Free Faithful by Janet Fox Page B

interrupted again when I realized that George Graybull’s eyes were fixed on me. I squirmed, uncomfortable under his gaze, and color crept into my cheeks. I twisted in my seat, trying to avoid his piercing eyes, and leaned against the wood windowsill.
    Neat, ordered, frame buildings capped with red roofs signaled our arrival at Fort Yellowstone. The coach drew past the fort and I looked up the hill.
    “Is that smoke?”
    “Steam, Margaret! You’re in Mammoth Hot Springs.”
    “Hot springs.” Saratoga’s springs were mineral, not steaming. I gawked, amazed.
    The National Hotel, a grand wood structure, loomed on our right. Clouds of steam rose beyond it. Elk grazed on the lawn only yards away from us and I couldn’t help feeling transported into another world. Our coach stopped before the National and, following the other jabbering tourists, I turned to enter the lobby.
    Papa put his hand on my arm, held me back. “Not here, Margaret.” Uncle John collected our belongings on the covered porch, off to one side of the other passengers’ things.
    “Not here?” I stopped, confused. “But, where . . .”
    “I’ve booked rooms for you in the Cottage Hotel.” Uncle John nodded in the direction of a ramshackle log building. “It’s very quaint.” His smile was uneasy.
    “Quaint?” It looked like a thin-walled box compared with the imposing beauty of the National. “What’s going on, Papa?”
    “The National is more than we need right now.”
    The other tourists had already gone inside the hotel. George Graybull glanced our way as he entered, clearly taking in my look of horror, and watched my uncle, who moved our belongings on a trolley toward the Cottage. Graybull tipped his hat to me, but his eyes betrayed his surprise. We looked like first-class travelers, but I could see his doubt now as we headed toward the Cottage Hotel.
    We were first-class travelers. I straightened my back and turned to my father.
    “Papa, I don’t understand. Why are we not staying here?”
    He cleared his throat. His eyes met mine, and what I saw made my stomach clench. His eyes were like the bear’s, flat and unreadable. “Margaret. The National is more than we can afford. Let’s go inside. I need to tell you something.”
    The air left my lungs and the ground shifted beneath my feet. I followed my father into the Cottage Hotel as if I were in a dream. No, not a dream, a nightmare. I knew, knew from his eyes, from his rigid shoulders, that something was very wrong. We couldn’t afford the National. That’s what he’d just said. How was that possible? Things were clearly not as he had led me to believe. And what of Mama?
    My feet took step after step after my father, but they moved by something other than my own will. And I willed my heart somewhere else—over the gorge of Paradise, perhaps in the thicket with the grizzly, or in the station with Tom—because if my heart was in my chest at that moment, I felt sure it was about to break.

Chapter NINE
    June 18, 1904
    There reigned for her, absolutely, during these vertiginous moments, that fascination of the monstrous, that temptation of the horribly possible, which we so often trace by its breaking out suddenly, lest it should go further, in unexplained retreats and reactions.
    —The Golden Bowl , Henry James, 1904
    “THERE’S NOTHING FOR US TO RETURN TO,” PAPA SAID. I could not see his face. His voice spoke of finality. “It’s gone.”
    My free hand tightened on the plain, wood bedpost. I stared at him, at his profile framed against the light from the window of my room, taking in his words. I was stunned to silence.
    “I let you think this trip was about finding your mother. I had to, or you might have resisted.”
    “Mama isn’t here? There’s . . . nothing?” My throat was so tight I couldn’t swallow.
    “I couldn’t let your grandparents take you away from me, Margaret.” His voice was soft. I knew he meant that he needed me, but he had betrayed me