LEGEND Read online

  When Ruth did not answer right away, Kady turned to stare at her and saw that she was so distressed that she appeared to have aged about ten years in just a few minutes. Unless Kady missed her guess, Ruth Jordan was hiding some big secrets, and when Ruth didn’t answer the question directly, Kady was sure she was right.

  “I didn’t know that Cole knew his family had died,” Ruth said softly. “On that horrible day we tried to keep the truth from him. His sister and his friend Tarik were killed outright, but Cole lingered for three days. We told him that they were fine but couldn’t visit him because they had to go to school. It was a lame excuse, but in the midst of everything it seemed perfectly feasible, and Lily and I thought Cole accepted it. During those three days I stayed with Cole every minute. His mother tended to her daughter’s body, then later to . . .”

  Hesitating, she looked at Kady. “Lily took care of her daughter, and later she laid out the bodies of her husband and mine when they were brought in, killed by the men who had robbed the bank.” Ruth’s handsome face suddenly turned bitter, her mouth twisting. “It wasn’t the outlaws who killed the children but the ‘good’”—she sneered the word—“people of Legend who murdered them.”

  For a while Ruth kept her face from Kady’s as she stared into the dark night. When she looked back, she had recovered herself enough to smile at Kady. “I lost everyone that night. Three days after the shooting the only person left alive was Lily, Cole’s mother, and I could see in her eyes that she was retreating. She couldn’t face what had happened to all the people she loved.”

  Again Ruth was silent, but Kady could tell there was more to the story, maybe a lot more, but it was obviously difficult for her to get the words out. Kady sat in silence and waited, the only sound around them the wind in the trees and a coyote in the distance.

  “I can’t describe those days of horror,” Ruth began slowly and so softly Kady could barely hear her. “Now I hardly seem able to remember them. My husband, my only child, both grandchildren, all of them were dead. After Cole’s death, Lily became catatonic. She just sat there in a rocking chair, refusing to eat or even to cry. She stared out the window in a way that made me know she might as well have died, too.”

  Ruth took a breath. “The only person left alive was young Tarik’s father, who worked for us,” she said, then her face softened. “Oh! but he was a good-looking man. As dark as my family was blond. It was rumored he’d seduced half the women of Legend, but if he had, he was very discreet about it. He was a silent man, devoted to my husband, and always polite, always courteous.

  “But that week-in-hell, after everyone was dead, Gamal—that was his name—was still alive. When the first shots were fired, he’d made a leap to put himself in front of the children, but he received half a dozen bullets in his left leg that halted him. Days later the leg was removed, and for a while we thought he’d live, but then his eyes started burning with fever, and I knew that he, too, was going to die.”

  Ruth looked at Kady, her eyes as hot as though she, too, had a fever. “He was my last link with my family. All I had to do was look at Lily to know that it was only a matter of time before she would will herself to die.”

  Ruth was looking at Kady as though she were pleading for understanding, but Kady still couldn’t comprehend what she was trying to tell her. Reaching across the short distance that separated them, Kady clutched Ruth’s hand.

  When Ruth spoke, her voice was almost defiant. “When Gamal opened his arms to me, I went to him, and we spent the night making love. The next morning he was burning up with fever, and he never regained lucidity. Two days later he was dead.”

  Ruth kept her profile to Kady as though she was waiting for some censorship, but Kady only squeezed her hand tighter, encouraging her to continue.

  “We made a child that night.”

  Ruth kept very still, as though waiting for Kady to pronounce judgment on her, but a twentieth-century woman looked at things differently than a nineteenth-century female did.

  “A boy or girl?” Kady asked.

  Only the tiniest of smiles showed that Ruth was grateful for Kady’s not passing judgment, and there was a loosening of tension in her shoulders, as though she had been relieved of a heavy burden. “At the time I never thought of pregnancy. I was forty-eight years old and had already skipped a monthly or two. After the funerals I moved Lily to Denver to see if I could find a doctor who could help bring her back to life. But part of me envied her; I, too, wanted to retreat from the world. How could I think of life after all the death I’d seen?

  “As for the symptoms of pregnancy, I felt so bad they seemed normal. And since it had been thirty-two years since my last pregnancy, I didn’t remember the symptoms very well. And as I was nursing Lily all day, I rarely got out of my wrapper.”

  Finally, Ruth turned to look at Kady, who was staring at her with wide eyes, fascinated by the story. Where was she leading?

  When Ruth saw Kady’s face, she relaxed more. “I finally went to the doctor when I felt the baby kick.”

  Dreamily, Ruth looked off into the distance. “That was the strangest day of my life. I went to the doctor, knowing something was wrong inside my belly, and I know it is a sin, but I was praying that whatever it was was terminal, as I so wanted to join my family in heaven.”

  She turned back to Kady. “But I left the doctor’s office with thoughts of life. I had forgotten that God gives as well as takes.”

  Kady still didn’t speak because she could tell that this was not the end of the story. If Ruth had given birth to a baby and everyone had lived happily ever after, Kady would not have been pulled through time smack into the midst of this situation.

  “I have made many mistakes in my life,” Ruth said softly, “but none I regret as much as what I did when I learned that I was going to have a baby.”

  She grabbed Kady’s hand so hard that Kady nearly cried out in pain. “After my family was murdered, I was numb. I didn’t care if I lived or died. There was nothing inside me, not hatred, not love, and certainly not thoughts of revenge.”

  Abruptly releasing Kady’s hand, Ruth looked back into the night. The moon was rising, and it was growing late, but Kady had never felt less sleepy in her life.

  Ruth continued. “When I found out that I had a life growing inside me, all I could think of was protecting that child. No matter what it cost in money, blood, or tears, I was going to protect this child from all harm.”

  Ruth’s lips tightened. “First of all I made my house in Denver into a fortress. No prison was ever as secure as my house and garden. Armed guards with dogs patrolled the grounds night and day. Not even delivery men were allowed onto my property, and servants entering and leaving were searched thoroughly.”

  For a moment Ruth paused as she thought back over the past, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet, deep with emotion. “It is many years later now, so it’s difficult to describe why my hatred took the direction it did. Maybe I should have hated the outlaws who robbed the bank, but I didn’t hate them. They never fired a shot in the town. No, it was the overzealous citizens of Legend who did the shooting. All of them owned firearms, half of them had never used them, but that day they saw their silver riding away, so they opened fire. They killed three children that day. And three adults in the days that followed. All in an attempt to keep their bloody silver.”

  When Ruth turned to Kady, her eyes were burning hotly. “Can you understand the hatred I felt? I was carrying a child, and there was no doubt in the world that this child would be the only family I’d have for the rest of my life. I had to protect him from those people in Legend.”

  “But you were in Denver,” Kady said softly.

  “Yes, I was.” Turning away, Ruth looked into the night. “Don’t try to make sense of it, because there is none to be made. I was a crazed woman, not in my right mind.”

  Kady hoped she never learned this from experience, but it was easy to guess that profound grief could make a person do irrational things