Chapter 5
Along the way we met up with Butch Hancock. He’s a real outlaw. The kind that thinks nothing of robbing trains and banks. It makes the mail coaches seem like work for little boys. I’m coming around to his way of thinking. The riches to be had are worth the risk.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, December 5, 1849
S he wanted to bite her own tongue out. That was the most ridiculous thing to say, and she felt . . . ridiculous about it. The words kept echoing in her head all the while she was trying to have a nice evening at home, washing the jitters of the whole day off her body, washing away the discomfort of every interaction she’d had in that meeting house.
They played in her head when she tried to sleep. And when she got up the next morning to get ready to go meet him again.
Her hero .
It was so overdramatic and so . . . bleah.
Except in the moment, it had felt true. Because Danielle had tried to throw a curveball and he hadn’t let her. She honestly wasn’t sure if she would have thought on her feet quickly enough to fix the issue. Heather would have volunteered to help, of course, but Heather had kids. And a full-time job. Millie couldn’t expect her friend to give up her free time.
Austin had a whole ranch to run. She wasn’t sure quite how either of them was going to pull this off. Cows and library patrons kept different hours. That meant their schedules might not be entirely harmonious.
She drove back out to the courthouse, though today she was filled with a different kind of energy. While she was embarrassed, she wasn’t feeling as grim as she had been.
She had won. And it was taking some time for that fact to fully sink in. Or maybe it didn’t feel like anything as simple as a victory, because now there was just work to do.
Work with Austin.
She should be used to him. She saw him so often—she probably saw him more often than anyone in town did.
As she got out of her car, she imagined being back at the library desk. Imagined him walking in and walking past her, off to peruse books. Or imagined him coming in and leaning over the counter in that way he did, asking for the books he had ordered or placed a hold on.
He was a patron of the library, like anyone else.
Like anyone else.
Like anyone else.
Like anyone el—
The mantra came to a dramatic halt in her head as she rounded the back of the courthouse building—where the basement entrance was—and saw him standing there, thumbs through his belt loops, a cowboy hat on his head, his face darkened by stubble he hadn’t bothered to shave away this morning.
She knew he was handsome. She’d watched him grow taller and broader. Watched his jaw turn square and his nose sharpen. She’d watched his hair go from tawny gold to a warm brown. She’d seen the boy become a man over all these years, and his handsomeness was a sort of undeniable reality that existed alongside all the other truths she’d learned while growing up. She knew it in an academic sort of way.
It didn’t feel academic out here.
Not since he’d grabbed hold of her elbow. Not since she’d called him her hero.
Not now that she was standing near him without a desk between them.
Not when she was so aware of how tall he was.
How small she was.
Not, regrettably, small enough to scurry into a hole in the side of the building and disappear for a minute. She was a mouse with none of the perks.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Good morning to you too,” she said.
“I didn’t say it was good. I just said it was morning.”
She was actually kind of happy he wasn’t being agreeable because that meant she might be able to tamp down the fizzing sensations in her veins that seemed to get worse the closer she got to him.
She wasn’t used to feeling fizzy. She didn’t like it.
She didn’t even know what it was. It would be easy to say it was attraction, but she’d been attracted to Michael, and he hadn’t made any of her internal systems go haywire.
“I can take you down here and show you the corner of the basement where they keep everything about the Talbot family. I just have to be finished by nine thirty so I can get over to the library.”
“I’ll be headed that way myself.”
“You don’t have any orders coming in today.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m going to go ahead and return the books I have and look around for a couple of other things.”
He was probably the most dedicated patron the Rustler Mountain Library had. At least, the most dedicated patron under the age of sixty-five.
“Right.”
She took the keys out of her pocket and jammed them in the stubborn deadbolt in the door, jiggling them before she was able to get it to turn.
“It feels criminal,” he said. “Having all this history shut away in boxes.”
“It’s common. A lot of things are archived.”
“Does this count as archives? Things being shoved in boxes and neglected in a basement?”
She shrugged. “Technically, I think so.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. This history belongs to the townspeople. It should be accessible to everybody.” She grimaced. “It’s very librarian of me.”
“To want everybody to have free access to information? I guessso.”
They stepped inside the room, and she turned on the light switch. The fluorescent fixtures hummed before lighting the room in a pale glow.
“I seem to recall that what you’re looking for is in the back right-hand corner. But I’ll show you the way.”
