Safely Hidden in His Pure Love – Extended Epilogue

Emily tugged the diaper onto Johnny, and he blinked his big blue eyes up at her. He was a serious baby, not one to cry all the time, but watching, always watching.

“There, you’re all clean now,” Emily told him. 

He waved one of his tiny hands in the air, and Emily gripped it. “Can you try to stay clean for just a little while? We have friends coming, and I’d rather you didn’t soil yourself while they are holding you.”

Johnny waved his hand again, but Emily wasn’t sure if that was in agreement or not.

“Well, as long as you try your best,” she said, rubbing his full tummy. Johnny burped, and Emily laughed. “I suppose manners will have to wait, won’t they?”

She scooped up her son and went to the door, standing in the entrance to their humble abode as she watched Jake guide the horse toward their house. She saw Reverend McKee and Sheriff Caulfield sitting next to him. The reverend waved eagerly while the sheriff nodded his head. 

It was time for a visit, no matter how covert they had to be. Emily hadn’t had the chance to thank them properly for the risks they took for her. 

“Johnny, will you let one of them hold you so I can finish cooking? I know you won’t get any of the food I’m making, but I promise it will be worth it, yes?”

Johnny stared at her face without expression.

“Hello!” Emily called when the wagon was close enough. Her yell startled Johnny, and he furrowed his tiny eyebrows.

Jake hopped off the wagon as did the reverend and the sheriff. Jake led the horse to the pasture beside their house while their guests came toward Emily on the porch.

“What a beautiful gift from God!” Reverend McKee said upon reaching her. He reached forward and cautiously touched Johnny’s tiny, perfectly-formed fingers. Johnny waved his hand at the reverend.

“He’s already learning how to say ‘hello’,” Emily joked. 

“Hello to you too,” the reverend said. He reached for the child, and Emily handed him over. He clearly had practice, probably from holding every newborn baby in Jacobstown. 

Emily nodded to Sheriff Caulfield.

“Thank you for coming,” she said to him, not sure exactly how to proceed. Then, she remembered that they were all still standing out on the porch. “Oh, come inside. Please. Have a seat.”

She bustled inside and motioned to the sofa and two armchairs. The sheriff plopped into one while the reverend perched carefully on the edge of the sofa, touching Johnny gently. 

Emily turned toward the kitchen. She had improved her cooking skills a lot since she and Jake had moved to Austin, but having Johnny had distracted her from her pursuits. However, she was making a meal that she felt confident would be delicious.

Jake entered the house and approached Emily, shamelessly swooping her into his arms and planting a kiss on her forehead.

“How has Johnny been today?” 

Emily pointed subtly to the pile of dirty diapers in the corner. “Very busy,” she said.

Jake laughed and squeezed her hand before joining the men in the sitting room. Emily had a few minutes to focus solely on the food, without having to worry about where Johnny was and if he was okay. He was only six weeks old, and she couldn’t believe that he was growing so quickly. Jake encouraged her to stay in bed and rest with him, but she couldn’t stay still for long, even when her body felt exhausted.

She finished peeling the potatoes that had been interrupted when Johnny had demanded to be fed. She plopped them into the pot of water that had significantly decreased in the time it had been boiling. She added more water and allowed the potatoes to cook while she checked on the meat. It was a bit overdone. 

Of course it was. The meat was overdone and hot, while the potatoes had not even been started. She frowned at the meal. She would get better at this. She just needed more time to improve. She reentered the living room, taking the final spot on the sofa which was next to Jake. 

“Emily has been staying very busy,” Jake told the others, his hand around her shoulders as soon as she sat. “Johnny may look like a calm baby, but he’s deceiving you.”

Johnny was gripping the reverend’s hand tightly.

“He’s telling me that he is always this calm,” Reverend McKee spoke up. “He says anything else you say is pure imagination.”

Emily laughed. “Oh no, I had no idea how often babies eat. He’s eating three times during the night, sometimes four.” She shook her head as she looked at her child, feeling tired at the thought of another sleepless night before her. 

“He’s learning,” the reverend said. “He’ll sleep through the night before you know it, then you’ll wonder where your little baby went. Enjoy each moment as it comes.”

Emily nodded, knowing the advice was good. She had many friends in the church in Austin, and many of them had multiple children. They always told her that she should love her children as much as possible, because they grew up too quickly.

Johnny opened his mouth and burped again, causing everyone to laugh.

Jake turned to the sheriff, who had been quiet up until that moment, fiddling with his hat. 

“Sheriff Caulfield told me he had an update for us, but he wouldn’t tell me anything on the ride from the train station,” Jake explained to Emily. “He said he would tell me once you were present. So, Sheriff? What’s the update?”

The sheriff placed his hat back on his head and nodded to both of them. “You’ll never believe what happened the day before we left. The government of California showed up to have a talk with the Cassidys. There were a few higher-up police officers from the capital. They talked with me first before talking to the Cassidys, so I got the whole story.”

