Page 27 of More Than Meets the Eye

She never spoke of Hamilton. At least not to anyone outside of Zach and Seth. They’d trained her to leave the past behind when they created their new family. It had been a necessity. However, they were all adults now. No one could separate them. And the time felt right. The situation felt right.

“He and I were close,” she said, the words stiff at first. “Inseparable, really, after Mama and Papa died. He had such a kind nature and always seemed to know exactly what to say to make a person feel better. Everyone loved him. I loved him.” She inhaled a shaky breath. “He died when the orphan train we were riding ran off the rails. I was only four, but I remember the devastation of that loss. Remember blaming myself. I should have done something different. Been something different. A girl with matching eyes who didn’t scare potential families away. Then he wouldn’t have died.”

“Eva, that’s not tru—” Logan started to turn, but she stopped him with a hand to his back, pressing him around again. She didn’t think she could keep the tears at bay if he looked at her.

“Zach and Seth helped me through the worst of my grief with their patience, their protection, and sometimes even their swats on my behind when I needed to be jarred back into the land of the living. Yet that’s not what opened my heart to joy again. God did that.”

“How?” Logan’s voice rasped like gravel against glass.

Evangeline smiled. “He sent me a flower.”

Logan twisted toward her, and this time she didn’t stop him. Furrows etched his brow so deeply that she could’ve planted potatoes in the ridges. “A . . . flower?”

“I know it sounds silly to an adult, but to a five-year-old girl, it was a miracle. And my heart still believes it was a gift from God planted specifically for me to find.”

His head tilted at a skeptical angle, but he held his tongue, waiting for her to continue.

“We were living in a storage shed out behind the livery where Zach had found work as a stable hand,” she recounted, her gaze drifting back to the creek. “I used to sit and watch the horses in the paddock and make mud pies near the trough. I never spoke to anyone, scared that someone might take me away from my brothers, and anytime someone entered the corral, I’d scamper back to the shed and close myself inside. Until the day a young boy came to collect the horse his father had bought him for his birthday.

“The boy’s hair was the same color as Ha—as my brother’s. The one who died. He was about the same height. He smiled and laughed and clapped his hands as he watched the livery owner put the horse through its paces. He was so happy, so full of life. Everything my brother had been. Everything I had been before the train wreck.

“Suddenly, I wanted that life again. I didn’t like being sad all the time, being scared. I wanted to laugh, to clap, to dance around in a circle like that boy at the paddock. But I’d forgotten how. I felt heavy inside. Dark.”

Evangeline turned and focused her attention on Logan. “That’s when I saw the flower.” She smiled at the precious memory. “A bright yellow sunflower. Growing straight out of the crack where the side of the shed met the hard-packed ground. The only color in the entire area. So many horses and men trampled the ground around the livery and corral that not even grass grew there. Just dirt. And mud. And weathered wood. Brown and gray everywhere. Except for that flower. A flower that hadn’t been there earlier in the day.”

Logan’s mouth curved upward in a slightly patronizing way. Not that she blamed him. This was the memory of a child, after all. Yet her heart knew the truth of what happened that day.

“Looking back, logic tells me that flower was probably a quick-growing weed that I hadn’t noticed because it hadn’t bloomed until later in the day. But it doesn’t really matter how it came to be there, because in the depths of my five-year-old soul, I knew that God had put it there for me to find at that precise moment. As soon as my eyes locked on that flower, warmth spread through my heart like a fire lit in a room that had sat cold for too long. God saw me. He cared about me. And he was showing me how to leave the darkness behind and enjoy beauty once again.”

Evangeline looked down at her shoes, her throat suddenly thick and her voice quivering. “I know I probably sound like a fanciful child, but the impact of that day still lives within me.” Gathering her courage, she lifted her chin until she met Logan’s eyes. His kind, thankfully nonjudgmental eyes. “If God can make a fleece wet when there is no dew on the ground, and replenish a widow’s store of oil until it fills every jar her neighbors bring, and if he can make the sun stand still in the sky, who am I to doubt that he can make a flower bloom to show a grieving child how to live again?”

Slowly she lifted her hand and cupped Logan’s cheek. His eyes widened a bit in surprise, but he didn’t pull away. “He can do that for your mother, too. I’ll pray that he does. I’ll pray for you, as well, Logan, that you won’t lay burdens on yourself that only God is meant to carry.”