She was very aware of the sound of his footsteps behind her. Of the fact that they had exchanged more words in the past few days than they maybe ever had. Well, she supposed if she added up the number of times they had greeted each other and said goodbye, it was technically more words. But this was different.
Not that she really knew much more about him than she had yesterday. Except that he didn’t like cheaters. And apparently he couldn’t stand bullies, so that was nice. Even if it was a little bit lowering to need rescuing from bullies at the age of thirty.
No. She hadn’t needed rescuing. She had been holding her own. She just might not have gotten the victory without him. Those were two different things. A moral victory would’ve been hers either way.
There were large pieces of furniture covered by sheets, shelves filled with pottery and baskets. Bins of clothing, fragments of dishes that were tagged and dated. And there in the back corner, where she remembered, were three large boxes labeled with the Talbot name.
“How come your family didn’t keep all this?” Austin asked.
“My grandmother thought that it ought to go to the museum. We used to have it at my grandparents’ house. I remember going over and looking at it when I was a kid. Along with a lot of my grandfather’s World War Two memorabilia. He really loved history. And he wanted to hang on to all of it. But my grandmother . . . she wanted to share it. After he died she donated it to the museum. I think my mother probably encouraged that a little bit.”
“Librarian,” he said.
“Yes. And I think even my dad was relieved, because I don’t think he wanted to feel like he had to keep all of it safe. It’s a lot of pressure. Of course, we didn’t count on everything ending up in boxes in a basement.”
“You donated it to the museum. Couldn’t you take it back?”
“I don’t think so. It belongs to the historical society. If we had given it to them as a loan, maybe.”
“So when the museum closed, that must have felt defeating.”
“Well, my grandmother wasn’t alive to see it. Neither was my mom. She would have been so sad.”
“I know she would’ve been,” he said.
There was something that sounded an awful lot like warmth in his voice, and it was unexpected.
She looked at him, his face washed out by the fluorescent lighting, yet still handsome. “She was a good woman, your mother,” he said, responding to the question in her eyes. “She always made the library feel like a place where I was welcome. You can imagine I didn’t always have that experience.”
“Really?”
“Millie,” he said. “Your dad arrested me. And you can honestly ask me whether or not I felt welcome in town?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Well. Did you commit acts of vandalism?”
He snorted. “Yes.”
“Oh. Well.”
“I was told from the time I was born that I was bad. Innately. My dad made it seem fun. He said we could go where we liked, do what we wanted, because we couldn’t earn our way to being good, so we might as well live down to the expectations of those around us. He said that was being free. Not giving a damn.” He shook his head. “So yeah, I did that shit. I broke windows, I started fights. I sold illegal alcohol, underage too. But it didn’t start there. The first time I went to the library, an old man told me to leave.”
Her stomach twisted. “How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s fine. Ancient history.”
But she knew that he was lying, because obviously ancient history mattered to him. The things they were looking for now were far more ancient than his being yelled at in a library when he was ten, and he still cared. That, she supposed, told her a great many things about Austin Wilder.
“Your mom told me I could stay. It’s why I kept coming back. The library was the only place I ever really went that wasn’t . . . for us.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on. You know. There’s a saloon for us, and a grocery store for us. There’s a diner we like, and we don’t go into your fancy Scallywag’s Coffee.”
She did know. That was the thing. She’d always thought the outlaws-versus-lawmen story was . . . local flavor. He made it sound terrible.
“Right,” she said, her throat getting tight. “I . . . I’m glad you felt you could go to the library.”
“Me too,” he said.
Silence stretched between them as an ache in her chest started to expand. She busily redirected her focus. “You can actually check things out, we just have to document it.”
“Well, I am well-versed in the act of checking things out.”
“So if you find some letters or a journal that you want. . . .”
He walked over to the shelves and took the lid off one of the boxes. “This is full of documents.”
“A lot of it is boring. Bank statements and deeds, a couple of mining claims.”
“I didn’t think your family ever did mining.”
“They didn’t really. As far as I know, they just had the claims to help keep a wide buffer around their property so that they didn’t have people putting mining rigs in where they didn’t want them.”
“Right.” He looked thoughtful, though.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” she said. “But as far as I know, the Talbots weren’t miners.”
“I might take this whole box,” he said. “Then come back for the rest.”
