Cocos Heart
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“You know it’s a good thing you don’t have any brothers,” Lucy said after they had left the train depot and walked back to her boardinghouse. “Or sisters.” She was smiling but didn’t mean to be funny. It wasn’t exactly like she’d ever seen her brother or sister or heard them laugh.
Her parents would always say that children are blessings from God. And then there were no more children born in the family for almost twenty years so maybe their family really had been blessed by God with the two of them.
They reached Lucy’s room on the second floor where she kept her typewriter, books, papers—anything having to do with her work as a reporter. As far as the rest of her belongings went, most of the house belonged to her.
Lucy paid rent every month and the boarders paid the water bill and light bills. There was a grocery store downstairs that rented rooms to the boarders who couldn’t cook for themselves since there wasn’t a kitchen in any of the rooms except for hers. But even if there had been a kitchen, Lucy wouldn’t have used it. She cooked everything over the open fire outside on her griddle.
The sun had already set before we left town; it was getting dark out now so Lucy lit candles all around the house so it would be warm enough inside. The boarders might not have any money but they knew how to appreciate a comfortable home.
They weren’t loud at night so she didn’t mind letting them live here as long as they paid their rent and respected Lucy’s rules—no men, no fighting, no running up the water bill or lighting fires during the day when it wasn’t hot enough for cooking.
Lucy took off her coat and hung it carefully over a hook on the wall. Then she opened the door of her room and motioned me inside. I didn’t ask why this place felt different from my own bedroom. It just did. She closed the door behind us and turned to face me.
She had taken off her hat but hadn’t touched her hair yet so it fell softly across her shoulders and down the front of her dress. She still wore her gloves but they looked awkward on her slim fingers. The softness of her skin made my hands suddenly feel clumsy, too, and cold. I tried to take them away from her but she held fast.
I wanted to touch her but the last time I did, my hand had brushed against a bandage wrapped around her wrist. She’d gotten hurt trying to save one of her horses. Lucy never complained about it or let anyone see it. She’d told me that if people saw it, they’d assume she had gotten hurt doing something bad.
She’d done something very wrong and now she worked hard to do something right, although sometimes it was very difficult because she couldn’t remember what she had done that was wrong or what she could possibly do now to make it right again.
“What am I going to do with you?” Lucy asked, staring down at me with those beautiful blue eyes and that mischievous smile.
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and looking up at her, “and that is going to bed and leave me alone.”
Lucy laughed and put her hand under my chin and gently pushed it up until our foreheads touched. That was when she kissed me first. She kissed my cheeks, then my forehead, then my lips. Her hands rested lightly on the sides of my head, holding me close, as she kissed me over and over, pressing closer and moving slowly toward the edge of the bed.
It seemed strange to be lying here in the dark with Lucy, but it also seemed strangely normal. This was the first time we had ever been alone together without a crowd watching and cheering us on. No one was going to interrupt us this night. And neither of us was ashamed to be with each other. We just loved being in love. And loving each other.
After Lucy finished kissing me, she moved back to lie beside me on the bed. I was glad it wasn’t the same old mattress on which we often slept together, but instead a much softer one covered with white sheets and blankets.
Lucy reached behind her head and unhooked the clasp on her glove, allowing her slender fingers to slip inside for a moment before she pulled it off and tossed it aside. The soft glow from the candles reflected off her golden ringlets like a halo and added a sparkle to her big blue eyes.
I wanted to kiss her mouth again but it would be more than an hour before she got tired and we could fall asleep.
“Will you come back tomorrow?” I asked.
“Of course, I will,” she answered, reaching for the covers.
I watched her as she climbed into the bed, slipping under the sheets and turning to face away from me. A moment later, the covers rustled as she scooted toward me, making sure our bodies touched. But even though she pressed her hip against mine, she didn’t turn over to look at me.
Instead, she reached down between her legs and pulled the sheet away from herself so it draped along both of our bodies. Then she leaned closer to me, resting her head on the pillow.
“Tell me about your childhood,” Lucy said quietly as if sharing secrets.
“My father left when I was five years old.” I hesitated. It was hard to talk about his absence. “Mother raised us, working long hours for meager pay. One time I remember being hungry so I went to the store in town. Mother must have sent me there by myself because I had no money.
When I went inside the grocery store, I picked up some cookies and candy, then walked through the line without paying for anything. I thought that since it was my mother who worked so hard at home, I should take care of her while she was busy.
