Chapter Thirty-Four
The Small Bedroom at the South End of the Upstairs Hall
The first thing was the smell of lamp oil and something warmer under it; the first sound was the small dry pull of a needle through linen at a chair by the bed.
Zoe opened her eyes to the low gold of the afternoon.
The ceiling of the small bedroom at the south end of the upstairs hall came into sight—the water stain at the corner she had marked her first morning in the household, the pale square of the south window with the light coming thin through it.
Her mouth was dry as a desert. Her left shoulder ached and was bound tight with a great deal of linen.
At the chair by the bed, in the low gold light, Alice sat with a small round hoop, a length of green thread in her hand and her head bent to the work, unaware yet that the eyes at the bed had opened.
Zoe watched her a beat.
She had little strength at the moment for words.
She watched the needle go up, and down, and up.
She watched the small frown of concentration Alice brought to a thing she had little natural gift at and a great deal of stubborn love for, and the ordinary sound of in at the quiet room was the sweetest thing Zoe had heard in the whole of her life.
“You have your tension too tight, Alice.” The words came up cracked and dry, little more than a whisper at the quiet room.
Alice’s head came up at once. The hoop fell out of her hands and onto the floor. She was up off the chair and at the edge of the bed with her two hands on Zoe’s good one before the green thread had finished settling on the rug.
“Zoe! Zoe!” The tears came up in Alice’s eyes at once and she made little effort to stop them.
“You’re awake. You’re awake, and you’re scolding my embroidery!
That is all the proof any soul in this house could want that you’ve come back to us.
” She pressed Zoe’s good hand to her own mouth a moment.
Then, she was up off the bed. “Stay. Don’t move.
Don’t so much as blink until I get Wade.
He has little slept in two days and he will not forgive me for keeping this from him. ”
She went to the door in a hurry.
“Wade!” She called. “Wade—she is awake, she’s talking, come up—”
Zoe lay in the low gold light and listened to the boots on the stairs.
They came up two at a time, hard, and the door burst open and Wade was in the room.
He had two days’ stubble at his jaw. Grey circles had set deep under his eyes, and his shirt was the same he had knelt in the snow in by the look of it.
He came across the small room to the bed and went down on his knees at the side of it and took Zoe’s good hand in both of his and set his forehead down on the back of it a long count without a word at all.
Zoe felt him shake through the back of her hand.
“Wade,” she said, her voice a cracked whisper.
He lifted his head from the bed. His pale blue eyes had gone wet in the low gold light, and he made little effort, the same as Alice, at hiding it.
“You are not to do a thing like that again, Zoe.” His voice came up rough at the whole of the two days. “Not for the rest of your life. You are not to step in front of a barrel leveled at me. I have no words for the two days I have knelt at this bed, and I have no intention of learning them.”
“You would have done the same, Wade.” The corner of her mouth pulled, small and dry. “You would have done it not a half beat slower than I did it for you. I know you.”
A broken sound came up at the back of his throat that was half a laugh and half not a laugh at all.
“I would have,” he said. “Lord help the both of us. I would have.”
***
She slept a while in the afternoon, and woke to the lamp lit. Wade was in the chair by the bed where Alice had been, the hoop set aside and his own two hands loose at his knees.
She had the strength at last for the questions.
“Wade… my shoulder.”
“The ball went in the back of the shoulder and out the front of it. It took a little bone, which Doc Reeves says was the best luck in the whole bad business.” He leaned at the chair at the bed.
“You lost a great deal of blood at, Zoe, and you had a fever at the first day I have no wish to watch again. You’re through the worst of both, now.
You are to keep to this bed a fortnight and not argue on it.
But you’re out of danger. Doc Reeves gave me his word this morning. ”
“A fortnight.” Her mouth pulled. “You have little idea the trouble a household comes in a fortnight.”
“I have a fair idea, on account of running the whole of it for two days.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “The bread came out more like a brick. Sadie has not forgiven me.”
She held quiet a beat. Then, the harder question came to her. The one she’d been asking herself since she’d hit the snow.
“Wade. The men at the road: Ben, George, Cord, and the men from Bozeman.” She turned her head to him on the pillow.
“I went to the chapel without telling a soul except for the note under the sugar bowl. I thought I was going to die. That you were forty minutes south at the wash and not a soul knew to come. How did you all come up the north road just in time?”
Wade took a moment to answer.
“It came down to Alice, in the end,” he said.
“And the letter, and a feeling in my own gut I had not named to myself until I came on the scene at the chapel.” He set his elbows at his knees.
“George rode up at dawn when he heard the wash was dug and the wire cut and the tracks heading for the chapel road, I went to the barn at a run for the horse. I didn’t see the note at the sugar bowl when I went.
