Galveston: Between Wind And Water (A Historical Literary Fiction Novel Filled with Romance and Drama) (22 page)

Gabrielle gazed at this beautiful young woman, as if lost in a mood over which she had no control. There was a time, she was certain, her love for Bret would have been as long as life and stronger. “Then, I must congratulate you.” 

She tried to steady her nerves and extended her hand to Miss Armstrong. “For succeeding where others have failed. Having a man like Bret McGowan declare his love and devotion to you must be a wonderful feeling.”

Miss Armstrong clasped Gabrielle’s hand, her fingers feeling even cooler to the touch than her own. “And of course. As you’ve said. Having a man like Bret . . . sometimes you have to look for other indications, other tokens of love and affection.” 

She let Gabrielle’s hand drop. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Miss Caldwell, to find out all that I can about him. He can be so
intense
sometimes, as I’m sure you well know.”

Gabrielle drew in a long breath.
Perhaps Bret hasn’t declared his love for her yet
. She lifted her chin and spoke. “For all his public bravado and devil-may-care attitude, Bret has always been a very private person, very guarded about his emotions and thoughts.” 

She held her breath, fearful of what might yet be revealed. “Most women would find that difficult to tolerate in a friend, let alone a husband.”

Miss Armstrong stepped to within an arm’s length of Gabrielle. Every line and shading of the young woman’s face was as clear as the silent slap of her muted animosity. “And you would not?”

Gabrielle walked toward the window and looked out at the garden. “I’ve come to understand Bret over the years and, lately, why he may be acting differently than he did before.” She turned to her guest. “But that doesn’t mean I approve of his behavior, in fact I condemn it.”

“What are you speaking of, Miss Caldwell? Bret has always been the perfect gentleman with me.”

Gabrielle took a step toward her. “Does your uncle know of your involvement with him?”

Miss Armstrong walked back from the chair toward the center of the room. “I . . . I want to surprise Uncle Caden after Bret proposes to me.” She seemed embarrassed by her curt laughter and covered her smile with her hand. “It may be as early as this weekend. I’m sure of it.”

“And you’re certain your uncle knows nothing of this?”

Miss Armstrong tilted her head ever so slightly and nodded.

Gabrielle narrowed her eyes on the younger woman.
Was she lying, or had Cade changed his mind? But why would he after everything he had said to her about that disgusting incident at Weems’s store?
 

She wanted to accuse this overly confident woman of being deceitful but her determination weakened. If this naïve young lady was telling the truth, then how could she risk causing Miss Armstrong pain and humiliation without revealing her own promise to help Bret?

Gabrielle fingered the white lace of her collar. “To be frank, Miss Armstrong, if I were in your position, I would be discussing this with my family. Events have occurred so quickly that I would need time to think, to make sure everything was really that perfect between us.” 

Blushing at her own unrestrained bluntness, she found it impossible to meet Miss Armstrong’s sharp, green eyes. “Sometimes a person who cares for our well-being sees something, or knows something that needs to be talked about first.”

Miss Armstrong remained silent, gazing out the bay window with a pensive expression toward the gulf.

Gabrielle stepped beside her and touched her arm. “But I . . . I am happy for you . . . for both of you.” At the sound of those words on her lips her heart suddenly felt heavier, colder.
What am I saying?
“But there is only so much a woman can know about a man, so much she only wants to see that—”

“But you’re neither, Miss Caldwell.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re
not
in my position.” She yanked her arm away from Gabrielle. “And you’re
not
happy for us.”

“But I assure you, I am.”

Miss Armstrong touched her lips with the tip of her index finger and tapped them lightly. “I suspected you would be polite in trying to hide your true feelings, but your eyes give everything away. Just the sound of Bret’s name on my lips makes them crinkle ever so slightly in the corners.” 

She turned and started toward the hallway. “And please don’t follow me or send for your girl. I can see my own way out.”

Gabrielle rushed forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Please, I was only trying to—”

“Goodbye, Miss Caldwell,” she interrupted without stopping. “You’ve given me more assistance than I could have hoped for.”

