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Chapter Fifteen
As the carriage drew closer, the welcoming sight of lamplight glowing through the windows and smoke rising from the chimneys indicated that Zach had waited up for me. I smiled, thinking that the pleasure of returning to a warm, well-lit home was yet another one of those things that I had missed during the time that I had been living on my own in Colorado. "Ready to go in and meet your nephew?" I asked quietly, as Erik helped me down to the ground. "It's long overdue, don't you think?" Although I was aware that the Lausenstroms had not known that Hank had a son, it wasn't until I opened the front door that it occurred to me to wonder whether or not Hank had ever told Zach that he had family back East. The answer to that question was readily apparent on his face when he looked up from his drawing, words of greeting dying on his lips as his eyes swept over the tall, blond male who entered the room behind me. He blinked, as if trying to clear his vision, then gazed at me in bewilderment, his manners forgotten. "Zach--I'm sorry." I went to him, resting my palm on his shoulder and squeezing gently. "I simply assumed that you knew. This is your uncle, Erik Lausenstrom. Hank's brother." "Pa--has--a brother?" In his confusion, the words came painfully slowly, and I caught a quick glimpse of how far that he had come from the emotionally wounded child who had retreated from fear and loss into a world of his own making. "Several brothers." Erik's voice was husky, and I glanced at him to see that he was holding back tears. "And two sisters." As if seeking reassurance Zach turned from his uncle to me, and I nodded. "You have a family--in North Carolina." "Pa--never--" "We obviously have a lot to talk about," I interrupted softly. "I'll make coffee. I have a feeling that this is going to be a long night." "My God..." Erik breathed, stepping forward to pick up one of the drawings that Zach had finished and left on the table. It was a sketch that he had done of me while we had been out riding --my hair windblown and swirling around my body, the laughter in my eyes matching the smile on my lips. In swift, bold strokes he had managed to convey not just my physical features but also a strong sense of my personality. "This is incredible. Some of the best work that I have ever seen. There is such a feel of--LIFE --in it. So much movement and energy." "That one's a present for Pa--as soon as I can buy a frame." Zach's speech returned to normal when he focused his attention on his art. "The rest are illustrations for a novel." I watched Erik carefully examine the sketches that had been already been completed for one of the manuscripts. "Zach does contract work for a publisher in Denver." "You have an amazing talent," Erik complimented, as he looked at each drawing once again. " "Thank you." Zach's eyes held mine, searching for cues as to what he should do next. "Would you mind bringing in more firewood, while Erik helps me in the kitchen?" I requested, realizing that both men could use a few minutes alone to adjust to the shock of meeting face to face. He got up to go to the woodpile, and Erik followed me into the kitchen, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. I put on the water for coffee, then took down the bottle of brandy that Hank had stashed in the cupboard and poured him a generous snifter. "You look like you need this." I handed him the glass. "You didn't tell me that Zach looks like he could be my own son." He nodded gratefully and took a long swallow. "Somehow I wasn't expecting that." "There's no doubt that you share the same blood." "We've wasted so many years of our lives harboring all of this resentment and anger--without any reason." His voice sounded shaky. "Why didn't Hans simply admit to us that he had a son? I don't understand." "He told me once that his family would be upset enough that he owned a saloon--that they would never accept a child that had been born from his relationship with a whore," I volunteered quietly. "I wish that I could assure you that both of my parents would have welcomed the boy with open arms, whatever the circumstances were surrounding his birth, but quite honestly I don't know whether they would have or not," he confessed. "It matters a great deal to my mother what other people think. And my father was--particularly unyielding--when it came to Hans." "If it helps you at all to know this, Hank would have gone back and enlisted, if he could have done that and still taken proper care of Zach." I finished grinding the coffee beans and put them into the basket. "He told me that himself. As much as he pretends not to care, joining the calvary would have given him one last chance to try to prove something to your father. Would have given him the opportunity to earn his love and respect. But his own son came first." "No matter what Hans did, it never seemed to be quite good enough for Far," Erik admitted. "He and Hans were like oil and water for as far back as I can remember." "Hank's a proud man--extremely proud and stubborn. I suspect that both of those things are family traits." "They go right down to the bone," he agreed ruefully. "I should have listened to Nana. She insisted all along that the rest of us were misjudging him." "I wish that your grandmother had made the trip with you to Colorado. She might be the only one who