MAIL ORDER OLIVIA Read online

  “Sorry for the wait, folks,” he said as he opened the door. Half a dozen patients filed in behind him.

  “That’s okay, Doc,” said Mrs. Cooke, from the church. “We saw the missus running around, looking frantic and calling for the little one. Did she find her all right?”

  Robert paused mid move as he took off his coat. “What did you say?”

  “Saw the missus down the street,” Mrs. Cooke said. “Calling Chloe’s name at the top of her lungs.”

  Robert shrugged back into his coat. “Mrs. Cooke, please keep an eye on things here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Sure thing, doc.”

  He rushed next door and strode through the unoccupied house. He set down his bag in the kitchen and went out to the back yard where most of the laundry was piled in a basket near the line. Something was definitely wrong. He made his way to the front yard and looked down the street. Mrs. Franklin was the first one he saw.

  She rushed to his side. “Thank goodness you’re home. Chloe has gone missing and Olivia is frantic. She’s on her way to the sheriff’s office. She said something about two men being here; men who threatened her and Chloe back in Philadelphia.” The older woman twisted her hands together frantically. “I said I’d wait here in case Chloe finds her way home.”

  Robert looked wanton at the housekeeper, her words making little sense. Since when did a one-year-old have any sense of direction should they wander off?

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I was hanging out the wash. One minute she was there, the next minute not.”

  Robert tried to think. Surely Chloe couldn’t have gone far on those short legs of hers. His mind flashed on an image of the tiny body lying in the street having been trampled by a passing wagon. He blinked it away and set off for the sheriff’s office, where he found a hysterical Olivia.

  The sheriff looked relieved to see Robert.

  “Doc. I was just telling the missus, I’ll send out my deputies as soon as they get back to the office. Not to worry. We’ll find your little one.”

  “What if she’s been kidnapped?” Olivia wailed. “Someone could have scooped her up and boarded a train.”

  The sheriff rose. “I’ll head to the train station now and ask around. Put the word out for folks to keep an eye peeled. Best thing you can do is go home and wait.” He raised a hopeful eyebrow in Robert’s direction.

  Robert nodded. “Come on, Olivia. I need you to help me close up the clinic and send the patients home. They were lined up outside when I got there.”

  Olivia’s eyes were big and shiny with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Robert.

  For closing the clinic without asking. For losing our daughter. For—” Her words broke off with a choked sob.

  He placed a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I know you talked to Marianne earlier. I wish you hadn’t. It’s my problem to deal with.”

  “I was trying to help,” Olivia said. “Maybe if I hadn’t— if I’d stayed at the clinic, Chloe wouldn’t be missing and—”

  Robert gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

  “I was so afraid it was those men who grabbed her up,” Olivia said. “They threatened all sort of unspeakable things back in Philadelphia.” “Sheriff assured me they’re still locked up tight in jail. It couldn’t have been them. Let’s stop in at Mrs. Thompson’s on the way home,” Robert said. “She might have seen or heard something around the time Chloe disappeared.”

  Olivia knew Robert was trying to be helpful, but he had no idea how it felt to be a mother whose child was missing. The way that initial frantic feeling of panic and disbelief slowly gave way to fear, and then guilt. What kind of mother lost her own child? What kind of mother entrusted the care and well-being of her child to another woman?

  It had been pure selfishness on her part, wanting to feel useful by helping Robert in the clinic. Her way of trying to recapture happier times, back when she and Robert first met and worked together at the hospital in Philadelphia. Before fate had cruelly ripped them apart.

  Yuma was a far smaller town than Philadelphia. Folks here knew each other, and the locals all knew Chloe. They would know something was wrong if they saw her in the company of a stranger.

  She closed her eyes against the wave of nausea at the thought of never seeing her sweet daughter again. She couldn’t think that way. She had to believe Chloe would be found.

  She’d expected Robert would stop first at his clinic to take care of business. After all, wasn’t that what men did? Put work ahead of family? Would he act any different if she’d told him earlier that Chloe was his?

