Chapter Nineteen
Nineteen
“Let me do the talking,” Morgan told Ellie.
She ignored him. For about a minute. Then she couldn’t help herself. “I wasn’t planning on talking. I wasn’t even planning on being here. If you hadn’t kidnapped me, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Here” was the train to Bitterroot. She was sitting opposite Morgan McBride and his wife Pip as the train chugged up the mountain.
Morgan had paid for first class tickets and Ellie’s imagination was caught by the velvety sprung benches and the chandeliers and curtains.
She wished she could ride in first class in better circumstances, when she could actually enjoy it.
“I didn’t kidnap you.” Morgan was offended.
“No? How would you describe it? Forced abduction?”
“No brother of mine is taking advantage of a poor girl and not taking responsibility for her.”
“He didn’t take advantage of me,” Ellie exclaimed, throwing up her hands. She didn’t know how many times she had to say it. “If anything, I took advantage of him .”
Once again, Morgan McBride didn’t listen to her. “He has to do what’s right.”
“Listening isn’t Morgan’s strong suit,” Pip sighed. “I find it’s best to raise your voice. He seems to enjoy a fight.” She stroked his arm.
Morgan’s only redeeming quality, as far as Ellie could see, was how well he treated his wife. He clearly adored her. Sometimes Ellie caught him gazing at Pip as though he couldn’t believe she was sitting right here next to him.
“I don’t want him to ‘do what’s right,’?” Ellie said, taking Pip’s advice and raising her voice. “I want him and Diana to be happy.”
Pip got a look.
“What?” Ellie demanded.
“You say that a lot,” Pip observed.
“What? That I want them to be happy? Well, that’s because I do!”
“You know you get to be happy too?” Pip said mildly.
Ellie blinked.
“All I hear from you is that you want Diana to be happy, and you want Beau to be happy, and you want Diana and Beau to be happy. But what about you?”
“I’m happy if they’re happy.” Ellie was unpleasantly reminded of something Junebug had once said, about Ellie’s happiness being based on making Diana happy.
Morgan snorted.
“What?” Ellie demanded.
Pip pressed her lips together. “You cry a lot for someone who’s happy.”
“No. I cry the normal amount for someone who has happily sacrificed their happiness for the happiness of others.”
“Definitely let me do the talking,” Morgan grunted.
“I don’t want to talk!” Ellie reminded him loudly. “At all! I don’t even want to see them!” The mere thought of seeing them made Ellie feel lightheaded and queasy. Maybe even bad enough to faint dead away at the sight of them…
It would be her first swoon. Ellie tried to imagine it. But it was too difficult when Pip was poking at her.
“So long as you know that you get to be happy too,” Pip told her. “It was a lesson that took me far too long to learn. You get to want things, just for the sake of wanting them.”
“Well, I want to let them be happy together.”
Pip rolled her eyes.
Oh God, they were approaching Bitterroot.
Ellie pulled at the collar of her pink dress.
Pip had made her wear it. In fact, she’d taken away all Ellie’s other clothes, refusing to let her have them again.
She’d ignored all Ellie’s protests and had furnished her with two new skirts and two new blouses, ready made from a shop.
In many ways, she was just as bossy as her husband.
Bossiness seemed to be a hard and fast McBride trait, whether by birth or marriage.
To Ellie’s horror, as the train rolled into Bitterroot, to the silvery bright blast of Bascom’s whistle, Beau and Diana were the very first thing she saw.
They were sitting on a bench under the fir trees next to the station; Beau had his arm around her, and Diana was snuggled into his chest. They looked perfect together, moonshine and midnight.
“I can’t do this,” Ellie blurted. Her composure shattered the moment she saw them there, in each other’s arms. A wild pain burst into flower behind her ribcage. She couldn’t bear to watch them together. Not when she loved him so much that it felt like she couldn’t exist without him.
Ellie felt like she’d been shot through the heart with an arrow. She loved him.
The truth was awful. She didn’t want to love him. She couldn’t love him. Because Diana loved him, and Ellie loved Diana.
At the same time that the awful, hurtful truth of loving him hit, a searing rage burned into being. She loved him and he’d cast her aside. He’d seduced her and then gone straight to Diana. Her hands clenched in her lap. He’d hurt her.
It was like she’d been in hibernation and now she’d woken up and all the feelings came crashing in. How could he have left her bed—well, his bed, that she’d been in—and gone to Diana?
Oh, that hurt. It hurt so much.
Oh my God. He’d gone straight from Ellie’s bed to Diana.
And Ellie had let him. She’d abandoned Diana to a serial seducer.
Ellie had let him sleep with her, discard her, and then move on to Diana!
He was nothing but a manipulative, corrupting reprobate.
He’d used her. Played with her like a toy and then tossed her aside. And now he was playing with Diana.
“Don’t worry. I’ll do it,” Morgan said grimly, following her gaze to where Beau was snuggling Diana.
“No,” Ellie blurted. “I will.”
“You just said you couldn’t.”
“I changed my mind.”
“In the last two seconds?”
“Don’t, Morgan,” Pip scolded, “she’s clearly upset.”
“Clearly, as she’s not making any sense.”
“He used me!” Ellie said hotly.
“I thought you said you took advantage of him ?” Pip challenged her.
“I did! But only because he made me.”
“Talking to you is as bad as talking to Junebug,” Morgan complained. He stood and pulled their carpetbags down from the rack.
“Are you ready for this?” Pip asked Ellie.
“No,” she said honestly. Through the window she could see Beau stroking Diana’s arm. Her silvery blonde head was tucked under his chin. Ellie didn’t know what she was feeling. Too much for one human body to hold.
