An Enduring Love to Heal Her: A Historical Western Romance Book Read online

  “I know why you do it, but it’s not okay, Emilia. I never wanted it to come to this, but I’m sending you to Texas, to live with my sister.”

  “What?” Emilia’s head pounded with confusion and pain at the same time. If only her headache would leave her in peace for a few moments, maybe she could think a little straighter. “Are you punishing me? I promise, I won’t lie about it again.”

  “No, I’m not punishing you. I had a talk with the doctor again. He says that your lungs… well, they will probably never be strong enough to really be okay here in the north. It’s too cold and damp here. You need to live where there’s warmer weather.”

  “But what about you and Mary? Will you come?”

  Before her mother could answer, Emilia knew what she would say. The sadness in her eyes spoke volumes.

  “We can’t leave, Emilia. You know we both have jobs here. It isn’t easy for a woman without a husband to find a reliable job, you know that. I can’t expect Carolyn to take care of all of us.”

  “I know, so let me stay. I’ll do better. I’ll stay inside. I won’t get worse, I promise.”

  A tear ran down her mother’s cheek. “Emilia, dear, you can’t possibly promise something like that.” Ma reached out and pressed a hand against Emilia’s forehead. “You’re getting a fever, and I just can’t watch you almost lose your life again. At least I’ll know you’re safe in Texas and we can write to each other.”

  “Please, Ma. Don’t send me away. It will be all right. I am always all right after a few weeks.”

  “You don’t know that you will be all right. What happens when the fever is too high? What happens when you get pneumonia again? Last time, you almost died. It’s too serious for us to take a chance. And each time you get that ill, it damages your lungs even more.”

  “The doctor will give me medicine again. I’ll stay inside and you can make me hot soup.” Emilia was trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t working. She couldn’t believe her mother truly intended to send her away.

  “Look, Emilia. I don’t want to do this. The only thing I want is to be with both you and Mary, but almost losing you nearly kills me every time. I can’t go through it again. I just can’t.”

  “But I’ve never even met Aunt Carolyn. I’ve never been to Texas. What am I going to do there? What if I get sick there, too?”

  “You won’t, and if you do, you’ll get better much faster. Aunt Carolyn would love to have you. She wrote and told me so herself. Your cousin, Lily, is around your age as well. She will be there to help you. We will be able to visit you maybe once a year. You will be okay.”

  “Ma, please—”

  “Don’t argue with me anymore, Emilia. You know deep down that this is the right thing. You’ll see that it’s for the best.”

  Emilia nodded numbly. What was happening right now? How had her entire life imploded with one single conversation?

  “Come on, you need to get some rest. Your uncle is going to take you most of the way there on the train. You’ll see that it won’t seem so bad once you get there. Just think of it as an adventure.”

  Emilia stood and let her mother lead her down the hall. “You know I hate adventures,” she mumbled under her breath.

  Her mother left her at the doorway of the room that Emilia shared with Mary. Emilia leaned over and gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Ma.”

  “Don’t worry, Emilia. It’s all going to be all right.” Her mother reached out and gave her arm a squeeze before disappearing into her own room across the hall.

  Emilia closed her bedroom door against the cool breeze drifting through the house. She padded softly across the floor and changed quickly and deftly into her nightdress. She wrapped a hot rock from the fireplace in a sheet and placed it at the foot of the bed, where her feet went.

  When she slid under the covers, Mary stirred. “What did Ma want to talk to you about?”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was, until your cold feet woke me up,” Mary giggled.

  “Oh, sorry,” Emilia pulled her feet back to her side of the bed and searched with them for the hot spot. The warmth of the rock penetrated the sheets and Mary put her feet next to it, too. A wave of sadness washed over her. What was it going to be like, no longer sharing a room with Mary? Maybe she and her sister were complete opposites, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t love her sister more than anyone in the world. She’d never slept a single night without Mary.

  She felt as if she were about to lose her family, and there was nothing that she could do about it. It seemed like her body had betrayed her.

  “So, what did Ma say?”

  Emilia had been hoping that her sister had forgotten about her line of questioning. “She found out I’m still sick.”

  “I didn’t say a thing, I promise.”

  Emilia could see Mary’s worried look in the dim light from the moon filtering through the window. “It wasn’t you,” she assured her sister. “Apparently, she saw me hiding my cough.”

