Page 25 of The Widow and the Wanted

My throat tightens. I linger too long over the straps, fingers tracing leather.

Cruel, cruel world. One that grows hemlock in thick bushels crowned with dainty lace-white flowers. One with men who ride in beneath the stars and kill innocent people stopped to admire them. My tongue goes heavy, rough and useless.

“Lula?” Boone’s voice is quieter now.

“I’m all right,” I say automatically.

I draw out the small linen sachets, still faintly perfumed with a life that had seemed ordinary once. I hold one up between two fingers. “May I place them by the cellar and the door?”

Okee’s mouth curves. “If you can persuade mice to vacate without bloodshed,” he says, “by all means.”

I crouch and tuck one sachet where the boards meet. When I stand, both men are watching—Boone restless, Okee with a steadier curiosity, as if he’s taking inventory of what I can do.

“Maybe I ought to see if I can catch us a meal ’fore dark,” Boone says suddenly, like he can’t bear the weight of stillness. He grabs his rifle and bolts out into the snow.

“Careful,” Okee says. “Wind is cutting north fast. Lead sky on the horizon. Another storm will be in soon. Don’t find yourself caught too far.”

Boone bows his head and mutters something before shutting the door behind him with a lonely creak.

Okee lets out a slow breath and looks at me beside the growing fire. He forces a tight-lipped smile.

Here we are again. Alone.

“So,” I say, because I refuse to let quiet swallow me, and Okee seems to be the kind of man who speaks only under duress, “what do you think Boone will bring back next?”

Okee eases into a chair. “A buck, most likely.”

“Truly? What makes you so sure?”

“Good time of year.”

“I’ve never been much for hunting,” I admit, hoping to pry more than a handful of words from him at a time. “I always wanted to try. My father-in-law called it improper. My husband agreed.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, mild as if it’s already decided. “We’ll put a rifle in your hands. See how you do.”

A laugh slips out of me—surprised, not mocking—at the thought of firing a gun. I suppose there’s no one left to forbid me now.

“That would be very kind of you to teach me.”

“It’s selfish. Best you know how to fend for yourself.”

Right. Of course.

As Okee predicted, Boone returns with a buck as the sky breaks open again, snow coming down thick and fast. Boone cuts a loin free, then goes back out to dress the rest. By the time he’s done, the carcass hangs under a limb where the cold can keep it and scavengers can’t.

In one way, it’s suffocating, watching the world white out around us. In another, it’s a kind of mercy—if we can’t get out, the men who are after us can’t get in.

As supper cooks slow over the fire and the cabin finally grows warm enough to remove the bite from the air, I take my bath. Unbuttoning my skirt with stiff fingers, I let it fall to the floor before folding it neatly over a wooden chair inside the washroom, grateful beyond words for a door that latches shut.

When I lower myself into the tub, I nearly weep. Heat seeps into my soul, loosening aches in my calves and feet. It feels as though the icicles clinging to my insides begin at last to melt, warming me through, inside and out. For a while there is nothing but the hush of the water, the wind beating at the cabin walls, and the muffled rhythm of Boone and Okee’s voices in the other room.

But still my mind will not rest.

Every time I close my eyes, I see it again—the burst of gunfire, the confusion, the blood on snow so white it looks unreal. Mary.

The terror of it comes over me in waves, sharp and cold, no matter the heat of the bath. I cannot make sense of how I’ve arrived here, how one moment everything becomes horror and the next I’m taking shelter in this unknown place. All of my possessions, aside from the clothes and remedies in my suitcase and my notebook, are back in Fort Smith. I’m tempted to pity myself, but then Boone barks a laugh outside, and it’s such a ridiculous howl I catch myself in a smile, remembering all the small, charming ways he’s proven himself a ninny.

It’s a cruel thing to smile while grief still makes a tangled knot of my nerves.