For the Love of Annie Read online

  This story copyright 2002 by Sabrah Huff Agee. Published by Hard Shell Word Factory.

  8946 Loberg Rd.

  Amherst Junction, WI 54407

  http://www.hardshell.com

  Electronic book created by Seattle Book Company.

  eBook ISBN: 0-7599-3100-3

  Cover art copyright 2002 Dirk A. Wolf

  All rights reserved.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  I'd like to acknowledge those people who believed in me, gave me sound advice, and encouraged me when I needed it most:

  A million thanks to Lyn Stone, Linda Howard, Rhonda Nelson, Deb Webb, Joann Westfall, Karen Agee, Becky Rinehart, Jan Caldwell, Peggy Owens, Marion Gantt, Perry Beasley, and Sherri Eddington.

  Your friendship means more to me than you know.

  Dedication

  To the memory of my father-in-law, Iredrell Kittrell Agee, my beloved “Mr. A.”

  To “Miss Dot,” my dearly loved mother-in-law,

  And to the newest member of the clan, my adorable granddaughter, Kara Brynn Agee.

  * * *

  Chapter 1

  February 1889

  Hollisburg, Alabama

  IN THE privacy of his inner office Sheriff Cooper Matthews leaned back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and propped his booted feet on his cluttered desk. He'd been up all night battling a brush fire and he desperately needed a nap. He'd only just closed his eyes when he heard the bell over the front door jingle, telling him that someone had come in. Cooper listened without moving, praying that his deputy could handle whomever it was. But it wasn't to be.

  "Sheriff Matthews?"

  Cooper opened one eye and scowled at the anxious, freckled face of his young deputy. "What is it, Simmons?"

  The lanky deputy stammered," T— There's somebody here to see you, sir."

  "Who?"

  "S— Said their name was Wheeler, sir. Said they come from Memphis."

  "Can't you take care of it, Joe Bob? I'm dead tired ."

  "Yessir, I know. And I tried, I swear I did, but Mr. Wheeler says he cain't talk to nobody but you— says it's real important."

  Cooper sighed heavily, lifted his feet off the desk, and cursed under his breath. "All right. Tell him to have a seat and I'll be out directly."

  When his deputy returned to the front office, Cooper dragged himself from his chair, yawned, and stretched. Damn, what did it take to get some rest around here? He was worn slap out. Cooper scratched his ribs and shuffled over to the wash stand. There, he poured tepid water from the pitcher into a chipped bowl, splashed his face, then dried it on an almost clean towel. Finally, he squinted into the cracked mirror hanging on the wall, rubbed a spot of soot from his chin, and finger— combed his hair into place.

  When Cooper walked into the front office, he spied a man he assumed was Wheeler and groaned inwardly. From the looks of things, Mr. Wheeler's entire family was with him. Seated on a wooden bench beside the timid— looking little man was a large, scowling woman holding a baby. Cooper supposed this was Wheeler's wife, though the two were grossly mismatched. The woman was enormous, at least twice her husband's girth and a head taller. He was surprised that two such dissimilar people ever got together. But there was little doubt that they did get together and quite often, judging from the infant in her arms and the six, stair— step children lined along the bench.

  Wanting to get the matter over and done, Cooper turned to the little man. "I'm Sheriff Matthews, Mr. Wheeler. My deputy said you wanted to see me."

  The man jumped to his feet as though he'd been shot from a cannon. Then, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, he twisted and untwisted his sweat— stained hat. "Yessir, me and Mabel is movin' to Mo— bill, so Mr. Atkinson, he give us some extry money to drop the chap off with you."

  Cooper blinked in confusion. Chap? What in the hell was he talking about? "Who is Mr. Atkinson?"

  "He's Miss Etta's lawyer up in Memphis. 'Fore Miss Etta up and died— rest her soul— she told Mr. Atkinson what to do about the chap."

  Even more puzzled now, Cooper shook his head. "You've completely lost me, Mr. Wheeler. Who is Miss Etta? What's this chap you mentioned? And, more important, what does any of this have to do with me?"