“You’re really going to go through all of this?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly are you doing with this research? Other than going on a personal quest for information.”
He let out a long, slow breath, and he seemed to be debating something. “I’m writing a book.”
“A book? Like . . . an entire book?”
“Yes. Not just historical record, I’m turning Austin Wilder’s journals into a novel.”
She didn’t know why it surprised her. He loved books. He loved reading. Maybe even more than she did, so the idea that he might be working on a novel shouldn’t surprise her, and yet.... She felt dumb, in that moment, confronted by the fact that she clearly had more prejudice against him than she had realized, by the fact that even she somehow held on to this idea that he was something he wasn’t.
She had watched him come into the library every single week, for all these years, and yet she still didn’t apply adjectives like imaginative , deep thinking , or even intelligent to him. He was a cowboy. And more than that, he was....
He was a Wilder. She was a Talbot.
“I’m sure it’s great,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. Mostly right now it’s a collection of scenes. And I don’t know if anybody would ever be interested in reading it. But it’s a story that I’m interested in. And I figure since I have all this insight into who he was, I’m in a pretty decent position to write it.”
“But you need to fill in information from other points of view.”
He nodded. “Yes. As far as town history goes, I’m pretty well steeped in it.”
“Sure. Still, I bet it’s going to be helpful to you, being involved in the Gold Rush Days.”
He chuckled. “Maybe. Though I remember the whole routine from back in the day.”
“There are some books in the library about getting published.”
“Thanks. I . . . do you remember Jennifer Allman?”
She squinted. Jennifer had been older than Millie, younger than Austin. She had left for college, and she hadn’t come back. “Yes. Vaguely.”
“She’s a literary agent. I got in touch with her when I first had the idea for the book. I pitched it to her. But she wanted me to get back to her when it was finished.”
“Ah.” She wondered if their connection was just professional. Or if there was some other reason he had thought to get in touch with her. How had he known she was a literary agent, when Millie hadn’t?
The thought made her fizzy again. It shouldn’t.
“Let’s just get all this signed out on the sheet.”
There was a clipboard hanging up on the wall, a sign-out sheet for all the documents, a place to put your name, the date, and the reference number of the items you were taking. No one had checked anything out for three years.
Austin wrote his name, boldly, in all capital letters as if he was making a declaration.
When they exited the basement, Millie let out a sharp breath, her lungs tortured, likely from the stale air they had just left behind, not anything else.
“I’d better go,” she said, looking at her watch.
Her mother’s watch.
She had inherited all of her mother’s jewelry when she had passed. She had often thought that there was a certain gift in having advanced warning that a loved one was going to pass away. Having experienced it both ways, she could confirm that if she had to choose, knowing beforehand was her preference.
She’d had weeks while her mother was in hospice to sit with her, to hear the story behind each piece of jewelry. To ask her about her childhood, to collect moments and stories, and to say what needed to be said.
With her father . . . one day he had been there, and the next he was gone.
One day he had felt hale and hearty and indestructible, and the next he was forever beyond her reach.
The only good thing, she supposed, was that he never had to grow weak. In many ways, she imagined that if her father had been forced to choose a way to go, it would’ve been exactly how he’d gone. The heart attack that no one had expected.
Himself until the very end.
But when she looked at her mother’s watch, she remembered the story her mom had told her about how her dad had given it to her for their fifth anniversary.
She could remember that moment. The way her mom had pressed it into her palm, and looked at her with those kind blue eyes. Millie did not have her mother’s eyes.
She took a breath, trying to shift some of the heaviness that had landed on her. It was all this talk of the past. “I’ll . . . I’ll get in touch with you about planning. . . .”
“I’m going to see you in a minute.”
“Right.”
She turned and hurried to the car. She doubted that he was actually going to make conversation with her when he came to the library. He never did.
She got to the library with fifteen minutes to spare before opening and unlocking the door, turning the sign early, and flicking on all the lights, starting up the computer.
The building was large and bright. A far cry from the basement space that had comprised the library until Millie was eight or so. There had been a levy to build all new libraries throughout the county, and large new buildings had gone up in each town. Finding money to keep the lights on had been the real challenge, and Millie felt blessed that Rustler Mountain had considered funding the library a necessity.
The library and the fire department were both well-funded. She supposed that was a function of being distant from major towns. Rebel Heart Books in Jacksonville was the closest bookstore, and it was nearly forty minutes from them.