10

Two days later, Eva’s words still lingered in Logan’s mind as he sat atop Shamgar and stared at the white clapboard church at the edge of town. A score of wagons stood in the yard, along with drowsy horses at the hitching rails beneath the trees. An occasional tail flicked, shooing away a fly. Singing drifted through the open windows, and he swore he could pick out Eva’s soprano. He grinned as he shifted in the saddle. Purely a fanciful notion. From this distance, all the sound blended together. Yet every once in a while, someone hit a high note that rang above the rest, and he imagined it was her. No doubt she sang with the same vigor at church that she did while working her chores at home.

Eva was so open with her opinions, with her faith. She exuded confidence. That was why her declaration to pray for his mother, for him, had struck such a deep chord. Some well-intentioned folks might make a similar pledge, then get busy with their own lives and forget. Not Eva. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he felt certain she actually prayed for him and his mother on a regular basis. Her genuine, compassionate nature wouldn’t allow anything less.

Logan shook his head. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had promised to pray for him. Or the last time he had promised to pray for another. Truth be told, he hadn’t prayed much at all since his father’s death. Oh, he asked God to grant him justice on a fairly regular basis, but after his conversation with Eva, he’d actually prayed for the well-being of his mother for the first time in . . . well, he couldn’t remember how long.

Shame had hit him hard when Eva made that promise. Shame and guilt. He wired money to his aunt every month to pay for his mother’s expenses, even though Mama refused to touch his ill-gotten gains, as she referred to money won at the card tables. It didn’t matter that most of what he sent came from his logging pay. Because he gambled, she judged all his money as tainted. Aunt Bess had a much more practical bent, thankfully, but that didn’t absolve him of his other failings. He hadn’t prayed for his mother. Hadn’t asked God to relieve her grief or help her find forgiveness for the husband who had left her and the son who had done much the same. Evangeline had hit too close to the truth with that observation.

It was as if she could see directly into his soul. Unnerving, yet he craved more of that connection. He’d spent so many years hiding his true self from others that no one knew him. Not even his mother. It made a man solitary. Lonely. Hard. But Eva saw past the mask to the man beneath. Even the bits of darkness he’d allowed her to glimpse hadn’t scared her off. It made the prospect of pursuing her for more than information mighty tempting.

That was why he was here. Staring at the church. Longing to join in the worship, to join her, to become the better version of himself her words had challenged him to be.

Yet he worried about what would happen when Eva’s brother saw him. Would Hamilton realize who he was? Logan couldn’t afford to jeopardize his plan. He hadn’t intended to meet his nemesis face-to-face until Hamilton agreed to meet him at the poker table.

A prospect that was turning out to be more of a challenge than Logan had anticipated. Arnold Dunn’s impression seemed to be correct: Hamilton had hung up his cards. Logan had ridden over to Ben Franklin after Eva’s visit, determined to find out where Zacharias Hamilton plied his swindling trade, yet no one at the Seven Ponies Saloon recalled ever playing him. The one fellow he’d found who even recognized Hamilton’s name only knew him from the sorghum syrup he bought from them every fall.

Then yesterday Logan had made the longer trek down to Cooper, only to encounter the same results. No one at any of the saloons in town recalled playing poker with a man named Zacharias Hamilton. So either he played under a false name, or he really had given up the game. A turn of events that made luring him into a high-stakes revenge match more difficult than Logan had initially projected.

Which was why he’d decided to continue improving the property to sweeten the incentive when he finally challenged Hamilton, and why he’d continue meeting with Eva to learn all he could about the man who refused to conform to expected patterns. Meeting Hamilton face-to-face would help in that endeavor as well, and Eva provided Logan’s way in. It would be risky to get so close to his target, but every gambler knew the potential reward a skillful bluff could produce.

Logan nudged Shamgar into motion and steered his mount toward the churchyard. After finding a place to tether his gelding, he slowly climbed the four steps leading to the entrance. He tugged off his hat, ran a hand over his hair to make sure it wasn’t sticking up like some wet-behind-the-ears kid’s, then inhaled a deep breath. Squaring his shoulders, he pulled the door open.

The singing instantly increased in volume. Individual voices became more distinguishable, especially those of the less melodious variety. Careful to keep his footfalls quiet, Logan crept through the vestibule toward the doorway to the main sanctuary. Once there, he stopped, his gaze glued on the three people sitting in the last pew on the left by themselves. An empty row stood between them and the next family.