Chapter 7

Shea stood on the kitchen porch ringing the bell to call the men in to breakfast. It was the season's first truly wintry day, and as she watched Cameron, Rand, and Owen tramp down the frozen lane puffing clouds of breath, she realized she couldn't expect Owen to sleep in the unheated tack room for very much longer. It was time she accepted her responsibilities and got the two of them settled somewhere for the winter.

Not that they hadn't liked being here at the farm. Owen had settled in better than Shea had ever dreamed he would. She and Lily had become fast friends. Rand was bright-eyed and inquisitive, headstrong and rambunctious, funny and dear—everything she hoped her own lost boy would be like when she finally found him.

Then there was Cameron, whose deep, rough voice she liked far too much. Who smelled too good. Who lit a strange, unexpected warmth inside her. She admired his intelligence, his wit, and his rare rich laughter. She liked that he took her ambitions seriously.

As Cam ushered Rand and Owen through the gate and up toward the house, Shea felt his protectiveness enfold her, too. Cam made her feel so safe. They all made her feel safe. It had been a very long time since she'd been safe. But if she meant for Owen and her to earn their keep, if she meant to find her son, Shea couldn't be seduced by that semblance of safety.

As the men stomped up onto the porch to wash, Shea went back into the kitchen to help Lily finish dishing up breakfast.

It was Saturday morning. The early chores were done, and all of them had gathered in the kitchen to enjoy the rarity of a leisurely breakfast. Banners of sunlight draped across the scarred pine table. The glassware and utensils twinkled in the light. Gold-edged steam rose in swirls from the heaping platters of eggs and bacon and biscuits.

They clasped hands once everyone was seated, and Lily offered a blessing. With Owen's cold fingers tucked tightly in her left hand and Lily's work-roughened palm clasped in her right, Shea felt so connected to these people, so grateful for their friendship.

A sharp burr of emotion caught in her throat. She wanted to save this moment, tuck it away forever. She'd done that with the evenings her father had played his fiddle by the fire, the rainy afternoons in the big house in New York when the women servants had gathered to do their mending, and the days when Simon had been well enough to walk with her in the park. They were the memories she took out and fingered when she was lonely and afraid. Yet sometimes, when finding Liam seemed hopeless, Shea wondered if this small store of memories were all she'd ever have.

Shea had just poured second cups of coffee all around when Cam turned to her. "Shea," he said, fishing in the pocket of his corduroy vest. "I have something here I want to give you."

"Something for me?" Shea couldn't fight the swell of anticipation that crept up her chest, or the quick pinch of eagerness. No one had given her anything since Simon died.

Cameron caught her hand in his and gently pressed a key into her palm. Shea closed her fingers around it, feeling the irregular shape of the metal against her skin and the warmth of Cameron's body.

"Why are you giving me this?" she managed to ask him.

Across the table Rand was squirming in his chair. Lily favored Shea with her one-sided smile, and Cam's eyes sparkled with mischief.

Shea's heart gave a sharp little kick of excitement.

"It's the key to the cabin down by the road," he told her.

"Down by the road?"

"The hired man's cottage," he went on. "It's small, and no one's lived there for more than a year. It needs some repairs and a good cleaning to make it habitable, but we thought you and Owen might like to use it for the winter."

Gratitude poured through her like sunshine. These people had done so much for Owen and her already that she could never repay them, and now they were offering them even more.

Then, on the heels of that flush of appreciation came an inexplicable wariness, the drag of unexpected reluctance. It was confusing, unsettling when just a few minutes before she'd been thinking how much she was going to miss the Gallimores.

"I can't think what to say," Shea murmured, fumbling for time to sort things through.

"Why don't we all walk down to the cabin so you can see exactly what it is we're offering you," Cameron suggested.

Owen hustled out the door, ten paces ahead of everyone else.

The rustic log house at the end of the lane had been the first building on the property. A trapper had raised it years before, and Cam and Lily had made do living there while the house on the rise was being built. The cabin had been improved several times since then and occupied by a series of hired hands. It consisted of one main room with a loft above and a lean-to grafted onto the back to serve as a bedroom.

"The roof's sound enough," Cameron observed, standing in the center of the main room with his hands on his hips staring up at the ceiling. "Though God knows the place does need cleaning and sprucing up."

Shea could imagine that with the cobwebs swept away and a fire glowing on the hearth, the cabin would be every bit as snug as the cottage where she'd grown up.

"I've a length of blue calico put by," Lily enthused, her face alight. "We could turn it into some perfectly lovely curtains..."

"I'll bring in wood every day," Rand promised. "And if you're here all winter, maybe I can teach you to win at checkers."

Shea laced her arms across her chest and surveyed the place a second time. "There isn't light enough to do photography here," she commented dubiously. "And surely no one would come all this way to have their portrait made."

"You could rent a studio in town and live out here," Cam suggested. Both he and Rand rode into Denver every day for work and school.

The Gallimores' open-handed generosity beguiled her. Lily's smile, Rand's excitement, and the warmth in Cam's eyes beguiled her. So why, Shea wondered, was she resisting?

