Page 68 of The Widow and the Wanted

“He meant to, but then you nearly died on our doorstep. It wasn’t the right time.”

“Well it ain’t better now.” He sinks back with a harsh exhale. “I’m a damn fool. Thought maybe I weren’t the only one wantin’ somethin’ I ain’t supposed to. Turns out I’m just the last to find out what already happened.”

I look at him, searching for words that all seem inadequate. The logs crackle. Wind forces through the seams between logs with a low hiss. His eyes cut to mine, sharp despite the fever. He drags a hand through his hair, frustrated with his own body for being stuck in bed. “I don’t know what to do with you,” he admits, voice rough. “You show up in our mess like you been meant for it. You keep me alive. You look at me like—” He breaks off, jaw flexing. “Like I’m a horse needs breakin’, and you cain’t decide whether to whip me or climb on. But if it’s Okee you want to kiss, go right ahead. Have at him. But ain’t a thing keepin’ me out. You’ll just have to put up with me.”

Chapter 19

Okee

Ikeep the horse at a steady trot, slowing only when the snow lies deep. The wind stays in my face the whole way, stinging my eyes raw, but I do not stop. Every mile I cover is one mile closer to a path out of this mess.

By midmorning the ridges fall away and the land opens. Pasture stretches brittle and brown under a low, leaden sky. A few rail fences sag under frost. Smoke lifts from chimneys in thin gray tendrils before the wind sweeps it away.

The last stretch is the worst. The track disappears beneath blown snow, and I have to trust the horse to feel out firm ground. My fingers are so numb I cannot tell whether I still hold the reins until the leather bites my palm.

Then the tvlwv, a tribal town, comes into view: a sparse scattering of weathered wooden buildings set far apart, their roofs dusted with snow, smoke curling from cook fires. Oak and hickory sting the nose.

Okmulgee. The Mvskoke Nation’s capital.

I ride down the main track between the buildings, hooves crunching over frozen ruts. A group of Mvskoke men pass, kept warm under vibrant blankets that stand out against the stark white and gray. The wind batters them, their voices low and flattened by the cold. I greet them.

“Hensci!”

They slow their pace and I ask after the government office.

One of them jerks his chin toward a two-story log house set apart from the rest. He answers me in Mvskoke.

The government keeps a room in the Council House now.

It stands beyond a stretch of dirt and dead grass powdered with crystalline snow. I thank them and ride on.

Inside the council house, men stand waiting with petitions folded tight in their hands. Others gather near the doorway in low conversation, Mvskoke and English mingling beneath the murmur of the stove. At one long table, clerks sort papers into neat stacks—petitions, notices, copies of treaty language, I assume. The government man’s business has been set up in one borrowed corner.

A coffee pot gone black at the spout sits on a side table beside a plate of cold biscuits and an open cigar box already half emptied. The room smells of woodsmoke, tobacco, and leather. I remove my hat. As I make my way through the crowd, my last visit with my father begins to play again in my head.

“A man of twenty-five ought to have a wife. Children. All you do is wander. It’s dishonorable, Okee.”

It’s been years since then. I sat in Father’s den in a leather chair and listened while he named all the ways I had wasted my potential and disappointed him.

“And instead of a young lady, you bring a man home to our family table.”

“He has no family.”

“Then perhaps he should find a wife himself and start one.”

He did not know Boone and I had already lain beneath the stars one summer night on Whiskey Island, lightning bugs drifting around us like tiny, flickering flames. My hand in his, Boone whispered, “I’d find you in the dark, through smoke, in the fire of hell if that’s where fate consigns us. Ain’t nothin’ ever keepin’ me from you, Okee, long as I live.”

How my knees had gone soft. I had only reached over, caught his collar, and pulled that sweet, beautiful man’s mouth to mine like my life depended on it.

But my father would never know. I never expected plain acceptance from him, and I never meant to shame him with the truth. The least he could do was accept the lie I offered him: Boone and I are business partners, guiding people safely across the Territory. Bachelors and messmates, nothing more.

“Okee,” I hear him call.

I turn toward the sound of his baritone.

He is grayer now. Thinner. I force a smile and walk to him. His face looks like my own, save for my mother’s complexion, hair, and eyes. Sometimes I study my reflection and wonder how it is possible that we could be so alike and yet so painfully different. It’s unsettling. The face of a man I love and hate in equal measure looking back at me.

I simply greet him as I was taught.