car.
Callie dropped her hands from around Baby’s neck and swiped at her cheeks. “You insinuated as much. But the truth of the matter is, your dog jumped in the back of my car and wouldn’t get out. It was easier to just let him ride along.”
Judd hunkered down beside them, placing a hand on Baby’s head. “When he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to sway.”
Callie sniffed and gazed off in the distance, refusing to look at him.
Judd nodded in the direction of the stone. “I see you found what you were looking for.”
Without favoring him a glance, Callie replied sharply, “I don’t know that I have.”
“Seems clear enough to me. There’s the stone bearing the name William Leighton Sawyer, infant son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. And there—” he said with a nod toward the larger upright stone “—is the grave of Mary Elizabeth Bodean. What more proof do you need?”
She snapped her head around to glare at him. “I don’t know for a fact that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean were one and the same person.”
The streak of tears on her face took Judd by surprise, for he couldn’t imagine what the woman would have to cry about. The grave was more than a hundred years old, so she couldn’t have any affection for the infant buried there. Which led him to believe that more than likely she was crying because she’d been caught in her lies. Still, the tears moved him. He tucked his duster behind his hip and dug in his back pocket for a handkerchief. He held it out to Callie.
“It’s clean,” he assured her when she hesitated.
“Thanks,” she mumbled grudgingly as she accepted it. She mopped her eyes, then blew her nose.
“Why the tears?”
The question made fresh ones well in her eyes. Grimacing, she balled the handkerchief in her fist. “I’m just tired, is all. I didn’t sleep well last night.” As soon as the words were out, she regretted them, knowing that with his ego, Judd would naturally assume thoughts of him were what kept her awake. Biting her lower lip, she glanced away.
Judd hadn’t slept well, either, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He didn’t trust this woman any farther than he could throw her, but he couldn’t deny the fact that she had aroused a craving in him that he’d kept under harness for the better part of a year. Just his luck to be tempted by another lying wench.
Because he wasn’t willing to confess to his own lack of sleep or the reason for it, he thought it only fair to ease her embarrassment. “Always had trouble sleeping in a strange bed, myself.”
If she heard him, she didn’t acknowledge it, for she continued to ignore him, staring off in the distance. She looked so pitiful, kneeling there in the dirt, looking so forlorn and lost that Judd was tempted to comfort her. He quickly squelched the urge. He didn’t need this headache.
Sighing, he pushed against his knees to stand above her. “Sorry if Baby made a nuisance of himself.” He shuffled his feet, not sure what else to say, but feeling something more was needed. “If you want to verify that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean are one and the same, you can check the records over at the Logan County Courthouse.”
“I intend to.”
Her acidic tone made him wish he’d kept the helpful advice to himself. The woman had an attitude and seemed determined to take her hostilities out on him.
“Come on, Baby,” he said, slapping a hand to his thigh. “Let’s go home.” He turned away, vowing that they’d be churning ice cream in hell before he offered any more help to Callie Benson.
Three
“Here it is!” The court clerk spun the heavy ledger toward Callie and pointed to an entry dated August 1, 1891. Callie’s heart sank as she read the entry the woman indicated. Throughout the trip from the cemetery to the Logan County Courthouse she’d held on to the thread of hope that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean were two different women. But the proof was there before her eyes: “Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Jedidiah Bodean, wed on August 1, 1891.” The words were blurred on the yellowed page, but legible, and they forced her to accept the truth.
Mary Elizabeth Sawyer hadn’t died in childbirth as her great-grandfather had been led to believe. She’d married Jedidiah Bodean, and—if the information on the tombstone was accurate—had lived to the ripe old age of sixty-seven.
Then why had Papa, as an infant, been returned to Boston to be raised by his grandparents? she wondered. And why had he been told his mother had died? The answer was obvious and had Callie sinking into a chair, her knees no longer able to support her.
His mother hadn’t wanted him. And now it was up to Callie to tell Papa that the mother whose death he’d blamed himself for all these