“You’re alive!” Diana lurched forward, cannoning into Ellie. She burst into violent, hysterical tears. “Oh my God, you’re alive !”
“You didn’t tell them you were okay?” Pip was appalled. “You didn’t even send a postcard, so they knew you were alive?”
Ellie stood frozen in Diana’s embrace. “I didn’t think they’d think I was dead ,” she said, defending herself.
“Oh, I could shake you !” Diana grabbed Ellie’s face in her hands and then peppered her with aggressive kisses. “I didn’t sleep for a whole week after you left! I have imagined you dead in every possible way.” Diana was ugly crying now.
“Diana,” Ellie said, trying to pull away, “I’m not dead. It’s okay.”
“Where have you been?”
“Snakehead.”
“Snakehead!” Diana shook her. “Why did you leave me?”
Ellie was painfully aware of Beau, who was having a very intense conversation with his brother. “I’ll tell you in private,” she said cautiously.
“Morgan?” Junebug’s clarion voice cut through the afternoon. She came striding down the platform in her denim overalls, her hair newly shorn. Ellie envied her aggressive elan. She wished she could be so sure of herself.
“Here we go,” Pip murmured.
“Old Roy told me you were here, but I didn’t believe him,” Junebug growled, approaching her brother.
“Well, here I am.”
As Morgan and Junebug stared each other down, Ellie succumbed to Beau’s gravitational pull. He was staring at her.
Then there was a smacking sound and an angry yell, and everything devolved into chaos. Beau was pulling Junebug away from Morgan, who was holding his cheek and cursing; Bascom was angrily blowing his whistle at them; and Junebug’s dog was savaging Morgan’s ankles.
“I’m going to head to the hotel,” Pip sighed, “McBride greetings can take a while. I doubt we’ll be heading up to Buck’s Creek today, given it’s late.
” She took her carpetbag and Morgan’s and set off, unperturbed by the bellowing she left behind in her wake.
“Bascom, tell Morgan to bring our trunks when he’s done. ”
“I’m not at the hotel anymore,” Diana told Ellie.
She couldn’t seem to let go of her; she was holding on like Ellie might bolt.
“I’m staying at Mrs. Champion’s. I couldn’t afford the hotel, and she kindly offered to let me board with her.
She has two spare rooms, I’m sure she’d be happy to let you stay too.
” Diana wasn’t brooking discussion. “Come on, we have a lot to talk about.”
Ellie looked over her shoulder as Diana escorted her away. Beau had his arms full of Junebug, but his eyes were still on Ellie.
Diana led Ellie to Mrs. Champion’s in sniffly silence, showing her to her room and promising to return for her as soon as Ellie had freshened up from her journey.
Ellie had been put in Beau’s old bedroom.
She’d be sleeping in that bed. Ellie didn’t appreciate the irony, and she didn’t appreciate the way Beau came barging in without so much as knocking, like it was still his room.
The door slammed on its hinges and there he was, filling the doorway like a vengeful god.
Her memory hadn’t done him justice. He was seriously, heart-hurtingly beautiful. But he had deep bruised circles under his eyes.
“Who the hell runs off after… that ?” He jabbed an angry finger at the bed.
She hated how glad she was to see him. And she hated how it hurt . She hated that Diana had cried herself into a puddle at the train station, leaving both of them worn out. She hated the anxiety and the guilt and the stinging pain. She wished Morgan McBride had left her back in Snakehead.
“I saw you,” she exploded, retreating to the safer plains of anger.
Anger felt better than pain. “I saw you and Diana, in her room. You were proposing to her! So yes, I ran off after that. ” She gestured at the bed as well.
The bed that she had no intention of sleeping in. She’d rather sleep on the floor.
Beau seemed genuinely bewildered. “I was what ?”
“You said she’d made you the happiest man alive and you kissed her on the head.” She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him. “Not an hour after you left my bed. This bed!”
He caught it. “I wasn’t proposing to her, you annoying woman! I was telling her that I was going to propose to you !”
Ellie froze in the act of grabbing the second pillow. “That’s not true.”
“It is! I’m in love with you, you idiot.
And everyone knows it, including Diana. She was happy for us.
That’s why I was thanking her. That’s why I was spinning her around.
I was going to goddamn well propose to you.
But you ran away!” He threw the pillow at the wall.
It made a loud smacking sound and then slid to the floor.
“You put us through hell. I looked under every bush thinking you’d frozen to death; I walked through every last inch of the woods around Bitterroot, thinking you were lost; I looked up every tree in case you’d met another bear; I suspected every stranger of causing you harm.
I interrogated Bascom but he swore black and blue you never got on any train.
I went to every mine on this side of the mountain.
And now I learn you were in Snakehead !”
“I was making you happy!” she told him hotly. “I was letting you be with Diana!”
“Well, you didn’t make me happy! You ruined my goddamn life. Not to mention Diana’s. Did she tell you about her nightmares? Have you seen how pale she is? Does she look happy to you?” He was wild eyed. “I mean, who the hell just runs off?”
“ I do!” Ellie shouted. “I do, when the man I love is kissing other women every five minutes and going straight to my best friend’s arms after I’ve slept with him .”
Beau went silent at that. He was breathing hard.
“I’ve wanted nothing more than to see you,” he said, his voice tight with emotion.
“I thought I just needed to know you were alive. That you were okay. That that would be enough.” His roiling black gaze met Ellie’s.
“But it’s not. Now that you’re here, I want to wring your goddamn neck! ”
And then he left her, slamming the door so hard the whole cottage seemed to shake.
Ellie didn’t cry. She didn’t swoon. She couldn’t even think.
Which was a first.
Or rather a second. The last time she couldn’t even think she’d been in this exact room. But in his arms.