Page 156 of The Widow and the Wanted

“Love, did Lula ask you to write labels?” I say, without glancing up.

“She tried,” Boone says, grinding a large granite pestle behind me.

I bite my lip and admire the page. For a moment I’m returned to our meager barracks where I’d have Boone read chapters aloud. We read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables by candlelight.

“This ain’t even English,” he complained, showing me the word and making an attempt. “Them-there-deers?”

“Thénardiers.”

He flushed. “Ain’t even close. Sounds fancy when you say it.”

It was sweet, defying the bravado of soldiers in close quarters. By all accounts, Boone was a joker and a hothead. He never shied away from a brawl. But at night, when everything fell to a hush and it was just us for an hour in a private corner, I saw who he really was.

The one who struggled, felt embarrassed, but kept at it. At first, every correction raised his hackles. Later, he only glared, repeated the word, and waited for my nod. I liked being the one who could give him something no one had bothered to give him before.

My chest swells with affection for him now, reading his misspelled labels.

“I can tell you were sounding the words out. Nice work, partner.”

He grins to himself as he smashes herbs for Lula’s tinctures. “Thank you. I told Lula, ain’t my fault folks decided not to spell words how you say them.”

“You’re right, it’s not.”

The shop bell rings as the door swings open. For one suspended moment, my mind refuses the sight before me.

My father stands inside Lula’s shop in a dark summer suit too fine for the dust on the road. His beard has gone mostly white, neatly trimmed along his jaw. His hat is brushed clean. His gloves are pale. His eyes move over the room, at the herbs, the jars. At Boone.

Then at me.

“Okee,” he says.

The room changes.

Boone’s pestle goes still in the mortar. My own pen hovers above the page, ink gathering dangerously at the nib. I set it down with care.

“Father.”

He steps farther inside, removing his hat and steadying himself on a cane—carved wood with an ornate silver grip. “I had to see for myself.”

“See what?”

His gaze moves over me with an efficiency I remember from childhood. Rolled sleeves. Ink-stained fingers. The labels beneath my hand. The staircase at the back.

Then Boone.

“The papers said Hollister’s company collapsed. Timber fraud. False surveys. Bribed lawmen.” His mouth tightens. He reaches into his coat and withdraws a folded newspaper, worn soft at the creases.

He sets it on the counter.

WIDOW AND WANTED MEN IMPLICATE HOLLISTER TIMBER IN MASSIVE FRAUD

Father spins slowly around the shop again, studying everything with curiosity. “I felt terrible for not having believed you, but then I heard the rest. That the woman survivor had opened an apothecary beside a business of ill repute. That the two men Hollister accused were living above it with her.” His gaze settles on me. “I expected to hear from you in spring.”

I look down at the newspaper, though I am no longer reading it.

“When I did not,” Father says, “I assumed you had made your choice.”

“I had.”