Seeking a Place to Call Home (Preview)

Chapter One

The Wilson Family House

Lawson Creek, Oklahoma, 1879

“Would you kindly move your feet?” Abigail Wilson said in as neutral a voice as she could manage.

Emma Sue sighed and moved her feet aside.

Too bad Emma Sue had to be inconvenienced for a moment, Abigail thought to herself as she swept over the kitchen floor where Emma Sue’s feet had been in her way.

Next Abigail moved to where Billy Jo sat reading a book. And like her sister, Billy Jo had to be prodded to move her feet so Abigail could finish sweeping around the table.

They weren’t really her sisters. Not by blood anyway. Emma Sue and Billy Jo were the blood offspring of the people who’d adopted her as a child.

And her adoptive sisters annoyed her to no end. One would think they were royalty, and she was their personal servant. And it had been that way for as long as she could remember.

“Pour me another glass of tea,” Billy Jo said and held up her glass.

She took the glass and filled it from the pitcher. How she would like to pour it over Billy Jo’s head. She gave the glass back to her sister.

“You’re welcome,” Abigail said.

“What?” Billy Jo said and looked up from the book she was reading.

“I said you’re welcome.”

“Oh.” She went back to reading.

Abigail rolled her eyes and finished sweeping the kitchen.

The two brats, well, they weren’t brats. Emma Sue was two years older than her, and Billy Jo was one year older than her. They should at least be thankful they didn’t have to do any chores, thanks to her being stuck with all of it.

It was bad enough to be adopted, but being adopted by the Wilsons was…well, she wished she knew where her real parents were.

Emma Sue and Billy Jo were insufferable. They acted like she had nothing to do but wait on them and clean the house. She was surprised that she wasn’t expected to clean the barn as well.

Her adoptive mother came into the kitchen. “Abigail, when you finish cleaning the kitchen, clean the rug in the parlor.”

“Yes, Mother,” she said and bit her tongue to keep from saying all sorts of things she shouldn’t.

The older she got, the harder it became to keep her mouth shut. How she wished she could find her birth parents. The Wilsons didn’t care about her. They never had. If she could find her birth parents, maybe she could finally have a better life. Because she was never going to have one with the Wilsons.

After she finished in the kitchen, she went to the parlor and started sweeping the rug.

She’d spent a good fifteen minutes working on the rug when the Wilsons came in. Her mother said, “We’re taking the girls into town. We’ll eat dinner at one of the restaurants so you don’t need to make dinner tonight. I’m sure you can find some leftovers in the icebox.”

“Great,” she said, not caring if it sounded snippy or not.

***

Abigail hauled the heavy carpet that took up most of the parlor’s polished floor outside and around the house. She struggled to shove the behemoth over the clothes line without it dropping back and flattening her beneath it.

She’d already spent a half hour sweeping it to remove as much dirt and grime as possible. Now she would take the rug beater to it and then finish it off by leaving it in the sun all afternoon.

She hated that rug. She had to drag it out and clean it every other month. Her sisters had yet to have to do it once.

She gave the rug a hard whack and a satisfying amount of dust came out of it.

She would have wondered why the Wilsons even adopted her, but she was pretty sure they’d wanted a maid, and she was it. They ran several successful businesses and cleaning and cooking wasn’t something they had time for. And apparently, their real daughters were much too good to cook and clean.

But she wasn’t. No. She was exactly what they needed. She’d always felt more like a servant than part of the family. They’d always favored Emma Sue and Billy Jo who usually didn’t even acknowledge her presence, unless they wanted her to do something for them.

She whacked the rug again.

At nineteen years old, she was still their servant. She needed to leave…soon. The one thing she’d clung to since she was a small child was the hope that her real parents were out there somewhere. And not just out there, but looking for her.

She dreamed of a better life, a life away from the Wilsons. A life with her real parents. They had to be out there somewhere.

Her next whack at the rug was extra hard, and she grunted with exertion. She took her frustration out on the rug, whacking it until no more dust puffed out with the hard blows she dealt it.

Finally, panting, she looked over the rug for an evenness in her cleaning job and determined that it was as clean as she could manage it. She looked forward to the day when she never had to see the rug again, much less clean it.

Rug beater in hand, she went back inside. She’d already cleaned the rest of the parlor. She put away the rug beater and headed for the library. It was the one place she liked cleaning.

It was her favorite room in the house. She often retreated there to avoid her family and read in peace. The walls were lined with built-in bookcases except where a huge stone fireplace took up a good portion of the wall. They were heavy and impressive-looking with dark cherry wood.