  To her surprise, he passed the clinic and headed to their neighbor’s house. She trailed behind him to the front door.

  “There you both are,” Mrs. Thompson said with a welcoming smile. “I was just telling Chloe that I was sure you’d be around right soon to fetch her.”

  “She’s here?” Olivia rushed past the woman, into the kitchen where Chloe was seated at the kitchen table with a cookie in front of her.

  Olivia snatched her daughter up and hugged her tightly. “You mustn’t give mama a scare like that again,” she said, pressing dozens of kisses to her daughter’s face and top of her head.

  The girl responded by trying to squirm out of Olivia’s grasp.

  “Little dickens must have crawled through a loose board in the fence,” Mrs. Thompson said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked out the back window and saw her running through the garden after the cat. She had no hope of catching him, but she was giving it a good try.”

  “I wish you’d let us know where she was,” Olivia said.

  “And didn’t I try! Right away,” Mrs. Thompson said, righteously. “But there was nobody at the house and no one at the clinic, either. Figured best I could do was keep her here safe.”

  Robert stepped forward and extended his hand to the neighbor. “Thank you for that, Mrs. Thompson. We had a few anxious moments when we didn’t know where she was.”

  Mrs. Thompson let out a mollified sniff. “Little ones can disappear in the blink of an eye. Best you check the fence for loose boards and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “I’ll be sure and do that.” He put a hand against the small of Olivia’s back. “Come along, dear. Chloe, wave goodbye to Mrs. Thompson.”

  Curled against her mother’s chest, her thumb in her mouth, Chloe lifted her free hand and waggled her fingers.

  “Will you be all right?” Robert asked kindly, as he saw her into the house, and picked up his medical bag.

  “I’ll be fine,” Olivia said. “I need to let Mrs. Franklin know we found her.” If only she could believe she was as fine as she insisted.

  Chapter 8

  Olivia hadn’t returned to Robert’s clinic since the day Chloe wandered off. If Mrs. Franklin noticed Olivia never let Chloe out of her sight, she kept her observations to herself and carried on as usual with her other housekeeping duties.

  Olivia was grateful when Good Friday arrived, and Mrs. Franklin left to spend the holiday with her family. Olivia had bought extra eggs to boil hard and color in Easter designs. Sunday morning, she planned to hide them outside for Chloe to find.

  They had attended mass earlier in the day, after which Chloe, tuckered out from the long service, had gone down for her nap and Robert popped next door to catch up on some paperwork. Olivia was humming to herself as she boiled the eggs and mixed some food coloring.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I have a very happy wife,” Robert said with an approving smile, as he joined her in the kitchen.

  “You’re home early.” She looked up from her coloring task just in time for Robert to press a kiss to the top of her head. She closed her eyes and savored the moment.

  “With the clinic closed, I thought we should do something different this weekend. I’ve been meaning to take a drive to visit my cousin Laura in the next town over. How about we head that way tomorrow?”

  “Is that the co
usin who grew up here, next door to you?”

  Robert nodded. “Laura and her brother were the closest thing I had to siblings. One day her family suddenly moved, and I was quite bereft. It will be nice to catch up. I hear she’s married with a little one of her own, which makes her daughter and Chloe second cousins once removed.”

  Olivia shook her head. “I never understood the ‘removed’ concept. But then I didn’t have any cousins, removed or otherwise.”

  Robert gave her a hug. “I’m happy to share mine.”

  Olivia had purchased new spring bonnets for herself and Chloe to wear to church over the weekend, and a family visit seemed another fitting occasion to sport their fancy headwear. Chloe was excited by the novelty of the buggy ride and sat good as gold between Robert and Olivia, chattering in her own language as she pointed at everything they passed. Once they left Yuma, they passed few other vehicles on the road.

  “Bullet is a small town compared to Yuma, but I expect it will expand rapidly once Laura’s husband opens a copper mine on their ranch.”

