Chapter 38
By the time I make it back to the house, the moon is already high overhead, and though I’m tired down to my soul after getting Helios settled into his stall, I don’t have my mind on sleep yet.
Not tonight. Instead, I’m moving with a sense of purpose, so completely focused on it that I don’t notice the person sitting on the porch waiting for me.
“Good evening, Aiden,” calls out a soft voice once I’m already on the steps, making me jump before I see Dolly watching me from a rocker that appears as ancient as she is, a well-loved book and a lantern on the table beside her. “Eventful night?”
“You have to be related to him,” I say again as I put my hands on my knees and try to steady my heart rate before she starts waving a hand at me as a signal for me to hurry up. She pushes to her feet, both the chair and her bones creaking from the effort.
“Come on in. I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Ma’am, it’s late. You don’t have to go to the trouble. I’ll be fine with—”
“I’m not out here in the middle of the night for my health,” she interrupts, prodding me in the side with her cane to move me along as soon as I’m within range. “Go on now. Besides, the food is only an excuse to make you stay still while I talk at you.”
“Not sure the trade is worth it,” I grumble, trying to evade the woman’s continued jabs with her damn stick, as well as the swing she takes at my head with her other hand. Given that she is about half my height, the hit lands in the middle of my back.
“Sit,” she orders, satisfied once she manages to successfully herd me into a chair in the kitchen. “Always such a grouch,” she mutters, the ruckus she starts making with her pots and pans somehow still not chasing my exhaustion away. “Really must be your good looks that he likes so much.”
I arch an eyebrow at her, but she only laughs at me. “I’m old. Not blind.” She turns toward the stove, heating up what appears to be a vegetable soup she made earlier this evening. “And I have known Cypress a long time. Never seen him so smitten.”
“That’s not…” I start to say, shifting in my seat. “Cypress is smitten with everyone.”
“Given what you saw tonight, I know you know that’s not true.” Her head tilts as she takes me in. “You sure it was smart to leave one of them alive?” When I give her a surprised glance, she chuckles again. “Nothing happens around here that I don’t know about.”
“Cypress told you,” I guess. “Never does keep his mouth shut.”
“He hasn’t been back yet to tell me. But as I said, I’m not blind.
Neither of you came downstairs again, and you’re arriving separately, which means you had different affairs to attend to.
I’m also missing two rugs—which the two of you will be replacing.
One would have been suitable if they were both dead, but they also can’t both be alive based on the blood stain you tried to hide under that trunk.
Let me guess, you went out the window and Cypress tossed each of them down like a rolled-up newspaper? ”
“Or a cigarette,” I mutter, impressed by how much she’d put together until my mind finally catches on the first thing she’d said. “Wait, what do you mean he’s not back?” I start to stand. “I left him hours ago.”
“You might have.” She stares pointedly at my chair, and I sit again. “Doesn’t mean he left you. Probably went looking for you as soon as he was done. Seems to prefer to be wherever you are, regardless of whether or not you’re aware of it.”
I lean forward in the chair, resting my elbows on my knees as I stare at the floor, not especially surprised by this observation even as I ask, “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying he doesn’t like to let you get too far out of his sight. As I said, smitten.” She smirks, gives the soup a stir. “It’s about time. He’s been alone for too long. I’d wager you have been as well.”
“I’ve been fine on my own,” I argue.
“No one is fine on their own,” she counters with a dismissive laugh. “And you both ought to stop pretending like you are.” She looks back at me, smiling wryly. “He’ll be good for you, too, I think. Need someone to give you a bit of trouble.”
“Already have had plenty,” I tell her, certain on that at least. “No need for more.”
She’s quiet for a moment as she finishes heating up the food and spooning it into a couple red clay bowls. For that empty span of time, I’m foolish enough to think that she’ll drop the subject altogether. Even more foolish to realize I don’t entirely want her to.
“He’s a good boy, you know,” she says at last, giving me an appreciative smile when I get up to carry the bowls to the table. “Far better than he ought to be.”
“That so?” I ask, setting her bowl then mine in place at the table before I pull out her chair and wait for her to sit, her movements with her cane stiffer with the late hour. She must be tired, maybe even more than me. “I found your good boy with two men tied up tonight.”
