Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Snakehead, Montana
One week later
Zori?’s lunchroom was a circus after the trains arrived.
Ellie was run off her feet as the customers poured in, filling up the stools along her counter.
She poured coffees and took orders for pork chops and frizzled ham, eggs and hot biscuits, sandwiches and fried potatoes.
Her boss was a garrulous Serbian who was prone to cursing enthusiastically and forgetting to charge people for their lunch.
Ellie had lost count of the number of times she had to go running down the street after a customer, waving the bill.
But Big Z, as he was known by everyone in Snakehead, had been good to her, and she counted herself lucky to have a job.
Ellie had come dragging into the lunchroom the day after she’d run away from Bitterroot. She’d been in a state after leaving Beau’s bed but she hadn’t planned to run away.
That had only happened after she’d spied Beau and Diana through the open door of Diana’s room. You’ve made me the happiest man. The sight of them twirling and laughing, Beau kissing Diana’s forehead and calling her an angel, had been like a fatal blow to the heart.
Ellie had only seen them because she’d been slinking down from the attic to confess everything to her friend. She couldn’t live with herself; Diana had to know the nature of the asp she held to her breast. An Ellie-shaped asp with sharp poisoned fangs. Who’d slept with her fiancé.
But then she’d seen them through the door and a noxious mix of feelings had fogged her. Diana had been so happy. And Beau…
Well, Ellie clearly hadn’t meant anything to Beau.
She was filled with disgust for herself.
She’d thrown her belongings into her carpetbag and run headlong into the night, without thinking about where she was headed or how on earth she’d get there.
She’d only made it to Snakehead because Purdy Joe had taken pity on her.
He’d found her weeping as she stumbled along the creek in Bitterroot that wretched night, carrying her luggage.
The sound of jollity drifting from the hotel had only made her weep harder.
“What on earth are you doing, Miss Ellie?” he’d exclaimed, pulling his horse up at the sight of her. “Why ain’t you at the dance?”
“Why aren’t you ?” she’d responded, wiping her tears away. But it was futile, because they just kept coming. She hadn’t thought she’d ever stop crying.
“Ah, Jonah and I had a fight.” Purdy Joe was equally miserable as he leaned on the pommel of his saddle. “A real doozy too. I don’t reckon he’ll talk to me again.”
“What was it about?” Ellie asked, her lip wobbling.
“A girl,” Purdy Joe sighed.
Ellie couldn’t control herself. She let out a hiccough and dissolved. She was crying about a girl too.
“Ah, there, there,” Purdy said awkwardly. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that.”
“It is. It really is,” Ellie assured him. She’d lost Diana forever. She’d lost everything. Because she was a selfish, untrustworthy asp.
She couldn’t think about it, or she wouldn’t be able to go on. “Is Jonah upset because you both like the same girl?” she asked, trying to distract herself.
“No,” he sighed. “Truth be told, I don’t really like girls that much at all.”
“Oh.” It sank in. “ Oh .”
“Jonah ain’t so upset about that,” Purdy admitted. “Ah hell. You don’t want to hear about my problems.” He sighed, a deep and melancholy sound. “It’s awful to lose a friend over something like love, ain’t it?”
Ellie nodded, the tears strengthening again. Yes. Yes, it was. Maybe just as bad as losing love over a friend. Losing both, though, was absolutely unsurvivable.
And yet here she was, all these days later in Snakehead, surviving it.
Purdy had rescued her. He’d ridden her down the creek to a little mining settlement, and the following day further downhill to the town of Snakehead, where he’d given her enough money for coffee and some food.
“I can’t take your money,” she’d protested when he’d pressed it on her.
“Sure, you can. It ain’t much. Just enough for a hot meal.”
“Purdy, I can’t…”
“Ah, stop your palavering.” He’d given her a gap-toothed smile. “We sore-hearted folks need to stick together.”
“Purdy, would you mind not telling anyone that I’m here? I mean, Beau… and Diana…” Her voice cracked on Diana’s name.
He was understanding. “I don’t reckon I’ll be going back to Bitterroot or Buck’s Creek any time soon,” he confessed, “so your secret is safe with me. I reckon we all need some time for our hearts to heal.”
She’d be forever grateful to him. His money had bought her to this very lunchroom, where Big Z had struck up a conversation with her, pouring her a coffee and trying to dig an interesting story out of her.
Ellie had envisioned herself as a silently tragical figure, a wraith of heartbreak, who would drift through the rest of her days like a ghost. But it turned out she was more the talkative sort of heartbroken.
She told Big Z the whole story and he’d wept with her, because he was the big-hearted sort.
And then he’d offered her a job so she could save up for a train ticket home, and she’d spent the week working the counter, taking orders and pouring coffee and telling anyone who looked in need of a good story about the vagaries of love and friendship.
And bears. She did tell the bear story too.
Just not as much as she told stories about Beau and Diana.
“Diana gave him permission to sow his oats and sow he did,” Ellie told the statuesque redhead at her lunch counter, “and I was just the stupid little fool who fell into bed with him. I was nothing more than a furrow. And an asp. I was both at once.” She knew she was making a hash of her metaphors, but she was destroyed by love and betrayal and her own outright idiocy, so she forgave herself.
