Maggie And The Maverick. Laurie Grant

wrinkled and much-folded piece of paper from her reticule and holding it out to him. “You can read, cain’t ya?” she asked, squinting up at him.

      “Of course I can read,” Garrick snapped.

      “No need to take offense, mister—I cain’t read,” she said equitably, then looked about her as if searching for something. “Johnny, lookit that puppy over yonder,” she said, pointing to where a small mongrel dog lounged in the shade of the bank awning several yards away. The dog had spotted the boy and was thumping its tail against the wood planking. “He looks like he likes little boys. Why don’t you go say howdy to him for a minute?”

      She waited, hands on her hips, until the boy had gone over to pat the dog and was out of earshot, then she turned back to Garrick. “I dunno what Cecilia wrote, exactly, but I kin tell ya this here boy is yore son—yores and Cecilia’s.”

      Her last sentence hit Garrick like an blow to his gut.

      “My.s-son? But that’s impossible! He couldn’t be!” He felt his face burning as the woman stared at him while he sputtered. “It’s one of her tricks! That boy is no son of mine! Whose bastard is she trying to pass off as mine?”

      The old woman drew herself up. “Mr. Devlin, I’ll thank ya to soften yore tongue a bit. Don’t you call that sweet little innocent boy no nasty names.”

      He lowered his voice. “I mean to say, she left—we didn’t.” He stopped, thunderstruck. “Oh, Lord, there was just that one time.it isn’t possible, is it?”

      He didn’t know he had spoken aloud until the old woman chuckled at his discomfiture. “Well, sir, I’m a widow, so I guess I’m qualified t’tell you it only takes the once.”

      Garrick froze, remembering the day he’d come home from the war, just before Lee surrendered at the Appomattox courthouse. His brothers weren’t home yet, but his mother and his sister had put together a family celebration out of the meager food supplies they had. Cecilia just kept staring at him—at his pinned-up trouser leg—her eyes wide with fright in her pale face.

      Later that night, when they’d gone up to the bedroom they shared in the Devlin family home, he’d tried to tell her how much he had missed her, how hers had been the name on his lips when the doctor, after giving him a little whiskey for an anesthetic, had hacked off the shattered lower portion of his leg. Shyly, he’d kissed her and asked if he could make love to her.

      He had never had to ask before. She’d always been eager to participate in the marital act—almost too much so by Victorian standards, but he’d always loved her for it.

      She’d told him to blow out the lamp—she who had always been excited to see the passion in his face. And then she’d just lain there, still as a marble statue and just as cold, and let him exercise his husbandly rights.

      He’d been careful to be gentle and had tried not to touch her leg with the bandaged stump, but as he was withdrawing from her and preparing to lie on his back, the foreshortened leg had brushed her shin.

      Cecilia had gasped as if revolted, and had then begun to cry, turning away from him and hugging the far side of the bed. He’d tried to comfort her, to apologize, but she’d just ordered him, in a tight little whisper, not to touch her again.

      Garrick hadn’t slept until dawn was paling the skies, and he was pretty sure Cecilia hadn’t, either. When he’d finally awoke midmorning, Cecilia had gone. Later he learned she had not only left the farm, but had taken a stage heading south.

      And over there, petting the friendly dog, was the result of that night, he realized. He stared at the boy, whose face he could see in profile.

      His son. But suspicion remained. “When was he born?”

      “I dunno the exact date,” the woman admitted with a shrug. “You read this here letter. She probably told you in it.”

      He accepted the wrinkled, folded piece of paper as one might accept a dozing rattlesnake. But before he unfolded it, he paused. “All right, supposing he is my son…why now? He’s what—three years old? Why is she sendin’ him to me now?”

      “Read the letter,” the old woman said. “There’s more to this here tale, but she said ya was to read it first.”

      Realizing that the old woman wasn’t going to make it any easier, he gave up and unfolded the letter, holding it so that the bright noon sunlight made it easier to read.

      Dear Garrick, I know I hurt you when I ran away. It was awful of me to treat you that way, after all you had been through in the war, but I just couldn’t help it. I guess I wasn’t strong enough and good enough to be the wife you deserved, and I’m sorry about that, but I just couldn’t be someone I’m not. I’m trying to make it up to you now by sending our boy. I know you won’t believe he’s yours, and I don’t reckon I blame you, but his birthday is New Year’s Day, 1866—which, if you count back, is nine months after you came home. I named him John Garrick. I know you hate me now, Garrick, and you have a right. But if you ever loved me, I hope you’ll be good to our son. I know he’ll be better off with you.

      Cecilia

      He read it through twice before lifting his eyes from the paper.

      “It tells me his name and his birthdate, but it doesn’t tell me what I asked you. Why now? She’s had him for three years. Why is she sending him to me now? What’s she up to?”

      The woman looked uneasily at the boy, then back at Garrick. “Bigamy, that’s what. I’m sorry to be the one t’tell ya that, but it’s the truth.”

      “Bigamy? She’s married to someone else?”

      “That’s what bigamy means, don’t it?” the old woman responded, adding a regretful tsk, tsk. “Yup, she’s Miz Cecilia Prentice—has been ever since soon after she showed up in Houston in ‘65 and started workin’ at the hotel. Pretty as a picture, she was. Men flocked ‘round her like flies around a picnic. It warn’t a week afore Will. Prentice up and married her and cut out the competition.”

      “But she was—is,” Garrick corrected, “my wife! We were never divorced! How did she explain, uh, being in the family way to her new ‘husband’?” He felt his face flush; one didn’t discuss such delicate issues as pregnancy with a lady, even one who had brought him the news that his wife had committed bigamy.

      The old woman chuckled again, a sound Garrick was growing to heartily detest. Nothing they were talking about was funny.

      “Who knows? It’s the oldest trick in the book, fobbin’ off some other man’s child on a husband, ain’t it? You’d think a feller wouldn’t be dumb enough to think that big healthy baby was his, come early, but I reckon he was, ‘cause he used to be proud as a banty rooster of him,” she said, nodding toward the boy.

      “’Used to be?”’ Garrick echoed. “What happened?”

      “There was an accident…they was comin’ home from a barbecue one night. I was keepin’ the child for ‘em. A storm blew up and lightnin’ was flashin’, and the horse got skeered and run away with them. The shay overturned and Mr. Prentice was thrown clear, but Miz Cecilia, she was trapped under a wheel. She was hurt bad, and it looked like she might die on the spot. Anyway, I reckon she was afeered for her immortal soul, ‘cause she confessed to will Prentice that that boy wasn’t his.”

      “Did she.did she.?” Garrick couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

      “Did she die?” Martha Purdy finished the question for him. “No, but she’s been bedridden ever since. I take care o’her every day, her an’ the boy. Prentice told her he wouldn’t keep the boy under his roof any longer, not now that he knew the brat wasn’t his.”

      Garrick felt his jaw drop as nausea churned in his stomach. He could no longer feel the burning hostility that had flamed up only moments ago toward Cecilia. Now he could only think