by Chloe Garner
She’d ridden home the entire way in tears. Strange to think of it, now, the entire memory dominated by the blurry line of Jasper’s mane more than anything about the act of taking the man’s life.
“This is a bad place,” Kayla said after another minute.
“It is,” Sarah agreed again. “People die here.”
“They die everywhere, though, don’t they?”
“Everywhere there’s Lawsons,” Sarah said. Kayla nodded.
“Did I marry a bad man?”
Sarah winced, glad for the moment that Kayla couldn’t see it, then shrugged.
“You tell Wade I said it, I’ll call you a liar, but no. There are plenty of reasons to kill a man in this world, and Wade ain’t often on the bad side of ‘em. Point of fact, I ain’t ever known him to take a life without cause.”
Kayla sniffed again.
“Do you have a handkerchief?”
“You know this dress better’n I do,” Sarah said, drawing a soft laugh.
“You looked beautiful today,” Kayla said. Sarah shrugged at the darkness.
“Ain’t done me so much good, but I appreciate what you done.”
“I’m sorry,” Kayla said.
They were quiet again.
“Does it get easier?” Kayla asked.
“Wearin’ a dress?” Sarah asked. “Not so much. Still feel like a confection.” She gave a small snort to make it clear that it was a joke, then shook her head. “No, it don’t. I don’t figure it should, if you’re a good person, inside it all. After a while, you get a bit numb to it, like if you don’t think about it for a while you can forget, and then you forget without any effort at all, and then you feel bad for a while ‘bout forgettin’, and then you forget to feel bad at all until...”
She sighed.
“Until?” Kayla asked.
“Until somethin’ comes along and out of nowhere you think of it again, and you kinda start over.”
Kayla sniffed once more, then laughed.
“Sarah Todd, did you just tell a joke?”
“Maybe. You had a tough day.”
“I guess.”
“Without any sleep, either. You should go home. Lay down, close your eyes. Dreams’ll be bad for a while, but you gotta work through it your own way. Ain’t no other way around it.”
“Thank you,” Kayla said.
“My fault you were out.”
“It was worth it, to see Lise’s face.”
Sarah snorted.
“Wherever you get your inspiration.”
Kayla still didn’t move, and Sarah sat with her for a while longer.
“I’m not going to tell Wade,” the other woman said.
“Don’t fault you for that.”
“He’d just make a big deal out of it and get all angry.”
“You took care’a yourself. No need to make it last any longer than that.”
“No one even cares, if you killed him,” Kayla said. “No one asked any questions or anything.”
Sarah thought of the years and years of taking lives. Most of them, she couldn’t have remembered if she’d tried.
“No, ‘round here, they kinda gone numb to it.
“That’s awful.”
“No, it’s just the way it is. You will, too, stay long enough.”
“I hope not.”
“Lawrence ain’t a city for pretty ladies and pretty dresses.” She thought of Oxala and snorted once. “Most places ain’t, underneath everything.”
“That’s not going to stop me,” Kayla said.
She’d had a rough day, Sarah reminded herself as she began to censor her thought. She’d earned it. Begrudgingly, and slowly, she spoke.
“If you gave up on account of what happened today, I’d be disappointed in you,” she said. “Nothin’ wrong with makin’ a place out to be more civil than it rightly is. I reckon that’s how places come to be civil, in the first place.”
“Wow,” Kayla said. “Thank you.”
“Go home,” Sarah said. “Sleep.”
“Tomorrow will be better,” Kayla said, standing.
“No it won’t, but at least the sun’ll be up,” Sarah answered. Kayla laughed.
“Would you hate me if I said that I’m finally beginning to understand you?”
“You got a long way to go on that count,” Sarah said.
“Yeah,” Kayla said. “But I’m getting there. Good night, Sarah.”
“Night, Mrs. Lawson,” Sarah answered, watching as Kayla got herself arranged in her buckboard and got underway. Dark or not, she was probably safe from there, Sarah figured. She went back to Gremlin, getting his tack sorted and only then considering how she intended to get herself home. The dress was hardly made for riding, and the right answer would have been to go back to the dress shop and change, but she was tired and hardly motivated enough to do that. She just wanted to go home and be done with today.
She’d missed her chance.
Nothing of that much significance had happened, with Jimmy, and yet she felt like this had been her one shot, her one attempt to undo what she’d done, and it was gone.
She was seconds away from just throwing a leg over the saddle, dress be damned, when someone behind her spoke.
“Can I give you a ride?”
She turned to find Thomas sitting in a cart watching her. She sighed.
“Ladies in cities don’t ride much, do they?”
“Not much, no,” he said. “Jimmy asked me to watch the tavern and make sure everyone got home safe, but I’d be glad to give you a ride. It’s too early for any of them to be that drunk, yet.”
She tied Gremlin to the back rail of the cart then hiked her skirt up to climb onto the bench next to Thomas.
“Not a bad day, in all,” Thomas observed conversationally as they set off.
“Lot of things happened like they were s’posed to,” Sarah agreed.