The books were leather-bound tomes on many topics. She especially loved novels and geography books with maps in them. She liked learning about other countries and often fantasized that she was planning a trip to foreign lands.

Thinking about that was much more pleasant than thinking about her next job for the Wilsons. How she would really love to travel to faraway places and see exotic things and meet new people.

She pulled out a book about Paris and sat down to read. Paris had always sounded so wonderful to her. She’d even considered learning French.

Abigail was so engrossed in the book that it took a couple of minutes to realize the Wilsons were in the next room, the study. She had no intention of eavesdropping until she heard her mother say her name.

Why were they talking about her?

She did everything they wanted without complaining, no matter how much a task annoyed her. They did put a roof over her head and fed her. They treated her like a servant so she saw having shelter and food as payment for her work. It was the only thing that made sense. She wasn’t a part of their family, never had been and never would be.

“You really should have gotten rid of that letter,” her father said. “She’s excellent at cleaning. She could have found it.”

“She isn’t a snoop. You know that. She does her work and nothing more. She isn’t interested in being part of the family,” her mother said.

“She isn’t like us,” her father said.

Abigail snorted. Where in the world did he come up with that idea? Sometimes she wondered if they actually thought about how they treated her. Or was it so much of a habit that they didn’t even give it a thought?

“Maybe you shouldn’t have lied to her mother when she wrote looking for her daughter,” her father said.

She froze, rooted to the chair. She couldn’t have moved if the house was on fire.

“I did the right thing. I didn’t want her coming here and making trouble. Saying Abigail had died was the best way to do it. I don’t regret it.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “They intended to go back for her.”

“We didn’t know that. And the orphanage adopted her out. It doesn’t matter after that. They knew what could have happened when they left her there.”

A haze of outrage closed over Abigail.

Her parents had written looking for her and her mother had lied to them?

Her fingers tightened on the book so hard that they hurt. She forced herself to loosen her grip and to stay quiet. She fought down the desire to charge into the study and confront them.

As she sat there listening to her adoptive parents, she quivered with rage. The awful life they’d given her while her birth parents had wanted her…Words couldn’t describe her feelings. Why? Why hadn’t they made things right?

If they had any letters or anything else to help her locate her parents—she needed to find them. And that meant not letting them know she was onto them. Breathing in ragged pants, she fought down the need to scream.

Keeping it bottled inside her was tough, but necessary.

She had to search the study. If there was any evidence, she would find it. And then she would confront the Wilsons.

She forced herself to remain seated. They didn’t need to know she was in the library where she could hear them. With her head swimming, she prayed silently that she would find something to help her find her real family.

They stayed in the study for nearly another hour before they left, closing the door loudly behind them. She listened to their retreating footsteps with relief that they were gone, and a burning desire to go straight into a search.

As much as she wanted to rush into the study, she tamped down the urge. She needed to be able to take her time and make a thorough search of the room if necessary. And she didn’t want to be looking over her shoulder at every little sound.

Knowing that she cleaned very well, any documents would be stored out of sight. Maybe even locked in a drawer. Since she’d never tried picking a lock, she would then have to search for a key. And hope that one of them didn’t keep it with them.

The following day was Sunday and would be her best opportunity. They all attended church regularly. But she wouldn’t be going with them. Not this time. They would be gone two hours for the services plus travel time. It wasn’t a lot of time, considering that what she sought might be well concealed. But with a longing deep in her heart, she couldn’t bear to wait longer to look for any documents if she didn’t have to.

If she didn’t find anything, she would have to wait for another opportunity and who knew when that would be? She couldn’t excuse herself from going to church two weeks in a row.

Regardless, if papers were there, she would find them. If not this week, then another week. It would be hard to appear as if everything was normal after learning of their disgusting deception. But she would do whatever was necessary to find her parents.

They wanted her. That was enough to fuel her search. She would find them, no matter what.

***

Early the next morning, the very moment the buggy horses took off, Abigail ran for the study. Services lasted two hours and the drive took about twenty minutes to reach the church. She had less than three hours to plunder the study.

With her heart pounding, she opened the study door and went inside. For a moment, she stood there looking around. Where to begin?

The huge mahogany desk was the most likely place.

She sat in the big comfortable chair and started with the middle drawer. It wasn’t locked. She slid it open.

Nothing but bottles of ink and pens and small scraps of paper with reminder notes written on them. Nothing there of value. She closed the drawer and moved to the drawers on the right side.

