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“Roy is not dead,” Lenny told her. “But he must have space while he learns to live. You must give him space.”
Okay, so Lenny could speak English.
“You must not ask Garret questions, or he will only be angry. He does not do well with questions, and then you will get angry, and then I will also get angry. Apparently. You are going to get me in trouble,” Lenny told her.
“In trouble with Garret?” she asked. “You can tell Garret to kiss your horse’s ass.”
“You have a filthy mouth,” Garret said.
With a yelp, Eliza spun and spied him leaning against the now open doorframe. “Well, so do you!”
Garret pushed off the doorframe and barked out, “Get back inside.”
“For what?” she demanded.
“Today is your wedding day,” Garret told her. “You need to get dressed.”
A laugh escaped her.
Garret turned and left the barn as a second laugh belted out of her lungs. “Very funny,” she called after him. He just kept walking.
Her wedding day? What did that mean?
She turned to Lenny, who stood with her arms crossed tightly over her middle, her eyes on the ground, and her lips pursed into a thin line.
Lenny wasn’t laughing at the joke.
The giggles faded away in her throat. Eliza looked at the cage again, then at Garret’s receding back, then back to the cage.
“I really want to see Roy,” she said suddenly.
“You should go to the house.”
“I’m not marrying anyone.”
“It was Roy’s choice.”
Uh-oh. No, no, no. “Who did Roy say he wants me to marry?” she asked low, though she already knew the answer.
“Garret Shaw,” Lenny murmured.
“I would rather eat the butthole of a buffalo. Raw.” She cupped her hand into the air. “I would rather have a chicken take a steaming dump in the palm of my hand—”
“I cannot do anything to stop it,” Lenny said. “Neither can Cookie. The decision has been made.”
Eliza was in Crazyland. “Why one God’s green Earth would I marry a man who has no sense of humor, who gets mad if I even breathe around him, and who has a bloody cage in the corner of his barn? His whole house is brown. And boring! He is rude and cold and cares for no one but himself.”
“That’s not true. He cared for Roy.”
“Is Roy really alive? Everyone keeps talking of some past tense of him.” Realization struck her like lightning. “Did Garret kill him? Is this some guilty-conscience thing?” A tremor of terror washed through her. “Am I in danger?” she asked, her voice wrenching up two octaves.
“Garret would never kill Roy. He cared for Roy. He cared enough to say he would pair with you to protect you.”
“To protect me,” Eliza repeated, unsure if she believed any of that. “Protect me from what? Happiness? That is a miserable man who couldn’t make a woman happy if he tried, which clearly he doesn’t want to.”
“Get…dressed!” Garret roared from the general direction of the house.
Eliza startled hard. These people—Garret especially—were rough and abrasive and bossy. They were loud and their eyes were strange colors, and she didn’t understand the dynamics here.
