A Man with a Past by Mary Connealy

EIGHTEEN

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been hunkered down there when a movement to his right brought his head up. His eyes were almost blurred through the pain.

“Are you bad off?” Kevin rushed to his side and dropped to one knee.

Falcon’s wavering memories slammed shut. He wanted to swing a fist into Kevin’s face and tell him to go away.

Then he thought of what Kevin had just said—and the voice he’d said it in.

“Did you, uh, o-once s-say . . .” His memory wavered. “Did you ever say ‘Pa, is that you?’ I mean, say it to me . . . ever?”

Kevin’s cheeks turned a ruddy color. One corner of his mouth turned up in an embarrassed smile. For some reason, the expression helped Falcon push aside the pain in his head.

“Yep, when you stepped off the train.” Kevin gave Falcon a worried look, checking him over. Then he rose to his feet. “For just that one second, with you turned mostly away from me, you looked so much like my pa, uh, our pa, a man I hadn’t seen for twenty years, that I let those words loose. I knew even as they left my mouth you were too young.”

“And you knew Pa was dead, the will and such?”

Kevin gave a little one-shouldered shrug. “Considering I’d known pa was dead for most of those twenty years, and I’d just found out he was dead again, seeing you and not being all that sure he was dead was an easy thing to have flicker through my mind.”

“Makes sense.”

“Is your head still sore? Is it worse? You’ve been moving and acting like you’re feeling fine. Except for losing your memory—”

“Yeah,” Falcon interrupted, “except for that.”

Kevin smirked. “Anyhow, I thought you were pretty well off. But you look like you’re hurting bad.”

Falcon didn’t like talking about how weak he felt when he was hunting inside his head. A man needed to hide if he was weak. The weak were prey. Supper. Animals and people were both dangerous. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the kitchen arguing?”

“I reckon. But I can’t add much to it, and they’re yelling just fine without my help.” Kevin reached a hand down to Falcon, who, after thinkin’ it over a bit, took the hand and let Kevin haul him to his feet.

It was a good strong yank. Falcon was eye to eye with his brother. Their eyes matched. They both had a little dip in the center of their chins. Beyond that, they didn’t look much alike. Falcon was an inch or so taller than Kevin. Probably broader. They both had brown hair, but Falcon’s was darker, straighter.

“When you went missing—” Kevin swallowed hard—“when we thought you were dead, it made me sad to think a brother I never knew was a brother I never would know.”

Kevin clapped him on the shoulder, and it was a gentle slap. He was acting like Falcon was fragile. Prey. Though Kevin didn’t seem to be hunting.

Falcon met his gaze. “A brother. And you have a little sister and brother. I-I don’t think I had anyone else. Except, I think . . . a wife.”

“A wife?” Kevin’s brows arched.

“I had a flash of memory. Patsy. I can see her face and a cabin. We were married, I think. Were or are married.”

“You don’t remember anything else?”

“I remember I had a mule named Harvey, and I remembered a man’s voice—you, I guess—sayin’, ‘Pa, is that you?’”

“Yes, you came out here on the train and arrived the same morning I came riding in with my family. And you heard what Tuttle said about Independence. So you had a run-in with him back there.”

“And then I went missing later that day I got off the train?”

“Yep.”

“Did I say anything else?”

Kevin thought a second. “When I said, ‘Pa, is that you?’ you said, ‘Ain’t no one’s pa, mister.’”

Falcon straightened. “I said that?”

“Yep.”

“So I didn’t abandon my children?”

That struck Kevin into a dead quiet. It was all there in his eyes how their pa had abandoned them. Falcon didn’t want to be that kind of man.

“Have you been worrying that you might’ve done that?” Kevin asked.

Falcon shrugged, but he was feeling better. The pain lessening in his head and his heart. “I thought of Patsy’s name when I was—” He snapped his mouth shut. He must’ve taken another beating on his head to’ve almost blurted that out.

“What happened?”

Falcon didn’t know what he must look like, but it had to be tellin’ Kevin something. And suddenly Falcon was glad he had a brother. Maybe talking to a brother would help him a little.

He looked at the door to the hallway, which led to the kitchen. Plenty of squabbling in there still. Dropping his voice, he said, “I thought of Patsy’s name, said it out loud, when I-I—” he cleared his throat ’cuz it was clogging shut—“when I had my arms around . . . Cheyenne.”

Kevin staggered back, caught himself, his eyes as round as twenty-dollar gold pieces. “You and Cheyenne?” Whispering didn’t hide the shock.

Falcon nodded, afraid she’d somehow heard and would come charging into the room, looking to pound on him worse than the rocks in that stream had. He’d already lost his whole past. What else did he have to lose?

His life.

“And called out another woman’s name after?”

Honestly, it was more during, but Falcon didn’t see any reason to mention that. Bad enough he’d thought of another woman, but to have said her name out loud . . . And now Kevin saying it out loud, it all made him feel even worse. Which surprised him because he wouldn’t’ve believed he could feel much worse.

“And you’re still alive?”

Falcon was alive. He was sitting right there. And still . . . “I’m a little surprised myself.”

They heard a commotion in the kitchen.

“If you repeat this,” Falcon growled, “you’re the next one going headfirst over a waterfall.”

Kevin held up one hand, palm flat at shoulder level. “I swear I’ll never mention it.”

“Not even to your wife?”

Footsteps came from the hall and Kevin turned. Without, Falcon noticed, promising a thing. But Falcon had to clamp his mouth shut ’cuz someone was coming.