But when I came out, a deputy sheriff confronted me. He grabbed hold of me, put his gun in my ribs, and told me he wasn’t taking any chances of letting me get away with shoplifting. I didn’t know how else to tell him my father had died, so I cried.
After that, people were always coming around asking us to join their church. Mother refused because she said it meant we’d be giving up on God’s forgiveness and that she knew He forgave her already.”
Lucy was silent for a time as if listening to what I was saying. But then she lifted her head and turned over to face me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You know what really hurt her most? You not remembering your father or having no idea where he was buried. She was so proud to be the wife of such a brave man.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said softly, wondering if I could forgive her for what she had done to me. If only I hadn’t run away, everything would be different. Lucy wouldn’t have gotten herself caught. And if I never went back to school, I might not have gone to the jailhouse. “And now, you have a wonderful family waiting for you. Why are you still living here in this shack?”
“I don’t want to give them up,” Lucy answered, squeezing my arm. “They’ve treated me so well. I’m afraid they’ll get sick of me.”
A tear ran down Lucy’s cheek and trickled onto the pillow. “When I met you tonight, it was as if the clouds parted and the sun shone down on us. Everything felt right again. For the first time in years, I forgot all about being a saloon girl. I forgot about everything except the way you looked at me and the warmth of your touch.”
I stroked the side of her face with my palm, wishing I could do something to comfort her. “Do you have any regrets about what happened today?”
“No regrets!” Lucy said emphatically.
I smiled at her then kissed her gently on her lips. Our embrace seemed to last forever before we finally broke apart. As I stared at Lucy’s lovely blue eyes, I saw them begin to glisten. The next instant, tears flooded my own eyes too as I tried to blink them away. I didn’t understand what made me cry when everyone else was smiling, but the truth is sometimes I just couldn’t help it.
We were quiet for a long while until Lucy sighed. “I think I should go home now,” she whispered.
“Why?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t feel ready to leave yet,” she said. “But it’s getting late and we need sleep so we can both be rested for work tomorrow. We shouldn’t make love anymore, not here in this room.”
Our bodies were still connected by the sheet. I wanted to pull it aside, but instead, I reached down and took Lucy’s hand in mine, pulling it up and holding it close to me so the two of us were joined together. “I won’t ask you why because I already know.”
After another pause, Lucy said, “You’re right. We should wait a few days before we try again.”
***
Lucy stayed with me for the next week. In spite of the fact that we weren’t allowed to be alone in this house, we managed to get into trouble every day. On Thursday afternoon, for instance, Lucy had slipped away from the other girls and sneaked upstairs to sneak a peek at me changing my shirt.
She was trying to get a good look at my bare chest when Mrs. Kipps discovered her and ordered Lucy to come downstairs immediately or she’d tell on her. That evening, Lucy told me it was because of that incident that Mrs. Kipps decided to banish her from the boarding house altogether and send her back to San Francisco.
But Lucy’s explanation did little to assuage my feelings of guilt. I should have stopped Lucy.
In a rare moment of honesty, Lucy told me that it was hard enough for her to be away from home during the day and then come here at night and sleep on this lumpy bed, without having to worry about Mrs. Kipps watching her every move.
“I wish I had never come,” Lucy said one night after we had lain together in the dark, neither of us wanting to break our intimate silence. “Maybe then you would remember me better.”
As I held her in my arms, I felt her body tremble slightly. “I do remember,” I whispered, pressing my lips against hers. “And if I could forget about your mother or my father, I would.”
“My mother wasn’t the only reason I married Jim,” Lucy explained. “Jim was very handsome. I thought he would make a fine husband, especially since his family owns several ranches around this part of California.”
“And does your marriage ever get lonely?” I asked. “I mean, there are times when it seems like I’m the only person you talk to.”
“That’s because Jim is always working,” Lucy said, her voice becoming bitter. “He comes home once in a while and spends time with us, but then he has to return to the ranch.”
Lucy’s words sounded hollow in my ears. There were times when I had imagined myself living on a ranch where my days were spent riding horses through vast grasslands and tending cattle with Jim by my side.
It seemed strange to me that I could imagine such a life now while I’d never once thought about it when I was with my father, even though we had owned a dairy farm. I wondered what my father had been doing with himself while my mother and I suffered at the hands of an evil man.