Emily gripped the edge of her dress tightly as she leaned in to hear what had happened. She knew it wasn’t right to wish ill-luck on someone, but she couldn’t help it with the Cassidys. They had never been honest folks, and the way they had tricked her was despicable.

“Apparently, the booming business at the saloon wasn’t the only reason they always had so much money to throw around. They never paid taxes—not on their land or building. All these years, they’ve owned the land and ignored their duty to the government.”

Emily absorbed the information for a moment and tried to understand what it meant. Olivia and Slim had always been reluctant to let any money slip through their hands, whether it was to buy new glasses because their old were cracked and broken, or for anything else. She could easily believe that they had purposely foregone their duty to the government.

“What happened?” Emily finally asked in a breathless whisper. 

“They’ve arrested them both,” Sheriff Caulfield crowed.

Jake stood up suddenly, and Emily looked up at him. He was smiling just as broadly as he had when he found out they were having a child. “Sheriff, please tell me this isn’t some elaborate joke.”

“Legrasse, you know me,” the sheriff said. “I wouldn’t joke about something like that. I asked the men who spoke with me what they planned to do with the Cassidys, and they said they would evaluate the land and business and make sure that their tax statements had the right value. Then, they would take whatever land was necessary in order to pay back the debt to the government.”

Jake slowly sank back down. “At which point, they will be released to continue their business of running a saloon.”

The sheriff now grinned widely. “Not exactly. You see, that would have been what happened if they had gone with the feds nice and easy, like, but you know those two; they weren’t going to walk away from their land and business. The saloon might have been looted as soon as they did. Instead of losing a third of their property, they’re going to lose the whole thing.”

“Why?” Emily asked, fixing her eyes on the sheriff’s face and gripping Jake’s hand so tightly that the fingers on his hand began to lose color.

“They tried to bribe the feds. Slim held out a hundred dollars and figured he would be able to skip out on paying the property taxes.” The sheriff laughed and slapped his knees. “They’re going away for a long time.”

Emily was silent for a moment as she considered the information. The Cassidys were really gone. They were no longer separated by state lines. They were separated by bars, but this time, the Cassidys were the ones imprisoned, and Emily was the one free. This was how it should be. 

Johnny whined a little, fussing in the reverend’s arms, and Emily remembered where she was. She scooped up her son but didn’t say anything. She was safe. She and her family were safe.

 

The next day, Emily began her usual tasks with her mind on Sheriff Caulfield and what he had said. The two had spent the night in their house before heading to visit the sheriff’s family a couple of towns over. Emily couldn’t stop thinking about the Cassidys in a dank, dirty cell like she had been.

Johnny whined.

“What’s wrong?” Emily asked him. He shut his eyes and balled his hands into tiny fists, turning back and forth as he fussed. “You can’t be hungry; you just ate. Do you have a dirty diaper again?” Emily checked, but Johnny was clean.

She picked him up and rocked him back and forth which seemed to calm him. As soon as she tried to set him down, he started fussing again.

“Why are you crying now?” she asked, feeling upset herself. 

Being a mother was often confusing. She didn’t know what the child wanted, and her neighbors who were mothers were a short ride away. She couldn’t show up at their houses every time she had a question. She had to figure this out herself.

“Okay, Johnny, tell me what’s wrong,” she said, looking into his tiny face. He opened his eyes briefly, then squeezed them shut again and began bawling. He rarely cried except faintly during the night when it was time to eat.

Emily walked him back and forth, and his crying tamped down. He still fussed softly, though.

“Please don’t get sick,” she said to him, kissing his forehead.

His fussing had covered the sound of the wagon’s arrival, and Emily jumped when Jake came through the door.

“I’ve brought you a visitor, Emily,” he said. He looked happy, but Emily didn’t feel up to a visitor at the moment. She wanted to figure out what was wrong with Johnny and take a nap. She definitely needed to sleep.

She turned around to give Jake a piece of her mind when she saw who was behind him. Her heart dropped then leaped up again. She wasn’t imagining it. Ben and Clementine were standing in the doorway.

“Oh! Hello! Clementine!” she exclaimed, forgetting how to speak correctly for a moment. She rushed toward her friend, and Clementine threw her arms around Emily. 

“Oh! You’re alive!” Clementine shouted. “You’re really alive!”

All of the commotion startled Johnny, and he started fussing again. Emily tried to bounce him in a soothing rhythm as she looked to Ben, who stood behind Clementine. Her eyes fell to their hands and she saw that they, too, wore wedding rings.

“Have you gotten married?” she asked.

Clementine nodded, the grin on her face wider than Emily had ever seen it. “We did! About three months ago. Once I got out from under Olivia’s thumb, I wanted to find a steady job. Then, we decided it was the best thing for us to do. We got married. I wish you could have been there!”