  The bench groaned in what sounded like relief when the large woman heaved herself off it. Cooper watched as she shifted the infant to her other arm and smacked Wheeler on the back of his head. The little man ducked. "Ow, Mabel! You didn' have no cause to do that!"

  "Sit down, Horace, and shut up." She snorted in disgust. "I might'a knowed you'd get everthang mixed up." She lumbered across the room until she was standing nose to nose with Cooper. "What my man wuz tryin' to say, Sheriff, is that we wuz hired to brang yore young'un to you." And with those words, she shoved the baby into Cooper's arms.

  Flabbergasted, Cooper almost dropped the child. "Wait a minute!"

  Mrs. Wheeler turned toward the bench and crooked her finger at one of the children. "Randy Lee, brang that there poke you got and give it over to the Sheriff."

  The tallest of the Wheeler children dragged a nearly— filled flour sack to Cooper. Feeling as if he were trapped in some crazy dream, Cooper to made no move to take the sack from the boy. Randy Lee glanced at his mother for direction, shrugged, and then dropped the sack at Cooper's feet before rejoining his brothers and sisters. Immediately, Mabel Wheeler clapped her hands and shooed her family toward the door. "All right, kids, y'all don't dawdle. We done what we come to do, so let's us get back on the road to Mo— bill."

  The Wheelers had already begun filing out of his office before Cooper was able to find his voice. "Wait a minute!" he croaked, urgently. "There has to be some mistake. I think you must have me confused with someone else, ma'am, because this baby can't be mine."

  Mrs. Wheeler stopped just outside the door, spat a steam of liquid snuff into the dirt, and glared at Cooper as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You sayin' you ain't got no wife named Etta Blake?"

  "Etta Bla— Do you mean Marietta Blake?"

  The woman shrugged. "All's I knowed was Etta. She was one'a them actress women up in Memphis. You saying you ain't her husband?"

  "Well, no...I...Marietta is my wife...but— "

  "There's a letter from Mr. Atkinson pinned to the young'un's blankets. I don't know what it says, I ain't never learned to read. Alls I knows is Mr. Atkinson paid us to brang that chap to you and that's what we done. You got a problem with it, you best take it up with him."

  "B— But— "

  Mabel Wheeler didn't wait to hear more. While Cooper stood with his mouth hanging open, she herded her husband and six children out into the dusty street and ordered them into a heavily— laden buckboard. As the creaking wagon rolled away, Cooper dropped his gaze to the squirming child in his arms. The baby appeared to be about a year old— give or take a month. A baby! Why in God's name had Marietta sent it to him? Cooper looked helplessly about. The letter! Mrs. Matthews had said there was a letter pinned to the baby's blankets.

  Tired and irritable, Cooper bellowed for his deputy. "Simmons!"

  The earnest young man hurried from the back room. "You called me, Sheriff?"

  Cooper thrust the baby at him. "Yeah, hold this."

  The surprised deputy took the child in his wiry arms and grinned at it. "Well, lookee here. Ain't you the cutest thang." He glanced up at Cooper. "Where'd the little feller come from, Sherif
f?"

  "The Wheelers dumped him on me."

  "You mean they just dropped him off and then up and left him?"

  "That's about the size of it."

  "Why that's terrible. How could somebody just go off and leave their baby?"

  "They said he wasn't their baby."

  "Well, whose baby is it?" Joe Bob asked, looking as confused as Cooper felt. "Did they tell you his name?"

  "No, Simmons," Cooper retorted irritably. "They didn't tell me his name. They didn't tell me anything except— " He stopped abruptly, suddenly unwilling to divulge that the Wheelers were under the misconception that the child was his. "Hold still while I look through this blanket. Mrs. Wheeler said there was a letter somewhere in here that explains everything." He fumbled in the blankets wrapped around the child. "Ah, here it is."

  Cooper quickly tore open the envelope and pulled out the folded letter. He glanced at the first few words and then slowly lowered himself to a chair. "Jesus," he muttered.

  "Dear Sheriff Matthews," the letter began. "I regret to inform you that your wife, Marietta Blake Matthews, passed from this life on the First day of September, in the year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and eighty— eight. Mrs. Matthews succumbed, as did so many others last summer, to that terrible affliction called yellow fever."

