Chapter 24
Austin Wilder, 33, was shot dead on Main Street by Sheriff Lee Talbot, after refusing to be apprehended by authorities for the crimes of robbery and murder. His brothers were arrested for crimes of the same nature. They are believed to be responsible for a string of robberies of stagecoaches and banks all over Oregon. If these men are remembered, it will be for their crimes.
—the Rustler Mountain Gazette , June 12, 1867
W hen Austin got home, his siblings were all waiting in the house. They had been texting him, and he had been ignoring them.
“What the hell are you all doing here?”
“We’ve been trying to get hold of you. We didn’t know if we needed to go down to the police station, but we thought that perhaps a bunch of Wilders showing up there would make things worse, not better,” Cassidy said.
“Not wrong.”
“What happened?” Flynn asked.
“I got put in handcuffs for punching that asshole. I don’t regretit.”
“And?”
“No and . It’s not a case. It’s not a thing. I’m not catching any charges.”
“Oh,” said Flynn. He sounded almost disappointed.
“Sorry if that damages your fantasy of me actually being dangerous.”
“Are you okay?” Cassidy asked.
“Do I look like something’s wrong?”
“You don’t look happy ,” said Flynn.
“I’m not.”
“What did you do, Austin?” Carson asked.
“Just leave me alone, Carson.”
“You broke up with her, didn’t you?”
He turned and looked at his brother. “How the fuck did you know?”
“Because actually, you look like a man with a broken heart. Not one that just got let out of prison.”
“Prison and jail aren’t the same thing.”
“Whatever. Why did you do it?”
“Because look at me,” he shouted. “I tried. I participated in her thing. I put on a costume, and I stood in the street and I did the thing. I participated and I supported her, and I got arrested. I punched her ex-fiancé because he was running his mouth. Because that’s who I am.”
“And did she at any point indicate she wanted you to be different?” Flynn asked.
“It doesn’t matter what she wants. We know how this goes. It’s a tired tale. Our dad could never get it together. He never could. Our mom left because she knew that we were never going to get it together. And you tried, Carson. God knows you did. But you’re a bigger fucking disaster than you ever were before.”
Carson sniffed and crossed his arms. “I’d be offended if it weren’t true. But it doesn’t have anything to do with you. And frankly, it doesn’t have anything to do with Mom or Dad. I went through something awful. But that has nothing to do with you.”
“It does,” he said. “Because if I know who the Wilders are, and I understand that it doesn’t matter how hard we try, life just doesn’t come together for us, then why would I ever put Millie through that?”
There was a long pause, and finally Carson spoke. “I don’t think you’re worried about her. I think you’re worried about you. Because you’ve been left before, and you know that sucks. Because you watched me lose my wife, and you know it was hell on me. I think you want to protect yourself. God knows I don’t blame you. But don’t pretend that you’re protecting her. You’re protecting yourself.”
Austin was angry. He wanted to lash out. He wanted to deny it. But it felt too real. Carson’s accusation sank down to the deepest parts of himself, and he found that he couldn’t.
“It doesn’t matter what the reason is. I can’t do it.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” said Carson.
There were so many unspoken words in his eyes. So much unsaid between them. And Austin was happy to leave it unsaid.
“Let yourselves out.”
He walked away from them, but he didn’t go to his bedroom. He went to his office, slammed the door, and shut it behind him. And then he sat there at his desk. With his manuscript open in front of him. Dry-eyed, his chest feeling as if somebody had taken broken glass and ground it up, then smashed it into his heart. He sat there until the sun rose. He didn’t sleep. He barely moved.
Then he got up and walked to his truck. He still had the keys to the old building. The one where they’d found the mining equipment. It had been his intention to go back and go through all the artifacts there.
He felt driven to do it now. He felt hollow. He had so many unanswered questions. And maybe they couldn’t be answered.
On the drive back to town, he cursed every jackrabbit that got in his way. But mostly, he cursed himself.
When he pulled up to the old Talbot building, he got out.
He shouldn’t use the keys. He should give them back to Millie. And he damn sure shouldn’t let himself in.
But he did anyway. And as he stood there in the darkness, surrounded by history, he didn’t find the clarity he was seeking.
Instead, he was swept by a terrible longing for something that he knew he couldn’t have. He had felt this way when he was a kid, on the outside looking in.
Except now he was a grumpy old man who had told himself he didn’t belong. He was a grumpy old man who had told himself to get the fuck out. He was the one who hated himself. And he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with that.
He walked through the place slowly. There were ghosts hanging in the air. Or maybe they were just inside him.
Maybe his brother was right. Maybe he was a coward. Afraid for himself.
Maybe the real tragedy wasn’t that everybody thought he was a villain, but that everybody thought he was a villain when he was, in fact, a coward.
There was nobody he could ask. Because his dad had never known him, and he was dead anyway.