  Emilia pulled the blanket around herself. She felt colder than she had when she laid down.

  “Your forehead is warm. You have a fever again,” Mary observed with concern. She was pressing her hand to Emilia’s forehead just how their mother had earlier.

  “I know. Hopefully, it won’t get too bad. Anyway, Ma is sending me away to Texas to live with Aunt Carolyn.”

  “What? We’re moving to Texas? What about my piano teacher? And our jobs? Can we even find jobs in Texas? I wonder if a family would hire me to watch their children. There have to be people in Texas who need help, I bet.”

  “Mary, you aren’t coming, and neither is Ma,” Emilia confessed. “She’s just sending me.”

  Mary looked stunned. She opened and closed her mouth repeatedly like a gaping fish, as if trying to find something to say. “But—But you can’t just go alone. I mean… we have to talk to Ma. You can’t leave me here alone.”

  “I already did talk to Ma. She said that I keep getting sick here and she can’t take it anymore. She says that the warm weather will help me.”

  “Do you think it will?” Mary’s voice sounded braver. “I’m going to miss you terribly, but if it will make you better, then I’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I don’t want to go to Texas. You know how I feel about new people. I won’t know anyone there. Apparently, Uncle Ted is going to take me most of the way there on the train.”

  “If only I could go with you, but I can’t leave Ma here in the city alone.” Mary reached over and took Emilia’s hand.

  Emilia gave her sister’s hand a tight squeeze. “I know you would come, but you’re right. Ma needs us to be strong. I just… You know, I never thought I would leave you two.”

  “Maybe this will be a good thing for you. Maybe you’ll like it.” Mary propped herself up on her elbow.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, everyone in town kind of knows you, and you know them. Maybe, if you go somewhere where no one knows you, you can be a new person. You can get out and make friends.”

  “I don’t know, Mary. I don’t do well with new people.”

  “That’s just because everyone in town knows about Pa and has always treated you badly. You’ve just got to be outgoing and show people who you really are. Leave the past here.”

  Emilia forced a smile. While her sister had a naturally outgoing personality, Emilia wasn’t like that, no matter how much she wanted to be. “I’d like to, I really would, but it’s not that easy for me.”

  “It is easy. You just have to believe it. You just have to be brave.”

  “I’ll try,” she promised doubtfully. Emilia really did plan on trying, but she was uncertain it would work. Even before her father had been admitted to the asylum, she hadn’t exactly had a lot of friends. She had never participated in the running or ball games with children at school, and after school ended, she just never had been a person to go out and spend time with o
thers.

  Having her father taken away had only made it worse. Everyone had started to treat her as if she was going to become crazy next.

  As the years went by, Emilia had isolated herself further, staying home and not interacting much with those around her.

  By the time that Mary had grown and started making friends, people didn’t seem to worry so much about their father’s having been put in an asylum. Or at least they didn’t connect it to Mary as much as they had done with Emilia.

  While Emilia was happy her younger sister could enjoy a good childhood, one pretty much free of teasing and bad feelings, she also envied that sometimes.

  “We should get some rest. Don’t give up, Emilia. Maybe I can talk with Ma tomorrow.”

  Emilia nodded, but she wasn’t going to count on it. Her mother had seemed pretty determined and Emilia had a feeling that changing her mind would not be easy, if even possible.

  “Goodnight, Mary.”

  “Goodnight.” Mary turned over and curled up into the bed beside Emilia.

  Emilia checked to make sure that her sister was well covered and then snuggled in next to her.

  She closed her eyes and the face of her father materialized against the black. She missed him. With sadness, she realized that the face wasn’t clear anymore. It was fuzzy, like someone a little too far away to see exactly what they looked like.

  She tried to recall his voice and his laugh, but they felt distant, memories on the edge of being forgotten. A tear ran down her face.

  She was forgetting him. How could she be forgetting him? Eight years had passed. It was a long time, but how could she forget her own father’s face, no matter how much time had passed?

  She sat up in the bed and slid her legs out until her feet touched the floor. Softly, she padded across the room, shivering a bit at the chill that crept up underneath her nightdress.

  When she reached the window, she made sure it was closed and then stared down at the street below.

  Everyone had gone to bed or at least gone home, because the street was empty and dark, the moon casting strange silvery shadows over it.

  She wondered what it would have felt like to walk down the street at this time of night. But she would probably never know. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to walk down the street at all.

