Memories of Gold (21 page)

Josie and Jimmy stood a few feet from each other, Jimmy trying to catch his breath and grit his teeth against the fresh pain, and Josie staring at him in dumbfounded wonder. After a long silence, they both began to speak at the same time.

“What hap—“

“Where’s Maria?” Jimmy rushed out, unable to control his near-panic.
Please don’t say she’s gone. Please.

“Oh God, Mary! She doesn’t know you are alive!”

The astonishment on Josie’s face turned quickly to elation, then to an expression of pain as her body was racked by coughs. After a long while, the coughing subsided and she was able to speak. “She thinks you’re dead.”

Jimmy had worried as much. Josie seemed unwell, but this wasn’t the time to discuss it. “Where is she, Josie?” he asked again, his voice laced with desperation.

“She’s down in Redding. We were packing up the last few things and going to meet her at her home.”

Jimmy’s head dropped to his chest. What Daisy said was true. The panic that he had felt morphed into numbness. He began to turn away from Josie, though he had no destination planned.

“Where are you going?” Josie exclaimed, a shout so loud that it morphed into another fit; once master of herself again, she continued, “You must come with us. She needs to see you!”

“She won’t want to see me,” he said quietly.

“Like hell she won’t!”

Jimmy looked up, surprised at her cursing, but Josie was too worked up to even notice. Her face was pale, but her cheeks were two bright red spots. “Jimmy, she thinks you died. She loves you more than anything. You need to come down with us right now.”

His breath caught in his throat and his heart tightened with pain. “Can’t you just tell her I’m alive? I don’t want to get in the middle of whatever she is doing and hurt her more; it’s too late.”

Josie seemed even more flabbergasted, but Jimmy’s mind was elsewhere. “Too late? Too late for what?”

“For anything. She’s with someone else now, and I don’t want to ruin things for her more than I already have. If she’s married—“

He was cut off by Josie’s laughter, though it quickly devolved once more into coughing. Something was definitely wrong with her.

“Someone else!” she exclaimed. “Whatever put that fool notion into your head? You are the only fellow she has eyes for even if she thinks you’re dead. That was why she quit Daisy’s and moved, after all.”

Jimmy was staggered by the news. He couldn’t believe what she was saying. Without another word, he walked back with her to the cart and allowed Josie and the old man to help him in. Josie had spoken to him and to the other man, but he had no idea what she was saying. The cart began to move, heading towards Maria.

After all the emotions of the day, he was exhausted. He sat in the back of the buggy, his bad leg carefully stretched out, and closed his eyes, focusing on his mental picture of Maria. Lovely Maria.

“Very good, Anna! You’re getting better already!” Maria looked at the neat letters on the slate and smiled at her first pupil. Anna came to her from a neighbor’s house, sent by the kind Sarah; she had gone to school at the nearby schoolhouse, but was trying to master French for the first time. Her first lesson consisted of writing a few key words, and she’d clearly worked hard in the meantime to remember all of them.

Anna blushed with the praise of her new teacher. The rest of the lesson went by smoothly, Anna concentrating deeply as she tried to write the common words in different combinations to make her first short sentences in French. At the end of the hour, she went home with a determined look on her face, and Maria felt confident that she would come back next time ready for something even harder.

Even though she’d only been in town a few days, she’d managed to get settled and even get a couple of students, with a promise of more to come. The income from teaching was a necessary part of her plan, and she was proud of her accomplishments in such a short time.

Josie and Alice were supposed to arrive either this day or the next, and she had wanted to do more work to the place before they got there, but for a moment she couldn’t convince herself to get up. She thought, for the thousandth time, of Jimmy. She wondered what he would say if he saw her new little home. He would be impressed, she was sure. He would make some joke, tease her in some curious and wonderful way that would make her laugh and warm her heart.

The tears, always so near the surface, tried to break through yet again. Maria took one deep, shuddering breath, shook herself back into the present, and got up to start working again. At that moment, she heard Sarah calling from outside. “Maria! Your friends are here from Shasta!”

To make directions easier, she’d telegraphed Josie Sarah’s name so they could ask for her once they got to town, and she had agreed to direct them to Maria’s new place.

Maria ran to the door, excited to see the familiar faces. Mr. Swenson, Josie, and Josie’s little girl all looked back at her from the cart, beaming at her. Then, another face showed itself from the edge of the cart, and her whole world froze.