  “It sounds as if you’ve been keeping up-to-date,” Olivia said. “How long has it been since you last saw Laura?”

  “It has to be more than ten years,” Robert said.

  “Hopefully, you two will recognize each other.”

  “I’m sure we will. I can’t wait for you to meet her. There was nothing much here other than a few rag-tag ranches and a café when I was younger,” Robert said, as they arrived in what appeared to be a tidy, up-and-coming small town. “It looks like there has been a fair bit of building lately.”

  Olivia followed Robert’s gaze to a new-looking three story hotel and a nearby building boasting a sign, Bullet Women’s Institute.

  “Laura lives at a place called the Copper Moon Ranch, which I understand is at the end of the road, right on the border of California to the west and Mexico to the south.”

  They drove for a while in silence, passing several other ranches.

  “This must be it up ahead,” Robert said.

  From the narrow road they turned onto a dusty, rutted driveway which led to a sprawling ranch house surrounded by several barns and outbuildings. Visible on a slight rise past the main house stood seven new looking cabins, equally spaced apart.

  Robert had barely stopped the buggy before the door to the ranch house flew open, and a group of women burst out to gather on the roomy porch.

  “I’m looking for Laura,” Robert announced, as he rounded the buggy and helped Olivia and Chloe down.

  Olivia reached the ground, Chloe in her arms, as one of the women separated from the others and made her way toward them. “Robert! Is that really you?”

  He turned and smiled, keeping one arm possessively across Olivia’s shoulder. “In the flesh. Laura, this is my wife, Olivia. And this is—” Olivia noticed he still couldn’t bring himself to say “our daughter” even though he knew nothing would make her happier. “This is little Chloe. I hear tell she might have a cousin here on the ranch.”

  After Laura’s welcoming hug, the shrill pitch of female voices nearly deafened him. He’d hoped for a little time together while he and Laura got caught up, but it wasn’t meant to be, for apparently Robert and Olivia had arrived in the midst of pre-wedding preparations.

  One of Laura’s many brothers-in-law was getting married the next day, and at Laura’s insistence, seconded by the bride, he and Olivia agreed to stay in town at the new hotel and attend the wedding.

  “That way, you’ll get to know everyone. It’ll be a wonderful big party,” Laura said. “And it will give our girls extra time to play.”

  He looked up in relief as they were joined by a contingent of men in work attire, and soon met Laura’s husband, Brody, who seconded Laura’s insistence that they stay in town for the weekend.

  Looking over at Olivia and Chloe, enveloped into this noisy, boisterous family where it seemed they had known the others for years instead of minutes, Robert felt a sense of belonging that he’d never known before.

  It was sometime later that he noticed Olivia and Chloe were nowhere in sight.

  “Laura, did you see where Olivia went?”

  “I thought she was right over there.” Laura pointed to where some of the men were lighting a large outdoor grill to start preparing a family meal.

  “I’d better go look for her,” Robert said, “and make sure she’s not totally overwhelmed. Your family is quite a force to be reckoned with, you know.”

  Laura dimpled. “Tell me about it. They take a bit of getting used to.”

  Over near the barn, Robert found Olivia rushing about in near hysteria. “Chloe has vanished,” she sobbed. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “There, there,” he said soothingly. “She can’t have gone far.”

  “You don’t know that!” Olivia snapped. “This is a huge ranch. There’s a river out back. Animals! She could be anywhere. Hurt or—”

  “Did you look in the barn?”

  “She’s not there!”

  “The stables?”

  “Oh, heaven. The horses. She could be trampled!”

  “Olivia. You’re being hysterical,” Robert said, one hand on her arm.

  She shook him off. “I am not being hysterical. I nearly lost her once before.”

  Just then, one of the male family members came out of the stables. He carried a young boy in his arms, closely followed by Chloe holding hands with her cousin Charlotte.

  “See. There she is. Right as rain.”

