by Chloe Garner
Granger had the ability to put up a building faster than Sarah could blink, and by the time of the nuptials, there was a livery stable with a dozen stalls out behind Granger’s store, with one of the local boys promoted to liveryman. It had a wide raised floor for keepin’ the carts up out of floodwaters.
Reservoir hadn’t survived the flood, like Sarah had guessed. When Jimmy finally got out to look at it, he’d found the men diggin’ feet of sand back out of it, but he said the feet of water in it would give the homesteaders a place to start, pumpin’ proper irrigation to crops what didn’t all have to be gremlin. Sarah’d heard some of the homesteaders rumblin’ about takin’ him up on the experiment.
And then there was the wedding.
Kayla hadn’t let Sarah see her get-up until the night before, for what she’d called the ‘final fitting’.
Sarah had stood in front of the mirror for a full ten minutes with the duster while Jimmy dressed Ellie.
“I ain’t gonna do it, “she murmured.
“You will,” Jimmy said, lookin’ down at Ellie on the bed and with significant humor in his voice. “You know she’ll find some way to make you, so you may as well just go along without it.”
Wedding colors in Lawrence were lavender and more lavender, then dotted with a rainbow of pastels, semi-pastels, and popping, bright colors to mimic the sea of lavender when the hobflowers were in bloom and their strange, genetically mutated anomalies.
Kayla Lawson had made a duster, an exact, to the stitch replica of Sarah’s normal jacket, but she’d made it out of lavender leather and put in buckles and buttons and snaps and stitching that nodded to the other rainbow of the Lawrence wedding colors.
Jimmy was wearing a black suit with a purple silk the color of hobflowers.
Sarah had a lavender hat sitting on the vanity next to her, and over by the door were lavender boots.
Lavender boots.
“Gremlin is going to die laughing,” Sarah said.
“He’s going to be just as embarrassed as you are,” Jimmy answered. Sarah wrinkled her nose, then Jimmy turned, lifting Ellie and holding her up to see Sarah in the mirror.
The child, scarce more than a month old, was wearing chaps and pants, a tan shirt, and a matching lavender duster. Over on the bed were the hat and boots.
“I’m going to die,” Sarah said. “Jimmy, so help me, I’m going to die.”
“Put it on,” he coaxed, biting his lower lip with a sparkle in his eye that threatened actual laughter. She slung the duster around her shoulders and let it settle.
If anything, the quality of it was higher than her normal wear. Even with the leather unworked, it fit like it breathed with her. She put on the hat, seeing the way Kayla had shaded the dye-work to mimic the way Sarah’s daily hat was bleached out at the flats.
Jimmy closed his eyes to keep from laughing.
“You’re Sarah Todd,” he said. “In a wedding. And it isn’t a dress.”
He handed Ellie to her and went to the bed to get the boots and hat for the infant.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. She looked over at him, darin’ him to make fun. He put Ellie’s hat on and started to work the boots on.
“Need to order one of these from Kayla in real leather,” Sarah said. “It’s fine work.”
“She won’t do it,” Jimmy said, and Sarah raised her eyebrows. He glanced at her in the mirror. “I’ve heard her call it a man’s coat. She won’t have anything to do with men’s clothing.”
She glowered, and he shrugged, getting the first boot on and going after the second.
“I’m registering her birth in Intec,” he said. “She’ll have citizen’s rights, like we did.”
Sarah would have had a hell of a time getting into Oxala, but that Elaine had registered her. She nodded.
“See no reason to complain about it,” she said. He shook his head.
“I’m registering her as Elaine Todd Lawson.”
He stood straight, looking at the two of them in the mirror. Sarah turned her head to look at the side of his face.
“Like hell,” she said. “I ain’t a Lawson no more’n she’s a Todd. Wouldn’t weigh her with that for everything.”
He blinked at her image in the mirror, not turning his head to look directly at her.
“My mother made very few large mistakes in her life. Going to the tavern that night was one of them. Not claiming you as one of us was another. This child isn’t going to know you as the woman who rescued her. She’s going to know you as her mother. You will belong to her and she will belong to you.”
She blinked, angry. Why were her eyes wet?
“No,” she said. “She ain’t a Todd.”
“Yes,” Jimmy said. “She will be. If she’s your child, she’s going to be like you, and she deserves to own it.”
She looked back into the mirror at the tiny be-hatted child in the purple duster.
“Take the victory, Sarah,” Jimmy said. “It isn’t over, not by a long shot, but today we’re the winners.”
Sarah glowered back at him standing next to her reflection.
“I ain’t so sure about that.”
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chloe Garner is a wanderer with a host of identities in her head fighting each other to get out. Chloe writes about the things that go bump in the night, the future, and all things fantastical. Find her on Twitter as BlenderFiction, on Goodreads and Facebook as Chloe Garner, or at blenderfiction.wordpress.com.
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