could talk some sense into Hank." "Unfortunately, Nana's dead," Erik said softly. "She died a few years ago during a trip to Norway." "He doesn't know." "I suppose that there's no way that he could have." He sighed, setting his empty glass on the table. "I think that I'll wait until after the trial is over to tell him. As fond as the two of them were of each other, her death may well hit him hard." "I don't know how to thank you enough for your decision to stay on and help." I turned to face him. "I have never gone through anything even remotely like this. I had never stepped foot inside of a jail until Hank was charged with murder. It's beginning to wear me down, despite having Zach to hang onto." "Everything will work out fine." Erik smiled down at me reassuringly. "Now that I have my brother back, I'm not willing to lose him again." "You don't have him back yet." "You haven't heard me argue a case." He winked. "But I have seen Hank angry--so I think that I will steer clear of the jail until after the fireworks die down." I glanced at the clock to see that the coffee had boiled for exactly seven minutes before I took out the grounds. "I'll get through to him somehow, even if it takes checking into the other cell and badgering him day and night." "That's the one thing that I haven't tried so far." I chuckled wryly. "I suspect that he would much rather have you as a roommate than me." "Right now...I wouldn't be so sure about that." "Then I'll have him plead insanity, instead of trying to convince the Judge that he's innocent," he teased. "Sometimes I wonder if he's deliberately trying to drive ME insane, with the way that he's been acting lately." I sighed. "I have never wanted to take my coat off and whale the living daylights out of one of my brothers any more badly than I did earlier today, when Hans talked like that to you," he admitted flatly. "I'll forgive you for not chivalrously beating him to a bloody pulp on one condition," I bargained lightly. "Name it." Erik grinned. "That you don't hurt Zach." I met his gaze. "He needs answers--and he has every right to know the truth--but life hasn't hardened him the way that it has Hank. Please--keep it in mind that Zach is not his father." "You don't have to worry." He added napkins to the tray where I had set the coffeepot, sugar, cream, cups and spoons. "What happened is not entirely Hans' fault--and even if it was, there has already been enough senseless blaming in this family to last us two lifetimes." "I think that tonight a bit of this might go well in everyone's coffee." I retrieved the bottle of brandy and followed him into the living room. Zach was just coming back inside, his nose slightly red from the cold, his arms overloaded with firewood. He stoked the blaze and added another log, then joined me on the sofa, sitting in the middle rather than at the opposite end. Recognizing that he felt the need to have me close by for emotional support as he heard whatever Erik was about to say, I linked my fingers with his. "I wish that I had let you know that Erik was coming to Colorado," I apologized softly. "But I thought that I owed it to Hank to tell him first, and somehow I never managed to find enough courage." "He's been awfully hard on you lately." He nodded slightly in understanding. "Still, it was unfair to everyone concerned, and I'm sorry." "Pa's the one never told me I had an uncle." Zach stretched his arm across the back of the sofa behind me. "You didn't know he had kept it a secret." Relieved at the look of forgiveness in his eyes, I reached up and brushed strands of blond hair out of his face in a maternal gesture of affection. "I need to get out my shears and trim those bangs." "You been sayin' that ever since the second day I got here." He grinned. "Remind me at breakfast in the morning," I ordered. "I'll do it before we leave for church." Erik had taken a seat in one of the wingchairs, staring pensively into his cup as he carefully finished gathering his thoughts. Finally he lifted his head and sighed. "I don't know how--or where--to start, Zach," he confessed quietly. "Clearly something went horribly wrong in our family. When I walked into that jail today it was the first time that I had seen my brother in more than 20 years, and I was as much in the dark about you as you were about me. I had no idea that I even had a nephew in Colorado until Caitlyn told me over dinner tonight. If I hadn't come here, no one in the family might have ever known. "So for the past two hours I've been trying to make some sense out of what happened--but all that I can really tell you is how it seems from my own point of view. I can't speak for your father...or explain to you what his reasons were for making the choices that he did. I hope that you'll ask him--that you'll want to understand it through his eyes, as well as through mine. "Your father has been using the name 'Hank Lawson' ever since he left home at l5, but he was born Hans Mikkel Lausenstrom, in Wilmington, North Carolina. There were eight of us. First Dyre, then Neils, Lars, me, Hans, our sisters--Ilsa and Kristiane--and Gunnar. Gunnar was killed at Petersburg during the War, but the rest of the family--except for Hans-- live within a 10 mile radius of the house where we were born. "Looking back, I think that Hans was probably shortchanged by being the fifth boy in a row to come along. By then Mother was already tired