Chapter 34 The Lie
THE LIE
Carsondale!” the driver hollered, his voice cutting through the thick, hot air.
We were here, or arriving. The wagon still rumbled beneath me, but the platform was already in view, blurred at first, then sharpening into a scene of bustling movement, men unloading crates, women clutching parcels, children darting underfoot.
Would he be here?
I imagined a tall, broad man in a fine coat, his boots polished to a mirror shine, standing at the edge of the platform with a bouquet of wildflowers in his hands.
It’s not strange that I’m imagining Major.
It is his brother, after all. Wouldn’t they favor?
But Ealy would have a ridiculous bouquet.
A grand gesture. A declaration. I hated flowers, useless, sneeze-inducing colorful grass, but I wanted the performance of them.
I wanted Major to see it, too. That I was not some reckless fool who’d let her heart get tangled up in the arms of a man who boiled cloths and looked at her like she was a gift he wanted to unwrap. The wagon lurched, sending my stomach dropping lower and lower.
Lessie Mae, ever practical, was already securing the two-day-old baby Freddie to her back, tying the fabric with a knot that looked like it could hold through a fall hurricane.
She lifted her bundle of belongings, same small satchel, same remarkable resolve, and I realized I had never asked her where she was going. Or why.
“So,” I said, brushing the soot from my skirts, “is your husband waiting for you here?”
“Hopefully my husband never finds me,” she muttered, without looking up.
I nodded. Fair enough.
“Family?”
Lessie glanced over, and her face was remarkably suspicious. “I got Freddie here, and a suitcase full of my granny’s recipes. Thought I’d get a cooking job somewhere.”
I honestly couldn’t believe it. The girl had no plan. No solid anything?
“That’s”—I gestured vaguely at the sack—“hopeful of you. What if your granny’s recipes are dreadful?”
Lessie laughed. “They ain’t. She had a shop.”
I said nothing. I had been to many a shop that should’ve reconsidered its ambition, but now didn’t seem the time to offer my critique of under-seasoned grits. Had she always planned to come to Carsondale? Or was this just her following her gut? Following me?
I saw past the ingenuity and the baby. Lessie’s soft face. The girl couldn’t be a day over sixteen.
“Well, then,” I said, adjusting the buttons on my cuff, “make me your granny’s best meal, and my husband and I will be your first patrons.”
“You still getting married?” She looked incredulous.
I nodded. “Of course… Of course,” I said too quickly. I heard it, that touch of disaster in my voice, like a piano chord struck an inch off-key.
“I thought—”
“You thought what?” My words had grown teeth. My guilt, sharper than intended.
Lessie narrowed her eyes, looking past me to Major’s broad back swaying on the perch. “You ain’t gotta make up your mind now, do you? About your husband?” She looked toward the approaching crowd. “Ealy Washington ain’t bought you, has he?”
Before I could answer, before I could even wonder how Lessie could have picked up my betrothed’s name, the wagon rolled to a stop, and Major hopped down from his perch outside. Landed soft. Graceful. Catlike.
Of course he moved like that. The sneak.
That Lessie and I were disembarking into what appeared to be a completely Negro town was not lost on the driver.
His lips curled in distaste as he hauled my valises onto the platform, making a spectacle of their weight before tossing them down with so much force the wood cracked open, leaving my petticoats exposed to the city dust.
I lifted a gloved hand, all politeness.
I reached into my reticule, pulled out a gleaming silver coin, and held it up just long enough for him to see it catch the light. Then, with a feigned fumble, I let it clatter onto the wooden platform at his feet.
“You don’t mind picking that up,” I said, voice thicker than sweet tea. “Since you seem so fond of throwing things down.”
The hush that followed was exquisite. The driver’s fists curled at his sides, but he did not move. The weight of the crowd, the town, the moment itself pressed down on him like a boot to the neck. He scrapped the coin up like a dog but not before he took a parting shot.
“Bitch,” he spat out.
Lessie let out a low whistle, adjusting the baby on her back. I smoothed my gloves, the big smile on my face was real.
“I do try,” I said.
Major had found his way behind me. Chest against my back as the wind picked up, tugging loose a puffy curl from my hasty chignon.
He reached up, so casually, so terribly intimate—Lord have mercy—and tucked it behind my ear like he had seen me do.
And it dawned on me that no one gives you flowers for what you didn’t do. Restraint is never applauded.
There’s no sash for almost kissing a man you shouldn’t even like. No medal for not swooning in public.
But if there were, I would be Miss Prairie Dust 1893, proudly standing there on that podium.
He turned, brushing the dust from his sleeves, and looked at me, not long, just enough.
“I’m going to find my brother,” he said, low and even.
My stomach dropped. Like I had passed a note in school, and now the teacher was reading it out loud.
I reached for his arm without thinking. Just the brush of my glove against the wool of his sleeve. “What,” I began, but the words curled into silence on my tongue, “—will you tell him? That we shared something? And it surprised us both?”
I was here to marry his brother.
Come hell. Come high water. Come whatever this was between us.
His eyes flicked to where I held him.
Then, softly, he said, “I’ll tell him a little bit of the truth and a little bit of a lie, Caroline…. That you’re the best woman he could have hoped for.”
His words echoed somewhere beneath my corset. God help me, I knew the lie.