The Stranger's Secrets Read Free Page B

from the farm. The green chair was as hideous as vomit, but she clung to it as if it held the ghost of her dead husband.
    “I’m traveling to Kansas City and then San Francisco.” He’d explained it a hundred times already. As he ran his hand through his hair, she stared hard at him.
    “Whit, you’re leaving me.” Her voice broke on the last word.
    So did Whitman’s anger. He knelt in front of her and took her small hands in his. “I’m not leaving you. I’m finally starting my own life. Can you understand that? I need to find my place in the world. All I know is it’s not in an army barracks, it’s not on a farm in New York, and it’s not in the boardroom at Kendrick Industries.”
    She shook her head. “I don’t believe that.”
    Whit made one last effort to make her understand. “It’s true. I can’t be happy here, no matter what. I’m not disappearing; I’m moving to someplace new. Maybe one day you’ll want to move there too.”
    She looked as if he’d told her to forget she had ever loved Bradford Kendrick. “Never.”
    “Then that’s your decision. This is mine. I’m going to California, by way of Kansas City.”
    He stood and started walking out of the room before she spoke again.
    “Who’s in Kansas City?”
    Whitman paused, his hand on the door. “My future.”
     
    On the train platform, Sarah spent her time sitting on the bench and watching other people. There was quite a variety, from well-dressed older women to raggedy children begging for coins. As the sun rose on the horizon, the train at last pulled into the station. The urge to run to the train before it stopped moving nearly overwhelmed her.
    Sarah had spent the last ten years learning how to control her impulses, even if that control slipped now and again. She was proud of the fact she allowed a woman and her children to get on the train ahead of her. What she really wanted to do was push everyone out of the way and get the hell out of Virginia as fast as she could.
    However, Sarah hadn’t been able to run for so long, she doubted she could even manage a fast hobble. As she waited to walk up the steps, her heart did a funny flip as freedom came within reach. She sucked in a breath through her teeth, gritting them against the loss of control that threatened.
    “One, two, three. One, two, three,” she counted slowly under her breath until the woman and her children were safely on the train.
    When her right foot hit the first step, a man appeared from her left who apparently had abandoned all semblance of good manners. The bowler hat–wearing fool tried to push past her, without regard for the fact she was a woman, and a cripple, for all intents and purposes. Yet Sarah had learned a few tricks and the fool never knew what hit him.
    She whipped her cane around to smack him in the shin with a resounding crack, then hooked it around behind his knee and yanked. The obnoxious fool landed on his pinstriped, well-padded ass while Sarah made her way onto the train, a smirk in place of the grimace she normally wore.
     
    “If you’re fixin’ to sleep you’d best change your mind.”
    Sarah opened one eye to see Mavis Ledbetter grinning at her. She nearly regretted the impulse to pay the woman to be her companion to Colorado. God help both of them if the woman didn’t let her sleep off a hangover.
    “Why is that, Miss Ledbetter?” Sarah’s voice was rusty from exhaustion and too many drinks of whiskey.
    “There’s another passenger comin’ and he’s a big ’un.” Mavis pointed one bony finger toward the front of the car. She cackled.
    “There’s plenty of room beside you.” Sarah felt sleep tugging at her and she didn’t want to resist.
    “Oh no, he cain’t sit there. It wouldn’t be right.” Mavis fussed with her traveling bag, perched on the seat beside her. The four-seat compartment would be their temporary home from Virginia to Kansas City. Sarah had settled in comfortably while they waited for the train to