by Lori Austin
How could it be? His dead wife wasn’t quite so dead.
Annabeth turned away. Why torment herself? As Ethan had asked: What did you expect?
Strangely, she hadn’t expected this.
She retrieved her saddlebags, her gun. But before she could sling them over her shoulder, she remembered her torn dress.
She drew out the clothes she’d been wearing last night. They were filthy; they smelled. She tossed them onto the floor; they were all she had, thanks to Ethan’s pyre.
She considered going to the Sewing and Sundry and taking the dress she’d been promised. She could wear a skirt that was a bit short. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done so before. All her life she’d outgrown clothes faster than her mother could sew them or her father could pay for them. At least her breasts wouldn’t be showing and she wouldn’t smell like a pig in wallow.
However, she might do something she’d regret—like gouge out her own eyes, or perhaps Cora’s—if she walked in on Ethan and the lovely Mrs. Lewis tangled in each other’s arms. Instead she stepped to the armoire, selected one of Ethan’s shirts. While she was there, she stole a pair of his trousers and one of his coats, too. Wasn’t the first time.
As she walked toward the livery, folks stared and pointed. It would just be her luck that dressing as a man would get her thrown in jail when riding with outlaws hadn’t. Then she heard the whispers.
“Where’s she been?”
“Thought she was dead.”
“Poor Miz Lewis.”
“Poor Doc. Woman’s a giant and that hair . . .”
Annabeth’s fingers clenched.
“They were gonna be married.”
Married?
“Uh-oh.”
The last was uttered in a cacophony of voices when she stalked to the door of the shop and went in.
• • •
Ethan held Cora’s hand. He wasn’t certain what else to do. She kept crying, and nothing he could say would stop her. He’d never been much good with crying women. Probably because he hadn’t known very many.
His mother had died giving birth to his brother. He had no sisters. His wife was not the crying type. He’d never seen Annabeth shed a single tear during the war. Certainly, at the worst point of their lives, there’d been tears. But, mostly, they’d been his.
He patted Cora’s hand, making noncommittal noises as she continued to sob. How long did such outbursts last?
“Y-y-your w-wife,” Cora stammered.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“She’s n-n-n—” Cora paused, breath hitching, large blue eyes beseeching Ethan for help. The only word he could think to suggest was “nice,” and he was fairly certain that wasn’t it. So he made more noises and patted faster.
“Not,” Cora finally managed. “Not dead.”
“No,” he agreed. Really, what more could he say about that?
“You said she was dead.”
Had he? His recollections since returning from Scotland had been fuzzy at best.
As time passed, he’d started to tell people she was “gone.” Everyone assumed “gone” meant “dead,” and as more years passed, he had begun to believe it, at least in the light of day. In the night, when he was alone, he’d known she was out there somewhere.
Out there choosing not to be with him. Which had led to the empty blue bottles.
“Ethan!”
He couldn’t recall Cora ever being so shrill before. Until now, her voice had brought to mind fog and smoke, not skinned cats. Of course, she hadn’t been committing adultery before.
Well, she had been. She just hadn’t known it.
“Yes?” he managed, though his head had begun to ache and his mouth was so damn dry.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
Her bottom lip pouted. “About her?”
“I don’t understand.” Annabeth was his wife—for better or worse—and though there’d been so much more worse than there’d been better, he didn’t really see how that mattered.
“Aren’t you going to . . . ?”
He waited, once again trying to fill in the blank and coming up short. Cora’s expectant smile gave way to annoyance, and she let out a huff. “Divorce her!”
The thought had never occurred to him.
“She abandoned you, Ethan. She can’t just walk back into town and become Mrs. Walsh again.”
“She doesn’t have to become Mrs. Walsh; she is.” Although Ethan didn’t think that she wanted to be.
Maybe divorce was the reason Annabeth had returned. But if she’d wanted to be free of him, she should have just stayed . . . free.
