Chapter 30 Everything But a Child of God
EVERYTHING BUT A CHILD OF GOD
The West stretched out before me like a messy unframed canvas. Unruly. Brown. Like God had spilled His drink and decided to call it a territory.
Major and I had urged Lessie into the bed last night, and he took the chaise.
I had rocked in the bed barely able to breathe with the knowledge that there was a man in this tiny room, boots falling over the velvet chaise, tight belly rising and falling, and eyes always finding mine in the night.
This morning, I turned to watch Lessie and Major eating cold shrimp.
I didn’t trust seafood this far from the gulf, so I let them have it.
Lessie made notes in her little book after she tasted something she liked.
Was I supposed to be flattered? Swept away? I was far from fainting.
I’m not romantic. Not desperately.
But I did think—just briefly—about the way Toussaint had looked at Eliza. That man trembled at the altar. Like love was the Holy Ghost and he’d just caught it in both hands. No one’s ever trembled for me.
I did want it, though. I had twisted myself into knots—so many, so tightly—that I was unrecognizable to myself. The way I’d started tousling my hair and taking those long, useless walks around my French Quarter apartment, waiting to bump into a miracle. I had lost myself trying to be her.
And I could never live that way again.
We’d been confined to the VIP cabin for the last twenty-four hours of the journey—me, Major, and Lessie, like debutantes in detention.
Our meals were delivered to the door with the suspicious energy of a jailhouse slop line.
Some father really didn’t trust his daughter.
The conductor watched Major and Lessie like they were planning an armed rebellion.
But did they care? Absolutely not. They ate like royalty. I watched the world change outside. I thought about Ealy. And then Toussaint. And then, annoyingly, Major. His eyes on my hair. His hand on mine as we swapped sandwiches.
At least the view wasn’t confusing.
It was vast and wild, unruly in a way that both thrilled and unsettled me.
The train ride from New Orleans had its moments of stunning clarity: the endless expanse of prairie grass shimmering in the light, the red rock mesas standing defiantly against the horizon, and the jagged peaks of distant mountains.
I wanted to see the grandeur. I tried to see the grandeur.
But all I saw was chaos. No order, no sense, no society. Just land and sky and nerve.
And honestly, it made my stomach twist.
I tried to find the hidden order in the randomness. The way the grasses bent uniformly with the wind, like wispy dancers. Even the train itself, though grimy and rattling, kept a steady tempo as it cut through the West. I clung to these patterns, like tiny anchors.
By the time the train pulled into the last stop, where a fancy Wells Fargo stagecoach waited to take the remaining passengers farther west, I was already mentally cataloging the next steps.
I avoided Major’s gaze, keeping to myself as I busied my hands, readying my supplies for the transition to the coach.
The stagecoach gleamed, its rich red panels trimmed in polished gold.
In Denver, an expectant husband stood swaying at the platform, scanning faces for a bride I knew was never coming.
I was just about to step forward, tell him she’d gotten off in St. Louis with her skirts hitched and her lover in tow, when the man staggered toward a stack of packing crates and smashed them with a single blow. Wood splintered. A child nearby started crying.
Then came the shouting. He called her everything but the child of God, each word meaner than the last.
So I stopped. Because maybe that rich girl hadn’t run toward romance after all.
Maybe she was running away from this.
I kept my mouth shut and boarded the stagecoach. Like any other woman minding her own business.