if to choose another piece of clothing and closed her hand on the stick she used to stir the wash.
“Excuse me.”
Callie whirled, stick raised like a club with Mica behind her. The fellow standing there held up his hands as if in surrender.
“Sorry I startled you. I’m looking for the Murphy family.”
Callie eyed him. He looked about Adam’s age, with curly hair a shade darker than hers and eyes so deep a blue they were nearly black. Something about those eyes seemed sad, weary, as if he’d come a long distance and still had a ways to go. He didn’t look particularly dangerous.
She held the stick high anyway.
“What do you want with the Murphys?” she asked.
“I have news about their brother Adam,” he explained. “Are you California?”
This time she did shudder. Why had Pa picked such silly names for his children? Adam had the only name that sounded normal, and only because Pa had thought the first boy in the family should be called after the first man in the Bible. When Callie had asked her mother, God rest her soul, about why she hadn’t protested, Ma had smiled.
“You know your pa,” she’d said. “When he gets an idea in his head, there’s no arguing with him.”
That was why they’d followed him from San Francisco in the south to the British Territories in the north.
Still, only family knew Callie’s real name, which meant this man must have talked to Adam. She lowered the stick but kept it at the ready.
“I’m Adam Murphy’s sister,” she acknowledged. “What do you know about my brother?”
He dropped his hands and took a step closer. Her fingers tightened on the stick. He must have noticed, for he paused.
“I mean you no harm. My name is Levi Wallin. I’m a minister.”
A minister? Now, that made no sense. Why would a minister bring her news from Adam?
“I don’t know your game, mister,” she told him, “but I think you better leave. I have two other brothers, and they don’t take kindly to strangers.”
He frowned. If he really was a minister, he’d probably lecture her on being kind to strangers, respecting her elders, even though he could only be five or six years her senior. That was what ministers did, she’d learned from the few she’d met—criticize her, show her exactly how different she was, why she would never fit in with good society. She figured the best thing to do was let them go their own way while she went hers.
But this fellow didn’t show any sign of leaving. “I knew your brother well,” he said, voice soft. “Adam had honey-colored hair, just like you, and his eyes were lighter. He was a little shorter than me, but that didn’t stop him from fighting for his place or protecting his family. When Gap-Tooth Harding offered to buy you, every man in camp weighed in on one side or the other.”
Now Callie frowned. “You were at Vital Creek?”
“To my sorrow,” he admitted. “Scout Rankin and I had a claim at the opposite end of town from yours. I met Adam in a card game at Gillis’s. He cleaned me out.”
Just when she wanted to trust him! “Now I know you’re lying. Preachers don’t gamble.”
He smiled, and something inside her bubbled up as warm as a hot spring. “I wasn’t a preacher then.”
He wasn’t one now that she could see. Those rough wool trousers and caped duster looked warm, but they weren’t nearly nice enough to belong to a fancy minister. Ministers liked to show how important they were, how much better, smarter. If that was what it took to win God’s favor, she never would.
“Well, whatever you are,” Callie told him, “I’m not sure what to do with you.”
“I’d like to talk to you and your brothers.” He nodded toward Mica in the basket. “And your husband, of course.”
He wasn’t the first to assume Mica was her daughter instead of her niece, for all the differences in their coloring. She told him what she told the others. “I don’t have a husband.”
Again, she waited for the expected response—the gasp, the finger shaking, the prediction she would suffer for her sins.
Instead, his eyes widened. “Adam has a daughter? Where’s his wife?”
She could lie, claim Adam’s wife was in the house with a gun at the ready, but suddenly Callie felt as weary as this fellow looked. She jerked her head over her shoulder. “Buried over there. I’m in charge until Adam gets back.”
He moved closer yet, carefully, as if unsure whether she’d hit him or snatch up the baby and run. She considered doing both, but he was close enough that she could see the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes. Worry lines, Ma had called them, and she’d had her share. What worried this man?
“That’s a heavy burden,” he murmured. “I can see why Adam wanted me to help.”
“Adam asked you to help?”
He nodded. She studied his face, but he didn’t avoid her gaze or blink rapidly like she’d known some men to do when lying.
She drew in a breath. “I wish he’d thought of us before hightailing it back to the gold fields the minute his wife Anna died of a fever. But you needn’t worry, mister. My brothers and I are handling things just fine. We’ll make it through until Adam gets back for the winter. If you see him before we do, just remind him that if he doesn’t live on his claim in the next two months, we could lose it.”
His face sagged, and he put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Miss Murphy. Adam won’t make it back in time. He died three months ago. I only received word yesterday.”
* * *
There was no good way to say it. Even if he’d been a minister eight years instead of eight months, Levi thought he’d have stumbled telling Callie Murphy what had happened to her brother. Adam had been so alive, so feisty, so determined to strike it rich. It was hard for Levi to believe all that energy had been snuffed out.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked the two grizzled miners who’d stopped by Wallin Landing with the news and to bring him Adam’s belongings and the note to the Murphys.
They’d hung their heads, avoided his gaze.
“Surer than we wish we was,” one of the old timers gritted out. “He caught pneumonia and couldn’t fight it off. All that’s left of Adam Murphy now is a pile of regrets.”
Levi knew something about regrets.
He kept his hand on Callie’s arm now, ready to catch her if she fainted. She didn’t so much as sway. Her eyes, a mixture of blue and gray that reminded him of the swirling waters of Puget Sound, narrowed on him.
“Prove it.”
She spat out the words, as if he’d lie about anything so important. How ironic. He’d lied enough over