"Before we decide, I think I'd like to go into Denver and see if there's studio space available," Shea hedged.

"Does that mean you don't want to stay with us?" Rand asked, clearly disappointed.

"It means she's a businesswoman who must consider her options," Cameron explained, though she could see the pleasure in his face had dimmed, as well.

Shea couldn't bear to look at Lily.

"Perhaps we should give Shea and Owen a chance to look over the cabin on their own," Cam went on, and he ushered his sister and Rand toward the door.

Once they were gone, Owen turned to her. "We staying?"

Shea could see unexpected hopefulness in Owen's face. "Is that what you want?"

He shifted from foot to foot.

Not once since Simon's passing had Owen questioned her decisions or expressed an opinion about where they went or what they did. What made taking this cabin so important? she wondered, and asked him outright.

"Like it here," Owen admitted, ducking his head.

Shea had always prided herself on being attuned to Owen's feelings, but she hadn't realized how he felt. Still, if she'd been so taken by the Gallimores, why wouldn't Owen feel the same?

She pressed him anyway. "What is it you like?"

He cringed like a turtle drawing back into his shell.

"What is it you like?" she persisted.

"He knows," Owen finally whispered.

"Who knows?"

"Judge."

She hadn't realized that Owen had formed such an attachment to His Honor. "What does the judge know?"

Owen hung his head. It was a full minute before he answered her. "About the war."

What exactly did Cameron Gallimore know about the war? Lily had said Cam fought for the Union, but Shea hadn't heard him moaning in his sleep caught in the throes of terrible dreams. He didn't appear to be terrified of gunfire. Cam didn't wall himself off the way Owen did.

But then, she didn't doubt Owen's word. If Owen said Cameron understood about the war, she believed him.

Owen rubbed his hands together. "Stay here, Sparrow. Please?"

Shea was stunned by the sudden lucidity in the old man's eyes. How could she have known him for all this time, traveled all these miles in his company, and never once caught a glimpse of this clarity, this other Owen?

No matter how wrong it felt to accept the cabin from the Gallimores, no matter how remaining on the farm seemed to threaten her own interests, Shea couldn't bring herself to refuse him.

"All right, we'll stay," she promised.

"Good." He nodded twice before his eyes clouded over again. "Good."

* * *

Shea left Owen in the cabin to contemplate their new home and headed for the photography wagon. The promise she'd made him lay like a rock in her belly, and she hoped that an hour or two of sweeping, scrubbing, and reorganizing the wagon would aid her digestion.

In truth, she was feeling better when Rand peeked around the back a good while later. "Shea?"

She looked up from the list of supplies she was making and smiled at him. "Come on in."

Rand accepted the invitation and climbed aboard. He settled on one of the wooden boxes across from her. "So, what is all this?" he asked her.

Shea suspected he'd been in the wagon before. What boy worth his salt wouldn't have come in and poked around? Now that she was here, he wanted to know what he'd seen.

She handed him a piece of the japanned steel. "This is the metal we use to make tintypes," she began in her most instructive voice. "These"—she pulled open the drawers beneath the dry sink—"are bottles of the chemicals that make that metal sensitive to the light."

She went on to elaborate, remembering how she'd gone through all this with the boy they'd met up in the mountains. Tyler Morran had been about Rand's age, and his eyes had shone with this same curiosity.

"Are you going to take a photograph of Pa, Aunt Lily, and me?" Randall asked when she was done.

Mindful of what Lily might think of having her likeness made, Shea answered carefully. "I'll discuss it with your father, and then we'll see."

Rand's shoulders slumped. "I was hoping you'd make our photograph and let me watch."

"I'll show you how this works when we get a studio in town," she promised him.

Rand seemed momentarily satisfied, though judging from the way he perched on the edge of the box, there was something more on his mind.

"Shea," he began, though he couldn't quite bring himself to look at her. "If—if someone overhears two people talking about a secret, should he let them know what he overheard?"

Shea put down her pencil and gave the boy her full attention. "I suppose it depends on the secret and the people involved," she answered carefully.

Rand frowned, a crease deepening across his brow.

He raised his gaze to hers. "I wasn't snooping. Honest, I wasn't."

Though her belly began to tighten, Shea did her best to draw him out. "I know you wouldn't pry into things that don't concern you."

He shifted again and looked down at his hands. "Well, this does concern me. It concerns Pa and Aunt Lily and me. They were in the kitchen talking when I came up on the porch."

Family secrets were dear things, especially to close-knit folks like the Gallimores, and Shea knew neither Lily nor Cam would welcome her interference.

Still, Rand wouldn't have come to her unless he needed someone to talk to—someone who wasn't part of whatever was bothering him. Perhaps he'd come to trust her in the weeks she'd been here. The notion sent a soft, sweet warmth sliding through her.

She shifted closer. "They didn't mean for you to hear what they were saying?"

"I don't think so."

Shea pursed her lips. Should she hear Rand out, then tell Lily and Cam what was bothering him? Should she suggest Rand go directly to his father? That's what Cam would want her to do, but she wasn't sure she could convince—

"They were talking about how Pa adopted me."