“You can’t judge me on metaphors,” she told the redhead.
“Heartbreak isn’t compatible with elegant storytelling. ”
“I wouldn’t dare criticize anyone’s metaphors,” the redhead said mildly, pushing her coffee cup forward for another refill.
“It’s a tale as old as time,” a middle-aged woman with half-moon glasses interjected. She was there with her husband, but he was buried behind his newspaper and wasn’t listening to Ellie’s stories at all. “Men pluck a cherry and then throw away the pit.”
The redhead gave the older woman a distasteful look. “Are we really saying she’s a pit now?”
“I don’t feel like a pit,” Ellie confessed. “I still feel full of juice. That’s part of the problem.”
“I don’t think juice is ever a problem,” Corina, one of the other waitresses, told Ellie sharply as she passed by with her arms loaded with empty plates. She’d heard Ellie’s stories a thousand times over this past week.
“It does trouble my dreams, though, all this juice,” Ellie sighed, leaning against the counter.
“You’re dreaming about him?” The redhead was compassionate.
“Every night.” Ellie flushed. They were intensely realistic dreams, where Beau ravished her, over and over and over again. Except for the times when she ravished him.
She woke up aching for him. “Which is a sin, given he’s married to my best friend.”
“You don’t know that they’re married,” the redhead protested. “Anything could have happened. Maybe your disappearance woke him up. That happens sometimes. It happened with my husband. He didn’t know a good thing till it was almost gone.”
“I don’t think Alistair would even notice if I was gone,” the woman with the half-moon glasses said moodily, giving her husband a sideways glance.
“Oh, they’re definitely getting married,” Ellie said with certainty. “They have to be, or everything is far more tragic than I thought. At least if they get married, I can imagine them both happy.”
“I can’t believe he proposed to her the very same evening he…” The redhead lowered her voice. “ Bedded you .”
Ellie felt the familiar tears flood her eyes. She still felt the pain of it like a red-hot needle to the heart.
“Oh, don’t.” The redhead fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. “Here.” She passed it to Ellie. “He’s not worth it.”
“Don’t fret over her too much, she cries at the drop of a hat,” Corina said, coming back past with a couple of serves of blueberry pie.
“To be honest, I don’t think they are married yet,” Ellie sighed heavily. “I think they’ll probably wait until spring. But it’s imminent. Don’t you think a spring wedding is lovely?”
“I think all weddings are lovely,” the half-moon glasses lady said. “Even mine was.”
“Did you tell them about the mistletoe?” Corina asked, pausing on her way back to the kitchen. “About him kissing all the girls, right in front of you?”
“No, she most certainly did not.” The woman with the half-moon glasses shook her head at her husband when he made to pay their bill. “What on earth do you think you’re doing, Alistair. Go back to your paper. I’m in the middle of something. Come on, dear, tell us about the mistletoe.”
Ellie was only too happy to. “Well, Junebug—”
The redhead spat her coffee, spluttering.
“Too hot?” Ellie guessed, swiping at the mess with a cloth. “Or too bitter? Sometimes the coffee here is terrible.”
“Did you say Junebug ?”
Ellie blinked. “Yes. Junebug McBride. She’s the one who hung the mistletoe.”
“Ah.” The redhead’s tawny eyes were wide. “And… I don’t suppose this man who…” She cleared her throat. “He wasn’t a McBride too by any chance?”
“Yes.” Ellie was alarmed. “Oh no. You don’t know them, do you? Because I don’t want Beau to know where I am. Diana’s happiness must be preserved at all costs!”
“Oh my God.” The redhead grabbed her pocketbook and slid off the stool.
“She hasn’t paid!” Corina reminded Ellie as the redhead made a dash for it.
Ellie groaned. Not again. She grabbed the redhead’s bill and ran after her. Lucky the woman was tall and Ellie could see her straw hat bobbing above the crowd. She darted through the busy street, keeping the redhead in view.
“Miss! You forgot to pay!” Ellie was sure she could explain to the woman why no one could know where she was. She caught up to her just as she reached the Canada Hotel. Ellie followed her in. “Miss!” She tapped the woman on the arm. “Your bill,” Ellie said breathlessly.
“Oh.” She took it from Ellie. “I was coming back,” she said. “I just…” She groaned. “I was just going to get my…” She trailed off.
“Purse?” Ellie guessed.
“Husband,” the woman sighed. She took Ellie by the arm. “Steel yourself,” she warned. “This might not be entirely pleasant.”
Frowning, Ellie followed her gaze to see a tall, solid man crossing the foyer.
There was something familiar about him, even though she’d never met him before.
He had a square jaw and wild dark hair and an intense gray gaze.
A very familiar intense gray gaze. For some reason it made Ellie think of mistletoe.
Then it clicked.
“Morgan,” the redhead said nervously. “I’d like you to meet Ellie. Ellie, this is my husband. Morgan McBride. We were just on our way home…”