  Olivia pushed past Robert and raced to Chloe’s side. “Mama was worried, poppet. I didn’t know where you were.”

  “Sorry,” the man said, before he set his son down next to the two girls. “I took them in to see the new colt that was born yesterday.”

  Robert exchanged a look with the man while Olivia, without a word, took Chloe firmly by the hand and marched her back toward the main house.

  “I really like Laura’s family,” Olivia said later that evening, once they had settled into a suite at the town’s new hotel, which coincidentally was owned and managed by one of Laura’s sisters-in-law. Not only was Robert having trouble keeping track of who was who, and who they were married to, his head was still buzzing from all the back and forth conversation between the Mason clan.

  “They’re certainly something else,” he agreed. “You’re sure you don’t mind staying?”

  “Are you serious?” Olivia said. “This is like a dream for me. A big, boisterous family all hunting for colored eggs on Easter morning after mass. Followed by a wedding.”

  As she curled up next to him on the bed, he smelled the faint floral scent he had come to associate with her.

  “Chloe is having the time of her life.”

  Robert nodded. He’d been heartened to see that, as the day and the evening wore on, Olivia slowly released her deathlike hold on her daughter, along with her constant panic, as she ensured the little one was within sight at all times.

  “I’m enjoying being here,” he said, “and we’ll visit often, but I think you and I will have new appreciation for the peace and quiet of our life in Yuma.”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Olivia said. “Once we start filling that house with all the children we’ve talked about—”

  “Are you . . . ?”

  She leaned over and kissed his brow. “Trust me. You’ll be the first to know.”

  “I most certainly hope so.”

  He saw the slight shadow cross Olivia’s face and quickly pulled her into his arms. He knew she was sensitive to the fact that Chloe wasn’t his in the true meaning of the word.

  The wedding was every bit as lovely and as busy as their visit. Easter mass had been followed by a massive pancake breakfast and egg hunt at the ranch, after which the Mason family, along with Olivia and Robert and Chloe had reconvened at Dove House, on a neighboring ranch, for the ceremony. Olivia couldn’t help but compare the elegant, large scale wedding, including a dozen attendants in a lush outdoor setting, to th
e quick, unemotional ceremony joining herself and Robert in matrimony. Perhaps one day they could renew their vows in proper style.

  At long last, they said their goodbyes and were on their way back to Yuma. Brody and Laura had promised to visit them soon with Charlotte, so the girls could play together under calmer circumstances.

  “It’s hard to believe all the members of the Mason clan have been in and out of Yuma on innumerable occasions, without your paths crossing,” Olivia said.

  “Like me, Laura had no idea I’d moved back. She didn’t even hear about my father’s funeral until after it was long over.”

  “Neither did you,” Olivia said.

  “That was his choice,” Robert said darkly.

  Olivia remembered those dark days. He and his father had been estranged for years before she met Robert, and even after receiving word of his inheritance from the solicitor, Robert had agonized about his return. In the end, his sense of duty prevailed, as she had known it would.

  She sighed. They had been so happy together in Philadelphia, and she remembered wishing he was not such an honorable man. But then, he wouldn’t be the man she fell in love with.

  She pushed away all memory of that fateful day when the telegraph arrived, informing her of Robert’s demise. Things after that were blurry. Her hasty marriage to Harry. His decline into the world of gambling and drink.

  She pulled herself back to focus on what Robert was saying. She hadn’t even realized they had reached home and the buggy had stopped.

  “I hope you will return to the clinic soon to help me again,” Robert was saying. “Mrs. Franklin is afraid you will never again trust her with Chloe’s care.”

  Olivia straightened and tightened her hold on Chloe, who nestled sleepily against her. “Mrs. Franklin is right to feel that way. I know she raised a family of her own, but she has clearly lost her edge.”

  “That’s not fair of you,” Robert said. “It could have happened to any of us with Chloe in our care. You can’t wrap her up and protect her for her entire life.”