Rand's words sizzled down Shea's backbone with all the heat of a lightning bolt. She straightened abruptly. "He adopted you?"

Worried sage green eyes looked up at her. "If he adopted me, it means Pa isn't my real father, doesn't it?"

At the uncertainty in his voice, tenderness closed like a fist around her heart. Shea shifted across the aisle to the box where Rand was sitting and wrapped her arm around his shoulders.

She shouldn't be the one explaining what adoption was; it wasn't her place. Still, Rand had brought his questions to her, trusted her with his uncertainties. In the instant she had to frame an answer, Shea did her best to think what Cam would want her to say to his son.

"It's true that being adopted means you and your father aren't related by blood. But being a parent is—" The dark specter of her own secrets and regrets rose before her. "Being a parent is more than blood. It means taking care of a child every single day. It means seeing that he's healthy and happy. It means guiding him as he grows."

She hauled in a ragged breath, thinking of Liam.

"Being a parent means loving a child with all your heart," she continued with fierce conviction. "You know how much your father and your aunt Lily love you, don't you?"

Rand nodded.

"I can see how much they love you, too," she confirmed, just to be sure he knew. "You must never doubt for a moment that you're your father's son in every way that matters. You're your father and your aunt Lily's child because they've loved you and cared for you." Shea spoke the words unequivocally, determined that he would believe her.

"Even if they got me from an orphan train?"

If his first revelation had stunned her, these last two words seared into Shea as if they'd been dipped in acid. "An orphan train?"

"That's what they said."

The faint waver in his voice tore at her, and she tightened her arm around him. She longed to tell him all she'd learned about orphan trains—how city children like Rand and her Liam were herded on. How they were marched out onto the platforms of stations thousands miles from anyplace they knew and paraded in front of prospective parents. Her child must have been picked just that way, like a puppy from a litter. And so had Rand.

Shea bit down hard on the bitter words. Rand had just told her his most terrifying and closely guarded secret. What he needed was to be reassured and comforted.

She wrapped both arms around him and felt him nestle against her. He was more solid than she'd expected him to be, broader across the back and shoulders, outgrowing his childhood by leaps and bounds. Yet he was still just ten years old, and he needed the right answers.

"Do you know what orphan trains are?" she asked him.

"Sort of."

If she were wise, Shea thought, she'd climb right out of this wagon and take Rand to his father. If she were wise, she'd let Cameron explain this to him.

Instead she stroked Rand's hair. "Orphan trains brought children from crowded cities back east out to the West, where life wouldn't be so hard for them," she began. "People who wanted to open their homes and their hearts to the children met the trains and picked the boys and girls they wanted."

"And Pa and Aunt Lily picked me?"

She could still hear Rand's uncertainty and groped for words that would make him feel as if he was wanted, privileged, unique.

"They must have been able to see right off what a good boy you were," Shea said, squeezing his shoulder gently. "They realized even then what a fine, upstanding man you were going to grow up to be. They chose you, Rand, because they could tell you were special."

"They picked me because they thought I was special?" His voice wavered a little, and she hugged him closer.

"Very special," Shea rested her cheek against his hair. "You're the kind of child any parent would be proud to claim."

Cam and Lily were exactly the kind of parents every mother dreamed would take the child she'd given up.

"What I think," Shea went on, "is that it's time for you to tell your father what you've just told me. I think you need to hear what he and your aunt Lily have to say about how they came to adopt you."

Rand sat back and looked at her. "You don't think he'll be angry I found out?"

"Your father loves you," she encouraged him. "I think the questions you have left are ones only he can answer. Why don't you and I go find him?"

"Now?" His eyes widened. "You want to go find him now?"

"I'll go with you," she offered and rose to stand over him. "I'll help you explain how you found out you were adopted."

Rand didn't budge. "I don't want to talk to him. I don't want him to know I was listening."

She ached for him, for all that contrition and confusion and uncertainty. She held out her hand. "Your father loves you. He'll want to explain this to you in his own way."

"I don't want to talk to him about it!" Rand insisted, and sprang to his feet. "That's why I came to you."

"Rand, please! This is what's best!"

"No, it isn't!" he cried and pushed past her. He leaped out of the back of the wagon and was halfway to the corral by the time she'd clambered to the ground.

As Rand scrambled over the fence, Jasper lifted his head and trotted toward him. The boy threw his arms around his pony's neck, and the neat little roan turned his head to nuzzle his boy.

Shea stood watching them for a moment more, then let out her breath. Rand had owned up to a lot today. He needed time to think this through, time to gather the courage he'd need to face his father. There was nothing to be gained by pushing him.

She sagged back against a wagon wheel, weary now that Rand was gone. Her hands were shaking and her heart was chugging like a freight on an uphill run. She couldn't help wondering if she'd said the right things to Rand, the things that would convince him to talk to his father. To the father who loved him.

She gave a long, bone-deep shudder as she realized what it was she'd just done. In telling Rand about the orphan trains, she'd put herself in the place of someone who'd adopted a child—not someone who'd given one up. She'd cried a lifetime's worth of secret tears because she'd given up her boy. She'd wrapped her hopes and dreams around finding him. Yet in the space of a few short sentences she'd disavowed all that heartache.