  Maybe, if she went to Texas and got better really fast, her mother would let her come back to the city.

  Soft raindrops began to pelt the roof, and Emilia shivered. Another rainy night. She knew deep down that her mother was right, but she was going to do her best to pretend that the trip was as far away as possible. She would try to spend extra time with Mary. She wondered how long she would remember her sister’s face.

  She shivered and tiptoed back to the bed, crawling back under the covers. The rock wasn’t so warm anymore. It felt like only a soft glow of what it had been.

  As she listened to the even breathing of her sister, a tear ran down Emilia’s cheek. Life would never be the same again. Things were always changing. She wondered if she would ever return to her family in Ohio.

  Chapter 3

  “I still can’t believe you’re actually leaving. My piano teacher’s son was sad when he heard.” Mary was clinging to Emilia’s arm as if she would never let go, although Emilia knew that she would have to let go as soon as Emilia boarded the train.

  “I wish I could go with you on this great adventure,” she went on, attempting to lighten the mood. “Time is going so fast. It’s too bad Uncle Ted needs to leave today.”

  She seemed to be chattering about unrelated bits and pieces. It was obvious that she was as distressed as Emilia at the approaching moment of separation.

  Emilia could still hardly believe that all of this was real. She was carrying one of her suitcases and Mary was carrying the other.

  Her few dresses and personal possessions were all packed away, ready to go to their new home. She hoped that, soon, she would be packed once again, headed back here.

  “You’ll write, won’t you? Don’t get so distracted with your piano lessons and the teacher’s sons that you completely forget about me.” Emilia’s attempt at lightening the mood ended in a warbling voice and a tear sliding down her cheek.

  “Of course, I’ll write. No one could keep me from the post office. I’ll write to you so much, you’ll be tired of hearing from me.”

  “I’ll never get tired of hearing from you,” Emilia assured her.

  “Here we are, girls.” Their mother turned to them with a tight smile from up ahead. They were already at the train platform where plenty of people were milling around, saying goodbye to their families.

  Emilia’s uncle was waiting on the edge of the platform, with his stern face. Emilia remembered always feeling intimidated by him.

  “There you are. I was getting worried you would miss the train. Step along. They won’t wait for us.”

  Emilia wished they had missed the train. Maybe then there would be no one to take her out west and she wouldn’t have to go, after all.

  She covered her mouth with her arm as she burst into a fit of coughing and staggered a little on the platform.

  “Is she all right?” her uncle said in a low voice to her mother. “Will I need to do something if she coughs like this?”

  “She’s fine. She’s getting the start of a cold again, but the sooner she gets to Texas, the better for her.”

  Emilia hated listening to the adults talk about her as if she wasn’t even there. She was twenty-three, after all, more than an adult herself. In fact, her mother loved to remind her that if she had spent more time out and about getting to know people, she would be married by now.

  Emilia had no interest in marriage. After all, what good would come of it? She was positive no one could really love her as such a sickly young woman, and getting married to someone for any other reason than true love was simply a terrible idea.

  The train whistle split the air, interrupting her thoughts and the conversation around her.

  “Better bid farewell quickly. We have to board now.” Her uncle looked anxious and eager to be on the train. He was dressed nicely, in business attire. He looked as if he were almost embarrassed to be seen with someone so ill.

  She hadn’t spent a lot of time with her uncle, and going on a trip with him didn’t sound fun at all. In fact, it was one of the last things Emilia thought she would ever be doing.

  Emilia turned and hugged Mary tightly. “Take care of yourself, and don’t forget you have a sister in Texas.”

  Mary’s arms tightened around her. “I could never forget you. You take care of yourself, too. Maybe you’ll find some handsome rancher out there.”

  Emilia pulled back and wiped tears from her eyes, “Nonsense. No rancher would look at me twice.”

  Mary didn’t look convinced, but she let Emilia go anyway without saying more.

  Emilia turned to her mother. As they gave each other a crushing hug, her mother sniffed. “I’m sorry, Emilia, but I think this is for the best. I am sure you will be healthier there, and even though I will miss you terribly, I will feel better knowing you will feel better.”

  Emilia nodded sadly. She had come to realize that her mother was only doing what she thought was the best thing for Emilia because she cared about her. Even though she wanted to be angry with her mother for sending her away, she couldn’t be.