She pulled the drawer open and beheld more papers than she thought she would ever have time to go through. She just stared at the contents with her heart thudding in her ears.

She grabbed a handful and brought them to the top of the desk. With a feverish pace, she started going through the stack, looking at each one just long enough to have an idea of what it was about and then setting it aside.

Paper after paper and nothing. Not a word about her or an adoption. She kept going until she gone through every document in the drawer. She closed it and jerked the second drawer open.

It was exactly the same as the other, stuffed to bursting with papers. She ripped out a stack and started going through them as fast as she could flip through them.

She neared the bottom and grabbed a folded sheet and opened it. A gasp tore out of her. And she clutched the page with shaking hands and carefully read the letter.

It was addressed from Mrs. John Bradley from Silver Creek in the Western Oklahoma Territory.

With her heart climbing into her throat, she read the words that condemned the Wilsons as terrible people.

 

April 9, 1864

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.

I am writing to you about a matter of utmost importance.

I was made aware that you adopted our daughter three years ago. So I know hearing from us will come as a shock. I feel I need to explain the circumstances of our precious child being placed in an orphanage.

Our home caught fire and was destroyed when she was barely a year old. We were left homeless with nowhere to turn, and we couldn’t care for her. As much as we loved her, we couldn’t stand the idea of her being hungry and cold.

So, we did the only thing we could. We took her to the orphanage but we made it clear that we would return the moment we had a roof over our heads and could provide for her. It took us two years to have such a place and situation.

We went back to get her, and they told us they had adopted her to a couple within just a few months of taking her in. They wouldn’t give us the name of the people who had adopted her. It took another year to find out who you were.

Frankly speaking, we want our child returned to us. I am sorry, I know it must be terrible to receive this letter now that she’s been part of your family for three years. But she is our daughter, and we did not place her without planning to retrieve her. They were well aware of our intentions.

 

The letter continued on but her vision blurred with tears.

Her hand shook and a sob tore out of her. They had never wanted to give her up. They had still wanted her, and tried to bring her back when she was four years old.

Rage boiled over in her. They’d lied to her parents to keep her around to be their servant. It was the only thing that made sense.

She took several deep, calming breaths. She had to make plans, decide what to do next and how to do it. But she had questions that needed answers. And she was going to ask those questions.

***

Abigail was primed and ready when the buggy came down the driveway. She watched out the parlor window, shoving aside the lavish deep-green and gold drape, as her mother stepped down.

Her father took the buggy to the barn, and her mother came toward the house.

Abigail stepped back, letting the drape fall into place. She had a bone to pick with her dear mother.

The weight of the Wilsons’ betrayal felt crushing. Abigail wanted to tell her exactly how angry she was, but that wasn’t the best way to handle it. She had to be a little more subtle than a fire-breathing dragon.

She retreated to the kitchen so she could make an approach.

Her mother came through the front door and headed to the parlor.

Abigail waited a few moments then went to ask some questions without alerting her mother that she knew anything about the situation.

“Abigail, I hope your headache is gone.”

“Yes, I’m much better now.” She hadn’t had a headache.

Her mother nodded. “Don’t forget we have extra clothing for the laundry tomorrow. We can’t donate items that haven’t been properly laundered. When you’re finished with that, our bedroom needs the floor mopped. Your father wore his riding boots in there and well, you can just imagine. It smells like the barn. If it wasn’t Sunday, I’d have you do it today.”

Abigail didn’t give two figs about the laundry or their stinky bedroom.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me anything about my birth parents?”

Her mother waived her hand. “There isn’t anything to tell. I don’t know anything about them. It isn’t important anyway.”

“You don’t know anything at all about them?”

“No. I’m afraid I don’t. Nor do I wish to. And neither should you since they gave you away. They didn’t want you. That’s all it should take to tell you what you need to know about them.”

Anger pounded at Abigail like hammer strikes on an anvil. “Why did you just lie to me?”

“Excuse me?” Her mother looked and sounded indignant. But a flicker in her eyes spoke of deception.

“That isn’t true. You know who they are. And you know they wanted me.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared a tiny bit. “I do not. And if I did, I wouldn’t disclose it. They gave you up because they didn’t want you.”

“That’s a lie!”

“No. It isn’t.” Without giving Abigail time to say anything else, she turned and flounced out of the room.

Anger squeezed Abigail like a fist. She’d opened the door for a conversation, and her mother had flat out lied. Her anger grew into a raging creature, straining at its chains.

That was absolutely it. She was going to escape their household, and she was going to do it the next morning.

