Chapter 13
I thought I’d given up the right to joy, but it found me anyway.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, May 30, 1856
M illie was not well . She went home and poured a glass of whiskey. She didn’t drink whiskey. The bottle had been her father’s.
But she could drink it now if she wanted to, and no one would blame her.
She stared at the amber liquid in the tumbler and wondered what had possessed her. She wondered a whole lot of things.
She clutched the cup and started to wander around the house, feeling restless and not at all interested in the whiskey. And then she decided to call Heather.
“Heather,” she said. “This is your fault.”
“What’s my fault?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Can you talk?”
“Kids are in bed, husband is playing video games. Yes.”
She took a deep breath. “Austin kissed me.”
“ No ,” Heather said. “ No . I mean, yes . Was it good? Is he hot? Is he a good kisser?”
“Yes, you already know he’s hot, and yes. It was the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life.” She didn’t even have to pause to consider. It was just the truth. Unvarnished and real. “Until he pushed me away and told me that nothing was going to happen between us, and then I told him that I was going to go home and think about him while I used my vibrator. And that is your fault.”
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the phone. It echoed inside Millie. Honestly, Heather probably thought she was lying, and she couldn’t blame Heather for that.
Millie never lied. Ever.
She could hardly believe what she was saying now, and she’d been there. The words had come out of her own mouth. But what she’d said couldn’t possibly be true. Because she was Millie Mouse.
The one who was so easily ignored. And yet, she’d always had this stubborn streak. An outright refusal to back down when she thought someone else was wrong. That was the problem, she realized. Austin was being dishonest with himself and with her. That was what had aroused the implacable part of her that simply couldn’t accept lies.
“You . . . you really said that to him?” Heather finally asked. “And how is that my fault?”
“Because!” Millie looked at the whiskey and seriously considered a sip. “You’re the one who gave me a vibrator as a joke gift.”
There was another extended silence. “Oh. Millie, that was not a joke gift.”
“It wasn’t?”
“It cost almost two hundred dollars!”
“I . . . I didn’t know they were that expensive.”
“I don’t go cheap on things that go in my body.” Heather sighed. “I was being serious when I gave it to you. Based on conversations we’d had, I thought you probably really needed a vibrator.”
“I had a boyfriend.”
“Yeah. You did. Michael.”
Millie stood, staring at the wall.
Had everybody else seen the truth that she hadn’t?
She decided to put a pin in that and worry about it later.
“Well, if you hadn’t given me the vibrator, I wouldn’t have told him that I was going to use it and think about him. It never would have even occurred to me. I probably wouldn’t have known what one looked like.”
“I can’t believe you said that to him . Did you rehearse it in your head first? I would have needed dress rehearsals to get that out of my mouth.”
“No. I didn’t think about it all. It wasn’t premeditated. It was just . . . reckless. I don’t even know who I am. I kissed him . I kissed him. I kissed him .” She tried a different emphasis on every single word in that sentence to see if it changed the way she felt about it. To see if it helped anything make sense.
It did not.
Nothing made sense. She had been transformed into another creature.
An outlaw, maybe.
Wild West Mouse.
Right. All it took was finding out that her ancestor might actually have been a crooked lawman, and suddenly she was a vixen.
Well. She was not a vixen, because the man had turned her down, which meant that she wasn’t irresistible and thus not really a vixen.
“I just wanted him to . . . I wanted him to suffer. Because he embarrassed me. And . . . I think he does want me.”
“I’m sure he does. I cannot believe for one second that he doesn’t, especially considering that he showed up to the town meeting and took your side like that. He had to have been interested in you. Men rarely show up for anything like that if they don’t think sex is going to be involved.”
“Is that true? Because we have other things in common. Historical things.”
Still clutching the whiskey, she reached up and pulled the rope that hung from the ceiling in the hallway to tug down the attic opening. Then she reached up and grabbed the ladder, pulling it down. It made a large thunk.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said as the whiskey sloshed over her hand. She didn’t need to drink any of it. She was already acting drunk. She still felt completely bowled over by the kiss. Completely undone.
“Going in the attic to look at . . . things. To try to . . . make sense of myself and my life.”
She climbed up the ladder, keeping the phone pressed to her ear, but discarded the whiskey on one of the steps.
Then she crawled into the attic, searching for the light.
“Millie, what are you doing?”
“I climbed into my attic.”
“Go use your vibrator and stop climbing things.”
It was a valid comment. “No,” she said. “Because I can’t . . . Iwill not fantasize about him, not after he did that.”
“You can do a lot of things that aren’t fantasizing about him but are also not scrabbling around an attic at nine p.m.”