“Only two?” She looks up at me as she settles herself and lets me push her chair in. “A slow night for him.”
“A slow—” I stare at her. “Suppose that’s what you wanted me to be ready to see?
Christ.” I glance toward the door to see if we’re still alone before I drop into the chair catty-corner from her, hanging my hat on the back of it and pulling an unsteady hand through my hair.
“You want to help me out and tell me what I’ve gotten into here? ”
“Nothing you can’t handle. If you’re wanting to,” she replies easily. “Isn’t that right, gunslinger?”
I go still, and she clicks her tongue at me. “I told you, nothing happens around here without me knowin’.”
“I don’t…” I start to say, her calling me that bothering me more for some reason than when I’d heard it a little while ago. Perhaps because I think I want this old woman to actually like me. “I don’t do that anymore.”
She purses her lips at me. “But you’d judge Cypress for killing?”
“I’m not judgin’ him for anything,” I try to explain. “I just can’t be a part of it.”
She nods, picks up her spoon. “He asked you to be?”
“No, but we’re partners, aren’t we?”
Her eyebrows rise again. “Are you? Just because you’re riding the same direction doesn’t mean you’re doing it together.”
“We have an understanding,” I say with a frown, and since that description doesn’t feel quite true, I quickly amend, “An agreement.”
“An agreement,” she repeats, pausing the spoonful on the way to her mouth to laugh at me. “So you’ve said. How romantic.”
I snort, but my skin heats beneath my collar. “We aren’t—it’s not like that.”
“Course not.” She nods in the direction of my soup, directing me to eat before she takes another spoonful for herself, and I figure it’s in my best interest to oblige her. “So, this agreement you keep hiding behind...”
“I’m not hiding,” I argue, realizing how hungry I am once the first near-to-scalding bite hits my tongue.
It’s good. Real good. I eat another before I go on.
“The two of us decided to be of use to each other until this thing with Maddock blows over—if it blows over. We split whatever money Cypress makes fiddling with his cards, and I keep him from finding an early grave. That’s it. Pretty simple.”
“Ah, but should the situation call for killing to keep him from that grave?” she suggests with a tilt of her head. “If someone had tried to kill him tonight, you’d have done what? Glowered at them?”
The furrow between my brow deepens, something that only seems to tickle her more. “I would’ve handled it.”
Her smile shifts from amused to knowing, making me feel cornered even before she says, “I have no doubt.”
“I’m not killin’ someone just because he feels like being rash,” I say, my irritation snapping a bit as I search the front of the house again and think about where Cypress could be right now.
He ought to be back. God knows what he’s gotten into.
All he was supposed to do was bury the body and then head home.
“What happened in Soldana is one thing,” I continue. “And I’ll admit, I wasn’t completely… I had my own reasons for intervening. But what happened tonight was different. He can’t just go around killin’ folk cause it pleases him.”
When I look back toward Dolly, she’s studying me, food seemingly abandoned as she reclines in her chair with her hands folded on the table, and I have the distinct impression I’m about to be scolded. “Is that what you think he’s doing? Killin’ cause it pleases him?”
No, I think, remembering again the way he’d looked. The way he hadn’t smiled once the entire time we’d been in that room.
“Did it please you in your old life?” Dolly asks, as if sensing the direction my thoughts have taken. “The killin’?”
“No, it didn’t,” I tell her, and she seems to know that’s the only response I’m capable of giving, too lost in some of my own memories before she starts giving me some of hers.
“You know, while I haven’t aged a day, the first time I met Cypress, he was quite a bit younger than he is now.
God, must be getting on about ten years.
” She smiles again, this time fondly. “He came through town with a group of train robbers that I knew at first glance were the type I wouldn’t care to have stick around, but Cypress… he was different.”
“Certainly is that.” I smile. “Can be hard to ignore.”
“He is. Was then, too. Bright. Kind. But also very…there was a watchfulness to him. He was always thinkin’, always keepin’ an eye on what the others were doing, even as he was talking away.
Could tell he never missed a thing. Never missed a trick, nor a harsh word or action from the rest of ‘em. He continually apologized on their behalf. Slipping us extra money when they weren’t looking.
And all the while, I wondered why he was with them, even if I was grateful that he was, too. ”
She pauses, stares pointedly at my still-full bowl, and I don’t need to be told twice.