“Well, come home,” Mac said. “Your mother is worried.”
Will turned to Shanty and led him out of the shack, tethering him beside Valiente. Without a word, he found a shovel in the barn, cleaned out the shack, mounted the gelding, and followed Mac toward town.
Chapter 15: Back Home
Will and Mac arrived home and stabled their horses in the carriage house. As Will trudged into the house, Mac clapped him on the shoulder. “Go see your mother,” he said. Will went upstairs and found Mama reading in her bedroom.
“William.” She rose and hugged him tightly.
“Mama.” At first he stood rigidly, then he awkwardly patted her back. She seemed so little. He thought of the violence she endured with Johnson and the other men. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry I ran away. Sorry for everything.” He hoped she understood what he meant.
She reached up and touched his cheek. “I never wanted you to know.”
Will shrugged. He still couldn’t make sense of it. He felt alien in his own skin—which scoundrel’s skin had he inherited?
“You look so much like my own papa,” she murmured.
“Which man do you think was my father?” he asked.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t think about it. I can’t. You’re mine—all mine.” She opened her eyes, met his gaze, and shook him by the shoulders gently. “Mac is your father. He has raised you as his own. And he loves you as much as I do.”
Will didn’t answer. He no longer felt any kinship with Mac. But he grieved the loss.
Jenny watched Will for the next few days. He didn’t speak much to Mac or her but seemed to act the same as always around the other children. “What can we do to help him?” she asked Mac one evening when they were alone in their room.
“Let it slide, Jenny,” Mac said. “Will’s a bright boy. He’ll sort it out.”
“He seems so lonely. Aloof.” She sighed. “I wish he were still a baby. He was so happy then. Remember?” She smiled, recalling baby William’s winsome smiles and coos. Her first child. A part of her. As soon as she’d held him, his paternity ceased to matter. She’d worked to put his violent conception out of her mind. “He’s keeping himself so distant from me now.”
“Boys do that.” Mac took off his cravat and threw it on a chair. “They can’t stay tethered to their mothers forever.”
“We can’t let the other children know. It’s terrible enough that Will and Maria do.”
“Have you talked to Maria?” Mac asked.
She shook her head. “I did that day. But not again.” She sighed. “What do I say?”
“Just answer her questions,” Mac said, taking Jenny into his arms. “And tell her to keep her thoughts to herself. Or talk to us. You’re right—the other children shouldn’t know. They’re too young.”
The next afternoon, Jenny and Maria polished silver in the dining room. The younger children were at school, Maggie napped, and Will was nowhere around. Mac had gone to his office in town. “I’m sorry you were there when Jacob Johnson came,” Jenny said, broaching the subject with Maria. “And I’m proud of you for scaring him off.”
“I was so frightened, Mama,” Maria whispered. “And now I’m so afraid for Will.”
“Why for Will?” Jenny asked.
“He’s brooding. Like he doesn’t know who he is or how to act around us.”
The girl’s perceptiveness startled Jenny. That’s exactly how Will behaved—like he had to probe a wound, to test his relationship with each one of them. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to act,” she said. “We must show him we love him still.” She hesitated. “You know, I’ve never loved you less because you aren’t my daughter. I mean, you are my daughter,” Jenny amended. “As much as if I’d given birth to you. And Mac feels the same way. About both you and Will. We’re your parents.”
Maria smiled, tears shining in her eyes. “I know, Mama. Folks in town might call me a half-breed, but I’ve always known you loved me.”
Jenny stared in surprise. “They don’t call you a half-breed around me.”
Maria shrugged. “They know you’d give them a piece of your mind.”
“No matter your heritage, you are our daughter.”
Maria’s face remained impassive.
“Can you keep your knowledge about Will to yourself?” Jenny asked. “If you have questions, come talk to me. Or Mac. But don’t let the little children know. Will would be embarrassed, and so would I.”
Maria touched Jenny’s hand. “You shouldn’t be. Those men were the villains, it wasn’t anything you did.”
“Good did come from their heinous acts,” Jenny said, with a rueful shake of her head. “Because they brought me Will. And then Mac. And you.” She waved her hand to encompass the house. “And all our family. I am more blessed now than I ever was before they assaulted me.”
“If anyone should be embarrassed, it’s me,” Maria said. “My mother was the whore.”
Jenny took the girl’s shoulders and forced Maria to look at her. “You mustn’t ever say that. You are not responsible for your mother’s actions. No more than Will is responsible for his father’s. We are each what we do in this life, not what others have done to us.”
Several days passed with no sign of Jacob Johnson anywhere in Oregon City. Mac decided it was safe to make his long overdue trip to Eugene. He took the steamboat upstream to Eugene. When he disembarked, he went to the newspaper office of Byron Pengra, the man planning to build a road from Eugene east across Oregon to Fort Boise. Pengra had arranged for Mac to meet other investors in the road project.