“You made quite a splash,” Thomas said.
“‘Cause that’s what I was goin’ for,” Sarah said dourly and he laughed.
“Nothing wrong with it, either way,” he told her. “Not a bad thing to shake things up like that every once in a while, just to show you can.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, but was certain he couldn’t see it in the dark. The stars cast just enough light to follow the trodden path through the hobflowers, but no more than that.
“We made a lot of money today,” Thomas said quietly after another minute. “If that’s how you count success, we’re winning.”
“Gonna need it, if we’re gonna hold what we got,” Sarah said. He nodded at the darkness.
“That’s what Jimmy says, anyway.”
“You think he’s in the wrong?” Sarah asked.
“No, not that,” Thomas said. “I just wonder if that’s all he thinks about, since it seems to be all he talks about.”
“You really are his favorite brother, ain’t ya,” she said. He laughed.
“Why?”
“None of ‘em would talk like that ‘bout him like you do, he’d lay into ‘em so bad.”
Thomas laughed his easy, open laugh.
“That’s because if any of them talked about him like it was possible for him to be wrong, it would be a plausible threat. I don’t want that power, and he knows it.”
“You ever wonder if you were born into the wrong family?” Sarah asked.
“No. I can still see the family resemblance, even if most people can’t.”
“I s’pose so,” Sarah agreed. “Keep an eye on Kayla, will you?”
“Why?”
“She had a rough turn today. Might not be so like to stand up for herself, should she need to.”
“Less likely than usual?” Thomas asked.
“She’s a kind soul,” Sarah said. “No need tramplin’ that down more than need be.”
She could hear the temptation to point out that that was supposed to be his side of the conversation, not hers, but he kept it to himself.
“I’ll do wh
at I can. Any more detail you can give me?”
“Not without breakin’ a confidence. Keep it to yourself, too, hear?”
“I got it.”
They pulled up outside of her house and she jumped down, resenting the way the heels of the pastry-colored boots Kayla had miraculously produced in Sarah’s size upset her sense of balance. She had backup boots at the house that she could wear back into town to collect her good ones tomorrow. No way she would wear these again.
“Tell Jimmy he missed his opportunity to seem me in this get-up one last time before I take it off forever,” she said.
“I’ll do that,” Thomas said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, when the real work starts.”
She wondered what that meant, but didn’t ask, untying Gremlin and untacking him at the front porch, then letting him wander. She went in and made herself a cup of tea, drinking it quickly before blowing the lamps back out and going upstairs. She lit the lamp over her vanity table.
“You really do cut a striking figure in that.”
The gun was out and pointed before her mind processed the mechanical actions necessary to make it happen.
Jimmy was laying on her bed, fingers woven behind his head. Not a muscle twitched as she stood with her handgun pointed at his chest.
“Dammit, Jimmy, you’d be right to be dead, now.”
“You never pull the trigger until you know for sure,” he said. His face was still, but there was amusement in his eyes. She glowered at him and put the gun back into her gunbelt.
“What are you doin’ here?”
“Waiting for you. As busy as I’ve been, I never expected to beat you here by that much.”
“How long you been here?” she asked, feeling her eyes widen. He shrugged, swinging his feet onto the floor as he sat up.
“Doesn’t matter. I wanted to tell you that you looked pretty.”
She turned to face the mirror again, anger flashing as she started to deconstruct her hair.
“Won’t your fiancée be waiting for you?”
“Why’d you do it?” he asked.
“Do what?” she responded, stubborn.
“You know,” he said. “You know exactly.”
There it was.
He’d opened the door and once again she’d tried to kick it closed. She looked at the dress, her hair, her own face, and pressed her lips hard, steeling herself. She’d done this much, come this far. She could do the rest. She would.
She turned around slowly, counting slow breaths.
“So you would see me.”
“I always see you,” he said, taking a step forward.
She closed her eyes.
“She’s pretty,” she said. “And she’s smart. Whip-smart, really, I can tell. She’s interestin’ and she’d make a good Lawson. I ain’t got no doubt.” She opened her eyes now. The room was small. Small like she could touch all four walls with her arms out. And Jimmy was just there, pressed against her as it were, in that tiny space, but so far away, like stretching away down a mineshaft, with all the light behind him and the dark behind her.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Jimmy said softly. “Talk to me like the girl who went to school in Oxala, the one who’s too smart for this place.”
She swallowed.
“Don’t marry her.”
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t have anything else to say, so she said it again.
“Don’t marry her.”
“You said you wouldn’t marry me. Do you just want me to be alone?”
She closed her eyes again, and this time, she caught the scent of him, familiar, his scent in her bedroom.
“Here it is, Jimmy. All my dignity. Everything I’ve worked for, all this time, with and without you. I will wear a dress. I’ll just be another one of them. If you will still have me, I will be your wife.”
He didn’t say anything.
She opened her eyes again.
The room had resumed its normal dimensions. He was over there, standing just a step away from her bed, against the wall. His eyes were serious, maybe even pained.
