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Still, she was dying to know what was in the box.
“Are you ready?” Carol asked quietly.
“I am. I think.” She laughed nervously.
Carol nodded. She carefully undid the clasp and opened the box.
Mabel wasn’t sure what to think. Nestled in the deep velvet folds was an old-looking pistol.
A gun.
She hadn’t anticipated seeing a gun. Of course, Annie Oakley was known as the most famous sharpshooter of the Old West, but still. A gun?
“Can I say I am a little disappointed?” Mabel said slowly.
As much as she admired Annie, it was more because of how she had learned about how Annie had supported women. How she had forged a path in a mostly male-dominated world, how she had gone forward but held out a hand behind her, helping those to come along, giving them a hand. Giving them confidence in themselves, and caring about her fellow humans.
It wasn’t really because of the guns.
In fact, that was probably the one thing that she and Annie definitely did not have in common.
Mabel couldn’t say for sure that she’d ever actually held a gun before.
“It’s beautiful,” Carol breathed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it before. It’s...pink.”
“That’s what I was thinking. So odd, the pink handle. It’s...not a gun handle I’ve ever seen before. Is that what it’s called? The handle?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about guns.” Carol almost seemed dismissive. “Here. You have to be the one to take it out.”
“I have to be the one? What do you mean by that?”
Carol clamped her mouth shut, almost as though she felt like she had said too much.
It made Mabel curious. What was Carol saying?
But she held the case over so that it was right in front of Mabel, and Mabel felt like she probably didn’t have a choice. She carefully reached out and slowly stroked one finger down the handle of the pistol before she wrapped her fingers around it and lifted it from the box.
It felt heavy in her hand. Although, having never held a gun before, she wasn’t sure whether that was normal or unusual.
“It seems fitting that a gun from Annie would look feminine.” James’s words caused Mabel to jerk. She’d forgotten that he was there.
She wasn’t sure exactly what she did, although she knew she almost dropped the gun, and as she grabbed for it with her other hand, she felt something click underneath her, and knowing the one rule of gun safety was to never point it at anything one didn’t intend to shoot, she was careful as she was fumbling for the gun to keep it pointed away from her.
Therefore, when the gun went off, she did not shoot herself.
She shot James instead.
