It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before Will and Adam stepped into the sheriff’s office, and in that time Eliza Jane had recovered her composure and was ready for them.
She sat ramrod straight in a chair, her hands folded in her lap. She wouldn’t cry—she’d cried herself out that morning—and she wouldn’t cower. She didn’t look at either man as Will took a seat near her and the sheriff sat behind his desk.
“Roland Thayer will recover,” Adam said abruptly, “though he’ll have the worst headache of his life. I won’t be pressing charges against his wife.”
She wanted to sag in her chair with relief for Dandy, but she didn’t. “And will you keep your promise to lock him up for abusing her?”
“I ain’t never made a promise I ain’t kept, Eliza Jane Carter.”
“Have you ever stuck around long enough to see the results of your work?” Will burst out, as if he couldn’t hold the words in another second. “Or do you just ride in, get everybody riled up and then just ride right out again?”
“What happened today was not my fault, Will. I’m not the one who hurt Dandy. I didn’t spend twenty years degrading her and beating her.”
“She never beat him senseless with a rolling pin before you came.”
Eliza Jane straightened in her chair, disappointment causing a keen pain in her chest. “So you think it would have been better if I hadn’t come?”
“Darlin’, you are no end of trouble.”
“So it would have been better for Dandy Thayer to keep suffering in silence. Far better for her to be belittled and beaten for the rest of her life rather than cause a fuss. She should have remembered her place instead of lifting a hand to her husband in defense of herself.”
“Goddamit, Eliza Jane! That is not what I mean.”
“Yes, it is.” She rose to her feet, looking down at the two men. “You’re both angry with me because I told her she deserved better in life. Because I told her it was wrong that her husband treated her worse than he’d treat a mongrel dog. Because I told her she had a right not to be punched in the face because her husband’s coffee was a little too bitter.”
She turned, intending to make an emphatic exit, but Adam’s tone of voice stopped her. “Sit down.”
“I will not.”
“Sit down or I will sit you down myself.”
Eliza Jane laughed bitterly, but she sat. “I believe you would, seeing as how you both condone violence against women.”
Adam crossed his arms and pinned her with his dark stare. “Did you tell Dandy Thayer she had the right to defend herself against her husband?”
She crossed her own arms and glared right back at him. “Yes, I did.”
“Did you ever tell her that that the next time he tried to lay a hand on her, she should come to me?”
“In these cases, officers of the law often—”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Will shifted in his chair. “Did you tell her she should bring her injuries to me so I could treat her and swear out a complaint against him myself?”
She looked down at her hands, surprised to find them trembling. “No, I didn’t. She wouldn’t admit it to me, so she wouldn’t have admitted it to you.”
“Did you think to come to me or Adam yourself and tell us you thought Roland Thayer was beating his wife and she needed help?”
“I went to the law once, on behalf of a woman who needed help.” Eliza Jane felt the anger stirring in her all over again. “The sheriff bought her husband a few drinks and told him maybe he shouldn’t beat his wife. And her husband, who got drunk, was convinced she’d shamed him by speaking out.
“He beat her to death that night. And maybe if she’d taken a rolling pin to his head instead of my going to the law, she’d still be alive.”
“I ain’t that sheriff,” Adam snapped.
“How do I know that?” Eliza Jane snapped right back. “Better a woman learn to take care of herself than to place her trust in yet another man who may not do right by her.”
“That’s an awful lonely way to live,” Will said, and the sadness in his voice was reflected in his eyes.
She didn’t know what else to say. While there were maybe other choices Dandy could have made, Eliza Jane could only make decisions based on her own experiences. And her experiences with going to the law had been tragic.
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Right or wrong, there are going to be some people in this town who blame you for what happened to Roland Thayer. The man’s got a lot of friends, and you’re going to want to be careful. Keep your door locked and try not to find yourself in isolated places. Will and I can’t be watching you every minute.”
“I understand,” she whispered, eyes on her lap. “I’ll be careful.”
“Look at me,” the sheriff demanded, and she did, blinking away the tears. “I know you believe in what you do, Eliza Jane. And I know you intend to keep on doing it. You just need to remember that a woman not only needs to know she can change her lot in life, but she needs to know how.”
She nodded, feeling very humbled. “I apologize for what I said about you condoning violence against women.”
“Apology accepted.” Adam got to his feet and put his hat back on. “And if you tell anybody I was soft on you after you pointed a gun at me, I will shoot you.”
And then he left her alone with Will, and one look at his face told her the humbling had barely begun.
“You sure do make it hard for a man to love you, Eliza Jane.”
“It’s easier for everybody that way.”
“I said you made it hard, not that it already hadn’t happened. I love you and I want you to be my wife, despite your being a pain in the ass the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
She’d thought herself totally cried out, but her eyes welled up anyway. “We’ve talked about this.”
“No, I’ve talked. You’ve tried to avoid it altogether.” Will leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees. “Do you love me?”
“Yes.” The word escaped her lips before she could stop it. “But—”
“So give me a good reason why us lovin’ one another ain’t enough to keep you here.”