What if it was people like Lily and Cam who had taken Liam? What would she do if Liam had come to love his adopted parents the way Rand loved the Gallimores? What right did she have to arrive unannounced and disrupt the only life her son could remember? And why, in God's name, was she trekking all over the West looking for a boy who might not want his mother back?

Shea swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "My boy does want me," she insisted under her breath. "He is waiting for me to come for him. Once I have him, once he's mine, I'll make a wonderful life for both of us."

Shea straightened slowly, feeling years older than she had half an hour before. She raked her fingers through her hair. She drew a breath and let it go.

No matter what her own concerns, she needed to let Cam know what Rand had discovered. At first she didn't have any idea how she was going to do that, then she realized that back in the wagon she had just the thing to open their conversation.

* * *

Shea had been dreading this moment all day. The rock that had lain in her belly since early this morning had migrated north, lodging at the base of her throat, making breathing all but impossible.

"Please help me find the right things to say to Cam," she whispered, then hastily crossed herself. She hadn't had all that much to say to the Lord since she'd given Liam up, but she could use a little help tonight. A little wisdom and insight.

Her hands shook as she reached for the pressboard portfolio she'd taken from the bottom of her valise. She clutched it against her chest like a shield and headed resolutely toward the kitchen.

Once she'd begun to recover from her wounds, Cameron had taken to working at the kitchen table in the evenings. That's where Shea found him now, his books and papers spread beneath the golden glow of the kerosene lamp.

With his head bent in concentration, lamplight threaded his crow black hair with veins of amber and highlighted the steadfast lines of his brow and jaw. He had such strong features, such an uncompromising face, that for a moment Shea lost her courage.

If she had come here for her own sake, she might have quailed. But knowing she was doing this for Rand, so he'd have no doubts about where he belonged, held her steadfast. She curled her clammy fingers around the edge of the portfolio, and stepped across the threshold.

"Shea," Cameron greeted her, one of his rare, slow smiles dawning through the drape of his mustache. "What are you doing up so late?"

Shea had deliberately waited to talk to him until Lily and Rand were abed. She didn't want either of them overhearing. "I've brought something I'd like to show you," she said, "if you've a moment to spare."

"I was just finishing up," he said and closed his books. "What is it you've got?"

Shea perched on the chair beside him and opened the portfolio. "These are some photographs I took while we were traveling," she explained, hoping the images would speak more clearly than she could herself.

The top picture showed a girl and slightly older boy seated on the steps of a neat, brick farmhouse. The girl's face was wreathed in smiles, and the boy's arm lay protectively across her shoulders. It could almost have been a photograph of Cameron and Lily in their younger days.

"Paul and Susan are children I met near Nebraska City," Shea told him. "Their family was one of the first to homestead in the area."

"I can see the farm is very prosperous." He indicated the rows of fruit trees visible at the side of the house. "But I thought itinerant photographers usually made pictures of the entire family."

"And sometimes even the family cow," Shea confessed with a smile. "I did do that kind of photograph for these folks, too," she went on, her belly quivering, "but I also wanted a picture with just the children. All of these are pictures of children."

She felt his regard slide over her, astute, curious. Her stomach rolled. She wasn't willing to own up to her reasons for taking these pictures if she could help it, but Cameron didn't question her.

She turned to the next photograph, one of a boy of eight or nine clinging to the bridle of a spotted pony. "This is John," she said. "He's apprenticed to a blacksmith."

She'd taken to John immediately, liking his brashness and his curiosity, seeing a bit of herself in his bright grin and curly hair. Until she'd talked to his parents, she'd all but convinced herself she'd found her son. But John had been placed out only the year before—far too late to be her Liam.

Cam slid her another sidelong glance. "The boy looks like he enjoys his work."

Shea had showed him half a dozen other photographs when he covered her hand with his. A shiver of his energy danced up her arm.

"Shea," he began, "is there a particular reason you're showing me these photographs?"

Her pulse rate surged. This was the question she'd been wanting him to ask, the very reason she'd showed him the children she'd photographed while she was searching for Liam. Still, the words came hard. "All these children were sent west on orphan trains."

Shea felt his fingers flex on hers, quick, involuntarily.

"Orphan trains?" he asked. Wariness darkened the blue of his eyes, as if he knew what she'd come to tell him and wanted to forestall her. "Is there some reason you thought I'd be interested in photographs of children from orphan trains?"

She swallowed around the constriction in her throat. "Rand came to talk to me today."

"What was it he wanted?"

She turned her hand beneath his and clasped his fingers in her own. "Rand knows how he came to be your child," she said gently. "He knows you chose him from an orphan train."

She saw a succession of emotions flicker across Cam's face: dread and resignation, confusion and concern. "Is Rand all right?" he asked her.

Shea curled her opposite hand over his. "He's confused. He needs to have his questions answered."

Cam's shoulders bunched defensively. "How did he find out?"

"He overheard you and Lily talking."

She could see the blame settle over him like fine dust, gathering in the creases at the corners of his eyes.

