Resurrection Read Free

you might have made during these past seven years.”
    Tacitly, they agreed to sit down, and took seats on the horsehair settee facing the fireplace. Gil brushed the back of Emmeline’s hand with his fingertips, and then enclosed it in a tentative grasp.
    A silence settled between them, and they simply sat together for a little while. Emmeline spent those moments trying to moderate her heartbeat and her breathing, and to get used to the fact that the man she’d long believed to be dead was very much alive.
    Finally, Gil thrust one hand through his unruly hair—in a gesture so dearly familiar that Emmeline felt a tug in her soul at the sight of it—and began to talk. To his credit, he met her gaze and did not look away.
    “I guess you didn’t get any of my letters,” he said.
    Emmeline bristled. For the first year after Gil’s disappearance, hoping for word from her missing husband, she’d met every stagecoach and waited in the general store while old Mr. Dillard sorted through the mail. “I told you,” she said stiffly, “I thought you were dead.”
    Gil sighed heavily. “Yes,” he said, and sighed again. “Well, there were times when I wished I was, but it isn’t my intention to burden you with my personal trials and tribulations.” He raised her hand, seemingly unaware of the motion, and brushed his lips lightly across her knuckles. “I went to San Francisco to meet with a banker about a loan to buy more cattle, just like you and I agreed,” he began. “Everything went well, and I was ready to catch a stagecoach back here, but thenext one wasn’t leaving for two days, so I decided to explore the city a little. I met up with some friends and told them all about you, and the ranch, and the steers we were about to add to the herd. We went to a saloon, the night before I was going to leave, for a farewell drink.”
    Emmeline straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin slightly, but offered no comment. Gil had been a reasonably temperate man during their marriage, but he had taken a drink now and again, and she had no call to think he was putting a varnish on the truth. Yet.
    Gil sat back on the settee, still holding Emmeline’s hand, but instead of looking into her eyes, like before, he stared off into the middle distance, as though watching a scene unfold in the ether. “I’ve wished I’d stayed in my room a thousand times since then,” he continued presently, his voice low and rough as gravel. “But there’s no sense in wanting to change the past, of course. I’d bought a brooch that day, to bring home to you, and my spirits were so high I just had to celebrate. I recall that I threw back a couple of shots of whiskey and watched the dancing girls for a while.” He paused again, and lowered his head. A tremor went through him, barely perceptible, and then he faced Emmeline again. “My friends wanted to stay, so I left the saloon by myself and started back to the rooming house, by way of an alley. The last thing I recall is something striking the base of my skull. When I woke up, I was in the hold of a ship out in the harbor.”
    Emmeline’s mouth fell open. Gil’s story seemed a bit overdramatic, and she wasn’t at all sure she believed it. “You were shanghaied?” she breathed. She’d thought of a thousand and one yarns he might tell just since he’d appeared in the side garden like some latter-day Lazarus, but this particular scenario hadn’t occurred to her.
    Gil used his free hand to rub the back of his neck, as thoughsome shadow of pain still lingered in the bones and muscles there, and sighed again. “I spent the next six and a half years hauling lines and raising and lowering sails. Every time we made port, I tried to escape, but I never even got to the end of the wharf before I was caught and brought back.”
    “But finally, somehow, you got away,” Emmeline whispered, marveling. She was caught up in the story, whether it was true or not.
    Gil nodded, but there was no triumph