Read Online This Calder Range by Janet Dailey - Free Book Online Page B

wandered over the jacket, stretched tautly across the wide set of his shoulders. The air was almost electrified with his tension.
    â€œWe tried to find you when your father died,” she told him, and was cut by his hard glance. “Mr. Boston sent out a couple of his men, but they weren’t able to locate you.”
    â€œI don’t imagine he tried too hard.” Benteen’s voice was stiffly dry as he continued to stare at the tintype.
    â€œDaddy said it would be hard to find anybody in that rough country,” Lorna murmured, and glanced at the picture of the woman in the frame, barely visible from her angle. “That’s your mother, isn’t it?” Lorna remembered one of his neighbors mentioning it. So many had come to the funeral and offered their sympathy that she didn’t recall which one. “She was very beautiful.”
    â€œYes.” It was a clipped answer.
    In an effort to understand what Benteen was feeling, Lorna tried to put herself in his place, imagining what it would have been like to be raised without a mother, then losing the one parent that remained. She had been so loved by both her mother and father that she couldn’t imagine a life without them.
    â€œYour mother died when you were very young, didn’t she?” she commented, in the hope he might talk about his mother and eventually release some of the grief for his father bottled inside him.
    When Benteen swiveled to look at her, Lorna was shocked at the bitter hate in his dark eyes. “She isn’t dead.” His mouth curled over the words like a snarling animal. “She ran off with another man and left us.”
    â€œI didn’t know.” Lorna recoiled a little from this frightening side of him, so utterly ruthless and unforgiving.
    That look was finally directed at the daguerreotype. “Pa kept waiting for her to come back, but she never did.” The pitch of his voice was absolutely flat, containing no emotion. “He never heard from her once in all these years, but he waited anyway.” There was a slight tremble in the gloved hand holding the picture. It was in his low voice, too, when Benteen spoke again—a tremble of anger. “He doesn’t have to wait anymore.”
    A small fire was burning in the fireplace to take the nip out of the springtime air. With a sudden turn, Benteen hurled the daguerreotype and carved wood frame into the fireplace. Glass splintered and broke as it crashed against the andirons holding the smoldering embers of a burning log. Lorna flinched in shock, and recovered immediately to grab for the iron poker and rescue the picture before it caught fire.
    The instant Benteen recognized her intention, his hard fingers circled her wrist in a painful grip. “Let it burn, Lorna.”
    â€œNo.” Her eyes were smarting with tears, not understandinghim at all. For the first time in her life, she defied male authority. “I’m not going to let you burn your mother’s picture, regardless of what she did.”
    â€œIt’s a picture of
my
mother,” he snapped. “I’ll say what happens to it.”
    â€œNo, you won’t.” She switched the poker to her other hand and raked the wooden frame away from the tiny flames licking at it. “It’s a picture of the grandmother of
our
children. We’re going to keep it.”
    Lorna was trembling at the anger boiling around her. Any second she expected Benteen to strike her, the feeling of imminent violence was so intense. Her hand was shaking badly, but she continued her frantic effort to save the picture.
    His grip had nearly cut off the circulation in her fingers when he suddenly let go of her wrist. “She deserves to burn in hell!” He rasped the condemnation. “Keep it if you want, but I don’t want to ever see it again!”
    Her knees gave out as his long strides carried him away from the fireplace. Lorna knelt weakly on the