“What about us?” Cora whispered.
Ethan brought his attention back to the woman before him. He cared for her. How could he not? She’d given herself to him when he was desperately in need of something, someone, to hold on to. She’d believed they would marry; he had heard enough hints to that effect both from her and from the folks of Freedom. He hadn’t discouraged those expectations. It had felt too good knowing someone loved him, someone wanted him, when the only woman he loved and wanted didn’t.
Would he have married Cora eventually? He wasn’t sure. He only knew that he couldn’t now. She needed to know that, too.
Ethan took Cora’s small, soft hands in his. “My wife isn’t dead. I don’t know where she’s been, or why she was gone for so long, but she’s back.” He kissed her knuckles.
When he lifted his head, she wasn’t looking at him but behind him. She wasn’t crying; she didn’t appear ready to scream. Instead, her face had turned white; her rosy lips had taken on a hint of blue. Alarmed, Ethan tightened his grip, and her gaze flicked to his.
“I’m with child,” she said.
The whole world shimmied. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t breathe. Someone behind him choked.
Ethan spun. His wife stood in the doorway. “Beth,” he began. “I—”
She ran.
Ethan’s skin went clammy; sweat beaded his brow. He swallowed several times and managed to keep himself from puking. Could life get any worse?
He took one step toward the gaping door, and Cora cried out. He glanced at her just in time to see her eyes flutter; he caught her before she hit the floor.
“Jesus,” he muttered, gaze flicking to the exit and then back to her. He wanted so badly to follow Annabeth, but what would he say?
Oops?
The laugh that escaped sounded slightly hysterical. Ethan pursed his lips. If he continued to laugh like that, he might not stop. Instead, he concentrated on the only thing he’d ever been good at. Doctoring. He certainly wasn’t much of a man.
Not true. By any “man’s” standards, he was quite the specimen. How many women would he impregnate before he was through?
Ethan retrieved his bag, dug inside, and found the smelling salts. One wave beneath her nose and Cora choked, then opened her eyes. She shoved the bottle away. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever used smelling salts when you fainted?”
“I’ve never fainted.” She set her hand on her stomach. “Must be the baby.”
Ethan glanced toward the still-open doorway and sighed. “Must be.”
“Aren’t you happy?”
Ethan was a lot of things, but happy wasn’t one of them. Happy hadn’t been one of them for so long, he couldn’t recall what happy felt like.
He returned his gaze to Cora. “Can you sit up?”
“If you help me.” He helped; she clung. “Tell me that you love me.” Her indrawn breath quavered, jiggling her breasts against his arm. Ethan wanted to tear away, to get away. “That you love us.”
Should he lie? Or should he break her heart?
The impossible choice was postponed when Sadie reappeared. “Doc!” Cora released an annoyed huff, and her fingers tightened on Ethan’s arm. “Yer wife.”
Ethan stood, the movement tearing Cora’s hold free. “What’s wrong?”
“You should
probably run,” Sadie said.
• • •
Folks continued to stare and mutter as Annabeth stumbled up the street. She ignored them as she headed for the livery. She’d been on her way out of town. She wished she’d just left and not decided to confront her husband and his mistress about their bigamous plans. Now she had a new painful memory to add to the old.
I’m with child.
She leaned against the corner of the nearest building; her chest rebelled at the lack of air. She took another gulp, which sounded too much like a sob. She hadn’t cried since she’d left Freedom; she wasn’t going to start again now.
Annabeth glanced behind her, afraid Ethan might have followed. But why would he? He’d just been given everything he’d ever wanted.
Her fingers curled until her nails bit into her palms. The tiny, sharp pain brought some clarity. She couldn’t leave. Not quite yet.
She retraced her steps to the office. No one spoke; everyone moved out of the way. Shoving open the front door so hard, it banged against the wall, her gaze circled the room. Cold stove, nearly empty wood box.
An ax.