“What happens next?” Lucy asked after a long period of silence.
“It all depends on what happens over the next few months,” I replied. “If we manage to stop these robberies and capture the gang leader, we’ll probably end up in Chicago. But if we fail or if we don’t catch him, they might put us under contract to the Pinkerton Agency and send us back to Texas. And if that happens, well, I hope we have more luck there than we did in San Francisco.”
“Then let’s make sure we do our best to catch this guy,” Lucy suggested. “So that we don’t have to leave San Francisco any sooner than we planned.”
“You want to stay longer?”
“Yes, I do.” She turned and looked deeply into my eyes. “You know, I’ve learned quite a lot from you,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much I needed to learn.”
I was silent, knowing that Lucy’s comment was directed toward me. The truth is, Lucy did need to learn a great deal about people, about society, and about herself. I was helping her find those things out about herself as much as I was trying to solve the problems of this country.
“We will succeed,” Lucy said. “We’ll catch this gang, and you’ll see that I was right. We can both go back to New York with this case behind us.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “The first thing we have to do is figure out who’s behind this mess and bring them to justice.”
Lucy gave me a small smile. “That’s what I love most about you, Ned. You never give up.”
Over the next couple of weeks, Lucy continued to spend time with me whenever we could sneak away from the others, including the other two women at the boarding house. It was clear to me that Lucy’s life here wasn’t exactly how she wanted it to be.
If I had known about her troubled childhood, I would have understood better why she sometimes acted so strangely, and I might have tried harder to help her feel comfortable in this house. “You’re not happy here, are you?” I asked her one evening.
“There are just too many secrets,” Lucy said quietly. “I feel like I’m always walking on eggshells in this place.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one secret I’ve kept from you—” I began before stopping myself abruptly. “No, wait. Let me start again.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow expectantly. “Go ahead,” she encouraged.
I drew Lucy closer to me until our faces were almost touching. “You may not believe this, but I am a man of many secrets,” I told her, “and I intend to keep them.”
***
As the days passed, Lucy’s visits to my room grew less frequent. It was hard for me to concentrate on my cases knowing that Lucy had left San Francisco and moved to a new city far away from me.
I hoped that we could meet in New York City where neither Jim nor anyone else knew us—and where she could finally open up to me freely without having to worry about who overheard our conversations. But I didn’t know whether this was a good idea or not.
If Jim discovered what was going on between us, the consequences would be dire. I couldn’t bear the thought of Jim beating Lucy again. He’d already broken one young woman’s spirit. I wouldn’t let him break mine.
One day at breakfast, I asked Jim if Lucy was gone yet.
“Not yet,” Jim replied with a shrug of his shoulders.
“When will she leave?” I pressed.
Jim shook his head slowly and stared at nothing in particular. “You don’t want to know.”
“Of course I do!”
“She’ll go when she wants to, and not before.”
“And you won’t force her to leave?” I asked.
“No. No way.”
I sighed deeply. It seemed impossible to me that I had lost another person who mattered to me. For years, I’d thought Lucy was a sister to me, and I had no regrets about losing my own blood family. Now I felt as if someone else was being taken from me too soon.
It was too bad Lucy couldn’t stay longer. Maybe if I had known about her past, it would have made things easier for her. Then maybe she would have stayed.
But I hadn’t known anything. Lucy was a mystery, and it was time that I learned the truth about her. I decided to go out riding after breakfast to think about what I was going to do next.
Before we left the ranch, I took Jim aside and asked him why he had been so hostile toward Lucy when he found out she was in New York instead of San Francisco.
“Because she lied to me,” Jim said, his face contorted into a scowl. “She was supposed to be in San Francisco, and now she’s here! How does that make sense? And you know, I hate it when people lie to me.”
“Then why didn’t you try to stop her?”
Jim paused and stared at me blankly before answering. “Who says she lied to you?”
“It’s obvious,” I said. “I’ve only known her since last October.”
“And you trust her? She has a lot of secrets.”
“What I care about most is catching the person responsible for this whole mess,” I said. “I don’t care about any of your personal problems. We all have them.”
“Your attitude is wrong,” Jim said. “You should have listened more closely to what Lucy was saying, and you shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions without hearing both sides of the story.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Jim cut me off. “Let me say something to you before you start thinking about telling me what to do around here.”
“Yes?”