Jimmy was leaning over the side of the cart, twisting to get a glimpse of her. Their eyes locked. He broke out into a relieved smile, but her face still showed shock and confusion. Her brain seemed unable to work properly as she stared at the dead man who was very much alive. Mr. Swenson pulled the cart up to the door; Maria and Jimmy were only a few feet away from each other.

Jimmy scrambled out of the cart, lowering himself as quickly as he could to the ground. He leaned on his crutch and hobbled over to Maria, who stood unmoving, except to follow his movements with her eyes. Before she could process what was happening, he was standing in front of her only inches away. He sighed her name.

“Jimmy?” She looked at him, still not quite sure that she was seeing reality.

He enveloped her, his crutch falling to the floor. “Maria, I’m so sorry. I promised I would never disappear. I came back to you as fast as I could. Maria, my love, please say you love me.”

With his arms around her and his voice in her ear, it all became so clear. Jimmy was alive. Jimmy was hers again. She gasped and wrapped her arms around him as tears streamed down her cheeks. His lips found her face and he began kissing every inch they could reach. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she began to laugh.

Epilogue

Jimmy leaned back in the rocking chair, cupping the tiny child to his chest. As slowly as he could to avoid waking the baby, he shifted his leg on the stool in front of him. Although his injuries had healed long ago, his leg ached from time to time, especially when the weather was turning and the sky threatened rain. He could see the dark gray skies out the window and hoped Maria would make it home before the deluge started.

As if he had conjured her with his thoughts, Maria strode through the door, untying her bonnet and letting her dark hair fall in curls across her shoulders. Even after nearly three years of marriage, her presence took his breath away.

She walked to him, keeping her footfalls soft and quiet. “Is everyone asleep?” she asked, her voice no more than a breathy whisper.

He nodded. “This one—“ he nodded to the baby on his chest—”was a bit fussy after you left, but quieted down about an hour ago. Alice and Emma played for a long while, but I think the weather made them feel tuckered out, so they decided to take a nap.”

Maria stretched out in the chair beside him, and his free hand found one of hers, his fingers lacing through hers. She leaned back and smiled at him. “It’s so nice Alice is such a help with Emma. Have you noticed how many good days she has had lately? I think Alice plays no small part in that.”

Jimmy nodded. In many ways, Alice had been a godsend to them. Her sparkling nature brightened up the entire house. She reminded him of Maria at that age, though her blond hair was so strikingly different from her adopted mother’s raven locks. Josie would be proud of how grown up her baby girl was getting.

Maria reached into her reticule and pulled out a slip of paper, passing it over to him. “I stopped by the post on the way home. We received a message from Guadalupe. She and Henry are getting along just fine, it seems, and they are considering coming for a good long visit in six months or so, after the house is finished. It’ll be good the new place has so much extra space, because by then there will be a little one with them.”

Jimmy smiled. “No kidding? Guadalupe’s increasing?”

Maria nodded. Rain began to splash on the roof as the clouds opened above their tiny home. “I doubt Julie and Jessie will be coming for lessons this afternoon, so it seems we should have the entire afternoon to ourselves. What should we do?”

Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “Everyone’s asleep. I’m sure we have enough time to do whatever we like, and you are looking mighty pretty.”

Maria laughed. “You are terrible, you know that? The employees at the bank would be shocked at how often their perfect proper employer’s mind is consumed with lust.”

“That means yes, right? Lupe here could use a little brother, and I would like another man around this house. Also, did I mention how pretty you are?”

Maria rose from her chair and leaned towards him, her lips tantalizingly close to his ear. “I’ll put Lupe in her crib and meet you in our room,” she said in a whisper that sent tendrils of anticipation down his spine.

She gave him one soft, lingering kiss as she took the baby off his chest, careful not to wake her, then she was walking away. Jimmy looked around the cozy, rustic room. Moving into a larger home was necessary with their growing family, and they could afford it with his new salary, but this place would always hold a special spot in his heart. Here was where Maria had nursed him back to full health, where Josie had lived her last months.

There was still time before the new place was finished, though, and he walked into the bedroom he shared with his wife, ready to make a few more memories in what he would always remember as his—and his love’s—first true home.

Beautiful memories.

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Dreams of Gold

A Gold Rush Romance

Henry just got out of prison and dreams of leaving his life of crime–after he completes one last job, that is. His boss will do anything to get his hands on a cache of buried gold and helping him acquire it is Henry’s only way out.

When Henry is injured and a strange woman takes him in, though, he finds something that might be more important than his deadly employer or the riches hidden only a few miles away.

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