Her fingers closed around the handle. Slowly, she climbed the stairs and went into the spare room. What had seemed like a good idea five minutes ago didn’t any longer. She couldn’t lift the ax; she wanted to sink onto the floor and die.
The footsteps pounding up the stairs caused her to tighten her grip. The sound of her name being called in a desperate, frightened voice made her want to laugh. What did Ethan think she was going to do?
He appeared in the doorway, his face as white as it had been at Cora’s. He was sweating; he appeared ready to vomit. That made two of them.
Make that three. Or would it be four? She was fairly certain Cora wanted to vomit right now as well, and did she count as one person, or two? Annabeth shook her head. Was she losing her mind? It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered.
“Beth?” Ethan stepped into the room. Hands open to show he held nothing in them, he stared at her as if she were a wild thing. “What are you doing?”
“What you should have done.” She tightened her grip. “Long ago.”
“Honey,” he began.
“Shut. Up.” Annabeth swung the ax.
The crib shattered into several large chunks. She continued to hack away at it until the thing lay in several dozen small ones. When she finished, she tossed the blade in the center of the room and peered out the window. She needed to leave—this room, this house, this town, this life—but right now it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
“Why did you keep it?” she whispered.
“I . . .” he began, then sighed. “I don’t know.”
On the street below, a few people still paused and pointed, but most of Freedom had gone about their business. No doubt the doctor and his no-longer-dead wife would be a topic of conversation on street corners for weeks to come, but folks had work to do and only so much time in which to do it.
Annabeth’s gaze went to Lewis’s Sewing and Sundry. At least Cora had the sense not to stand outside and stare, although she might have been doing just that behind the windows. The sun glanced off of them bright enough to blind.
Ethan came up beside her. He didn’t speak; she had told him to shut up. Annabeth still couldn’t look at him.
“Why?” he murmured. She wasn’t sure which “why” he meant. Why was she here? Why had she left? Why had she lied, spied? Why had they even tried?
Or maybe just why had she used his ax on their dead child’s crib? At least for that question she had an answer.
“You might have put Cora Lewis in our bed,” she said, “but you aren’t putting her child in the one you made for ours.”
“I wouldn’t,” he began.
She had no idea anymore what he would or wouldn’t do, but she knew one thing for certain. “Now you can’t.”
They continued to peer outside. Did Ethan see the streets, the buildings, the people? Or had his vision blurred with memories, too?
Standing in this room all those years ago, the town below them dustier and smaller—but back then wasn’t everything? Laughing together, her belly round and taut. When he’d laid his palm against it, everything in the world had seemed so right. How could it have gone so quickly, and so totally, wrong?
Lies.
His. Hers. She still wasn’t sure where one began and the other ended. She probably never would be.
A flash of light drew Annabeth’s attention to the sewing shop; the sun had moved just enough to take the bright flare off the windows and reveal that Cora was not standing behind the glass.
The sparkle came again farther down, near the edge of town. She’d seen sparkles like it before.
Annabeth shoved Ethan aside as the window shattered all over them. They bounced off the wall, landing on the floor in a heap of limbs and glass and crib chunks as the echo of a gunshot rang in her ears.
Ignoring the spike of glass and wood against her knees and palms, the tiny cuts across her face and throat, Annabeth crawled to the door where she’d dropped her possessions. She slid her Colt from the holster, muttering a few curses that she’d left the rifle in her saddle’s scabbard. A pistol was going to be of no use unless whoever was shooting at them decided to approach the house. And if they were going to do that, they would have done it in the first place rather than snipe at them from afar.
Annabeth thought about what she’d seen in that instant before she’d pushed Ethan out of the way. A glint of sun off metal at the edge of Freedom, where few people roamed, in a place where whoever wanted them dead could slip back into town during the commotion, or jump on a horse and disappear during the same. Although, around here, there wasn’t much cover.
