Serena's Silence

CHAPTER ONE

SERENA

Oklahoma, 1907

The screech of the whistle announced the train’s approach to the next station. Serena Belle woke with a start. She clambered over her travel companion, Freddie, and stuck her head out of the window; then she bolted to the other side of the carriage and strained over two passengers to see outside.

A sign read Bakerstown, their destination.

Freddie had promised her that the small Oklahoma town was arid and dry, with no large bodies of water, and from the evidence outside the window, he was correct. Still, Serena clutched her carpetbag to her chest as they exited the train.

The sun shone bright in the cornflower-blue sky, but the spring morning air was cool. There was a spattering of cottontail clouds. If there’d been a hint of rain, she wouldn’t have left the train.

Through the train depot’s rectangular windows, a strip of town was in view. Nothing like the old cobblestone roads lined with run-down tenement buildings in their old neighborhood. All her life, Serena had been surrounded by the sights, smells, and sounds of her little Italian neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey. The air there had been filled with a mixture of freshly baked bread, the tang of blood from the butcher, and the foulness of the waste dumped on the streets. It had been dirty and crowded and none of it ever felt like home to Serena.

Oklahoma—not a state, but a territory—was calm and open, with flowers in bloom and trees bursting with vibrant green foliage. And it was quiet. No one had yelled while conversing on the train as they traveled across the territory. The passengers on the train—and in most of the places they’d stopped along the way—had been polite and decent.

On the platform, Serena clung to Freddie, her fingers fidgeting with the handle of her bag. It had been his idea to escape to this new place, far from their home. His new job was their opportunity to reinvent themselves.

And they’d needed money. Desperately.

Freddie had answered an ad in a paper three weeks prior, and the reply had come swiftly. A widower named Alexander Randall was in need of a farmhand. Freddie had worked seasonally at a farm in one of the Italian agrarian colonies in New Jersey. Serena wasn’t sure that qualified him for this job—running a private farm—but they’d had no other option.

The ad had made no mention of the hired help being allowed to bring someone along, but Freddie said they’d tackle that obstacle once they arrived.

Despite everything, Freddie was optimistic. And Serena trusted him wholeheartedly. Deception, even by omission, did not come naturally to Serena, but Freddie said it was the only way they could stay together. And Serena would not survive without Freddie by her side. He was the reason she was able to break free from the horrors of her past, thousands of miles away. Freddie was her savior, her heart, her only family.

There was a buzz in the honeysuckle-scented air. People were nearly bouncing in their boots on the dirt road and raised sidewalks that encompassed the town, as if dreams could be plucked out of the air and realized. Travelers moved out West with nothing more than hope and a dream, and Serena lapped it up. If these people could start anew, there may be a chance for her. She smiled timidly. It was her first hint of joy in a lifetime.

“Are you okay?” Freddie squeezed her hand, which held his arm in an iron grip.

She nodded.

Hope circled her, but as with everything, it was muted by the darkness that dulled any brightness flowing into her.

“Mr. Randall’s correspondence was very decent,” Freddie said.

In the letter, which Serena had read numerous times, Mr. Randall explained he was a widower with an eight-year-old daughter. He’d recently moved to Bakerstown and was renting an old farmhouse. The owners had moved farther west and lent it to him in exchange for farming the fields. But he was overwhelmed by the extra work because of his day job, and that’s why he’d placed the ad.

“I looked into the lumber company he manages in this town.” Freddie opened the door to the depot, and they stepped inside the building, the air stuffy and ripe with the pungent smell of passengers newly disembarked from long travels. “It’s a respectable family-owned business.”

In his letter, Mr. Randall said he was close friends with the owner’s son, who helped run the business in a town called Hillview, where Mr. Randall had lived and worked until recently.

Freddie looked over the people milling around, but no one fit the description that Mr. Randall had included in the letter of acceptance. They stepped back outside onto the platform.

“I wrote the son of the lumber company’s owner, William Arlington, separately and asked for a character reference for Mr. Randall.”

Serena shot a worried glance at Freddie.

“Don’t fret. I implied I was a developer from up North looking to invest and build in Bakerstown and wanted to confirm I’d be dealing with an honest man if I were to work with their company.”

Serena raised her eyebrows, impressed. She wondered why he hadn’t mentioned this correspondence before. But didn’t ask.