***

Just before dawn, Abigail packed carefully, not that she had that much to take. Nothing they had given her over the years went into her bag, because they’d given her nothing that meant anything. Mostly, she’d received items to clean with. Yes, those were gifts with real sentimental value alright.

She packed clothes in her bag and a slip of paper with the information about her parents. Now she just needed someone who could help her find them. And she was pretty sure she knew of someone who could.

She crept downstairs and went to the study. Once inside, she leaned against the door for a moment and bit her lip.

She wasn’t a thief and the idea of taking something repulsed her. But she had no money of her own. And Lord knew she’d worked hard for them since she was little. They owed her enough to find her way back to her parents.

He kept a small sack of gold coins behind a stack of books on one of the shelves. She had overheard them talking about them and knew they were worth several hundred dollars.

She retrieved the little bag and took a dozen coins. She hoped it was enough. She didn’t know what they were worth individually.

She glanced around the office, and her gaze landed on a briefcase that no one other than her father was permitted to touch. What was in that briefcase? Papers? Probably. What if there was something in there about her adoption that would help her locate her parents? It was a long shot, but still…

A door opened up on the second floor.

She grabbed the briefcase.

“I’m sorry, Lord. I hope you’ll forgive me.” She don’t care if they did or not though.

She had one more theft to conduct.

Looking around like the thief she’d just become, she snuck out of the study, slipped through the back door, and hurried to the barn. She went inside and closed the door behind her. It was still pretty dark in the barn, but it was light enough to see what she was doing. She wanted to be off the property before anyone got up and decided to go outside for a morning stroll.

She went to the last stall where Ginger, a large pony, was stalled. She was almost a horse, but not quite. But she was plenty big enough for Abigail to ride comfortably. No one else liked the little mare because she wasn’t as tall as the other horses in the barn. Abigail was the only person who gave her any attention or rode her.

As far as Abigail was concerned, they didn’t deserve the little mare. The only bad thing was that she was a striking color and stood out like a black eye. She was golden with a chestnut and gold mane and tail.

A small horse of that lovely color would stand out by a mile anywhere she went. Well, too bad. She needed a way to travel, and they didn’t care one bit for Ginger.

She quickly groomed Ginger and saddled her. Abigail patted the horse’s sleek neck.

“Okay, girl. We’re going on an adventure.” She tied her bag and the briefcase to the saddle and then led Ginger outside. With a quick glance around, she mounted the little horse and took off at a canter.

She was headed for the next town over, Hampton Fields, where a young private investigator, Colton Drake, was always in the papers. He could help her find her parents.

When she reached town, she went to the bank and exchanged one of the gold coins for its value in dollars. She’d been half afraid they would accuse her of stealing it…which she had. But her transaction had gone off without incident.

From there, she went to the hotel and rented a room. As soon as she had her belongings in the room, she rode to the livery stable and rented a stall for Ginger.

Once Ginger was taken care of, she walked back to the hotel and locked herself in her room…and the briefcase. She set it on the bed and sat down, ready to try her hand at picking the lock. She’d never done something like that, but she’d never been a thief before either.

She took a pin out of her hair and began working on the lock, which proved maddening and unyielding. But she didn’t give up. She kept trying to trip the lock and then it dawned on her that maybe she needed to turn the pin around. The other end was more firm and the curved shape might trigger the lock easier.

She tried again without success, but she kept working with it until a soft click rewarded her efforts. She smiled in triumph over the stubborn lock and opened the briefcase.

It was filled with papers, as she’d assumed. Now to go through each and every one. Maybe they had information on her parents. And if not, maybe there was something else of value she could use. She picked up the first paper and began reading.

She didn’t find anything that might be valuable until halfway through the briefcase, when she found a ledger. She flipped through it, taking note of the names of people her parents had been doing business with.

She recognized a couple of names she’d heard the Wilsons talking about fairly often when they thought they were out of earshot of everyone else. Over the years, Abigail had gotten good at listening in on conversations in the study.

If they didn’t want anyone to hear their conversations, there had to be a reason for it. The ledger held names, dates, meeting places, and other information that didn’t mean anything to her. She would bet almost anything that what she was looking at represented something shady.

Were the Wilsons involved in something illegal? Or were they just selling merchandise to Silas Boone? While they hadn’t exactly been stellar parents to her, she’d never known them to be involved in criminal activity.

But why did they keep it in a locked briefcase? It didn’t make sense to her. But it was hard to imagine them as outright criminals. Maybe they were doing something slightly shady.