His mom was gone.
And he thought back to his siblings, sitting in that house, looking at him, wanting better for him.
God dammit. They were his family. They were his better.
The ones who knew him, the ones who cared for him. And so was Millie.
He was strangled by the depth of that realization.
He took another step and tripped, his foot connecting with something hard.
He swore a blue streak, grabbed his phone, and switched on the flashlight. He shone it down on the bin he had just tripped over. Inside were books.
Of course there were books. Because there were always books. Because somehow it always came back to books. He bent down and started going through them. Little Women. Pride and Prejudice. A big family Bible. He grabbed hold of it and opened it up, looking for the family tree.
And there he saw it, in faint spidery writing. Austin Wilder. Katherine Wilder. The date of their marriage. This was . . . this Bible belonged to his family. These were their books.
This was their history.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he actually sat there and asked himself what had made him hang on to these keys. What had made him drive here this morning. There had been a feeling. Something compelling him. Something he couldn’t explain.
Goose bumps broke out all down his arms. He picked up another book. Huckleberry Finn . And then, he saw a little red journal, identical to the one that had been Austin’s.
He picked it up. He opened it, and his heart hammered hard against his chest.
This journal belongs to: Katherine Wilder.
He opened it up to the first page, and read their wedding date.
This was the happiest day of my life. And he gave me this book to write all about it. To write about our lives.
This was it. This was what he needed.
How the hell had a woman like her loved a man like Austin Wilder? How did she bear it?
He sat down, there in that dusty building, and shone his flashlight onto the pages. And he began to read as quickly as he could.
The joy when she had found out she was expecting. Every time she was afraid that Austin was going to get caught.
She didn’t like Butch Hancock. And she was against her husband’s continuing his life of crime. But through all of it she loved him. Even if he was imperfect.
Sometimes I wonder if we agree on anything.
She had written that one day after a big fight. But she had never wavered in her love for him.
She didn’t make entries every day. Especially not after she had the children.
A few days before Austin’s death, there was one last entry, and then nothing. For two years.
He looked at that two-year gap. There was nothing written about those years, but he could feel the pain.
The emptiness.
And very slowly, he began to read the first entry she wrote after living in a world without her husband.
The boys are very tall now, Austin.
He gritted his teeth, taken aback by the shock of seeing that the entry had been written to Austin.
I think they’ll be even taller than you. I wish that you could see them. I’m so damned thankful for the life that you gave me. Every day I find ways to be thankful for the happiness we had. So many people in this town have asked if I’ll remarry. Marry a respectable man this time. I don’t want a respectable man. I have always and only ever wanted you. And I had you. Gloriously. I miss you. Sometimes like a small crack in a windowpane, letting in a few raindrops. And sometimes like a whole flood. When you first died, I wondered if it would’ve been better if we had never met. But then I wouldn’t be me. And our boys would never have been. And I have decided that I would rather live with your loss, than live in a world where I didn’t love you.
It has taken all this time to write these thoughts out. I wanted to try to hold on to them, instead of just sending them out like prayers into heaven.
I do believe you’re in heaven, Austin, even though you told me you never would be. And I got so angry at you and threw a water pot at you, because I told you there was no point to anything if we wouldn’t be together in the hereafter. So you told me you’d do your best to get there. I believe you did.
It was never hard to love you. Only to lose you. But I would do it again. All a thousand times over. All those people, who asked me if I wanted a better man. There was no better man. Because no one could’ve loved me in the way you did. No one.
He stared at those words. They mirrored so closely what Millie had said to him. That they were perfect for each other. For Katherine there had been no better man, because Austin was the right fit for her.
Could he be Millie’s?
Was she his? Maybe that was the most terrifying question of all.
Because if she was, and then he lost her....
“You already have, dumbass.”
Those words came right out of his mouth, seemingly from nowhere. Perhaps he had been possessed by his late ancestor—he wouldn’t be surprised.
Katherine had loved Austin. And even though their years together had been short, they had been full.
He didn’t want short years. Not with Millie. He wanted their years to be long.
He wasn’t afraid that he couldn’t have a happy marriage. He was a man who did what he set his mind to. It really was as simple as being afraid of losing the person he loved.
But if Katherine Wilder believed that loving and losing was well worth the cost, then maybe he could believe it too.
Maybe she had always been the missing piece. The missing lesson.
And he made a decision right then and there. If Millie would love him, still, after everything, then he would give her everything. He would stop trying to protect her. He would stop trying to protect himself.
He would put all the outlaw into that book. And not call himself an outlaw ever again.
Because she was right. He couldn’t use his reputation as a convenient excuse when he didn’t want to deal with something.
He was going to lay down his gun.
He was going to do what his namesake had never done.
He was going to change for the woman he loved.
In whatever way he needed to change.