  Cooper narrowed his eyes in thought. It was now the middle of February. Etta had been dead more than five months and he hadn't even known it.

  He turned his attention once more to the letter.

  "If it is any consolation, your wife did not suffer long. Before her passing, however, Etta made certain decisions regarding the fate of her child. She instructed me that upon her death I was to see that the baby was placed in your care. If you are reading this letter, I can only assume my mission was successful and the aforementioned child is now in your capable hands."

  "Capable?" Cooper snorted. "That's a laugh." He stopped reading for a moment and rubbed his eyes. He hadn't seen his wife in more than five years— not since she'd run off with an acting troupe passing through Hollisburg. She'd been only seventeen at the time. Poor Marietta, he thought. Dead at only Twenty-one years of age.

  Cooper resumed reading.

  "I am fully aware," Mr. Atkinson's missive continued, "that you have had no contact with Etta in many years. However, as neither you nor my client sought to nullify the marriage in a bill of divorcement, you were legally her husband at the time of her child's birth. Therefore, this child is, if only in the legal sense, your child and heir."

  "What!"

  "Something wrong, Sheriff?"

  Cooper glanced up at his deputy. "I'll say there's something wrong." He refolded the letter and snatched his hat off the brass hook by the window. "I've got to see Eli, Joe Bob. You take care of the baby till I get back." Maybe his attorney could sort this mess out. God, he hoped so.

  Deputy Simmons anxiously watched Cooper stride to the door. "B— But what if he starts cryin' again? I don't know nothing 'bout takin' care of little babies, Sheriff."

  Cooper speared his deputy with a hard stare. "And you think I do? Just do the best you can, Joe Bob. I'll try not to be too long."

  "B— But what if something happens?"

  Cooper pulled open the door and muttered a curse when the overhead bell jingled annoyingly. He was about to close the door behind him when he saw his deputy's woebegone face. Cooper heaved a weary sigh. "I'll try not to be gone too long. If you need me, send somebody to fetch me." With that, Cooper slammed the door and headed down the street.

  COOPER'S mood was grim when he left his attorney's office. Eli Davis agreed with Atkinson. Since Cooper had never divorced Marietta, her child was legally his heir, his responsibility.

  "Damnation!"

  As he neared his own office, Cooper's frown deepened. What on earth was making that ungodly racket? He quickened his steps and rushed to throw open the door. "Lord, give me strength," he muttered when he found Deputy Simmons singing off— key at the top of his lungs while the baby, its little face beet— red, squalled louder than a sore— tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  "Good God, Joe Bob, what'd you do to him?"

  Joe Bob sagged with obvious relief when he saw his employer. "I didn't do nothin' to 'em, boss. I was just holdin' him like you said, and he started to whimper a little bit. Then the next thang I knowed he was hollerin' loud enough to wake the dead."

  "Give him to me." Cooper took the screaming baby from his deputy, gently laid the child against his shoulder and patted its back. "There, there, little fellow," he crooned. "You stop that cryin, hear?"

  The baby hiccupped once and immediately grew quiet.

  "Well, would you look at that," Deputy Simmons said in an awed whisper. "Looks like you got the magic touch with babies, Sheriff."

  Cooper scowled at his deputy. "Don't be ridiculous. You were probably scaring him. That god— awful caterwauling you call singing would make a grown man cry for mercy."

  Joe Bob, apparently unaffected by Cooper's unflattering assessment of his musical talent, grinned and asked, "What you gonna name him?"

  Cooper, being careful not to disturb the child, eased into a chair. "I'll leave that decision to the family who takes him in."

  Joe Bob stared at Cooper. "You mean you're gonna give him away?"

  Cooper sighed in exasperation. "Jesus H. Christ, Joe Bob! I can't keep him. I don't know anything about raising a kid."

  The deputy stuck his hands in his back pockets and looked at the floor. "Yeah, I see what you mean." He cast a soulful gaze at the baby. "He sure is cute, though, ain't he?"

  "Yeah, I guess." He arched a brow. "You want him?" The question was said in jest, but Joe Bob smiled and for a moment Cooper thought his deputy was actually going to say yes.

