The Last Renegade by Jo Goodman

Author:Jo Goodman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101589618
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2012-09-04T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Kellen wished he could see her face more clearly. “Your brother,” he repeated. “And Ellen?”

“She’s my sister,” she said. “And Adam’s. Our half-sister. Her father is Andrew Wilson. Ours was James Berry.”

“I know that name,” he said. “Andrew Wilson, not James Berry.”

“I thought you might.”

He waited for her to help him out with a prompt, but she made him arrive at it on his own. “Coastal Railroad. San Francisco to Seattle. Paper mills and the timber route.”

“That’s right. He’s a robber baron. One of the lesser ones, to be sure, but rich is merely relative when you’re seated in the company of Leland Stanford and James J. Hill.”

“What you told me about how you acquired the Pennyroyal, was it true?”

“Most of it. Adam did win it in a card game, but the stake that I told you that Adam used to get into the game wasn’t parlayed from earlier winnings. He stole it from our stepfather. He used Andrew’s money to win this place and a good deal more besides.”

“Your stepfather didn’t suspect?”

“Not until Adam disappeared. Then he became more…” She stopped, considered her words carefully before she continued. “Difficult. Unpredictable. Dark moods, Mama used to call them. When we were growing up, she was always sensitive to the signs that one of those dark moods was coming on. She put herself front and center to protect us.”

“He hit her?”

“When he could. When he couldn’t get to Adam. Or me. My father was a drunk, Kellen. Mama knew something about ducking a fist. Adam and I learned the same. When James Berry walked out, Mama thought that life was behind us, and when she met and then married Andrew Wilson, she was certain she had secured peace for all of us. She didn’t understand that dark moods lived in places other than the bottom of a bottle. In Andrew’s case, I’ve always thought that mood slithered out from under a rock. Once Adam left, it was impossible to know when Andrew would strike. Even Ellen, whom he adored and we protected, saw through to the threatening side of his nature.”

“You were just a child when your mother remarried. You were only five years older than Ellen. How did you know so much?”

“Don’t children always know? Look at Rabbit and Finn. Adam had six years on me and ten on Ellen. Cautious, quiet Adam. He never caused a stir, and he always paid attention. I was eight when he promised that he would take me out of that house, and I was eighteen when he made good on it.”

“You took Ellen with you.”

“Of course. There was an outbreak of influenza not long after Adam left. It would have killed him if he hadn’t gone when he did. I would have joined him sooner—that was the plan—but I stayed to nurse Mama. She died. It was her wish that Ellen go with me. She didn’t know where Adam was, and it was better that way, so she died without knowing where we were going and without being able to tell her husband.

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