Unable to look him straight in the eye, she looked at his hands and went for the easy answer. “You love children, Will, and I can’t bear any for you.”
“That’s bullshit, Eliza Jane. In case you haven’t noticed, I have an entire town full of children. Sure, I see the worst of them as a rule, but each of them is special to me. If I feel a need to throw a ball around with the boys or read a storybook to a little girl, all I have to do is step outside and give a holler.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I won’t feel the loss of not being a father anywhere near as bad as I’d feel the loss of not being your husband.”
The word husband made Eliza Jane’s heart ache for what could have been. “You said yourself I’m the opposite of everything a doctor’s wife needs to be.”
“But you’re not the opposite of what this doctor needs his wife to be.”
“You won’t be happy with me for long, Will. And I won’t change.”
“You’re not being fair to me. I’ve never tried to change you.”
“You said I was no end of trouble.”
“And that’s the truth. But I fell in love with you anyway. So it seems to me if I want a stubborn, wanton troublemaker as a wife, you shouldn’t be trying to talk me out of it.”
She didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t know how to explain that she loved him so much she didn’t see how she’d get through the rest of her life without him. And how afraid she was he’d wake up one day and realize she wasn’t really the wife he’d wanted after all. She’d survived Augustus casting her aside, but couldn’t survive Will not wanting her anymore. It would kill her.
While she sat silently, trying desperately to come up with the right words to convey her fears, Will stood and dropped a leather wallet
onto the desk in front of her.
“I can’t believe I’m helping you leave me, but that’s enough to get you anywhere you want to go.”
Eliza Jane lowered her face to her hands as she began to cry in earnest.
“I won’t beg you to stay, darlin’, but I also can’t take any more of this. It hurts too much. You either get on the next stage out of town or you stay and be my wife. The choice is yours.”
Will walked to the door, but paused and looked back at her. “I love you, Eliza Jane. Not the woman you think I want you to be, or the woman other folks say you should be. I love you.”
He closed the door behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
On the morning Eliza Jane would leave Gardiner, she woke to rain beating on the roof of the hotel. It seemed appropriate somehow that the sky would cry the tears she couldn’t.
When she turned her head on the pillow, the first thing she saw was the single yellow blossom in the glass of water on the bedside table. Johnny Barnes had given it to her, to thank her for her talks with Melinda. Dandy had baked her a batch of muffins for her journey. She closed her eyes again, not wanting to see the evidence of how much the town—or some of it, anyway—had embraced her. And how much she’d come to care for them.
Her trunk was packed, so after dressing and stowing a few last things, she went down to the front desk and asked Dan O’Brien to have her things brought down front in time for the stage.
“I will, Mrs. Carter. But I wish you weren’t leaving us.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “And Sadie’s going to miss you something fierce.”
“I’m going to miss her, too. As a matter of fact, I’m going to walk down and say goodbye after I have breakfast.”
She went to the restaurant, where she ordered coffee she barely sipped from and a meal she only picked at. When Marguerite handed her a picnic basket filled with food for her trip, Eliza Jane thanked her effusively and fled before she could break down and make a scene.
It was tempting to pay a visit to Lucy Barnes just to make the leaving seem easier.
Rain kept people indoors, so Gardiner seemed unnaturally quiet as she walked down the plank sidewalk, staying close to the buildings in an effort to stay dry. When she reached the Chicken Coop, she took a deep breath before opening the door. This goodbye wouldn’t be easy.
At first she thought she’d missed the chickens entirely—perhaps it was shopping day—but she found Sadie in the kitchen, wiping dishes and putting them away.
“Good morning, Mrs. Carter,” she said sadly. “You’re still leaving today?”
“It’s for the best, Sadie.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “Where are the others?”
“Holly and Betty are upstairs in their room. They don’t do well with goodbyes and they ain’t comin’ out. Fiona went to the Mercantile and to visit Miss Adele’s resting place. She likes to walk in the rain and she doesn’t want you to see her cry, I guess.”
“I’m going to miss you all, Sadie. Who will do your bookkeeping? And I’m going to miss knowing how your life turns out and if you marry Dan and whether the baby’s a boy or a girl and…” Her voice choked off and she shook her head.
Sadie put down her towel and took a seat across from her. “Dan’s going to take care of our money for now. And I already plan to ask Miss Adele’s niece to write you once she comes—if you let us know where you are. And as for Dan’s proposal, I told him I won’t make any decisions until after Miss Rebecca comes. With only the four of us, it don’t seem right for me to up and leave, too.”
“You know as well as I do the others would be nothing but happy for you if you marry Dan and get to raise that baby in a nice home.”
“I don’t know how to be a wife, Mrs. Carter. My momma died birthin’ me, and my daddy wasn’t no good, so I ran off when I was old enough, and I ain’t done nothin’ but whorin’ since. I don’t know how to be Mrs. Daniel O’Brien.”
Eliza Jane reached across the table and covered Sadie’s hands with her own. “He didn’t fall in love with Mrs. Daniel O’Brien. He fell in love with you, Sadie. You’re not a stranger he just met. He knows who you are and he knows what you’ve done.”