and had her hands full. It was different with the girls--they were a welcome relief--and everyone spoiled Gunnar because he was the baby, but Hans was thrown in with the rest of us when he was around three and a half, and it was our general consensus that we had better things to do with our time than act as nursemaids to a snot-nosed baby brother, so we told him to sink or swim. Even at that age he had already learned to be tough enough that somehow he did. No matter how badly Hans was hurt-- whether he needed stitching up or had broken a bone--he never shed a tear, and the idea of quitting never crossed his mind. "My mother is not a woman who believes in coddling--or cuddling-- children. And financially, you would call Far a success but as a father, I'm afraid that he left a great deal to be desired. He found his work much more satisfying than raising a family, so we saw very little of him. But even though he wasn't there, his word was law in our house, and when he did come home he didn't hesitate to punish infractions of it with the help of a razor strop. Both of my parents placed a great deal of emphasis on discipline, obedience, and education--none of which overly appealed to Hans--so he was the one most often on the receiving end of a beating, which did absolutely nothing other than to harden him and make him even more determined. "There was enormous friction between Far and Hans that just kept building, especially after Hans told him that he would see him in hell before he would join the family business. It finally got to the point where they could no longer tolerate being in the same room--even for meals. I think that we all knew that it was only a matter of time before all of that anger spilled over and exploded...that eventually it was going to tear the family apart...but we didn't know how to stop it or even if it could be stopped. We all knew that it was coming, but in our family you kept everything inside and didn't talk about it." Erik paused to take a sip of coffee. "I was already at University when Hans left home, so all that I know is what Ilsa saw happen. I have no idea what he had done, but Far had apparently beaten him rather savagely with some sort of riding crop. She said that his shirt was off and his back was covered in blood where the tip had torn into skin and muscle--when Hans suddenly turned on him and ripped the whip out of his hands. He was almost as big then as he is now, and he wrapped the leather around Far's neck and pulled it tight. Held it that way for a few seconds to make his point...that he could kill him if he wanted to...then threw it into the fire and left. He never came back." The visual images that Erik had just painted made my heart ache for Hank, but I had no idea that I was crying until Zach dropped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close enough to rest my head against him. Reaching into his pocket he withdrew a handkerchief and watched as I used it to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. "Never needed to carry one of those 'til I moved in the house with you." He hugged me comfortingly. "Now I got a spare in every pocket." "I'm beginning to think that the name 'Hank' is actually short for 'Handkerchief'--and that he decided to call himself that for good reason." Giving me a moment to regain my composure, Erik refilled his cup with coffee. "Far never spoke of what happened between the two of them. We would never have known about it at all if Ilsa hadn't been a confirmed eavesdropper, and none of us would have ever dared to ask. Hans was gone, and that was the end of it. We were ordered never to speak his name again in my father's house. "Those of us who had felt the lash ourselves or tended to Hans' back afterward--doctored bleeding cuts and welts--honestly couldn't blame him for getting out. The beatings were growing more violent each time-- happening with more and more regularity, at the slightest excuse. It was obvious that Far's intention was to bring Hans to his knees, but unlike the rest of us, this one son of his was too strong-willed--he simply refused to bend or to break. "Hans was thousands of miles away, and we had no contact with him, but it wasn't until '61 that there was an actual rift between him and the rest of the family. Why doesn't really matter. From what I know now, we jumped to conclusions that had nothing to do with the truth. It grew out of misconceptions and misunderstandings, and harsh things were said that should not have been. We all share in that responsibility, and we've all paid for it--especially Hans. "What I realized tonight was that my father drove in that first wedge between us...and I've been trying to sort out in my mind whether or not it was deliberate. Part of me would like to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that it might well have started as an attempt to put the past behind them that failed--that was doomed to failure from the beginning because Far still hadn't learned that Hans doesn't respond to demands and threats. But I have no idea what the truth of it is. All I know is that I feel frustrated and angry because I allowed a bitter, controlling old man to manipulate me into believing what he believed instead of taking a closer look. Far's dead, so I can't even confront him with the fact that he cheated me--cheated the entire family--out of 20 years with one of my brothers. And I'm mad