"I've been wanting to tell him how he came to us for months," he said on a weary sigh, "but Lily keeps insisting he's too young."

"She needs to hang on to him as long as she can."

Shea knew now why Lily stood on the porch in the morning and watched Rand ride down the lane. She'd seen how carefully she smoothed her boy's clothes before putting them away, and knew that there were always molasses cookies in the cookie jar because they were Rand's favorites. Lily had wrapped her life around this child. Small wonder the idea of telling Rand he'd had another mother, another life threatened her.

"But why would Rand go to you instead of coming to Lily or me?" Cameron asked her.

She squeezed his hand, wishing she could dispel the raw note of disillusionment in his voice. "He came because I'm a stranger here, because I've got no part in this."

He came because he trusted me.

Shea treasured that trust, even if she'd risked losing it by telling all this to his father.

She looked into Cameron's face. "Rand's whole world changed when he heard you and Lily talking. He isn't who he thought he was, and you aren't who he thought you were, either."

But didn't she mean to change Liam's world just this way? Didn't she mean to reveal that he was someone else entirely when she finally found him? The insight appalled her, and she hastily shoved it away.

She had to make sure Cam talked to his boy and got things settled. Shea leaned in close at Cameron's shoulder. "Rand discovered the truth without having anyone to tell him what it meant," she explained, "without having anyone to reassure him. He wants to talk to you, Cam, but he just doesn't know how."

He dropped his head into his hands. His voice came ruffled on a sigh. "God knows, it seems like Rand's been ours forever."

Though she knew she had no right to ask, the question was on her lips before she thought to hold it back. "How is it you came to adopt him?"

Cam steepled his forefingers against his lips. "Do you know how Lily came to be scarred?" he asked.

"Emmet told me."

Desolation skimmed the surface of his eyes like scudding clouds reflected in a night blue lake. That resolute mouth lost its resolution, the strength in that strong jaw eroded. As ghastly as Lily's burns were, as devastating as losing her beauty must have been for her, this was worse. Whatever Cam was remembering ate at the very core of who he was.

Yet when he finally spoke his voice was low and cool. "Our mother died not quite a year after the guerrillas came through Centralia, and it was then I realized what Lily had become. Though she'd physically recovered from her burns—" Cam pressed his lips together as if just speaking of this took unimaginable courage. "—She was barely alive. She wandered the house like a wraith. She rarely spoke. She never saw anyone. I moved my law practice into a room downstairs because I didn't want her to be alone there."

Shea could imagine how Lily must have felt—disconnected from a world she'd once been part of, walled off, separate, terrified of how people would respond to her.

"Once I was there every day, I began to notice she kept her own kind of schedule. I'd find her peering around the edges of the curtains every morning and every afternoon. She was watching the children going back and forth to school. She watched them with such intensity, with such longing, that I got it into my head that what Lily needed was a child."

Shea nodded, encouraging him.

"It was a good while later that I found an article in the newspaper announcing that orphan trains were coming to Missouri." His tone warmed, and Shea thought the memories of that time must not be quite so bleak. "I made inquiries and when the next train was due, I bought Lily a bonnet and mourning veil and loaded her into the carriage. She cried for two whole days, all the way to St. Joe. I wasn't even sure she'd go and see the children once we arrived, but I didn't know what else to do for her."

Shea's throat went dry. "You—you adopted Rand from a train that stopped in St. Joseph, Missouri?"

Cam nodded. "There was a little frame church not too far from the St. Joe station. They'd already begun letting people select the orphans when Lily and I arrived. The children were lined up in chairs on a platform across the front of the sanctuary. They were a ragtag lot. Most of them looked scared to death; some of the younger ones were crying."

Shea's stomach twisted. This was just what she had imagined—children put on display to be poked and prodded and haggled over. Liam must have gone through exactly what Cameron was describing.

"The older children seemed to have been chosen first by folks who were looking for hands to work their farms, and a few of them managed to convince their new parents to foster their brothers and sisters, as well. But inevitably some of the younger children were left behind. Though the Children's Aid Society agents were busy making out the indenture papers of the foster parents to sign, they did their best to keep track of the families so the brothers and sisters could at least write to each other. But still, it was a sad thing to watch those boys and girls going to different families."

Shea knew how it tore your heart to lose every tie you had, to see people you loved manacled and hauled away, to hold your mother's or your sister's hand as they lay dying, to wake from dreams of home with the smell of peat in your nostrils.

Cam took up his story again. "Finally only a handful of children were left. There were three boys and two girls about six or seven, and four or five toddlers not much over two years old.

"One of the agents told us it was unusual for the Society to place out children so young, but because there were so many older girls on this particular train, they'd sent the little ones west to find new homes."

"But, Cam, how did you choose?" she whispered. "How could you look into all those little faces and pick just one?"

Shea had never been sure which would have been worse—to sit on that platform waiting to be chosen or to have to choose a single child.

"In the end," he said, "it was Rand who chose Lily and me."

"How?" she asked him. "How did he choose you?"

Cameron smiled with the memory. "As the crowd thinned, we went and sat at the edge of the platform. At first Lily refused to uncover her face, but I said whichever child we took had a right to see who we were and decide if he wanted to go with us."