“The only wifely thing I know how to do is give him pleasure in bed.”
“Is it pleasurable for you, as well?”
“With Dan, you mean?” When Eliza Jane nodded, Sadie smiled. “He’s a sweet man and he always tries to make our time together special.”
“That’s wonderful! And look how well you and the others keep up this big house. You can cook and clean and anything else you need to do. Being a prostitute is just one of the things you do. It’s not who you are.”
“Well, I hear tell you’re leaving because you won’t marry Doc on account of you being a women’s libber. How is that different from me not marrying Dan on account of being a whore?”
Eliza Jane drew her hands back, shocked. “That’s… It’s an entirely different situation.”
How on earth had Sadie heard about Will’s ultimatum? She supposed he might have told Adam, but Sadie wasn’t likely to have heard it from him considering the way he avoided the Coop as a rule.
Then she realized what a ridiculous train of thought that was. In Gardiner, everybody knew everybody’s business.
“It ain’t no different,” Sadie insisted.
“It is,” Eliza Jane said, perhaps a little more abruptly than she’d intended. “Prostitution was your job. The liberation of woman is my life philosophy. It colors everything I think and do and say. It’s a part of who I am.”
“Fancy words just confuse me, Mrs. Carter. You think women should be treated decent. I sleep with men for money. I think it’s pretty plain which of us makes for a better wife.”
“Slept, Sadie. You slept with men for money in the past.” She didn’t want to talk about Will and marriage. “You can start a whole new life—be a wife and mother, and help Dan run the hotel.”
“Fiona told me I do have a strong background in hospitality,” Sadie said, and they both laughed, though not for long.
“It don’t matter now, anyway,” Sadie continued. “I told him we’d wait ‘til Miss Rebecca comes and then we’ll see. If after waiting and listening to the townsfolk jaw about it, he still wants to marry me, I probably will.”
“I hope you do. When a man is willing to defy the entire town by marrying a prostitute carrying a child who might not be his, that speaks to a pretty powerful love. Don’t dismiss that too readily.”
“I reckon a man wanting to marry a woman who can’t cook, gets drunk in saloons and makes an entire town full of men so mad they could spit speaks to a mighty powerful love, too.”
Heat prickled around Eliza Jane’s collar. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Well, we wasn’t, but now we are.” Sadie leaned back in her chair and folded her hands over her softly-rounded belly.
“I’d never make a good doctor’s wife.”
“I reckon everybody knows that, especially the doc. But it’s just like you told me about Dan falling in love with a whore and not a perfect wife. Doc Martinson fell in love with a women’s libber, and not a perfect wife.”
Eliza Jane was horrified to find her vision blurring from tears. “I’m afraid, Sadie.”
“I’ve known Doc for years, Mrs. Carter, and he wouldn’t ever hurt a woman.”
“Not afraid of him. I’m afraid of…having it all turn bad. I know he loves me, and I love him. And we had our own independence while still having each other and it was working. What if becoming man and wife ruins that? I was a wife once, and it made me desperately unhappy.”
“The way I see it is that the man made you unhappy, not the marriage. You ain’t never been Doc’s wife, but being his woman sure has made you happy, hasn’t it?”
Eliza Jane smiled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You’re a wise woman, Sadie.”
“No, I just ain’t real smart, so I don’t overthink things the way you do.”
“Will loves you,” Sadie said softly. “He could have his pick of any woman in Gardiner—or in any other town—and he chose you.”
“I’m leaving today, and some day when Will has a nice wife and a pack of children, he’ll thank me for it.”
Sadie stood and shook her head. “Hell, maybe I am smarter than you. But I don’t want us arguin’ on your last day. Us chickens made you a goodbye present. Wait here.”
She went down the hall and came back a moment later carrying the ugliest—and yet most beautiful—scarf Eliza Jane had ever seen.
“We all knitted on it,” Sadie shyly handed it to her.
She could see they’d all taken turns. Fiona’s tight, determined stitches. Sadie’s rows, which varied in length as she randomly dropped or added stitches. Betty knit so loosely her rows had an almost lace-like quality, and Holly seemed to purl accidentally quite often. And it was bright red.
Eliza Jane pressed it to her face, inhaling the lingering perfumed scents of these fallen women as if she could keep them with her forever.
“We figured you might end up someplace cold, and we wanted to keep you warm.”
Eliza Jane’s raw eyes burned and she threw her arms around Sadie. “It’s the most precious gift I’ve ever received. I’m going to miss you ladies so much. I…I have to go.”
After one final squeeze, she looped the scarf around her neck, grabbed the picnic basket and left the whorehouse for the last time.
The rain had dwindled down, and Dan had set her trunk and valise out in front of the post office to await the stagecoach. It was almost time, so Eliza Jane sat on the trunk to wait. She’d said the goodbyes she could say.
She hadn’t seen Will since he’d delivered his ultimatum in the sheriff’s office, and she had nearly convinced herself it was for the best. But she couldn’t stop thinking about him as the time drew near to leave.
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