Gabrielle’s hand slid off her dress. In a few moments Rebecca Armstrong was gone—free to rush into Bret’s open arms—and she, alone, was left, rooted to this place, waiting for the return of her bitter father and his flattering fools like Timothy DeRocha, Hadlee Foster, and Liam Dawson with their dragging feet and trite conversations.

Verna hurried into the sunroom. “Is everything all right, Miss Caldwell?”

Gabrielle parted the curtains and stared toward the cloudy horizon, praying for one memory to remain bright before the encroaching darkness.

Thinking of her wonderful meal at the seafood restaurant with Cade made her heart feel lighter for a few moments but then it was gone. Gabrielle closed her eyes, letting the memory of her last waltz with Bret rise unrestrained from the deepest place in her soul. 

She felt herself gliding with him across the floor, the music flowing around her so tender and gracious that her eyes filled with tears and she clutched the drapes for fear she might swoon and fall. 

 
CHAPTER 18

Friday, September 7, 7:00 a.m
.

Philip rocked slowly back and forth on the veranda in William McGowan’s favorite pine rocker as he read yesterday’s edition of the Galveston News. He stopped to stretch his stiff legs and rest them on top of his two packed suitcases.

In the distance, the sky was hidden in dusk like night made visible and the air was thick and sweet with the wafting scent of oleanders. 

He looked up at the overcast morning sky and took a sip of his drink. A heavy swell rolling in from the southeast.
Part of that trouble they had down in the Keys, no doubt.

Philip took another sip of the McGowan’s best Napoleon brandy, savoring the slow liquid flame of the liquor sliding down to warm his insides and fortify his resolve. He had been up most of the night, dozing only for minutes at a time, hoping to meet Bret when he returned.

Miss Caldwell was right. Bret was in the grip of something evil. He took another sip of the brandy.

So what would Bret gain if he told him?

Lorena lost her husband and he lost his sweet Janeen. If one word had crept out, he would have been lynched. Could still happen if some of these folks ever knew.

He tapped the side of his glass.

Lorena was a good, Christian woman. She lived the Lord’s word the best she could and loved him as a man under the eyes of God. He loved her as his wife and that troubled boy was the closest he’d ever have to a son of his own.

Philip put the glass down on the veranda table. He slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and touched the top of the small vial. He prayed Miss Caldwell was right because this was the last decent thing he could do to help Lorena’s only child.

He opened the palms of his coarse, weathered hands and puzzled for a few seconds over the new indentations added to the years of patchwork lines already there. They were from his fingernails.

No matter. Bret is the only one left now and he’s got to know before he runs off and does something foolish with that Armstrong girl.
That bastard Hellreich’s family and the McGowan’s bound together? Not while there was a breath still in this body. No sir! I won’t bow to that son-of-a-bitch ever again.

Philip jerked to his right at the ricocheting backfire of the approaching automobile. He stood and watched Bret turn the vehicle around the corner and weave its way up the street toward the house. The mechanical carriage fired another volley of black smoke as it bounced over the pavement stones from the road to the lane way leading up to the garage.

Instead of driving into the garage as he usually did, Bret made a sharp left turn on the lane way and drove straight up to the front of the veranda. The clanging and clattering of the contraption only stopped after Philip repeatedly yelled and pointed at the motor.

Bret stepped down from the front seat and stumbled, catching his balance, but still wavered on his feet. He took hold of the handrail and took slow, heavy steps up the stairs. “How thoughtful. I hope you weren’t waiting up all night jus’ for l’il ol’—” He coughed until tears formed in the corners of his eyes. He frantically felt around the pockets of his jacket until he found what he was looking for.

Bret pulled out the brown bottle of cough remedy from his inside pocket, unscrewed the cap, and tipped the mouth of the bottle up to his lips. “Goddamn it!” He shook the bottle and tried again. “Just a taste! All I need is a taste until—” He turned and threw the bottle onto the grass of the front yard.

“Here, Sir.” Philip held out the blue vial in his hand. “I always put some aside in case of emergencies.”

“Good, dependable Philip.” He snapped the vial out of Philip’s hand. “How would mother and I have ever survived without you?” Bret pulled the cork stopper with his teeth and spat it into the palm of his hand. “So why didn’t you leave after the war? You were a free man.”