And if disaster struck, the rural fire department acted as EMTs as well as putting out fires.
With the closest hospital over an hour away, an active fire department was a necessity.
She had just sat down behind the desk at ten o’clock when her first couple of patrons came in. Some of her favorite library ladies who always came for the new romance releases on Tuesdays.
They often competed for books on hold, though Marjorie preferred historical romance while Alice liked vampires.
She was busy helping a patron find a new cozy mystery series to start and had almost forgotten that Austin was supposed to come by, when she heard the door open again and turned to see him stridingin.
Every head turned when he entered.
Marjorie whispered something to Alice, who shook with laughter, her shoulders bobbing up and down.
It hit Millie then, that they were lusting after him.
Good God.
It hit her, with even stronger force, that she might’ve been doing the same earlier.
No. It wasn’t. Because that fizzy feeling wasn’t anything remotely familiar, and she knew what lust looked like.
And frankly she could do without it. Having been once reduced by the unwieldy force of lust, she could happily go without for the rest of her life.
She was not someone who inspired it, apparently. Not the way Danielle did.
Really, she wasn’t hurt. Really, she was not heartbroken.
Really, she was just mad.
And didn’t need to be pondering it right now.
“Anyway,” she said, turning back to the patron she had been working with, “I think you’ll really like this series. It’s set locally.”
“Thankfully, we don’t have actual murderers locally,” the woman said.
“Not recently.”
She went to the desk and took a seat, and Marjorie and Alice came to check out their books, followed by the cozy mystery patron. And then, Austin came to stand behind her, looming very tall.
She ignored the fact that her hands began to tremble just slightly.
He had two more Jack Reacher books and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. “This is a good one,” she said, pointing to Bird by Bird .
“Good,” he said.
“I haven’t read Jack Reacher,” she commented.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Would I like the books?”
“They’re violent. And they’re about a very large man who solves his problems by being large. So, I don’t know, you have to make your own determination.”
She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. “That is a pretty good endorsement, actually.”
“I don’t know what you read,” he said.
“A little bit of everything,” she said.
“It’s just, I realize that you know everything I read.”
She blinked. It was true. She did. That made her feel powerful in a way. She could look right into his imagination, and he had no idea about hers.
“I do,” she said. “Suddenly I feel drunk with power.”
“Well. We can’t have that.”
Suddenly she heard a very loud throat-clearing noise, and she looked behind Austin to see a short man who only came up to his shoulder and had been previously obscured by Austin’s body. He was standing behind Austin looking impatient. “There are other patrons,” he said.
Austin looked at the man. Millie fought to keep a disdainful look off her face. She did not know this man’s name. Which meant that he didn’t often come into the library, and he probably hadn’t lived here all that long. He was certainly demanding that things work at a pace they did not work in Rustler Mountain, and she discovered right then that she and Austin had something else in common, beyond their love of the library.
Neither of them took kindly to somebody who wasn’t from around here telling them how to do things.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” she said. “I’m just finishing my conversation with this other patron.”
“I need your phone number,” Austin said.
She sputtered. “Oh.”
The man let out a hard sigh. “Are you flirting or are you checking his books out?”
“Flirting,” said Austin, without looking at the complainer. He reached his hand out. “Give me your phone.”
She did. He punched in a number, and then called, then hung up quickly. “There. Now I’m in your call data. You can text me and let me know when you want to meet up.” He took a stack of books. “Thank you kindly, Ms. Talbot. I’ll see you around.”
Then he turned and walked out of the library, and she struggled to take her eyes off the door long after he had gone through it.
“I have an appointment,” the man said.
“Well,” Millie said, turning her focus to checking out his books. “I’m sure there won’t be any traffic on the road. You ought to get there just fine.”
She looked down at her phone, looked down at Austin’s number.
Then she clicked add to contacts .
Create new.
Austin Wilder.
She sat there and stared at it, and she wished that she could go back to the Millie of two months ago who had been devastated and quite certain there would never be anything else in her life that meant anything, with her mother gone, her father gone, and her only romantic relationship dead and buried.
She wished she could go back and tell her that she wouldn’t even believe what was happening now. Nothing huge. Nothing life-altering. But definitely different from anything she could have imagined.
There was something about that she found oddly cheering.