by Jane Porter
“What did my mother say?”
“I’m not good for you, Sinclair,” she said bluntly.
“What does that even mean?”
“Your family remembers how I hurt you—”
“Pfft. I’m not a child.”
“Yes, but they’re women, and women have memories of elephants. We women never forget anything.”
“So something was said to you that hurt you, because you are hurt. That’s why you rushed away from lunch. Your feelings were hurt which is why you didn’t want to eat with them.”
“They are far easier to be with than Miss Burnett.”
He glanced up at her. “What can you possibly have against Miss Burnett? She’s well liked by everyone.”
“I’m sure she is. She sounds very popular which is probably why she danced all night long.”
The corners of his mouth curved. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous. She’s your sister’s good friend and your… you know. There’s no reason to be jealous of your… whatever she is.”
He kept smiling at her. “I had no idea you were the jealous sort.”
“I am not jealous. How can I be jealous? I had my chance. You gave me a chance—”
“Did Johanna say I was spending time with Miss Burnett?”
“Aren’t you?” she snapped.
He grinned and shook his head, and began wandering around her classroom. He moved with easy grace, so very comfortable in his skin.
She watched him stop at her narrow bookcase with the row of books. He pulled out one dark green volume and leafed through it for a moment before putting it back.
“This brings me back to when we were in school.” He looked over at her. “Remember when you taught me to read?”
“You already knew how to read.”
“Not well.”
“I just think you were bored by the children’s stories. You needed something more interesting.”
“So you had me read Horatio Algers.”
“Should I not have?”
“It put ideas in my head. It made me think I could be one of those self-made men.” He leaned against the wall. “I’ve often wondered if that was intentional. Were you trying to inspire me? Did you want me to want more?”
“I assumed you wanted more. Isn’t that why your parents left Ireland? To have more than they could have there?”
“I’m not talking about my parents. I’m talking about you and me.” His gaze met hers and held. “Of all the books you could have had me read, why the Alger rags-to-riches novels? Why not history books, or a Mark Twain novel?”
“Should I not have?”
“Those stories were a tease. An American fantasy. Most men will never have that kind of success. Most men will never have great wealth.”
“You think I set you up for failure?”
“I haven’t failed. I don’t live on Millionaire Row, but I have five hundred acres and one hundred head of cattle and a comfortable home. I have no debt. I have no employer. I answer to no one.”
“You have what your parents came to America for. Prosperity, freedom, security.”
“You wanted this for me,” he said.
Her gaze traveled slowly over his handsome face—the broad brow, strong cheekbones, square jaw—and she nodded once. “I did.”
“You believed I could be more,” he added.
Her eyes stung and her chest burned. A lump filled her throat. “With or without money, you are more.” She exhaled painfully. “You’ve always been more.”
Her gaze locked with his.
“But not enough to marry me,” he added.
She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip, wetting it. Her mouth was so dry.
She didn’t know how to explain everything that had happened when she still didn’t fully understand. “It wasn’t that simple.”
“I want to know,” he answered, crossing his arms over his chest. He was so big and ruggedly beautiful, filling her classroom with energy and vitality. Even from across the room she could feel that intensity all the way through her. “I’m not a simpleton—”
“Never said you were! And I didn’t go away to escape you,” she said, and it was true.
Her desire to earn a college degree and travel and be someone had little to do with love. She had loved Sin. She couldn’t remember a time she didn’t love him. But she struggled then—as she did now—with the idea that love meant one couldn’t want more, that love meant she was supposed to give up her own dreams. And so she’d reached for more, and failed. Gambled and lost. Not just Sin, but her family, and her position in society, leaving her with even less than what she’d started with.
“I went away confident in us, confident that we would have forever,” she added.
“And then you realized there was a great deal more to life than Butte and copper mines.”
“I love New York, and London, and Venice.” She hesitated. “I’d be somewhere and wish you were there, and then I’d wonder if you’d even want to go to those places.”
“Don’t feel a need to go to any of them.”
“I thought that would be your answer.”
“And you wanted these places more than me?”
“No. But I began to worry that I hadn’t been honest with you—”
“That’s fairly obvious.”
“And that maybe I wasn’t really what you wanted.”
He looked at her a long moment. “So help me understand—what did I want?”
“A wife. Someone to have your children and make you dinner and do your laundry and make sure you were comfortable.”
Sinclair continued his walk around the schoolroom. “That is what wives do.”
“It sounds so much like drudgery.”
“The children, or the laundry, or the loving?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, to be honest, I’m not sure I do.”
“Loving you—” She broke off, flushing.
She’d almost said that it was easy, that it was the most natural thing she knew how to do. But it wasn’t entirely true.
Loving him was complicated. Wanting him was easy but crossing the divide was hard. He wanted the earth and she wanted the stars. He put down roots and she wanted to fly.
How to reconcile their differences?
How to love him and not lose herself?
How to be what he needed and not feel trapped?