Shea could imagine how difficult saying that must have been for Cam, how horrifying it must have been for Lily to lift her veil and reveal her scars to strangers. "What happened?"

"Two of the children cried and ran away. But one boy—he wasn't much more than a toddler, really—came toward us. He looked us up and down"-—Cam's voice deepened—"and then he reached right out and pressed his fingers against Lily's withered cheek.

"When that baby touched her, Lily came alive for the first time since she'd been burned. She reached out and pulled him into her arms. 'I think this one picked me to be his mother,' was all she said. And that's how Rand came home with us."

Shea swallowed around the knot in her throat. "It's a wonderful story," she told him, imagining the joy in Lily's eyes, a joy that echoed in them today. "It's exactly what Rand needs to hear from you. He needs to know that from the first you belonged to him. That he belonged to you. That he's the one that made you a family. You need to tell him as soon as you can."

Now that she'd come to know the Gallimores and seen how they loved their boy, how could she think about interfering with another family to reclaim her son? Yet how could she turn away after searching all this time?

Shea shook her head and pushed away those unanswerable questions. She couldn't consider them here or now. She couldn't consider them when every day brought proof of how happy their adopted child had made Lily and Cam. And what wonderful parents they'd been to him.

Hastily she pushed to her feet and began gathering her pictures—pictures of the more than three dozen orphans she'd managed to find. They were pictures of children whose lives she'd have disrupted in an instant if she'd thought they were Liam.

Cam rose and stood over her. "I know this can't have been easy for you to tell me. I can see how affected you are by the orphan train stories. But I want to tell you how much I appreciate your letting me know what's on Rand's mind."

Shea's fingers fumbled on the photographs and all at once she realized that in exchange for the truth about Rand's concerns, Cam had given her a few more bits of information to add to the store she'd been collecting.

Then it struck her that if she asked exactly the right questions, perhaps he could tell her even more.

"Do you remember the name of the church where they'd taken the orphans?" she asked carefully, averting her eyes lest he see more in them than she wanted him to see. If he could tell her that, maybe she could write the pastor. Maybe he would remember one particular child and know what had become of him.

"It was a Baptist church." Cam narrowed his eyes as if that would bring the past into clearer focus. "First Baptist Church, perhaps?"

"And just when was it you got Rand in St. Joe?"

"It was the year before we came here. 1866."

Shea straightened abruptly, but she dared not look at him. "What month exactly?"

"November."

Around her the world took on a particular brittle clarity. She became unaccountably aware of the coals hissing in the stove, and the screen door creaking in the rising wind. She became unbearably aware how the blacks and whites in her photographs shaded to gray.

This couldn't be happening.

"November of 1866." Her words came on a shuddering breath.

Because so few rail lines had gone west nine years ago, many of the orphan trains had passed through St. Joe. Only the winter before had Shea finally learned when Liam had been placed out. It was when he was almost two years old, in November of 1866.

In the space of a heartbeat, a dozen coincidences converged: that Rand's hair had the same reddish sheen as hers, that he cocked his head in a way that reminded her so much of her mother, that he handled horses with her brother Sean's innate skill. And his father's gentleness.

It wasn't possible.

After these years of searching, of tracing dozens of children, of writing letters and ferreting out the tiniest shreds of information on Liam's placement, how could she have found her son by purest chance?

Fate couldn't be so cruel.

Certainly it wouldn't have led her here, to these people and this boy. To this family she'd come to care for so deeply. Rand wasn't the son she'd searched so long to find—was he?

Her mind raced. Even if Rand was her son, how could she think of taking him away? How could she destroy the Gallimores? How could she deny Lily the single thing that kept her alive? And Mary, Mother of God! How could she make a better home for Liam than this fine place, or be a better parent than Cam or Lily?

But if she refused to acknowledge this boy was her son, she'd be giving up the only dream she'd ever allowed herself.

Shea closed her hands around the photographs, pictures of children who weren't her boy, and struggled with her need to claim the child who was. She clutched the papers tighter, as the future she'd imagined for herself disintegrated around her.

A tear plopped unexpectedly into the center of the photograph she'd made of Paul and Susan. Another rolled down the edge of the portfolio. A third spattered onto the back of her hand. Shea stared at the drops, hardly realizing what they were.

Cam must have seen the tears, because he tucked a finger beneath her chin and raised her face to his. "Shea, what is it? What's the matter? Why are you crying?"

Misery closed her throat, and Shea couldn't think of a way to answer him.

"Oh, Shea," Cam murmured, tenderness rife in that soul-deep voice. He wrapped his arms around her.

Though she knew she had no right to accept what he was offering, Shea leaned into him. She nestled against the bulk of him, pressing her nose into the rough-woven poplin of his Saturday shirt. He smelled of fresh air and sunshine and hard work.

She wanted desperately to absorb the comfort he was offering. But how could she accept succor from this man when only moments before she'd realized that his son was her own lost boy? When she could, only hours and days from now, be telling him she wanted her son back?