“Ben, I’ll show you around the place,” Jake offered, and the men disappeared outside. Now that Emily could study her friend, she saw the mixture of emotions on her face. Between the excitement and happiness, there was something like hurt. Emily knew that she had a lot of explaining to do.

“Ben decided it was safe to come after everything that happened with the Cassidys.”

“But I thought he didn’t know that my death was faked,” Emily protested, trying to understand how her friends had arrived here and why Jake didn’t seem surprised at all.

“Let’s sit down,” Clementine suggested. She sat on the sofa, running her hand over the material. “Wow! I like this sofa. The pattern is so regal, like something you would find in the White House.”

Emily smiled. Clementine’s eyes didn’t see the tiny white stains that Johnny had made spitting up, but Emily saw the imperfections.

“What’s happened?” she asked, and for the second time in two days, she sat rapt as she was recounted a story of her old hometown, Jacobstown.

“Jake wrote to Ben about a month ago. The Cassidys’ saloon started failing after all of us working for them got out. The only one left was Violet, their cousin? I can never remember her relationship to them. Well, when she was the only one left, they started working her hard. She was running around faster than we were. Could you imagine serving the whole saloon by yourself?”

Emily shook her head.

“She quit and went back home to her parents. So, Slim and Olivia lost her, too. They started trying to serve and cook and everything themselves, because no one else would work for them. And people starting going to the other saloons. Well, I figure since I wasn’t working there and Ben wasn’t drinking anymore, since he spilled that secret about you in jail, then Jake figured it was safe to tell us you were still alive. He told us to visit sometime, but Ben didn’t think it was safe until the feds arrived in town and took them away.”

“The sheriff told us what happened. It sounds like bribery is a bigger crime than not paying their taxes,” Emily said. She rocked Johnny back and forth. 

“Can I hold him?” Clementine asked. “I don’t really know much about babies, but I can try.”

Emily handed Johnny over gently. “Hello, little buddy,” Clementine said to Johnny. He grunted, then started wailing.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him today,” Emily said, quickly taking him back. She tried to feed him, but he turned his head away. “He’s normally much calmer than this, I promise.”

“He doesn’t like me,” Clementine said. “That’s okay. I can take it.”

Emily studied her friend’s face. It had been a year since they had seen each other and so much had changed. She still saw the hurt that her dishonesty had caused however, and she remembered how tough she had been on Jake for being dishonest to her while locking her up.

“Clementine, I’m sorry for not being honest about my….well, my death. I didn’t think I could tell anyone. I was more worried for my own safety than making sure you knew I was okay.”

“I cried for you for three days straight,” Clementine admitted. Her lips trembled, and she embraced both Johnny and Emily. “But I understand why you had to do it. Your situation was more difficult than the rest of ours.”

“I’ll never do anything like that again,” Emily promised. 

Clementine nodded. “You better stick to that.”

“I will.” 

Suddenly, Johnny passed gas loudly and stopped fussing. Emily stared at him. 

“Johnny, really? Was that what was causing you so much distress?” Johnny calmly stared back at her, and Clementine laughed.

“Babies. I’m not ready for one yet. They are so confusing.”

“How long will you be staying?” Emily asked, glancing at the messy kitchen.

“A few days, but we’ll be staying at a boarding house in town. We will have a lot of time to catch up.” 

“I’m so excited,” Emily said. “Will you help me start dinner?” But something else was on her mind, something she needed to do before focusing on the food. She needed to speak with Jake.

She stepped out on the back porch and found him talking amiably with Ben. 

“Jake,” she said softly. “Can you come here for a moment?” Trepidation filled her stomach as Jake came to the doorway. Ben wandered away from the porch to pet their horse.

“I just talked with Clementine,” she said, pressing her lips together to keep her emotion from spilling over. “I need to apologize to you for how harsh I was on your deception. I didn’t think about how Clementine might feel deceived when she realized I was alive, the same way I felt deceived when you arrested me without telling me why. Sometimes, we are pushed into dishonesty or situations we prefer not to be in as it’s the safest thing.”

Jake wrapped his arms around her and didn’t let her finish. “I don’t want you harping over things of the past. We did what we had to do to get you out of that place. It’s done. You’re out of there, and you’re safe. We’ll never have to be dishonest again.”

Emily laid her head comfortably on his shoulder and breathed in his scent of fresh hay. “After a lifetime of living in fear, it’s strange to think that it’s really over. There’s no chance that they can come after us now.”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “You’re safe.” He kissed the top of her head once, then again. “I love you, Emily.”

“I love you, too,” she responded. Then, whether she wanted them to or not, the tears spilled over, tracking their way down her cheeks, and splashing onto Johnny’s tummy. Her family was complete now.

THE END

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