as hell about it." For a long time the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire, then Zach's blue eyes searched Erik's face. "Up 'til tonight the one you had hard feelings toward was Pa?" "Yes." "So why did you come?" "I'm an attorney." He cradled his cup between his palms. "When Caitlyn sent a telegram, letting me know what had happened, I made arrangements to come out here as soon as possible." "Why?" Zach persisted, his gaze unwavering. "Because he's my brother--and despite everything, I still loved him," Erik admitted softly. "Hans and I must have bloodied each other's noses a hundred times growing up, but no matter how much we fought, we always stood side by side when it came to taking on the rest of the world. I knew that if there was ever a time when he needed me on his side, that time was now." "Whenever I asked about family, Pa said all we had was each other." "For all practical purposes, that was true." Erik nodded. "We were no longer a part of his life--in any form or fashion. Considering how badly he was treated, the only real surprise is that he never filled your head with resentment toward the rest of us. If I had been in his position, I don't know if I would have had the self-restraint to leave the door between you and the rest of the family this wide open." "Sounds to me like Pa was ashamed to tell you he'd got a bastard son offa whore," Zach opined dully. "Ashamed for you to know." "Don't you ever let me hear you refer to yourself in that way again," Erik objected firmly. "Never. Whether you call yourself Lawson or Lausenstrom, you're a part of me. You came from my blood. And I want you to understand one thing--you are only responsible for who you are now, and there is not a man alive who wouldn't be damned proud to call you 'son.' Including me."
An hour later Zach finally stumbled off to bed in exhaustion, and I walked with Erik out onto the porch, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the chill. Rain had started falling again and I grimaced, weary of the seemingly endless deluge. "That was one of the hardest things that I've ever done," Erik confessed quietly. "You couldn't have possibly said it any better." "Thank you--for everything." "Even for that scene over dinner?" "Especially for that verbal duel over the soup." He smiled down at me. "Without it, I might never have known the truth." "There are no secrets in Colorado Springs. You would have found out that Hank had a son sooner or later. I didn't know until after we started seeing each other, because Zach was living in Denver and the subject just never came up, but given who you are--and the strong family resemblance--it would be a natural topic of conversation." "I learned more than one truth tonight." He leaned back against one of the columns that supported the porch. "For all of these years I've been jealous of Hans. If you hadn't sent that telegram, and I hadn't come here, I would probably never have been forced to admit to myself that I was jealous of the fact that my brother had enough courage to walk away from the life that Far had mapped out for each of his sons, and I didn't. I might never have had to admit that I both envied and resented him for his freedom. That what I was really angry about was the lack of control that I had over my own life." "His freedom came at a price," I reminded him softly. "It always does." He sighed, then changed the subject. "Is it my imagination, or do the characters in this book that Zach's illustrating look extremely familiar?" "Hank and I are about to be immortalized on the pages of what actually is a rather well-written romance novel set in the West." I smiled. "If it's in the shops by Christmas, I'll make sure to buy one for every person that I know," he promised lightly. "Then you plan to tell your family about Zach?" "That will be up to Zach and Hans, but I hope to. We can't undo anything that's happened or snatch back words that would have been better left unsaid, but it's time to let those old wounds heal." "Some of them go awfully deep." "I keep thinking of how it would have felt to have been in his shoes," he admitted. "Trying to imagine leaving Kristen alone in a strange place, with people that she didn't know, in a household where I had never felt loved or wanted... Knowing that there was a good chance that I might not live to come back for her. I couldn't have done it." "Hank would go to the ends of the Earth and back for that boy. And by now, so would I." "I only managed to keep Anya for a little more than a year, but she left me with the greatest gift that anyone could ever have given me when she gave birth to Kristen. The minute that they laid that little pink bundle in my arms I knew that I was lost--that Krissie owned me for life, heart and soul." "Sometimes I wonder..." I broke off the thought, blushing. "If you'll ever bear Hans a child?" he completed my sentence. "Lately, I'm starting to wonder if I'm lying to myself--if he's truly decided that our relationship is over." Tears blurred my vision. "Perhaps I should take Hank at his word and let him go." "Do you love my brother?" "I think the only question that truly matters is whether or not your brother loves and wants me." I turned my head to hide the wet trail of teardrops on my cheeks. "He would have to be crazy not to want you." Erik's long fingers gently cupped my face, tilting it upward so that our eyes met. |