Philip looked away.
What do you want me to say, Bret? That I loved your mother? That Lorena and I lived like man and wife in secrecy while you were away in boarding school or out gallivanting for months on end? Or that you were both the closest I ever had to a real family after my Janeen died?

Philip smiled. “Well, sir, I guess you could say that after all those years I got used the Gulf climate around here. This weather agrees with me and my old bones.”

Bret tilted his head back and took a quick sip, then another. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his hand. After a few seconds, he opened his bloodshot eyes again and put the stopper back into the vial.

“Better now, Mr. McGowan?”

He nodded and put the vial in the pocket of his suit coat. Stepping up onto the veranda, Bret looked down at Philip’s shoes. “A little late in the season for a summer vacation don’t you think, Philip?”

“Trains run out of Houston pretty much the same no matter what time of year it is.”

Bret looked at Philip as if forcing his red, squinting eyes open to let in the light. “Lord, but it’s hot so early in the morning.” He completely unfastened his loose, hanging tie and dropped it on the veranda. 

He stumbled past Philip and dropped down into his father’s pine rocker. Bret rolled his head to one side and stared at the bottle on the rosewood veranda table. “Father’s best,” he said, picking up Philip’s glass. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything . . . but I didn’t get an invitation to your bon voyage party.”

Philip glanced at his shoes.

Bret raised the glass. “Well, cheers, happy trails, Godspeed, don’t forget to write, and all that.” He tilted his head back and finished the brandy.

Philip walked across the creaking floor planks and placed his hands on the top railing. “There was a time I would have taken that as a compliment, Mr. McGowan.” He looked out at the passing carriages on the street.

“What’s that?”

Philip dug his nails into the wood handrail and turned to face Bret again. “Being your father’s
best
. Yes sir, there was a time, but those times are long gone now, like your father and your mother, and soon . . .” 

He glanced down at the freshly filled brandy glass in Bret’s hand. The liquor seemed to burn with an orange flame when the sunlight caught the glass. “Sometimes a man just lets himself get swallowed up, like when he swims out too far in the Gulf and the warm waves wash over him, putting him to sleep as they drag him under.”

“Mother always told me you should have been a preacher.” Bret raised the brandy glass again. “To His Most Reverend, Philip Harper.” He took a drink. “Ministering only to Galveston’s finest families before, during, and after their fall.” 

He held the glass out to Philip. “Won’t you toast yourself, my good man? Lord knows you deserve it, or won’t you share this last refreshing libation with the bad blood son of your ol’ massa?”

Philip stared at Bret, locking the drunken man’s bloodshot eyes with the unwavering cold glare of his. It pained him to see this once proud young man turning into a tarnished imitation of himself, eaten from the inside by the corrosion and storms of his past.

Philip stepped across the squeaking boards and stood silently in front of Bret. He snatched the glass out of the young man’s outstretched hand and threw back the rest of the brandy in one gulp. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, dropped the glass on the veranda, and ground the shattered fragments into the boards with the sole of his shoe. 

“Yes sir, and there’s one more thing ol’ Philip will share with his dead massa’s boy, before you ruin what’s left of the good in your family’s name and property.” 

He bent down, grabbed hold of the wood armrests, and looked Bret straight in the face. “How does it feel to be wanting to mix your blood with the kin folk of a man who helped to spill yours?”

Bret puckered his brow. “Take it easy on me, old man, it’s been a long night, Miss Armstrong and I danced—”

Philip started clapping his hands and whistling as if kicking up his heels at an old-fashioned barn dance. “That’s it boy, you keep dancing and skirt chasing your life away until all the money’s gone. Then who you going to turn to when the oil well keeps coming up dry? Your new wife and
her
family?” 

He stopped clapping and rubbed his hands to soothe the strain. “Wasn’t it enough for respectable folks to hang your father like that and get away with it, but then turn on your mother too?”

“What the hell you going on about, you crazy ol’ coot?” Bret pushed Philip away. He stumbled back but retained his stance. “You know how to take liberties, Philip.” Bret reached down and raised the uncorked bottle to his lips. “But this time,” he took a short sip, still keeping the bottle near his lips. “I think you’re drunker than I am.”