Her silence seemed to frustrate him. He walked another few steps before planting his feet to read the day’s lessons still up on the blackboard.
“You’ve had it so easy,” he said finally. “You might as well be royalty. I don’t think you ever had to prepare a meal for yourself, or do your own laundry until you arrived here.”
She winced at his tone, but he spoke the truth. “Yes. You’re right.”
He touched the date on the blackboard, smudging the chalk. “I think I’m beginning to understand what happened when you went to New York. You left Vassar and realized you had choices. You didn’t have to choose me. You didn’t have to choose poverty—”
“No.”
“Let me finish.” He faced her. “You saw your friends marry wealthy men, and you have opportunities most women would never have, and you realized that even though you loved me, you didn’t love me enough to be like my mam.”
She swallowed hard. Again, he saw far more than she’d imagined.
After her mother died and she returned to New York, the fantasy began to wear thin. Her mother’s death had been slow and agonizing, and the wasting away of a woman’s life had terrified her.
It was hard enough losing her mother in their elegant, modern home. Imagine dying in a place without the conveniences of running water and electricity? Imagine trying to nurse someone without being able to afford help, never mind excellent doctors?
And then there was love. The intense desire, the dizzying attraction. She wanted him, and craved his mouth on hers, and his arms around her, holding he
r close.
But would desire survive illness, poverty, and the dangers of childbirth?
And what if he died in the mines? What if he died like his father had, how would she raise their children? How well would she make ends meet? “You are content with so much less.”
“I’m content with less because I’ve never had more. It’s not that I enjoy less. It’s that more isn’t easily attained.”
She glanced down and saw she’d accidentally knocked her pen from the inkwell, splattering black ink across her lesson plan book. She dabbed the wet ink dry. “It’s all true. Everything you’ve said. I didn’t want to be poor. I didn’t know how to marry and keep a house and not have help. I was scared to give birth to baby after baby—”
“You should have just told me. All you had to do was write me. Tell me you’d changed your mind, and that you didn’t love me—”
“But I did love you.”
“All the more reason for you to have written that letter, and let me know how things were, and not to wait for you any longer.”
She closed her eyes and nodded, because he was right. Absolutely right. She’d owed him that much, and more.
“I should have been honest,” she said, opening her eyes, only to discover she was speaking to an empty room. Sinclair was gone and his departure was so abrupt it felt as if he’d taken a sledgehammer to her heart.
Chapter Ten
The week passed, and the weather had noticeably turned colder, the air sharper, the wind vigorous, constantly at play. Although Thanksgiving was still twelve days away, winter seemed impatient to arrive, with snow falling midweek.
The light flurries had melted within a couple of hours, but McKenna fully expected that to change any time now, but before it did, she needed supplies, and someone to come look at her stove as it had begun to smoke a little bit.
These were the times McKenna wished she knew more practical things. For example, was it normal after time to have a little bit of smoke from one’s stove? And if there was a problem, was it something she should be able to fix herself? She’d tried to inspect the chimney but she had no idea what she was looking for and just ended up with a filthy hands and face.
Thursday and Friday she avoided using her stove, planning on going to Emigrant Saturday to see if she couldn’t hire someone to come out and look at her for her. And that someone would not be Sinclair.
She appreciated the gift of the stove—it had been incredibly thoughtful and generous gesture on his part—but she hadn’t forgotten their conversation Monday afternoon, and she’d slept poorly since, still bruised from his abrupt departure.
He of all people should know her. He should know she’d never meant to hurt him. He should know there was nothing cold or calculating in her.
If anything she was too emotional, too impulsive, and being impulsive had disastrous results. Just take a look at her life, and the mistakes she’d made. It was time she grew up and learned from the past. And she was trying. She really was. Because, clearly, she didn’t know men, or understand them at all. Bernard had opened her eyes, and then her father’s scathing denouncement had broken her heart.
This year had made McKenna doubt everything she knew about men, and life, and even herself. She found herself questioning everything constantly, including her feelings for Sinclair.
She wanted him. That was simple.
She loved him. That was a given.
But could he forgive her for the past? And were they better suited now, or was there still too much conflict and tension? Deep down, she feared there might always be conflict and tension. Deep down, she feared that she’d never be what he wanted or needed, and that made her hold back from reaching out to him.
Yet, when alone, he was all she thought of. And not even when she was alone, but even when she was teaching, she’d be in the middle of a lesson, and she’d find herself thinking of him, wondering when she’d see him again, wanting to see him again, and she’d have to shake herself, and focus her thoughts.
But then he’d creep back in.
And she’d long for him to suddenly open the door and be there.
It was a secret wish… a dream…
Was it too much a dream?
If only she knew. If only she had someone she could talk to, as she needed advice. This wasn’t something she could talk to Sinclair about, either. She’d disappointed him once. She couldn’t do that to him again.
