Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
November had dropped its last leaves like a wilted bouquet, and Beau was mucking out the stables, doing his best to ignore Junebug, who was listing all the things that needed doing for her next dance.
Which she was holding to welcome Morgan and Pip home.
A postcard had arrived suggesting they’d be home in time for Christmas.
“Leave him be, Junebug,” Jonah sighed. “He don’t care about your next dance.
” He was busy clearing off shelves. Junebug was determined to throw her dance in the stable, which she felt was better looking than the barn.
She kept saying no one wanted to smell cows while they danced, but horses were passable.
She was hectoring her brothers to get things organized, so they could spring into action the moment their prodigal brother returned.
“Beau don’t care about anything anymore,” she complained. “And neither do you, Jonah. You’re the most miserable bastards a girl’s ever had the misfortune to live with.” She jumped from the hayloft into a pile of hay.
“Junebug!” Beau roared. “You’ll break your neck.”
“Spit, you’re turning into Morgan, Beau. Since when are you no fun?”
Since he’d had his heart smashed like pottery, he thought grimly, returning his attention to scraping out the stalls.
“Junebug!” Maddy’s voice rang across the meadow from the big house. It fairly crackled with displeasure.
“That’ll be about the menu I wrote out for her,” Junebug said with satisfaction. “It was extensive. Oh, I need to go pick up those lanterns I ordered from the catalog. Sour Eagle said they’ve arrived. Can someone come with me? Kit says he’ll cancel the dance if I sneak off alone again.”
“I cain’t. I’m at the trading post today,” Jonah sighed. “You know this is a busy season, before the snows.”
“Beau?”
“I’m busy.” He did his best to pretend she wasn’t there.
“Come on.” She climbed over the stall and dropped in his path, blocking his shovel. “I’ll buy you a soda at Diana’s window.”
Diana had opened a little soda fountain out of a side window at the train station, to earn some money now that Junebug was no longer paying her keep.
It opened onto a nice little area under the firs and Bascom had set up some benches for folks to sit on.
She did fair trade on days that the train came, and roaring business whenever the miners were in town, mostly because they liked coming to look at her.
She said she’d chosen the train station so that she’d be the first to see Ellie if she came back.
Also, Bascom had been glad of the company, especially when Flora came to chat to Diana. It gave him a chance to moon over her.
“Junebug!” Maddy was sounding increasingly impatient.
“I’ll return once I’ve talked to Maddy,” she threatened Beau. “And by then I hope you’ll have improved your attitude and decided a ride and a soda with your sister is a perfect way to spend one of the last clear days before winter comes.”
“You should go,” Jonah told Beau as he stacked buckets in an empty stall. “It ain’t doing you any good being stuck here.”
“I’ll mind the trading post. You take her.”
“I cain’t. I don’t want to miss anyone if they come by. You know it gets busy.”
“There’s no point waiting for Purdy, Jonah. He ain’t coming.” Beau knew he was being cruel. He heard Jonah’s sharp intake of breath.
“He’s just been off prospecting,” Jonah said tightly. Beau winced at the sound of Jonah kicking the buckets over.
“Jonah…” But his brother was gone. Beau swore and threw his shovel on the ground. He was growing crusty and mean.
Pain wasn’t new to Beau, but this was pain of a whole different order.
It was like someone had peeled the top layer of his skin off and now he was sensitive to the slightest little prick or scratch.
He ran his hands through his hair and groaned.
Goddamn that woman. He stared out the stable door at the meadow.
He could see Jonah stumbling down to the trading post, shoulders slumped.
His gaze drifted over the meadow to the big house, which sat contentedly in Maddy’s little orchard.
Damn it. Fine, he’d take Junebug down to Bitterroot for her lanterns, even though he hated going back there.
He finished the stable, saddled up Dutch and then collected his annoying sister.
“You wait till you see these lanterns,” Junebug chattered as they rode out.
“They’re made of paper and you string ’em up and they look like little hot air balloons.
I’m going to hang ’em all over the stable.
Maybe some around the cookout area. You think anyone will actually come to our dance?
We might be snowed in. In which case it’ll just be us.
But that’s fine too. So long as you all dance with me. ”
Beau let her chatter, but his mind was elsewhere.
Junebug sighed. “You ain’t no fun anymore, Beau.”
He grunted.
“You know the girls can come. Jonah can play his fiddle and old Hicks the butcher says he’ll bring his accordion, if the snows hold off and he can make it up to our place.
Personally, I think his accordion sounds like someone’s squeezing a cat, but people seem to like it.
Thunderhead Bill says he’ll call the dances. It’ll be a time.”
Beau grunted again.
Junebug muttered under her breath. Then she seemed to decide she was wasting good words. “She’s not worth it!” she told him hotly. “She had awful clothes, and she was mean to you! Let it go.”
“She wasn’t mean to me.” Beau wasn’t letting that stand.
“She left you.”
“She didn’t leave me. She just left. It’s different.
” The thought of her out there, somewhere, alone, ate him up.
He’d torn the town apart looking for her—but there was no trace of her.
He imagined all kinds of horrors. She could have frozen to death out in the woods.