Unaware of how she could destroy his world, Cam bent over her, smoothing his palms from her shoulders to her waist, conforming her body to his.

He felt so good against her, so sure, so safe. So comfortable and welcoming. A sob worked its way up her throat.

"Oh, Shea," he whispered and tipped her face up to his. There was such tenderness in his fingertips as he swiped the tears from her cheeks. There was such sweetness in his eyes.

"You mustn't cry," he murmured. "You mustn't cry."

And when she couldn't seem to stop, he bent his head and kissed her.

It was a kiss that began with the most gentle graze of lips, a slide of warmth and texture. It became a consoling skim of his mouth on hers, a pure and gentle intimacy. It grew on a mingled breath and flourished with the brush of their tongues. Then all at once, that tender touch of solace transformed itself into something else.

It was as if one moment they were standing barefoot on a beach, the breakers foaming gently around them, and the next they were swept out to sea.

They floundered amidst a swirl of sensations neither of them had anticipated or was ready for. Just that quickly the world of consolation and consequences liquefied. Their breath raged rough and ragged in their throats. Their hands clutched, hers charting the bow of his back and the breadth of his shoulders. His palms slid down to the soft, full curve of her derriere, and he drew her against him.

Shea shivered as all that was female in her melted into him, going fluid and soft and welcoming. He raised his hand to her breast, cupped his palm to the shape of her.

"My God! Shea," he whispered and her soul caught fire.

"Pa."

Before either of them had time to consciously recognize the voice, they jerked apart. Shea stepped back dazed, her senses humming, her mind grappling to understand why she was standing here alone, while Cam stood three feet away devouring her with his eyes.

"Pa?"

The sentient cloud of physical allure that had rolled up so unexpectedly between Cam and her blew away like a squall before a freshening wind.

Rand was poised on the threshold into the kitchen, tousled, barefoot, blinking in the light.

This boy.

Her son.

The realization swamped her, set her head to spinning with wonder and incredulity. Her son was here before her now, solid and real after so many years of living only in her imagination. Joy burgeoned in her chest, filling her, making laughter bubble in her throat and fresh tears sting her eyes.

She needed to reach for him, hold the weight of her child against her chest the way she had when he was hours old. She wanted to feel the rise and fall of his breathing beneath her palms. She wanted to savor his scent, stroke the hair at the nape of his neck with her fingertips.

She wanted to tell Rand who she was—and who he was.

Instead Shea stood crushing the orphan train photographs against her chest, as ten years of guilt and loneliness and self-denial clamored that she speak.

"Pa?" Rand said again, beginning to sound uncertain as the silence in the kitchen lengthened.

"What—what are you doing downstairs?" Cam's own voice seemed a little frayed.

And then Shea realized all at once what they'd been doing in front of this child. In front of her child. A flush scorched to her hairline.

She could see the boy was flustered, too. "I—um—came—um—down for a glass of water."

"The bucket and dipper are there on the sink," Cam directed unnecessarily, following after the boy, dipping a cup of water for him as if he were a far younger child. He stood with his hand cupped to her boy's back with a gentleness that tore at Shea's heart.

How could she tell this boy who she was, if it meant destroying something so precious as this father's love? How could she hurt these people who had been so good to Owen and her, so wonderful to her boy?

Shea turned away, fumbled the photographs into her portfolio, and jerked at the strings.

"I—I was just going off to bed myself," she said.

Her voice was trembling, but she didn't even try to control it. "So I bid you good night."

"Good night," the boy and his father echoed.

Once she'd been swallowed up in the shadows of the dining room, Shea looked back at her son. In the lift of Rand's arced eyebrows and the quirk of his mouth, she rediscovered the man who had been his father. She caught the play of a dimple that reminded her suddenly of her sister Mary Margaret. And though she was seeing Rand Gallimore with new eyes, she realized this boy was everything she dreamed he would be.

Then as she watched, Cam bent close to the boy, speaking to him with concern etching the contours of his lean face. With love in his eyes, he spoke to the boy in a way that excluded everyone else. Including her.

And in that moment Shea knew she couldn't stay on at the farm. She couldn't stand by and watch how Cam was with her son, or see proof every day that her boy was the light in Lily's world. She couldn't stay here and make the decision she had to make, the decision that could change everything and disrupt every one of their lives.

She needed time. She needed space. No matter what she'd promised Owen this morning, they had to leave.

* * *

Cameron stared after Shea, his body still thrumming with the unexpected longing her kiss had fired up in him, his mind churning with all she'd said about his son. He turned back to where the boy was drinking water as if his life depended on finishing every drop.

How much of what had gone on between Shea and him had the boy seen? Too much, Cam suspected.

But that wasn't what he needed to talk to his son about tonight. He had to speak with Rand about his adoption, tell him how he'd come to be with Lily and him. Rand needed to hear how much they loved him. Every child deserved to be secure within his family and if Rand had doubts, a father's job was to reassure him.

Cam shifted on his feet and cleared his throat. "Shea and I were talking about you just before you came down to get a drink," he began, then did his best to ignore the glance Rand slid across the rim of the cup at him. It was a glance that said he knew exactly what his father and Shea had been doing when he'd interrupted them—and it hadn't been talking.

