Summer Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lone Star for over fifteen
years.
    He had failed to mention how incredibly striking, how very regal she was for a woman in her early fifties.
    “I’m—” Kate started to introduce herself, but before she could finish, the housekeeper reached out, grabbed both her hands with a familiarity Kate was not used to, and held them tight. Shaking her head, the woman began crying without a sound; then she let go of Kate’s hands to wipe her eyes.
    “You are Señora Whittington Benton.
Lo siento.
I am sorry. So sorry.” The woman whispered the words over and over, met Kate’s eyes, and then quickly looked away.
    Despite the warm dry air, Kate shivered, not knowing what to make of the forlorn, apologetic welcome.
    Finally, the woman in black seemed to realize they could not stand there forever.
    “Come in, señora. Come in.” She picked up Kate’s carpetbag and led her into a spacious, airy entry hall between two larger, open doorways. “I am Sofia Mendoza, Señor Benton’s housekeeper. We . . . were not certain when to expect you.”
    “Reed mentioned you in his letters,” Kate said, glancing down at her old carpetbag now sitting just inside the door. It looked lumpy and threadbare and out of place, the most worn and faded thing in such a grand entry. She struggled to hide her embarrassment as she looked at Sofia again.
    Still shaken by Sofia’s emotional greeting, Kate tried to pull herself together and hide her nervousness by weaving her fingers together. She pressed her hands tight against her waist.
    “There was no way to let him know exactly when I would arrive. Is Reed here?” She glanced over at the staircase across the foyer.
    “No.” Sofia appeared to be fighting for words, her throat working to swallow, her eyes bright with tears.
    Sinking into sharp-edged disappointment, Kate made a feeble attempt to smile.
    “Will he be back soon?”
    Sofia closed her eyes, as if speech was too painful.
    Uncomfortable, Kate looked away. Her gaze drifted over the room beyond the foyer: a parlor with fine furnishings upholstered in rich, shining brocade fabrics and warm wood surfaces gleaming with polish; a bookcase filled with gilded, leather-bound volumes; long windows; a massive fireplace of river rock. The room had an air of disuse about it, as if perfected and then abandoned. Each piece appeared to have been carefully chosen for both comfort and style and then ignored.
    Suddenly, her breath caught. There, in a bay window at the far end of the room, a wooden coffin rested on two sawhorses. When her knees nearly buckled, she reached for a circular hall table in the center of the foyer for support and then miraculously, somehow found her legs. She rushed into the sitting room.
    “Wait, señora!”
    Without responding, Kate ran across the endless parlor until she reached the coffin.
    In death, Reed Benton appeared to be far older than he had led her to believe, but he was still as handsome as in the photograph.
    His hair was thick, dark brown, with silver at the temples. His jaw line was still firm, but his cheeks were hollow and his neck thin. He had been a man of stature, well over six feet, with shoulders so wide he cramped his final resting place.
    Before she knew she had even moved, Kate touched his neatly combed and oiled hair, gently ran her fingers over it just above his brow, careful not to touch his skin. She remained surprisingly calm in the face of death’s cold finality until she realized she felt nothing simply because she was numb.
    In his letters Reed had told of his father’s immigration to Texas from Georgia nearly thirty-five years ago. How Reed had married young, buried his first wife, and lost a son to the Indian wars. Kate knew the milestones of his life, but now she would forever be deprived of learning the little things, things a wife should know about a husband—how he liked his coffee, what he liked to read, his favorite foods, what made him smile.
    No single word of love, no mention of it had