“First of all, listen carefully because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. You are a guest in my house. The moment Lucy arrived, she became part of this family. That means I can tell you what to do.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” I protested. “We work together, not for each other.”
Jim rolled his eyes and turned to leave before turning back to face me again. “Just because Lucy isn’t related by blood doesn’t mean she’s not important. What do you think happened to me when I got married? Did I suddenly forget that I had a family?
Or did I just get too lazy to see them or visit them often enough? Well, guess what. This isn’t a marriage, and I sure as hell haven’t forgotten my parents or sisters. They’re still alive and well, even if they live thousands of miles away from me.
Don’t ever forget that Lucy is very much part of this family, and she will be treated with the same respect that everyone else receives. Is that understood?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now let’s ride.”
After I rode off to enjoy my morning ride in the woods alone, I came back to the ranch house to find Jim and Lucy eating dinner together in the kitchen. I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I saw them sitting there chowing down. When Jim caught sight of me, he nodded politely and then returned to his meal.
Lucy gave me a quick glance before staring at her food again. I sat down next to her and started talking about the weather and how much I liked the trees and flowers.
“So tell me about yourself,” I said. “How long have you lived in Montana?”
Lucy looked up from her plate, startled that I cared about her personal life. “Why would you want to know?” she asked with a frown.
I shrugged and said, “I’m curious. Tell me.”
“Well…” Lucy hesitated and picked at her food. I waited patiently while she gathered her thoughts and decided what she wanted to say. She finally spoke softly. “The thing is…I don’t really remember where I come from. Not completely.”
“Are you adopted?” I asked.
“No!” she snapped. “I was born on a ranch near Fort Benton, Montana. It was called the Larkin Ranch. But it was sold years ago, and I’ve never seen it again. My mother died during childbirth, and after that, no one ever talked about my birth family.”
“Didn’t anyone care?”
“My father loved me as much as he could, but he wasn’t always home. He worked a lot of hours. Then there were my brothers, who couldn’t even bother to visit me once they found out I’d been taken in by a wealthy family.”
Lucy’s tone grew angry, and her eyes flashed anger at the memory. “I was their sister, and yet none of them thought much about me.”
“Why do you think they didn’t visit you?” I asked. “Maybe they were busy with their own lives.”
“They weren’t interested in me,” Lucy said simply. “It was hard enough growing up in such a large family, with all those kids running around like crazy people. It was just easier to ignore me than to deal with all the fuss.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
Lucy’s eyes clouded over with sadness as she continued, “Sometimes I feel so empty inside—like there isn’t anything left inside me that makes me who I am. I don’t understand why God took the only mother I’ve ever known away from me.”
A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed hard before asking, “Do you have any family now?”
Lucy shook her head and said, “Not anymore.”
“Then you’ll stay with us, won’t you?” I asked.
Lucy smiled and said, “Yes, but don’t worry about me too much. I’m used to being alone.”
As Lucy finished her meal, I tried to keep my attention focused on her instead of Jim. His eyes kept darting to me, and I wondered if he’d told Lucy everything that had happened between us. Maybe it was wrong for him to bring Lucy back to the ranch without warning me first.
After we ate dinner, the three of us walked down to the barn so that I could saddle the horses and lead them both back into the stables.
“I think we should get a dog,” Lucy said.
I stopped walking and turned around to face her. “What? A dog?”
Jim laughed and said, “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. She doesn’t want a mutt to chase squirrels and bark at every noise outside.”
Lucy glared at him and pointed out, “She likes dogs. And she’s right; we need something that will protect this place from intruders.”
I stared at her in amazement. “You mean like a guard dog?”
“Yes! Exactly like that,” Lucy said proudly. “And I don’t care what animal it is. Any kind will do as long as it barks and growls loud enough to scare the devil.”
“Sounds good,” Jim said. “We can go to town tomorrow and look for the right dog.”
When we returned to the house, I went to take care of my horse and Lucy went upstairs to change. Before going to bed, I decided to check up on Jim and Lucy to make sure they had settled in comfortably.
I found Lucy lying in the middle of my bedroom floor as she played with her cat. The door to Jim’s room was closed, but his light was still on. So I quietly opened the door just enough to peek through and saw that Jim was sitting on the edge of Lucy’s bed, stroking her hair as she slept.
Her head rested on his lap and her arms were tucked under her cheek, and her mouth was slightly open in slumber.
The End