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“Suit yourself, Miss Flemm,” Bill quipped, and was quiet.
She may have frustrated the man. She didn’t know, nor did she pretend to understand the inner workings of men’s complicated minds, but the last thing she needed was to unload her family's skeletons on a stranger who would, no doubt, go gallivanting straight back to town with the gossip. She would at least try to keep her reputation intact in this new place she was determined to call home.
How would it be to see Roy after so long? She’d never called him Father because, biologically speaking, he wasn’t. Blood aside, though, he was the closest to a father she would ever have in her lifetime. She hadn’t wanted to leave the caring man behind all those years ago, but Mother was a fearful creature who’d never accepted the wilderness as home. Maybe if Mother hadn’t been brought up in society with all the conveniences of city life, she could’ve found happiness out here.
Even if it was dangerous, it was quite beautiful here.
The leaves on the passing trees lifted lazily in the wind and sang a quiet song of homecoming. The land was flat and she could see for miles. It was so different from the cluttered streets of the busy city. How Mother hadn’t seen the beauty of the wide openness of this place, she would never know. Scandal did awful things to people though, and Mother had endured her share of heartache. Maybe she’d had a broken heart, and that hadn’t allowed her to see the secret promise in this life.
Eliza reached out and plucked a leaf from a low-hanging branch as they passed. As long as she lived, she would never allow a man to break her like her real father had done to Mother. Leaving a pregnant woman like he did, without a care for giving his unborn child a name, was the vilest act of dishonor a highborn man could commit. Roy, with his plain way of life and easygoing ideals, had been ten times the man and hadn’t even had a reason, other than he loved her and Mother. The genuine, smiling expression in his eyes still visited her fondest memories of childhood. Yep, there was something to be said about finding happiness in a simple life out here. Seeing Roy again would be a start.
She pulled a stack of letters from the side pocket of one of her suitcases and traced the top envelope to calm her nerves. She and Roy had kept in touch by writing a few times a year. His letters were a reminder of the life she had loved and left behind as a child. The tattered notes had always brought solace during dark times in her life, and she needed such comfort again as the buggy jerked and swerved closer to the only place she had ever considered home.
The town had changed and grown so much in the past ten years, she felt disconnected from it. The road to Roy’s homestead passing beneath the buggy’s wheels, however, was just as she remembered. Still littered with potholes so deep they echoed, and peppered with rabbits frightened out of hiding as the shallow-bedded wagon rolled noisily by.
When they neared the first turnoff, shivers of excitement fluttered in her chest. Clusters of blooming cacti lined an unassuming dirt road leading away from the main. The jutted turnoff signified the entrance to the Lazy S Ranch, where Garret Shaw had lived when they were little. According to the updates in Roy’s letters, he didn’t live here anymore, but she peered as far as she could see across the flat landscape for him nonetheless.
Garret. Her first crush. It had only been puppy-love, as she had been just a child back then, but it had felt so big at the time. It was probably the most she would ever feel for a boy. None of the city boys who had pursued her lived up to the memories of the nice neighbor boy when she was twelve. She still thought about him from time to time. Imagined what he looked like all grown up; what kind of man he had become. Roy had grown used to her asking about her childhood friend, and when he wrote, offered tidbits of information on him. Last she knew, he was finishing up his schooling in Georgetown, and had left his father to run the family ranch, the Lazy S. According to Roy, he hadn’t been back to visit in years.
She squinted against the sun as they passed the Lazy S. What had he looked like? It had been so long ago for a person so young—half a lifetime. He’d had dark hair, though the exact color she couldn’t recall. Dark brunette, perhaps? Five years older than her, he’d been kind for accepting her younger, and constant, presence with minimal annoyance. Compared to her, he’d been tall, and as thin as a fence post no matter how much his mother had fed him. What had his features looked like, though? The color of his eyes? Had they been green? Blue, perhaps? Her memories of him had blurred over time.
The next homestead was Roy’s. As Mr. Borland pulled the team up the long drive to the front of the house, Eliza tucked the letters into her luggage. She straightened her dress as nerves fluttered her stomach. The time had come to introduce her memories of Roy to the present-day man.
Roy’s cabin was well-maintained, but showed some signs of aging. The wood wasn’t the color of new logs like she remembered. The bones of the small home had grayed with age, and newer wooden shingles peppered the roof where leaks had been tended to. Eliza scuttled out of the buggy and lifted her skirts to make her way up to the door. The porch creaked underfoot and her heart hammered as she lifted a gloved hand to knock on the front door.
Knock, knock, knock!
No one answered.
“Roy?” she called as she knocked again. Silence.
Bill hopped from the buggy and sauntered around the house, yelling out Roy’s name to no answer. “Well, he still lives here, I can promise you that. He runs cattle. He’s probably out with them, is all.” He hoisted her luggage out of the back and set them in the dusty yard, then climbed back into the wagon seat and tipped his hat at her. “I wish you well, miss, but I’m losing daylight. That old coot won’t mind a bit if you just went on in there and made yourself at home.”
She reached for her small coin purse. “At least let me pay you for your troubles.”
He waved her off and slapped the reins against the backs of the two-horse team. “No need.”
“Are you certain?” she called out to no answer. “Thank youuu,” she sang out with a wave, but if he heard her, he didn’t show it.
When she opened the door to the cabin, a hundred memories from childhood flooded her. Every piece of furniture seemed to be in the same place. The small oval dining table was surrounded by four ladder-backed chairs, and the deep slate sink that took up most of the kitchen still boasted the same old hand pump. The small bookcase had not moved from the shadow of the stone fireplace, and the faded floral curtains Mother had hung lifted lazily in the breeze from the open window. Even the smell of bacon grease and yeast bread seemed familiar.
A smile curved her lips. There, beyond the front porch and yard lay the prairie grass so tall, it would tickle her waist if she had a mind to stand in it. She had imagined this a thousand times.
Home.
She lugged her baggage inside, set it near the front door, and bit her bottom lip as she scanned the front room again. A change into a dress with lighter skirts would be a relief, but it felt odd to make herself at home when Roy didn’t even know she was here. Padding around the cabin, she picked up a glass perfume bottle Mother had left behind, and a folded drawing of an atrocious-looking grasshopper she’d drawn as a child. She touched blankets, curtains, and furniture to re-familiarize herself with the place. In the mirror over the washbasin, she straightened her prim, cream-colored hat. She re-pinned a couple of curls that had come loose during the jarring trip from the train station, and then plopped into one of the chairs at the dining table to practice the patience Aunt Elizabeth always complained had skipped her entirely. It had been a long trip with many days of travel, and as she watched the fluttering curtains, her eyelids grew heavier and heavier, until she gave in and lowered her head to her arms on the table to wait.
Slam! The wall shuddered with the force of the door, and Eliza screamed and lurched awake in startlement. The metallic sound of a pistol being cocked reverberated through her mind, and she stared down the barrel of a gun.
“You’re a woman,” a gravelly voice ground out in surprise.
“Roy?” she said, still half-dazed.
The gun was pulled away and clicked loudly as the man uncocked it. A bewildered look crept over his older, yet still familiar face.
“Lizzy?” he asked, stunned.
The old nickname warmed her. Roy had only called her that when her mother wasn’t around to scold him for not calling her Elizabeth. “It’s me, Roy. I’m…I’m…” She didn’t even know a word big enough to fill the air between them. “I’m back.”
