Titans by Leila Meacham Read Free Book Online Page B

I decline,” Samantha said. “May I now return to class?”
    Mr. Latimer shifted his flabbergasted gaze to the Gordons. “Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, your daughter is the most brilliant student I’ve ever taught. She is a natural scientist. Surely you support this opportunity for Samantha to fulfill her calling and contribute her gift to the world. It’s a rare privilege that will not be extended again once she’s out of school.”
    Neal Gordon had stood up, offering his arm to Estelle. “My daughter knows what she wants and doesn’t,” he said. “That’s how she’s been raised, and as she says, it’s not for anyone else to decide.”
    Later in the day, Mr. Latimer had approached her. “Miss Gordon—Samantha—I beg you. Don’t give up your dream to become a scientist for the sake of your father. You know how much you love research and the study of plants and animals.”
    “Which I’ll have plenty of opportunities to do at Las Tres Lomas, Mr. Latimer, and an interest is not a dream. I’ve made my choice.”
    “Your father made your choice.”
    “I’m devoted to the ranch. Ranching is in my blood.”
    “How can that be? You’re devoted to your father ’s passion for the ranch, not yours. If he owned a chain of candy stores, you’d feel the same loyalty.”
    “Probably,” she’d admitted, “but I wouldn’t feel the same about candy that I do about cattle.”
    Mr. Latimer had hardly spoken to her again.
    Todd’s birthday present to her had been a pair of tickets to a lecture given by a noted paleontologist who was to speak on structural and sedimentary aspects of fossil strata as a means to identify possible oil traps.
    “Were you being thoughtful or provocative, Todd? What’s the point of either?” Samantha had scolded him later in a private conversation when everybody had adjourned to the parlor for ice cream and cake.
    “No point at all,” he’d said. “I thought you’d like an opportunity to keep up with the times. Petroleum exploration is the next great archeological dig, Sam. Ginny and I are going to the lecture, and my boss will be there. I want my future wife to meet him and learn what her geologist husband will be doing. I thought you could bring along a friend, and we could make it a foursome.”
    She’d handed back the tickets. “Thank you, Todd, but I’ve no idea who I would invite. You and Ginny enjoy the use of these with another couple.”
    He’d taken the tickets, but she’d later found them in the calling card tray in the foyer.
    Todd, two years into his geological studies at Jackson, had been as upset as Mr. Latimer, almost outraged, when he learned she’d given up her place at the seminary. She could not convince him that it was her decision to stay behind.
    “Because your parents make you feel you owe them, Sammy!” he’d yelled.
    “I do owe them!” Samantha had shouted back. “If you’d seen what I saw—”
    She’d pressed her lips together. Never would she divulge to anybody the sights that had sent her running home to her adoptive parents to throw herself gratefully into their arms.
    “Saw what?” Todd asked.
    “Never mind,” she’d said.
    The scene was one Samantha had never been able to forget and had come back to haunt her in her sleep through the years. She was ten years old. Her Sunday school teacher, a well-meaning soul, had thought it a great idea to take baskets of Christmas treats to the unfortunate children who had been left without parents, either through death, misfortune, or abandonment. She proposed a trip to the Millbrook Home for Orphaned Children. On a gray and cold Sunday morning, in lieu of the lesson, her charges piled into a wagon in their warm coats clutching their holiday-decorated baskets and headed off to their destination. Samantha had never forgotten the ugly, forbidding house that loomed into view at the end of a muddy country road. Barren, treeless fields stretched for miles around the dark, sinister-looking structure that