The single bulb barely illuminated the space. It was cramped, with a low ceiling, and stacks of boxes everywhere.
There were probably mice in here. Her kinfolk.
She curled her lip and made a face as she pushed around the boxes.
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” she said. “I am trying to plan Gold Rush Days, I’m trying to open a museum. I got the funding for it, I have everything I want. And I decided to involve myself in kissing Austin Wilder? I have no idea what I was thinking. I have no idea . . . why am I doing so much? Why am I changing everything?”
“Because you aren’t happy.”
Heather’s pragmatic, completely flat delivery set Millie back on her haunches. “I’m not?”
“No, Millie. You’re not happy. Your wedding got called off. Your dad is dead. You’re by yourself. Your life has changed in a thousand different ways that you didn’t choose. Of course you want to do something that you’re in control of. You’ve never rebelled in your life. It was bound to happen someday. And your rebellion is manifesting itself in this very literal way. He is like . . . the last man on earth you should touch. Your dad would’ve disapproved.”
Millie huffed. “I know. He wouldn’t have approved. And I wouldn’t want my dad to disapprove of me. . . .”
“Or maybe you would. Maybe it makes you feel good. To push back. To be different. To be doing something without permission. Something that you know is a little bit wrong.”
“I never have.”
“I know that. You have done nothing but the right thing, what you thought was the right thing, all your life, and where has it gotten you?”
Currently curled up in an attic feeling utterly humiliated.
“Nowhere,” she said. “There’s been no reward. Not a gold star. . . .” She pictured him pinning the sheriff’s star to her chest again.
“Of course you’re pushing back. And he . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry he rejected you. That really sucks. I thought he liked you.”
“I thought he did too,” she said. She curled her knees up to her chest, and rested her cheek on her hand, and was a little bit devastated when a tear splashed down onto her knuckle. She didn’t want to be that sad. “I don’t know why I thought so. No guy ever paid any attention to me until Michael, and I couldn’t hang on to him.”
“He let go of you,” Heather said. “Don’t go blaming yourself for his nonsense.”
“Thank you,” Millie said. “I just feel ridiculous. And it felt so good to shock Austin. But almost immediately I just felt sick. I feel sick. It’s like I took all my clothes off for him and showed him everything, and he’s given me nothing. Absolutely nothing. I risked everything. I risked my pride . . . which I didn’t even know I had until recently, and he walked all over it. And kissing me doesn’t mean anything to him. He’s kissed a thousand women.”
“Did you ask him for a count?”
“No,” she said. “I did not. But I just know he has. And he’s only the second man that I’ve ever kissed. And it was . . . it was like a whole different thing.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
She looked around the attic. “No. I’m too embarrassed. I can’t face you.”
“Okay. How about you face me tomorrow morning. I’ll bring you a chai.”
“Thank you.”
“Just try to get some sleep. You didn’t do anything wrong. This kind of thing happens. When you go out and you try to date. . . .”
“I’m not trying to date him. I just wanted to do something wild. And actually, I just wanted to kiss him. And I am so out of my depth here. I don’t know what you do when you just want to touch a man—you don’t want to date him.”
“Ideally,” Heather said, “you touch him. But tonight that didn’t go your way.”
“No,” she said. “It didn’t.”
“Do I need to come over?” she repeated.
“No,” she said. “I need to get out of my attic and get in the shower.”
“That’s a good idea. Everything makes more sense after a good shower rant. Yell at him beneath the warm spray. And text me when you’re done. Let me know you’re okay.”
“I will.”
She hung up the phone and looked around the attic. She didn’t even know what she was looking for up here. She didn’t know what she was looking for in general.
She moved the boxes around. Opened one up that had her grandmother’s china in it. Maybe she would bring it down to the kitchen. Maybe she would use it every day, just because she could. Michael hadn’t liked it, so it had been put away. But she liked it. So she was going to get it out. She would use it when she had a girl dinner, just collections of little bits and pieces of things. Cheese and pickles, and whatever else she wanted.
Because she didn’t have to have a meat and a main to feed a man who was particular about what he wanted set on the table in front of him. As her dad had been, as Michael had been. There was more than one way to feel liberated, she supposed.
She moved the box out of the way and found a small one, wedged between two larger ones. An old shoebox, with a rubber band around it.
She slipped the rubber band off and opened the box up. Inside was a stack of papers. They looked like letters. And a slim book.
Her heart started to pound. She had never seen these.
She turned one of the letters over, and on the other side was spindly, neat writing.
The return address read: Mister Butch Hancock.
And it was addressed to Sheriff Lee Talbot.