Page 136 of The Widow and the Wanted

I wrap my shawl around my hand, sift quickly, and palm several pieces no longer than my thumb.

I return to the cot with the roots hidden in the folded shawl and do not sleep.

Chapter 35

Boone

Goldie told us to stay put. Lula told us too, though kinder.

So here we are. Trusting.

Or trying.

Okee stands by the window with one shoulder pressed to the frame, not close enough to be seen from the street but near enough to torture himself with pieces of it. Lamplight from below cuts across his face in thin gold bars. Every so often, a carriage wheel grinds through the mud, or some drunk fool laughs outside the saloon, and his whole body goes still like a hound catching a scent.

I sit on the edge of our bed because if I stand, I’ll pace, and the floors will creak and groan.

The room smells like her.

Soap. Dried herbs. A little whiskey from last night. That faint, sweet-sharp scent clinging to her trunk and shawl and the little glass bottles arranged on the washstand.

It’s enough to make a man stupid.

Okee’s fingers flex once against the window frame. “She’s been gone too long,” he says.

I glance toward the door. Goldie’s girl is posted in the hall, or so Goldie said. Another woman downstairs by the front parlor. Somebody watching the back. Somebody watching the street. Goldie laid it out cool as a cardsharp, telling us where we’d be most useful, and wouldn’t you know, the place she found for us was right here.

Out of sight.

Like a pair of loaded pistols kept under the mattress until she needed to draw.

Okee near bit through his own tongue when she said it.

Now he says, bitter as burnt coffee, “What kind of mother sends her daughter out as bait?”

I huff, though there ain’t much humor in it. “The kind that owns a house full of women.”

He turns his head slowly. I know that look.

“She did not tell us the whole plan,” he says.

“No, she did not.”

“She told us the portion she wished us to obey.”

“Yep.”

“She expects us to sit in this room while Lula walks beside that man.”

“She expects us not to ruin whatever Lula agreed to.”

His jaw works hard. That’s the part cutting him raw. Lula agreed.

Lula looked at us both with those green eyes steady as a rifle sight and asked us not to make her smaller by loving her. Asked us not to yank her out of every room that frightened us just because we were scared of what might happen inside it.

Below, the Gemini hums soft through the floorboards. Women’s voices. Men’s boots. A piano playing too sweet and too slow. Somewhere down there, Goldie is smiling at customers and moving people around like pieces on a board.

And somewhere beyond this room, Lula is walking beside a man I ain’t yet laid eyes on, though I already know plenty. Fancy coat, soft hands, clean fingernails. A man don’t need to look like a monster to be one.