She didn’t know.

Regardless, the ledger didn’t have any value for her at the moment, but maybe it would later. She would hang on to it. She finished going through the briefcase but she didn’t find anything else that she thought might be useful. She wouldn’t bother taking it any further. Other than the journal, it was worthless, and for that matter, maybe the journal was worthless, too.

So much for that. It was time to go to the investigator’s office.

Chapter Two

Colton Drake leaned back in his desk chair and did his best to shut out his father’s complaints. He loved his father deeply, but sometimes, he needed to shut off his father’s constant diatribes.

“I can’t believe I lost another poker game,” he said in an overly loud voice and smacked his hand down on Colton’s desk.

His father, Robert Drake, had completely given in to the bottle. And gambling.

Colton got up and made his father a cup of strong, hot coffee. Maybe that would sober him up. Something certainly needed to.

It was nothing new. His father had been a falling-down drunk ever since Colton’s mother was killed during a botched bank robbery. She had simply been walking by when the gunfire had erupted from the bank. He had been ten years old when she was killed.

His father had been a sober, upstanding community member before he lost his wife. Her death had done something terrible to him. Something he’d never pulled himself out of. It was tragic, but other than watching out for his father and protecting him to the best of his ability, there wasn’t much else he could do.

“Hey, Pops, how about you and I walk home so you can take a nap?” Colton said. He loved coming to the office to spend time with Colton. But he usually grew tired after a while, and then he became cranky. It was best to cut if off before it happened.

His father looked up from the cup of coffee. “That sounds right nice, Son.”

“When you finish up your coffee we’ll head home and you can rest.”

His father nodded. “You’re a good son.”

Colton did his best for his father. In his mid-fifties, he looked fifteen years older. Losing Colton’s mother had wrecked him. Some men could recover from tragedy, his father couldn’t.

He finished off the cup of coffee and clapped his hat on his head. “I’m ready to go home for that nap.”

Colton grabbed his own hat. “I’ll lock up and we can be on our way.”

He followed his father out of his office and locked the door. “Come on, Pops, let’s take the long way home.”

They lived at the end of town in a two-story home. It was his father’s home, but he had taken over all the maintenance and care of the house. His father was no longer able to take care of it. So Colton did it for him.

“That sounds good,” his father said.

“I know you like going that way.

“The walk is good for these old legs.”

“Yeah, Pops, it is good for the legs. But you’re not old.” He didn’t like the idea of his father growing old, becoming frail, and eventually passing away. Assuming the alcohol didn’t kill him first.

His father chuckled. “I’m not ancient, but I’m feeling my years.”

There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his family, even when they caused him difficulty or put him at risk through foolish behavior. Which his father’s drinking and gambling had done time and again.

Unfortunately, one of the people his father had gotten into a mess with was a wanted outlaw, Silas Boone, whom he owed a debt. Boone usually made his way to town once a year and then completely disappeared for months.

He needed to hunt Boone down and hand him over to the law to remove the threat to his father once and for all. His father had no idea that Colton and Boone had crossed paths before. Though sadly, if he had, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference.

Of course, finding Boone was easier said than done. The man was wilier than a fox. His hideout had never been found. Maybe he moved around a lot and didn’t settle in a single place for long. Perhaps he’d learned from his brother’s mistake

Whatever the case might be, he needed to find the man. He wasn’t a bounty hunter, but he knew how to find people and things. It was how he made a living.

 

Along his father’s favorite way home, passing the general store, a harness shop, a candy shop, and a few other places his father liked to visit. Unfortunately, one of those places was the Silver Star Saloon where his father spent too much time.

Colton hated that the saloon was so close to their home. It made it much too easy for his father to mosey down there and have a drink or ten.

He’d thought about trying to talk his father into moving far enough away from town to curb some of his drinking activity. But his father didn’t want to leave the home he’d shared with Colton’s mother. And Colton would never try to force his father to leave something that important to him.

They chatted amiably until they reached the house. He opened the door and ushered his father inside.

“You want me to fix you something to eat, Pops?”

“No. I’m going to take a nap. Then I’ll make some coffee and maybe I’ll fix some supper for us.”

“You don’t have to do that, Pops. I don’t mind cooking for my family.”

His father smiled at him. “You’re my favorite son.”

“I’m your only son, Pops.”

His father laughed. “I know. But if you had a brother, you’d still be my favorite.”

Colton snorted. His father had always loved a good joke. At least the bottle hadn’t taken that from him.