She doubted the culprit was still out there. Nevertheless, she peeked over the edge of a window that now matched the empty one in Ethan’s room—very quick, just in case—but no more shots were fired.
A cloud of dust had marred the horizon. A horse and rider? Or just dust? She couldn’t tell. Fleetingly, she thought of Lassiter Morant. But if he’d been shooting at them, someone would be dead.
“I think they’re gone, but . . .” She paused. The words “stay away from the window”—one never knew just how gone ‘gone’ was—remained unspoken.
Ethan didn’t move, didn’t speak. She considered he might be frightened, but as he’d once spent time as a field surgeon in the middle of a war, shots had come closer to him than this.
“Ethan?” She sat on her heels and glanced over her shoulder.
She’d been wrong. No shot had ever come closer than this.
• • •
One minute Ethan stood at Annabeth’s side, remembering the day he’d built the crib that lay in pieces behind them. The next, a sharp pain in his temple preceded images flashing through his mind so quickly, he could barely grasp them.
His mother—so young, Mikey still in her belly.
His da—so old and dying.
John Law grinning through the gray ash on his face.
Fedya’s smirk.
Mikey’s laughter.
Annabeth tugging at the shorn ends of her hair. It’ll grow back. Then the wonder on her face as she’d laid her palm on her stomach and murmured, I’m with child.
Pain dragged Ethan from the past, and he moaned, batting at whoever was poking his temple; his brain felt on fire.
“Stop that!” His hand was grasped, then shoved to his side.
Ethan opened his eyes. Annabeth’s face swam into view. Her hair had grown back.
His vision went hazy. He blinked, and his left eye burned. He began to swipe at it again, and she growled. His arm fell to his side.
He heard footsteps on the stairs, saw movement in the doorway. But Annabeth didn’t even glance in that direction. All her attention was for Ethan.
“What happened?” A man with gray hair and blue eyes knelt on Ethan’s other side. Memory flickered—there, gone, and then . . . just gone.
“If
you can’t decipher that, you aren’t much of a lawman,” Annabeth muttered.
Lawman. The sheriff? Except he didn’t resemble the sheriff of Freedom at all.
“I heard the shot,” the man said.
“Didn’t everyone?” Annabeth stood, and memory glimmered again. Another place, another time. So much blood, but the face beneath it was not his own.
Ethan caught the cuff of Annabeth’s trousers—why was she wearing them? They looked like his—and tried to draw her back. She yanked the material from his fingers and headed for the door.
“Baby,” he managed, and she stopped so fast, her boots slid in the broken glass and slivers of wood.
“I need supplies.” Her voice was hoarse. “Make sure he doesn’t get up or touch that wound.”
Footsteps clattered downward; Ethan waited for the door to open and close. When it didn’t, he relaxed. Although, knowing Annabeth, she could leave without him ever hearing her go.
He tried to remember—when had she left? Why had she gone? When had she come back?—but he couldn’t, and the fact that he couldn’t bothered him.
“Seems like more happened here than a gunshot through your window,” the man observed.
“I dinnae recall,” Ethan said.
The lawman, who’d been frowning at the room, now frowned at Ethan. “Since when do you speak with an Irish accent?”
“I dinnae—”
“Recall. I suspect getting shot in the head can do that.”
He’d been shot in the head? No. That hadn’t been him; it had been—
“Mikey,” he said.
A sharp intake of breath had Ethan glancing toward the door where Annabeth stood, one arm full of medical supplies, a bucket dangling from the other, face as white as the clouds drifting past the open window.
“This isn’t like Mikey.” She bustled inside, setting what she held in her arms onto the ground and busying herself with them. “A flesh wound. You’ll be fine.”
“Who’s Mikey?” the unknown lawman asked.
Annabeth, a large bottle in her hands, glanced at Ethan as if waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t, she dumped the contents into the bucket she’d carried upstairs. The two liquids merged, and a strong medicinal scent filled the room.