“Mr. Arlington gave a glowing report and even included a few personal details about Mr. Randall. He’s a widower, as you know. His wife died a few years ago, and he never remarried.”

Perhaps the man had moved away to escape a broken heart. But that gave no indication of a kind character. In fact, his loss could motivate the exact opposite reaction. A man in pain could be a vicious creature.

Serena was reassured, knowing that if Mr. Randall was unkind, Freddie wouldn’t hesitate to run again. They’d been running for the past two months.

At the end of the platform stood a man with chestnut hair, tan skin, and a stern, sullen face. He looked to be about thirty-five years old, with a towheaded girl, clutching a letter and searching the thinning crowd, next to him. Serena whacked Freddie’s shoulder to grab his attention.

“Ow. What?”

Serena nodded toward the pair.

“I bet that’s them.” Freddie adjusted his well-worn derby hat. “They look respectable.”

Serena was wary, but there was an unfettered glow about the girl, which gave Serena faith that perhaps this man was a good father.

“Let me do the talking,” Freddie said—his little joke.

Serena rolled her eyes. She hadn’t spoken a word in over two months.

###

ALEX

“How old is the boy you hired for the farm, Papa?” Vikki asked, her golden hair shimmering from the reflection of the late April sun.

“His name is Fredrick Belle, and his letter said he’s nineteen years old.”

“I’m nearly nine, which means he’s ten years older.”

Alex Randall smiled over his right shoulder at his young daughter, who sat in the back of the open wagon, her gaze fixed on the dirt road ahead. “Your arithmetic has much improved since we hired Mrs. Briney.”

Vikki frowned and turned around, facing backward. “She’s so old. Sometimes she forgets that we’ve done my schoolwork, and she’ll insist on doing it again. I long for Miss Wallace.”

Alex’s heart hitched as it always did when Kimimela Wallace’s name came up in conversation.

“Don’t you find life here agreeable?”

Vikki shrugged.

Alex had taken Vikki from the only home she’d known and moved them to Bakerstown five months prior. The town was in its infancy, but it was expanding rapidly after many new families had claimed the cheap government land and settled. The company he worked for—Warlington Lumber—had expanded their business along with it, opening a new hardware store and lumberyard to provide the supplies for all the new building. Alex had moved to manage the operation, since Will Arlington wasn’t able to travel as much now that he and his wife, Lucy, had adopted a baby.

And if Alex allowed honesty into his thoughts, he’d also left to escape the humiliation and heartbreak of losing the woman he loved. Not his wife, who they buried many years ago, but Kimimela Wallace, who’d swept into his life like a storm and left him in shambles.

“Miss Wallace misses you, too,” Alex said. “As you know from the letter that is practically falling apart in your pocket.”

Kimi wrote to Vikki once a month, and she cherished the letters. Kimi relayed her adventures up North as she set up the first boarding school for Indian children. Kimi never sent Alex a letter. What would be the purpose? She was with her true love, Chayton, now. And their love—Alex and Kimi’s—had been misguided. If it could even be called love. There’d been an ache in his heart when he’d released Kimi from their engagement, but sometimes he wondered if it was his loneliness that had loved her most.

Guilt hung heavy inside of him. Not from losing Kimi, but over taking Vikki from the only place she’d known her mother, Mabel. But the loss of Mabel hadn’t been a hardship on Vikki. She’d been young when Mabel died, and Vikki continued on with her life, laughing and playing and collecting her little figurines as she’d always done. Vikki’s indifference was a reflection of how distant Mabel had been in her daughter’s life, especially at the end.

“Can we go by the store and check if they have any new dime novels. Please?”

Alex smiled. “Certainly.”

Vikki was not a typical girl who loved to dress up her dolls and play house. She was entranced by spaceships and creatures from outer space and eagerly waited for the next science-fiction stories to be released in the ten-cent weeklies. She devoured the stories, then carved little wooden figures and painted them like the strange life-forms in her tales.

“I like it being just you and me,” Vikki said.

Such a simple and honest statement, it tore at Alex’s heart. He’d wanted to manage the farm on his own, but his real job was running the lumber business in town. It hadn’t been an issue during the winter, when they’d moved to the farm. But once the soil thawed and it was time to seed, the day-to-day tasks became too cumbersome, and he had to seek out help.

“Things change, my darling. With your momma gone, and the farm, we need help. Think of this young man as an older brother. You’re always saying how bored you get with no one around.”

