“You had a baby together and you walked away and left them. Never came back, Grandma Emily told me. My father never met his dad. You never met your son.”
“When was your father born?”
“You don’t even recall your own son’s birthday?”
“When was he born?”
“The tenth day of March 1830.”
He tried to roll back the years to that time. He had been home in the one-room log and sod shack that Emily hated so much for several months during the spring of 1829, and she had reluctantly given in to his lustful approaches as often as weekly during that time, always making clear the inconvenience he was causing. It was late June when he was summoned by Austin again, and when he had informed her, she calmly told him not to bother coming back. She had written to her father, and he was coming to pick her up before Independence Day. She would be getting a divorce. Jack had swung by two months later, and she was gone. If her best friend knew where, she was not telling. Anyway, the date of J. T.’s birth made his paternity possible.
“Where does your Grandma Emily live these days?”
“In heaven. She died almost six years ago in Austin. Papa was with her.”
“How old did she say J. T. was when I left?”
“You don’t even know that? Maybe I should not have bothered to come here.”
“How old?”
“You abandoned them on Papa’s first birthday.”
The sinking feeling in Jack’s stomach made him feel weak. Sierra Wills carried a bundle of lies with her. But critical parts of the story made sense. And her hazel eyes were undeniably Wills. He had to see this tale through, but he would not dispute any of it, not now, anyhow. Attacking Emily would make Sierra defensive and serve no purpose, perhaps make him seem even more despicable. He had learned over the years that some lies were best left untouched.
“Tell me about your father,” Jack said.
“He hated you.”
“I guess that’s a start.”
“He was raised in Austin. Great Grandpa Cooper was an investor there. Just outside the town, he had a plantation and lots of slaves. Papa was embarrassed about the slaves as he got older, but he didn’t want for anything when he was growing up. He loved horses, and he learned all about them from the slave who was stable manager on the plantation. He was even taught about breaking horses, although he said Grandma was terrified that he would be hurt.”
“They lived on the plantation with his grandfather?”
“Yes. Great Grandma was sickly. Grandma Emily was the matron of the house, you might say.”
“She did not remarry?”
“No, of course not. She said you were the love of her life. She never divorced you. Unless you divorced her, you became a widower when she died. Or if you married someone else without divorcing her, you became a bigamist. Grandma thought that was more likely.”
“I did not remarry. But I want to know about your father.”
“He was a good man. Kind. Hardworking. And he loved his horses. That was his dream. To breed and raise horses. But he wanted to do it on his own. At twenty he left the plantation to work on the estate of one of the Spanish patrons, Manuel Garcia, who lived nearby, and worked mostly with the horses. He liked that the patron had no slaves. He met Mama there. She was mestizo, and Great Grandpa Cooper was not pleased when Papa married a Mexican who was not of pure Spanish descent. Grandma Emily did not like it either, but she grudgingly accepted Mama into the family because she did not want to lose Papa. They never became close, though.”
“And after they were married, they remained on the Garcia estate?”
“Yes. I was born there. So were my brothers—both of them.”
“You have brothers?”
“Had. They died shortly before I was born. Ages two and three. Smallpox. They are buried at the hacienda.”
Jack tried to convince himself that Sierra Wills was a storyteller, an outright liar, but too many pieces of her story rang true. It was highly unlikely Emily would have remarried for anything but money. She had hated the marital bed, and her interest beyond things material had been nil during their time together. She had always loved romantic novels. He wondered if their brief courtship had been the product of an inexperienced woman’s fantasy and a young man’s lust for a pretty female, doomed to destruction by their venture into reality.
Sierra yanked him back to the moment. “You are not with me. Sometimes your silences make me nervous.”
“I’m sorry. Tell me the rest.”
“What little I remember of our time on the estate brings happy memories until the war came. Papa opposed slavery but was convinced the South would eliminate that curse in due time. That is what he told me later, anyway. He served in a cavalry unit, of course, mustered out as a colonel. Mama took ill during the years Papa was absent, and I spent much of my time with Grandma Emily whose house was only three miles down the road. Finally, Mama died of consumption two weeks before Papa came home from the war. I was almost eleven by this time, and I had no notion that the worst hard times were in front of us.”
“Did your father remain at the Garcia estate?” Jack asked.
“No. We returned to the plantation for a time. The slaves were gone, and his help was needed there. Great Grandma had died, and Great Grandpa Cooper had no money, only his landholdings. Then the Yankee carpetbaggers came, and within two years the land was sold for back taxes. Great Grandpa hanged himself from a rafter in the barn the day the sheriff and his deputies came to remove us from the property.”
Jack said,
