to whom she owed her life could discover her presence. She loved them so much. They never had to be afraid she’d go with her real parents if they came to take her back. She’d run away and hide until they were gone.
In her childish hand, Samantha wrote a letter to Susie explaining that she’d been forbidden to come see her again. She addressed it simply “To Susie” and hoped there was only one by that name at the Millbrook Home for Orphaned Children. Whether she received it, Samantha never knew. When she was thirteen and was presented Pony, a quarter horse, for her birthday, her first sprint of freedom was to the orphanage to visit Susie. Susie was no longer with them, the merry-faced matron informed her. She had died of tuberculosis the preceding winter.
Chapter Nine
D id she have regrets about anything? Absolutely not, unless it was Sloan Singleton’s infatuation with Anne Rutherford. Samantha adjusted her pillows against the headboard to indulge in a few more minutes of thought and reflection. Todd Baker and his like had no background or experience to understand her willingness to accept the future laid out for her by virtue of loyalty and obligation. Todd came from a family of academics. He was the son of the president of AddRan Christian University located in Waco, approximately ninety miles south of Fort Worth, and had grown up in a liberal home where all four children had been encouraged since birth to follow their own star. His parents were not native born. They had arrived in Texas from Pennsylvania fifteen years after the Civil War, Professor Baker to spearhead the fledgling AddRan Male and Female College, then situated in what became Fort Worth’s notorious Hell’s Half Acre. Neal and Estelle Gordon, like their parents before them, were Texas born and bred. Todd couldn’t begin to understand the life-blood connection of men like her father to the land their ancestors had settled and fought to keep against every adversary that would have taken it from them. Todd’s father would never expect his children to follow in his footsteps, while in the world of the Neal Gordons, offspring were reared from birth to fill their fathers’ shoes.
Also, Todd Baker had not lived with the knowledge that, but for the loving people who had raised her, she could have been Susie. Samantha did owe them, and that was the end of the argument. She was the only heir to all her father and mother had worked for. To go off to pursue a degree in science—paleontology, to be exact—would have been a betrayal of their caring and giving. What would happen to Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad—the Three Hills of the Trinity—once its mighty owner died? How could Samantha allow her father to live out his life knowing that all his sacrifice, work, and devotion to the land of his family and heritage would pass into other hands at the time of his death? No other passion was worth it.
When she was sixteen, Todd had asked her if she ever wondered about her birth parents, who they were, where they lived, if they were still alive. “ Of course not! ” she exclaimed, like one jumping back from a spitting fire.
But that was not entirely true. Around her fifteenth birthday, an incident occurred that caused Samantha to question briefly the fragment of fact about her adoption she’d overheard at ten years old. She was in her workshop cataloging her find for the day, when she heard a moan of animal distress outside the window. Looking out, she saw a mother cow in agony, her unweaned calf beside her. Samantha ran out and discovered the cow had swallowed a crab apple too deep to be extracted from her throat. The animal had wandered far away from the pasture into human territory, and Samantha, peering into the dying Hereford’s brown eyes, wondered if the cow had not intentionally brought her calf to her laboratory workshop where she spent her spare time.
“Do you suppose she led her calf here for me to look after?” Samantha asked Wayne
In her childish hand, Samantha wrote a letter to Susie explaining that she’d been forbidden to come see her again. She addressed it simply “To Susie” and hoped there was only one by that name at the Millbrook Home for Orphaned Children. Whether she received it, Samantha never knew. When she was thirteen and was presented Pony, a quarter horse, for her birthday, her first sprint of freedom was to the orphanage to visit Susie. Susie was no longer with them, the merry-faced matron informed her. She had died of tuberculosis the preceding winter.
Chapter Nine
D id she have regrets about anything? Absolutely not, unless it was Sloan Singleton’s infatuation with Anne Rutherford. Samantha adjusted her pillows against the headboard to indulge in a few more minutes of thought and reflection. Todd Baker and his like had no background or experience to understand her willingness to accept the future laid out for her by virtue of loyalty and obligation. Todd came from a family of academics. He was the son of the president of AddRan Christian University located in Waco, approximately ninety miles south of Fort Worth, and had grown up in a liberal home where all four children had been encouraged since birth to follow their own star. His parents were not native born. They had arrived in Texas from Pennsylvania fifteen years after the Civil War, Professor Baker to spearhead the fledgling AddRan Male and Female College, then situated in what became Fort Worth’s notorious Hell’s Half Acre. Neal and Estelle Gordon, like their parents before them, were Texas born and bred. Todd couldn’t begin to understand the life-blood connection of men like her father to the land their ancestors had settled and fought to keep against every adversary that would have taken it from them. Todd’s father would never expect his children to follow in his footsteps, while in the world of the Neal Gordons, offspring were reared from birth to fill their fathers’ shoes.
Also, Todd Baker had not lived with the knowledge that, but for the loving people who had raised her, she could have been Susie. Samantha did owe them, and that was the end of the argument. She was the only heir to all her father and mother had worked for. To go off to pursue a degree in science—paleontology, to be exact—would have been a betrayal of their caring and giving. What would happen to Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad—the Three Hills of the Trinity—once its mighty owner died? How could Samantha allow her father to live out his life knowing that all his sacrifice, work, and devotion to the land of his family and heritage would pass into other hands at the time of his death? No other passion was worth it.
When she was sixteen, Todd had asked her if she ever wondered about her birth parents, who they were, where they lived, if they were still alive. “ Of course not! ” she exclaimed, like one jumping back from a spitting fire.
But that was not entirely true. Around her fifteenth birthday, an incident occurred that caused Samantha to question briefly the fragment of fact about her adoption she’d overheard at ten years old. She was in her workshop cataloging her find for the day, when she heard a moan of animal distress outside the window. Looking out, she saw a mother cow in agony, her unweaned calf beside her. Samantha ran out and discovered the cow had swallowed a crab apple too deep to be extracted from her throat. The animal had wandered far away from the pasture into human territory, and Samantha, peering into the dying Hereford’s brown eyes, wondered if the cow had not intentionally brought her calf to her laboratory workshop where she spent her spare time.
“Do you suppose she led her calf here for me to look after?” Samantha asked Wayne
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