Embarrassment scorched up Cam's jaw, but he didn't let his own discomfort deter him. "Shea seemed to think," he went on, "that you had some questions I needed to answer."

Rand set his cup on the edge of the sink. "She told you I found out about the orphan train, didn't she?"

Cam inclined his head. "She thought it would make it easier for you if she told me."

Rand looked down at his bare toes. "I—I didn't know how to tell you what I heard. I thought you'd be mad at me for listening."

Cam reached across and clasped Rand's shoulder. "It's been weeks since your aunt and I had that conversation, and you've been stewing over this ever since, haven't you?"

"I couldn't figure out why you hadn't told me about being adopted."

Cam squeezed his son's shoulder gently. "Where did you think you came from?"

"I thought you had been married and my mother ran away," the boy confessed in a rush. "I thought that's why you never talked about her. I—I thought because of that you were..."

Cameron squeezed again. "Were what?"

Tears rose in Rand's eyes and Cam could see how hard he was trying not to cry. "I thought you were ashamed of me."

Cam pulled his son close, cradling him against his chest as he had cradled Shea not so long before.

"Oh, Randy," he murmured. "I could never be ashamed of you. You're the finest son any man could have." A shiver of feeling crept into his own voice as he went on. "No one's ever been prouder of a boy than I am of you. I'm proud of how hard you try at school, proud of how much you help around the farm, proud that you're honest and thoughtful and kind to people. And your Aunt Lily thinks the sun comes up in the morning because you're here with us."

He felt the boy shudder in his arms. "Does—does Aunt Lily really think that?"

Cam hugged his son tighter. It was closer to the truth than the boy would ever know. "Why do you think she goes around singing in the morning the way she does?"

"I like it when she sings."

"So do I," Cam admitted. There was a time in his life when he thought Lily's song had been silenced forever. Adopting Rand had taught her a whole new melody; he'd saved her life.

Cam held onto his son in silence, feeling the warmth and life in him, a promise to the future every man wanted to believe in. And he most of all.

"Did Shea tell you anything about orphan trains?" he asked, when Rand's tears had abated to sighs and sniffling.

He felt Rand nod against his chest. "She said children were sent from the city on the orphan trains so they could have a better life. She said people out here took children because they wanted to make them part of their families."

Cameron blessed Shea for giving the boy such a comforting view of a controversial enterprise. "Well, Shea would know," he observed, his suspicions about Shea's interest in the orphan trains sharpening.

"She said you picked me off the orphan train because I was special."

Cam leaned back far enough to look into his son's face. It was tear-streaked, and his eyes were red. Cameron gently smoothed down his sleep-tumbled hair.

"You have no idea how special you were to your aunt and me," he confirmed, thinking back. "Do you remember anything that happened before we came here to Colorado?"

"I remember the old house in Missouri. There was a swing in a tree out back, and Aunt Lily used to swing me. You had a horse named Ned, and there were children next door I played with."

Rand paused to think. "And I remember being in church. I remember sitting in the front of it, not like we sit sometimes in the rows of benches. And Aunt Lily was on the edge of this little stage."

Cam stared at him. "You really remember that?" Rand couldn't have been more than two years old when they'd gone and gotten him in St. Joe. "Well, that's a very good thing for you to remember. It was the day we got you. The day you picked us."

Rand sniffed in surprise. "I picked you?"

Cameron could see that day now just as clearly as when he'd described it to Shea earlier. He remembered the terror in Lily's eyes and how afraid he'd been that he was making a mistake by forcing her into this.

"When some of the children saw your Aunt Lily's face, they ran away."

"Because of her burns, you mean?"

Cam nodded. "But you came up to her and put your hand right on her cheek. And we knew the moment you did that you were meant to be our boy."

He hugged Rand close again, and his own throat went tight as Rand hugged him back. "Don't doubt for a moment how much we love you," he whispered hoarsely. "No two people could be more pleased and proud of any boy than we are of you. No parents could love their son more. If you ever have any doubts about that, I want you to come to me. To me or your Aunt Lily."

"All right," Rand promised.

They clung together for a moment more before Cam stepped away. "Are there any more questions you want to ask me?"

Rand thought for a moment, then beamed up at him. "No, Pa."

Cam let out his breath, feeling weak-kneed and battered, yet strangely content.

"I'm going to tell your Aunt Lily that you and I had this talk," Cam warned him. "And I wouldn't be surprised if there are things she'll want to say to you, too. But I don't want you worrying about that. She loves you every bit as much as I do. She's every bit as proud of you as I am. You understand me?"

"Yes, Pa," the boy answered.

"Good," he said on a nod. "Then let's head on up to bed. Dawn seems to come earlier than I ever expect it to."

"But in the morning Aunt Lily will be singing, won't she?"

Cam reached to douse the light. "You bet she will."

He heard his son's voice in the dimness. "Pa?"

"Yes."

"You shouldn't be embarrassed that I caught you kissing Shea. I think she's really pretty."

Cam burst out laughing. "So do I," he agreed and slung his arm around Rand's shoulders.