But Alice had come across the creek at first light with a basket of eggs, not liking the sound of the night before, and she was in the kitchen when I came through it at a run.
She read the note under the bowl to my back while I saddled up—that you had gone to the chapel, that the letter was under the bowl, that I was to bring Ben. ”
“And you didn’t go to the wash.”
“I headed for the wash the first quarter mile.” The line of his jaw.
“The tracks went at to wash. The whole of my own reasoning told me the trouble was at the wash. A quarter mile down the wash road, my own gut turned me and would not let me go on. I had read the letter the, the same as you. I had gone a whole day telling you the man was no danger and telling myself the same, but I had not believed it in my gut. Jameson was gone. The one place the letter put the gold—the chapel—was the one place not a soul was watching. I turned George at the wash road and sent him for Ben at speed, and told him to raise the whole county and send them to the chapel and not to the wash. Then I turned my own horse to the chapel and rode.”
The lamp burned at the sill.
“You came because of the letter, Wade.” Zoe’s good hand turned to him. “I had gone because of the letter, alone, on account of not trusting you to read it in time. And you read it, and you came, and you brought the whole of the county to my back at the hour I needed them.”
“The one of us with the county behind him had learned a thing or two from the one of us at the pony cart.” His pale blue eyes held hers.
“I have spent years holding the world at arm’s length, and telling myself it was to keep people I loved safe.
You went alone to show me the cost of the holding.
I do not mean to make that mistake again—” the corner of his mouth pulled “— you will not go alone again, on account of having learned the cost of that in your own shoulder.”
“And Jameson,” she asked, low. “What has become of Jameson?”
The warmth went off Wade’s face, and something graver came over him in place of it.
“He is in jail in Bozeman. He took three bullets but is little the worse for it, which Doc Reeves called the second best piece of luck in the business, though I have not settled in my own mind whether it was luck, in the end, for him.” Wade turned his hands on his knees.
“He will stand at the court in Helena at the spring and he will little see the outside of a wall for a great many years at the end of it.”
Zoe was silent a beat.
“All of that for nothing,” she said, low.
“For nothing. That is the whole of the tragedy, and it is a worse sentence than the court at Helena will set at him in the spring.” Wade put his hand in hers on the quilt.
Zoe turned her good hand up and folded her fingers under his. The two of them sat a long while without a word.
The lamp had burned down an inch when Zoe turned her head to him again.
“I have not said yes to you,” Zoe whispered, voice cracking.
“You talked about a book at the back of a chapel and a yes I had not stood and said. I didn’t hear the whole of it.
I was near clean gone. But I heard enough, Wade.
I am saying it at you now, with a bound shoulder and a cracked voice and a fortnight of a bed ahead of me, on account of having little wish to wait.
Yes. The yes is yours. It has been yours longer than I realized. ”
Wade’s hand came up to the side of her face at the pillow.
“Zoe,” he said, rough. “I’m asking you again, in the quiet of this room. Say it once more.”
“Yes, Wade.”
He bent to her.
And in the small bedroom at the south end of the upstairs hall, careful of the bound shoulder, Wade set his mouth to hers, small and slow and sure, the whole of the five weeks of his courting and the whole of the two days of his kneeling poured into it.
The door burst open.
“Auntie Zoe is awake—”
Sadie came into the room at a run, her yellow braids flying and Henrietta left behind on the stairs. She came up to the edge of the bed at once and stopped at the sight of the two of them, a tiny frown etched on her brow.
Then it left her face in favor of a grin.
She came to Zoe’s good side at the bed and wrapped her two arms around all of Zoe she could reach, careful of her bound shoulder.
“You came back,” Sadie said. “I prayed the whole time, the whole day and the night, on account of not having better skill at letters than praying. I told the Lord He was not to take you at me. I told Him you were my—” The small voice caught.
“—you were my mama. And that He was not to take a mama twice from the one small girl.”
The room went still. Zoe’s good arm came up to the small braided head at the quilt.
“I am not going anywhere, sweet girl,” she said, a tear falling down her face. “The Lord heard your praying. I came back.”
Sadie lifted her face from the quilt. She looked at Zoe a beat, and at Wade at the edge of the bed.
“Then you are my mama,” she said. “And Uncle Wade —” she turned the small face at him “— you are not my uncle. You are my papa. I have decided it. I decided in the night, and I do not mean to argue it.”
Wade reached for the small braided head on the quilt, and set his hand on it. His pale blue eyes had gone wet at the corners and he made little effort at hiding of it.
“I will not argue it, sweet girl,” he said, at the rough of the whole of it. “You have the deciding of it. You have always had the deciding of it. Your papa I am, now and for all the years to come.”
The three of them held each other in the low gold of the lamp, in the small bedroom at the south end of the upstairs hall, the lamp burning warm and steady at the sill against the dark.