Page 43 of The Widow and the Wanted

She studies me. “Has anyone ever suggested that choice to Boone?”

I smile, though there is ache in it. “He does both well, doesn’t he?”

She seems to realize what she has implied only after the words leave her.

“My apologies for the jest.” She smooths her skirt. “He wears his heart plainly. That is all I meant.”

“That is Boone.”

A beat passes before she asks, “And is there someone of consequence in his life?”

I cough, the bitter pine still clinging to my tongue.

The kettle ticks softly near the coals.

An embarrassed laugh escapes her. “Please, do not mistake me, sir. I am not fishing for matrimony. Only seeking to understand you both.”

“No, of course not. Boone is…”

The word catches. To call him singular feels like betrayal.

“I do not believe he has had a woman in his life in some time.”

There.

The truth, dressed carefully enough to pass.

“Ah,” she says.

She turns the tin cup in her hands, watching the steam thin.

“Back home,” she says, “people took my widowhood like a temporary ailment. They spoke as if remarriage would heal me. Like a dead husband was just an old boot you could replace with a little effort.” She huffs a quiet, humorless laugh. “But what I wanted was not a new husband. What I wanted was my own name on my own door.”

I find myself smiling. “Your own apothecary,” I remember. “You mentioned it once before, beside the campfire.”

“Yes,” she says, her expression softening, surprised that I had listened, perhaps.

“I loved my husband. Eli was good to me. But I do not miss being managed. I am fully capable of managing myself.”

“Managed,” I repeat.

She nods. “It is not merely that a husband expects service. It is the world’s assumption that he is entitled to it. That my time, my body, my ambition must take the shape he defined.”

The fire pops. Outside, the wind leans hard against the cabin, and the word husband turns over in my mind.

I know what the church says a husband is. I know what the nuns taught us, what the preachers read from their books. A man at the head. A wife beneath his roof, beneath his name, beneath his will. All dressed up in candles and scripture until it sounds less like possession.

I think of Sister Margaret in her habit. The robes, the prayers, the solemn hush of it. Ceremony has its own power. I know that much. Some promises are too large for ordinary words.

But Boone and I had no church. No priest. No blessing anyone would name holy. Only the lake, the dark trees, his hand in mine, and the two of us promising what we already knew.

No robes. No rings. No law.

Still, I have never belonged to anything more truly.

“In scripture,” I say slowly, “marriage is spoken of as union. Not ownership.”

She lifts her eyes. “And yet in practice it often resembles acquisition.”