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“The little guy is waving at you. See?” Dr. Dan pointed to a small movement on the screen, then winced in regret. “That was a revealing slip of the tongue, wasn’t it? I hope you wanted to know it’s a boy.”
“Yes,” Cat whispered through a fierce lump of tenderness and stared at the shadowy image on the screen. The image of her baby. Her son.
Later, after the examination was over, Cat dressed in a haze, still wrapped in that warm and wondrous feeling, unaware of the glow in her eyes or the smile on her face. She paid no attention to the sudden silence that marked her return to the clinic’s waiting area. In her mind, she hummed a lullaby while she donned her winter coat, cap, and gloves. Lastly, she tossed one end of the red muffler over her shoulder and walked outside into the December sunshine.
A son. The word sang through her, turning the morning into something glorious and beautiful, a moment to be remembered. Still smiling, Cat set out for the Blazer.
Four feet from the clinic, she was brought up short by an acid voice behind her. “Look at you with your head up like you were somebody special, and you, no better than a common tramp without an ounce of shame.”
Bristling instantly, Cat whirled to find herself face to face with Emma Anderson, her thin body hunched in a faded brown coat that had seen better days, an old scarf tied around her, a mittened hand clutched around a pill bottle, her face pinched mean with hate.
With an effort, Cat channeled her anger into an icy sarcasm. “And a very good morning to you, too, Mrs. Anderson.”
“Go ahead and carry on like some high and mighty princess. It won’t do you no good. Folks know what you are now.” Her narrow lips curled in contempt. “You had ’em fooled for a while, carrying on the way you did over the Taylor boy, and making sure my boy went to prison for it.”
“I am not responsible for your son going to prison,” Cat flashed.
“You as good as turned the key to lock him in,” the woman declared. “He was a good boy, but that didn’t matter to you. There was no forgiveness in your heart, not a grain of mercy. You wanted him punished. You didn’t care that it meant we’d lose everything we owned, that we’d wind up old and poor, living on the dole. Well, ‘as ye sow, so shall ye reap.’ And you’re gonna be reaping your rightful harvest. Folks around here will have no mercy on a trollop like you.”
“I don’t have to listen to this.” With her jaws clenched in fury, Cat spun on her heel and made to walk away.
“That’s right, run away.” Emma Anderson came after her. “We don’t want your kind around here, spreading your legs to any and every man that comes along.”
Cat swung back, hotly indignant. “That is a lie!”
The woman sneered at that. “You think people can’t remember the way you threw yourself at the Taylor boy, rubbing yourself all over him even when you were out in public. And he wasn’t the first, I’ll wager. Which is why your pa always kept you on such a short rope around here—and it’s probably why he sent you off to boarding school the minute he saw you were going to turn into a wild little Jezebel just like your mother.”
“How dare you talk about my mother like that?!” Cat demanded, white with rage. “You aren’t fit to even mention her name.”
“The O’Rourkes are trash. They always have been, and they always will be. Blood tells, and you’re an O’Rourke through and through.”
Culley appeared beside her, coming up from behind in that soundless way he had. “Shut your mouth, old woman.” His voice was low and thick with threat.
Emma reared her head back, focusing on him like a snake about to strike. “You can’t scare me into shutting up, Culley O’Rourke.”
“I ain’t trying to scare you, old woman. I’m telling you not to be talking bad about my sister or Cat,” he warned, then paused, his expression taking on a sly and crafty look. “If I hear that you been blackening their names, I may have to do me some talking of my own about those two jailbirds you raised.”
The woman went white for an instant, a look of alarm leaping into her eyes. Something flat and ugly took its place. “Lath and Rollie are good boys. It’s the law that done ’em wrong,” she stated and struck out across the snow, her boots crunching through the snow’s brittle crust.
Cat watched her. “I have never come so close to hitting anyone in my whole life,” she muttered and buried her fisted hands deep in her pockets.
“You can forget about her. She won’t be spreading any more lies about you. If she does, she knows I’ll be telling some tales of my own,” Culley made it a vow. “And mine will be true.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Cat pulled her gaze from the woman and started out once again to retrace her steps to the Blazer. “She was only saying what others are thinking. I just never realized the talk had gotten that bad—to where they think I’m—”
“You ain’t that kind of girl, and we both know it,” he cut in and fell in step with her, his hat pulled low on his grizzled head, his hands shoved in the pockets of his sheepskin-lined denim jacket, and his shoulders hunched against the nipping wind. “Some folks just got dirty minds. When something like this happens, they just let them go wild. One person says something, then somebody adds to it, and the next guy starts swearing it’s the gospel truth. That’s how rumors start and lies get spread.”
“I know,” she said on a gusty breath that billowed in front of her like a cloud. “It’s just so unfair.” Cat felt the sting of tears, which only made her angry all over again.
“Humans ain’t the kindest creatures on this earth,” Culley pronounced. “Some take real delight in kickin’ a fella when he’s down, and the rest just scatter like a herd does when a pack of coyotes attack a lamed cow.”
“There’s a cheerful thought,” she murmured dryly.
“Sorry, but…” He paused, struggling to get his tongue around the right words. “When Maggie—that is, your ma—found herself in this same fix, she went off to California where all this kind of talk couldn’t reach her. Maybe that’s what you should do.”
It was the same suggestion he had made when Cat first told him she was expecting a child. Her answer was the same now as it had been then. “I can’t do it, Uncle Culley. This is my home. I won’t leave, especially not now. If I did, it would be the same as admitting that everything they’ve said about me is true. And I won’t do that. I can’t.”
Culley walked with his head bowed for several strides, thinking about her answer. “If you’re determined to stay, then you’d better learn to guard your feelings. You’re too quick to let people see that their talk gets to you. You can’t let them rile you like that old woman did back there at the clinic. You need to be more like your father. Calder is a master at not revealing what he’s thinking or feeling. Ty’s good at it, too,” he said with a decisive nod. “That’s the way you have to be, Cat.”