  But then the younger man shook his head. "Naw, I don't think Miz O'Delle would let me have a young'un in my room, what with me not bein' married and all. 'Sides, a boardin' house ain't no place to raise a baby."

  "And my place over the jail is?" Cooper retorted, referring to his own living quarters.

  "It's a sight better'n just one room. Your place is almost as good as a house. You got a kitchen and a extry bedroom. Shoot, you even got a parlor, Sheriff."

  At that moment the baby begin to wail again. Cooper patted it's back, but this time it didn't seem to help— magic touch or no. He stood and began to pace as the baby's wails rose to such a crescendo that Cooper and Joe Bob had to yell to be heard over the din.

  "Good Lord, he's got a powerful set of lungs for such a little bitty thang," Joe Bob shouted. "You reckon he's hungry?"

  Cooper stopped pacing and looked down at the sobbing child. Was he hungry? Probably. "Simmons, look in that flour sack and see if there's something we can feed him."

  Simmons opened the bag and emptied it on his desk. "There's a bottle with a rubber nipple on it, Sheriff, but there ain't nothing in it. And there's some kind 'o' rags— looks like old pieces of flour sack."

  "Those must be the baby's diapers," Cooper muttered to himself.

  Simmons put a hand to his ear. "What'd y'say?"

  "What else is in there?" Cooper shouted.

  Joe Bob continued pawing through the things on the desk. "Here's a piece of cloth with a cold biscuit in it, Sheriff. Reck'n' that's for the baby?"

  Cooper snatched the biscuit from the deputy's hand and stuck it in the baby's open mouth. The child immediately stopped screaming and began chewing on the biscuit.

  "Thank God," Cooper muttered as he eased back into the swivel chair behind Deputy Simmons's desk. He looked down at the child and saw its sapphire— blue eyes staring unblinkingly up at him. Then, to Cooper's surprise, the child smiled and revealed four tiny white teeth.

  Cooper grinned in spite of himself. "Doesn't take much to make you happy, does it, little fellow?" His grin disappeared when an offensive odor rose to his nostrils. He didn't have to check the baby's diaper to know what that meant. He groaned. "Simmons."

  "Yeah, Sheriff?"
/>
  "Hand me one of those pieces of flour sack. And while you're at it, bring me a basin of water and some kind of rag— a clean handkerchief will do if you have one."

  In short order, Simmons brought in the basin of water and presented Cooper with his clean, folded handkerchief. Then he cleared a space on his desk so Cooper could use it as a changing table.

  "You ever changed a diaper before, Sheriff?" Simmons asked as he watched Cooper lay the child on the desk.

  Cooper shot his deputy an annoyed glance. "Do I look like a nanny, Joe Bob?" He quickly divested the baby of its blanket and, grimacing with disgust, he studied the single large safety pin that secured the tri— folded diaper. Freed from the confining blanket, the baby kicked his chubby legs.

  Cooper sighed. "Be still, little guy. This is going to be hard enough as it is." He glanced over at Simmons. "Grab his legs and raise his backside so I can get this thing off."

  Simmons, wrinkling his nose in obvious distaste, grasped the baby's ankles and lifted the child's rear a few inches off the desk. Cooper unfastened the safety pin and looked at Joe Bob. "Ready?"

  Simmons drew in a deep breath and nodded. "Ready."

  Holding his breath, Cooper snatched off the diaper and dropped it on a newspaper lying on the floor. "Whoo— whee!" Cooper grimaced and turned his head to cough. "How could something that bad come from one little boy?"

  Joe Bob swallowed. "Uh, Sheriff....I b'lieve there's somethin' you ort'er see."

  Cooper turned a quizzical gaze on Joe Bob. "What?"

  Simmons nodded toward the baby and Cooper looked down at the naked infant. "Oh, Lord," he groaned. "If things weren't bad enough..." His gaze fell on the wrinkled letter which had fallen on the floor. Noticing for the first time the post script scribbled below the attorney's signature, Cooper picked it up. He grunted. "Well, Joe Bob, you'll be interested in hearing this." He read the addendum aloud.