“I have my magazines and my books.” Vikki stuck her nose in her beat-up copy of From the Earth to the Moon.

“Oh!” Her head popped up. “Mrs. Briney says the town just received funding for a library. They’re going to use the vacant building at the end of Main Street.”

“I hope you’ve requested plenty of science-fiction books for the shelves.” Alex pulled the wagon up to the platform in front of the depot and watered his black mare, Jupiter.

Vikki ran into the general store but came out with a frown.

“No new stories?” Alex asked.

She shook her head.

Hand-in-hand, they walked to the train platform. Alex cherished his daughter’s slight hand in his palm. The days were limited until she’d want more to do with her friends than her father. With his free hand, he rubbed away the pang in his chest. He wished he could freeze time. One day, Vikki would be married with her own family. What would he do then? Die a lonely, grumpy old man, most likely.

On the platform, Alex distracted himself from his morose thoughts by watching the line of passengers disembark from the train carriages, but none fit the description of the young man—a strong and able nineteen-year-old, tall and lean, with black hair and brown eyes—who’d answered the ad Alex had placed in the regional paper. The young man was traveling from New Jersey and had written that he’d lost his parents and was looking for honest work.

The train spurted several puffs of smoke from its stack and then sighed as if resting after its long journey. Disappointment filled Alex, and it hit him how much he’d been looking forward to having someone else around to talk to and to share their small life within this new place.

They hadn’t made many friends, and the nights got lonesome with only his thoughts to keep him company. It could be tedious with only a child to talk to most days.

A young couple stepped out of the depot. The man fit the description, but the woman was his opposite in coloring: wavy blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. The young man appeared to be around nineteen, and the woman appeared a few years older.

The woman spotted Mr. Randall and nudged the young man’s shoulder.

“Mr. Randall?” the young man said as he approached Alex and Vikki. “I’m Freddie Ro—er, Belle, and this is my sister, Serena.”

Alex blinked at the young lady. Her light eyes locked with his for a brief moment and then lowered. She huddled close to her brother’s side.

“You never said anything about a sister.” Alex wasn’t upset as much as curious about this frail young creature.

“Please accept my deepest apologies for the slight dishonesty. I’ll pay for her food and keep with my wages. I’m her only family, and in good consciousness, I couldn’t leave her behind. She’s a hard worker. Really, you’ll be getting two for the price of one. She can work with the animals, or on the farm, or in the home. Whatever you prefer.”

Alex studied Miss Belle. She was about ten years younger than him, twenty-five years old if he had to guess, but there was deep sorrow in her eyes. “And you don’t mind this arrangement, Miss Belle?”

“She doesn’t speak.” Freddie and Miss Belle exchanged a nervous glance. “But she’s very bright and amicable. She attended the top schools in New Jersey.”

“Oh. Are there special schools up there for people who are . . .” Alex wasn’t sure what to call her affliction.

“Oh, she hasn’t always been mute. She was a chatterbox before she lost her voice.” Freddie laughed self-consciously. “It’s almost a blessing.”

Miss Belle poked her elbow into her brother’s side.

“Sorry. That was daft.” Freddie shrugged in apology. “But I give you my word, she’s perfectly capable. Except for her lack of speech.”

Alex wanted to inquire more about this perplexing young lady, but they seemed a nice and honest pair—despite the minor deception—and he was already late seeding two of the fields.

“Very well, then,” Alex said, deciding to give them a chance. He could always let them go after the planting season if they didn’t work out. And it would be a relief to have a woman in the house for Vikki. Miss Belle’s presence in his home wouldn’t be inappropriate with her brother as chaperon.

“Thank you, sir. Thank you.” Freddie beamed.

Miss Belle and Freddie looked as if a great weight had been lifted from their shoulders, and it warmed Alex’s heart to help the young pair.

Alex guided them to his wagon at the platform’s edge. Miss Belle climbed into the back with Vikki, and the child’s eyes brightened at her new companion. They were mirror images of one another with their light hair and coloring.

Alex turned toward the platform for their luggage but found only a small carpetbag. “Where are the rest of your belongings?”

“That’s all,” Freddie said.

“Surely there’s more.”

Freddie’s gaze lowered. “I stepped away from our luggage while buying our train tickets and someone stole it. We lost everything.”

Alex didn’t press the boy further but asked softly, “How long has she been mute?”

“She stopped talking over two months ago.” A shadow fell on the young man’s face. “The day our father died.”