He’d walked every inch of the woodland around the hotel, his heart in his throat, terrified of what he might find.
She could have fallen foul of miners or prospectors or trappers.
She could be injured, captured, hungry, cold…
And there was nothing he could do about it because he couldn’t find her.
“When people leave, you got to let them go,” Junebug said fiercely. “Pa, Charlie, Morgan, Ellie… There ain’t nothing you can do about it.”
Beau lost his ability to breathe for a moment. The loss of Charlie and Pa collapsed into his loss of Ellie. The pain was threefold, sharp as a knife. He hadn’t connected it until now, that he was feeling all that pain at once.
“I know it tries the soul not knowing about people. Not knowing if they’re alive or dead, not knowing if they’re happy or sad, not knowing if you’ll ever see them again.” Junebug’s voice cracked.
Beau pulled his horse up. “Bug. Morgan’s coming back.”
She turned her pony and glared at him. “I know. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll kill him.”
He took in the hard glitter of tears in her eyes. He knew exactly how she felt.
For the first time since Ellie had disappeared Beau began to crawl out of himself.
He wasn’t the only one suffering, he realized.
Jonah didn’t know where Purdy was, Junebug didn’t know where Morgan was, Kit didn’t know where Charlie was, Diana didn’t know where Ellie was…
Beau’s mind turned to other people too. Maddy didn’t know what had happened to her siblings, Thunderhead Bill didn’t know his family, Sour Eagle had lost all his wives and children…
Everyone had pain, he realized. Maybe everyone felt exactly the way he did, as though they were walking around without their top layer of skin.
It was possible Ellie would never return.
It was possible he would never know what had become of her.
He felt his own eyes prick sharp with tears.
His throat was swollen and his stomach sore.
It was possible he’d had all the time he would ever have with her.
That those stolen kisses were all there would ever be.
That their one magical hour in his bed was the last time he would ever see her.
“Beau…” Junebug looked panicked by his rising emotion.
He bit the inside of his cheek and let the tears fall.
“Beau, don’t…”
“I love her, Bug.”
Junebug’s gray eyes were wide and horrified. “Don’t cry ,” she said, appalled. “Get mad, but don’t cry.”
“But I ain’t mad.” His voice was tight. “I love her, and I’m scared and I’m sad and my heart hurts so much I don’t know how it can go on beating.”
“Stop it,” Junebug wailed. Her own tears started falling. “Stop it!”
“I think I’ll miss her till the day I die.”
“I won’t miss Morgan,” Junebug railed. “I won’t! I’ll hunt him down and make him sorry he ever left me.”
“You know what’s worst of all, Bug?”
“You crying?”
He laughed. “No. Not crying is way worse than crying. Not crying is a flat-out misery. What’s worst of all is I’d be okay if I just knew she was alive. I think I could breathe if I knew she was happy.”
“I don’t want Morgan to be happy without me,” Junebug told him firmly. “And he better be alive, or I’ll kill him.”
“That don’t make no sense.”
“It’s a different kind of sense. The kind you feel in your gut.” She dashed her tears away with the back of her hand. “Now can we get these lanterns and plan a dance and actually enjoy our lives for once?”
Beau nodded. He followed her down the hill, his tears still dripping.
“If you love Ellie, that means I win the bet, don’t you think? Which means you owe me a circus.”
He didn’t dignify that with a response.
“Well, hi, stranger.” Diana lit up when she saw Beau. She leaned through her window and stretched out her hands to him.
“Hi.” He took her hands and squeezed them. She was wearing blue mittens and they were fuzzy and soft in his hands. She was looking thin and pinched, but her smile was warm.
“You look terrible,” she laughed.
“So do you.”
“I looked worse yesterday. I hadn’t slept at all. At least last night I got a couple of hours.”
“Still having nightmares?”
She nodded. “You?”
“The worst kinds.”
“Want to have a sarsaparilla with me?” She didn’t wait for his answer.
She closed her window and came around through the station to meet him, carrying two open bottles of fizzy drink.
“There’s not much custom till the train comes in anyway.
” She handed him a bottle and they ambled over to one of the benches under the firs.
“Has Junebug come down for her lanterns?”
He nodded, taking a swig of the syrupy drink. “What was your dream about?” he asked her. He knew it helped her to talk.
“Oh, it was ridiculous. The bear again.” She pulled a face. “This time it turned up at the Christmas dance and went on a rampage. It was coming at me, with long claws, and then I saw it had Ellie’s face.”
“Makes sense. She wore a lot of brown. A bear suit wouldn’t be much of a stretch.”
Diana smiled wanly. “I feel like she ripped my heart out, Beau.”
“Me too.” He toasted her with his sarsaparilla bottle.
“I walk around imagining what I’ll say to her if I ever see her again.”
“Me too.” I love you. I miss you. Don’t you dare ever leave me again.
“There’s a lot of cursing,” Diana told him. “And a lot of finger pointing. Sometimes I throw things at her.” She let out a shaky breath. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“I hope so.” He felt Diana sag against him. He put his arm around her. “I really hope so.”