Gray eyes. Thin lips that showed everything, if you knew how to look. High cheekbones dotted with freckles, pale skin, despite the sun and the desert and the improbability of it all. He wasn’t beautiful, and he wasn’t even powerful. Not until you looked into those eyes, and then you knew.
You knew.
Standing in front of him was as pointless, as suicidal as standing in between the twin iron rails as the train came on.
Gray eyes that saw deep down through her.
With pain.
“Is this just because you don’t want me to have anyone else? If it has to be someone, it’s got to be you?”
She was shocked that he could think it.
And then even more stunned to find that it was a valid question.
Would she have ever, ever felt this way if Rhoda has never come? If he had never threatened her with a real, live woman that he intended to marry? If it had only been Lise and Jezzie and whoever came next?
He was watching her, and her stomach felt funny.
Queasy.
His eyebrows dipped.
“Is it that hard a question?”
She swallowed the ‘ain’t’.
“I’m not good at this, Jimmy. I don’t know.”
His face hardened, just a subtle tucking at the corners of his mouth. This was worse than kicking the door closed, this watching him ease it closed in her face, instead.
“I’ll ask you an easy one, then,” he said. “Do you love me?”
She reflected, feeling the weight, the importance of the question, hesitating. Then she turned her head, looking at her reflection.
“I wouldn’t have done this, if I didn’t,” she said. “This isn’t about Rhoda. She made me see it, but it isn’t about her. I can’t lose you. Not again.” Truth is a funny thing, how it sort of slips in when you least expect it. “It tore me apart, when you left last time, and I can’t do that again. If that isn’t love, real and honest, then I don’t know what love is.”
“Will you follow me, next time?” he asked. The pain, there in his eyes, it was still there, but it changed somehow.
“Yes,” she said, the word torn from her against her will, against everything she believed about herself and the world and justice and truth. “Would you?”
“Follow you?” he asked. She nodded. “Sarah, I already did. I followed you back here. I’ve been watching for a reason to come back for as long as we’ve been gone. Any excuse. Anything.”
She cut herself off from the sharp response to that, swallowing hard.
“Don’t marry her.”
“You know I’ve never wanted anyone but you. How many times do I have to say it?”
“One more,” she said.
“Marry me, Sarah Todd. Be my wife, my companion, my most trusted advisor. You are the love of my life, and the only woman I want.”
He knelt. It was an archaic tradition; in Lawrence, he was supposed to offer her a bouquet of hobflowers, but it had been in style in Oxala while she’d been there. She couldn’t remember telling him about it.
“Marry me, Sarah.”
“I will.”
He stood, quick sharp motions that bespoke the violent passions of his character under the still face, crossing the room and kissing her.
She stiffened, long habit overcoming the situation, and he put his palm to her face, fingers playing the loose bits of hair at her temple.
“Are you afraid, Sarah?”
His eyes were close, his body touching hers. She found her hands were balled at her sides.
“There’s violence in you, Jimmy. And me, as well.”
He shook his head.
“Not here. Not now.” His eyes lowered, his eyelids dropping far enough that he wasn’t looking at her, but at some memory. “This is what we’ve been since we were teenagers. Another time, another place, this is what we would have always been.” He shook his head and looked her in the e
ye again. “Nothing that’s happened since then matters. It doesn’t change us.”
He put his mouth against hers, just a gentle pressure of lips against lips, and it brought the memory of sitting on her bed, whispering into the small hours of the morning, watching his mouth as it formed words, the soft sound of the letter ‘s’, the crisp, sharp noise of ‘p’, the way he licked his lips as he waited for a thought to come to him.
How she’d loved him. Easy and without guile or expectation. Unplanned. Unburdened.
She kissed him back. Her hands eased, finding the fabric of his shirt, his arm, the back of his head. Slowly, and then with more intention, they tangled into each other. He started to unbutton the back of her dress, then laughed.
“What exactly was your plan with this?” he asked as he craned his head to see how far the tiny buttons went.
“Don’t tell Kayla, but I probably would have used a knife on it.”
He laughed again and kissed underneath her ear. She couldn’t remember his laugh ever sound like that. Genuine, almost like when Thomas laughed. Easy. She found herself on the verge of giddiness, her grasp on reality fading.
It wasn’t her.
It wasn’t him.
They weren’t in Lawrence.
It was someone else, somewhere else, where this was possible.
Where this was happening.
They fell into her bed, an accelerating knot of limbs and chemicals and breaths that neither of them seemed to be able to catch, his weight on hers, his mouth against hers, hungry, his hands greedy.
Two other people, somewhere Sarah had never been, the only two people in the world, the feeling of satisfying an inevitability.
––—
She lay with her back against the wall, her blankets held in a knot under her head. She wasn’t sure if Jimmy was asleep or not. It didn’t bother her, either way. He hadn’t expected her to snuggle against him. He’d just spent a few minutes running his fingers through her hair, then he’d put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.
There wasn’t anything either of them needed to say.
He’d been right. This had been a part of who they were since they were young. It had just taken this long because life was never simple like that, in Lawrence.