Friday night after school, McKenna wrote her friend Amelia, her best friend from Vassar. McKenna wrote her almost weekly, but she kept her letters cheerful, not wanting to worry Amelia who had enough to deal with as a newlywed.
Sitting before the fire, McKenna put her pen to paper, keeping her tone light, writing a long, chatty, humorous letter intended to make Amelia laugh, and then at the very end, McKenna added a post script, asking Amelia how she dealt with a husband on a daily basis? Were men as mystifying as they seemed? How did Amelia manage her Mr. Harris?
Saturday morning, McKenna did her usual weekend chores, before changing to walk into Emigrant to mail her letter pick up a few items from Mr. Bottler’s store.
Emigrant had been founded by three emigrants that had arrived in August 1864 on the Bozeman Trail. When they discovered miners were already in the valley, they traveled deeper into the gulch, finding gold high on the side of what they all knew as Emigrant Peak. But winter was harsh and there wasn’t a great deal of gold. The minters struggled but Frank Bottler, a savvy entrepreneurial sort, bought land and fenced in pastures for cows and pigs, planting crops, and created a store for those who were struggling to eek out a living in the remote valley. When the train tracks were laid to carry tourists to Yellowstone, the train made a stop in Emigrant so tourists could stock up one last time before they reached the rugged national park.
McKenna relied on Mr. Bottler’s store far more than her students’ families. Most local homesteaders couldn’t afford to be dependent on others, which was why they had their own livestock and crops. McKenna was not about to plant anything, and she was grateful for the store as it gave her somewhere to go on the weekends and if she was lucky, she’d find someone pleasant to visit with.
Today when she dropped her letter off with the clerk at Bottler’s, the clerk asked her to wait a moment. “I have a letter for you today, Miss Frasier.”
McKenna was delighted. It had been over a month since she’d received any letters, and she hoped it might be a letter from Mary. She missed her sister, and she’d give anything to have an update from home. But it wasn’t Mary who’d written. It was dear Amelia.
Before leaving Bottler’s, McKenna asked the clerk if he knew of anyone who did repairs, or looked at things like chimneys as her new stove was smoking, and she didn’t know if there was someone in Emigrant who fixed that sort of thing. The clerk promised to speak to Mr. Bottler, assuring her that between the two of them they’d find someone, but in the meantime, to refrain from lighting her stove until someone could look at it.
McKenna agreed and after purchasing a small bag of flour and some salt and a cup of sugar, walked back towards her cabin, making a detour before her road to go sit on the bank of the river. The trees lining the Yellowstone were beginning to drop their leaves and the riverbank shimmered gold.
She sat down on her favorite rock, the copper and gold leaves clouding around her and drew the letter from her pocket, smiling at the elegant script of her friend’s name on the return address.
Mrs. Henry Harris
Lucky Amelia who’d made an excellent marriage. Mr. Harris wasn’t just a successful banker, but he absolutely adored his wife.
McKenna unfolded the letter and began to read.
Dearest McKenna,
Everything is well here and I’ve been waiting to share my good news until I was feeling better, and I’m feeling better, so brace yourself, darling, because… I’m expecting! Mr. Harris could not be happier. I was not myself for the past few months but that’s changed and I’m overseeing the preparations for th
e nursery, looking forward to welcoming our little one in late February.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I have been enjoying your letters. They lifted my spirits so much when I had to take to my bed. McKenna, you inspire me with your wit and humor, taking your difficult situation and turning it into an adventure. You were always an excellent writer at school and you have captured the true spirit of the Northwest Frontier perfectly. I can’t wait until you finally visit Yellowstone and tell me everything. I look forward to your next letter.
Amelia
PS I hope you won’t mind that I shared your last few letters with Mr. Harris, and he agreed with me that you are an exceptional storyteller and wondered if maybe you’ve missed your calling? Could you possibly be the next Mark Twain or Jack London? Mr. Harris believes he could get your letters published. It wouldn’t be a great deal of money but every little bit would help, wouldn’t it, my dear? Do let me know if you give Mr. Harris permission to act on your behalf, and also, if you would want to use your name or perhaps a pseudonym?
McKenna lowered Amelia’s letter. Amelia was going to be a mother! Such exciting news.
And how exciting, too, that Mr. Harris thought that someone else would enjoy reading about McKenna’s adventures in Montana.
McKenna doubted that anyone would pay her for them, but just the idea of having her stories published made her feel buoyant and optimistic. She’d have to write Amelia back right away, to congratulate her on her news, as well as address Amelia’s questions.
Stuffing the letter into her coat pocket she began the walk home. If she could find someone to print the letters, should McKenna use a pseudonym? Would it be better if she did, or would using her real name maybe help her redeem herself? Maybe society would eventually forgive her.
But, then again, maybe no one would want to read her letters if they knew they were by her…
McKenna was still deep in thought when she approached the schoolhouse and her cabin beyond. A thud echoed in the clearing, and she frowned. Who could possibly be here? She heard another thud and another.
Was someone in her cabin?