Titans by Leila Meacham Read Free Book Online

show the letter to Samantha. Neal Gordon was known as a man who jealously guarded what was his, and of no one was he more protective and vigilant than the young woman he’d taken and raised as his own flesh and blood.
    Donald Tolman was certain of that fact. He had kept tabs on the Gordons and the baby he’d left with them twenty years ago. He would have called the couple on it straight enough if they hadn’t been the people he’d judged them to be—decent, caring, starved for a child. This he’d known from a late sister who lived in Fort Worth, a friend of Estelle Gordon. She’d died ignorant of the little bundle her brother had surprised the Gordons with at midnight one late March. When Mrs. Mahoney, his midwife, had come to him with the rejected twin, an adorable baby girl, he’d known exactly with whom to place her. No papers were drawn up. No rules of adoption followed. Back in 1880, registration of orphaned or abandoned infants on the Oklahoma frontier was slack at best. It had been a clean handoff to the Gordons with no government agency involved.
    Now, though, he couldn’t die without some record left behind of the child’s parentage in case it might be of interest to someone down the line, presumably Samantha. She was aware the Gordons were not her parents. How could they be, they being rangy, dark, big-framed, the direct opposite of their fair, delicately boned daughter with hair the color of an autumn sunset.
    Dr. Tolman read the letter again, silently this time, to make sure he’d not left out the few details he knew. He’d stated the names of the parents as Leon and Millicent Holloway, and the place of birth as their farm, but he wasn’t sure of its location near the Red River. He listed Bridget Mahoney as the attending midwife. According to Bridget, she’d been visiting her sister in Gainesville, another midwife, but she was out on a call when she was summoned to the farm, so Bridget had gone in her place to assist in the birth. Bridget was a closemouthed sort, so as far as Dr. Tolman knew, he, Mrs. Mahoney, and the Holloways were the only people, besides the Gordons, who knew Samantha had not been wanted. His midwife had come to him in Marietta in the Oklahoma Territory with the child, bearing only the skimpy information that the mother refused to nurse her. Dr. Tolman decided not to include that information in the letter. Perhaps the child’s parents had been unable to care for her and depended on his midwife to find their daughter a good home. He’d been so happy to have a normal, healthy child to present to the Gordons that he’d asked few questions of Mrs. Mahoney, and the Gordons had asked even fewer of him. Beggars could not be choosers. In the letter, Dr. Tolman stated that he could give no further information except the little girl had been born with a twin brother.
    His conscience satisfied, Dr. Tolman licked the flap of the envelope and sealed the letter. The post office was located not far away. He threw a couple of pills down his throat, gulped a glass of water, took up his cane to assist his weakening frame, and made his way to the door.

Chapter Eight
    T he fifth day after her twentieth birthday, Samantha awoke from a nightmare that had not reoccurred in years. In it, she was a waif abandoned miles beyond escape before the door of a dark, forbidding house located in a landscape as barren as a moon crater. Heart racing and mouth dry, ears still holding the cry that had awakened her, she blinked at the abrupt reality of the morning sun pouring through silk-draped windows into her French-inspired bedroom, lighting the rose-papered walls and graceful furniture and the canopied bed in which she lay. Its benevolent warmth fell upon her like the reassuring smile of an angel. It’s all right. You’re in your mother’s house. You’re safe. With her heartbeat steadying and a sense of rescue, Samantha burrowed deeper into the downy comfort of the bed as the last vestiges of her dream