Chapter One
Redflower, Arizona
Mary’s head tingled with that familiar sensation.
The one that always came before her spells, that warned that soon the world would seem to split in two, and she would feel like she could barely breathe.
The migraines had gotten more frequent in the past two years, rearing their ugly heads whenever she least expected it, but Mary pushed through.
She kept on working until the feed invoices seemed to blur in front of her, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then, she kept on going, fighting the urge to toss all the paperwork aside and telling herself that she had to do this.
After all, she was the only one left to try to make sense of the numbers. The only member of the family around, now that her parents had been gone for so long, and one who was responsible for the livelihoods of a handful of farmhands and a cook.
Though, Mary wasn’t sure how long she would continue to be responsible for their livelihoods with the way the numbers were looking.
She was almost relieved when she heard the knock at her office door, the sound jolting through her mind like lightning, but at the very least giving her a much needed reprieve from the numbers that seemed to be actively tearing her apart.
“Come in,” Mary said, her voice barely more than a gasp as she gave in.
She braced her head on a single hand as the door opened, unable to hide the pain in her expression any longer.
Sophie only tsked, shaking her head. A stout woman with salt and pepper hair and a near constantly skeptical expression, the cook, Sophie, crossed the room, placing a steaming bowl of split pea soup in front of Mary.
“You’ve been doing it again, haven’t you?
” Sophie asked, her disapproval was more than evident.
“This will suit you, it’s easier on your stomach. ”
Mary could only nod in response, head still reading in her hand, and her teeth clenched together. The scent of camphor flared in her mind; she could almost smell the looming threat of a doctor’s visit growing closer.
“Sleep, eat, rest,” Sophie said, setting the bowl in front of Mary before she ran through the list on her fingers. “That’s what the doctor said would help you.”
“I know,” Mary gritted through clenched teeth.
“And yet…” Sophie trailed off. She looked down at Mary with pursed lips.
Mary didn’t so much as bother to reach for the soup spoon. There was no point when she felt the way she did. Every motion felt more painful than the last, and pointless.
“I can’t eat,” Mary said, pushing the bowl away with a wave of nausea.
“You need sleep,” Sophie said, pulling at the back of Mary’s chair before offering her a hand.
Mary accepted it, practically throwing herself into the other woman’s arms as she struggled to stand.
This had to be the worst of her spells to date, a continuation of the pattern that had long since begun to irk her.
The pattern where each and every one of them was worse than the last, until she felt like it was almost impossible for her to survive.
She let Sophie all but carry her across the hallway to her room, sinking into the bed with an expression of gratitude.
“You’re overworking yourself,” Sophie clucked in that mother hen tone of voice that kept her employed.
She’d been taking care of Mary for a few years now, having been one of her parents’ friends before they passed.
She’d become almost the full-time caretaker of the house once Mary was left alone, never asking for a raise or bringing up days off. Mary knew Sophie felt bad for her.
Just as Mary also knew that the other woman couldn’t afford once it got to the point where Mary couldn’t pay her wages anymore. “Call the doctor,” Mary said, gritting her teeth at the idea of another bill, but knowing that the doctor was her only hope.
Dr. Lancaster was never overly pleased to make a house call, least of all to Mary, whose demands were always the same. But she showed up, and Mary paid her, knowing that the visits were cutting into what little money she made, and yet finding it impossible to exist otherwise.
Sophie turned from Mary with a wince. She opened her mouth almost as if to argue but then closed it just as quickly. They’d had this conversation before and for all that Sophie may have worried after Mary and the consequences of their visits she gave in.
Hours later, Dr. Lancaster arrived.
She was a tall, thin woman with brown and white hair and heavy bags under her eyes. Mary always heard her black doctor’s bag before she entered the room. The clicking of metal implements within it an almost soothing sound.
The dark circles beneath Dr. Lancaster’s eyes—which had only been increasing as of late—did not soothe her at all.
“Mary,” Dr. Lancaster said. Mary opened her eyes, looking at the woman to whom she almost felt she owed her life. “This is the last time, you know that.” Dr. Lancaster’s voice was heavy with warning. “I can’t keep doing this,” she added, but Mary knew that wasn’t true.
That for all that the woman may have told Mary that this was the end, that she would help her no longer, she would always do the same thing again.
The Doctor opened her bag as Mary watched. The brown vial clicked on the table, and the pipette sitting beside it. Laudanum. Mary didn’t know how she would live without it. It was the only thing that made the pain go away, the only thing that helped her sleep. She’d run out only two days prior.
Mary watched as the drug was sucked into the pipette and waited for it to be given. Dr. Lancaster hesitated instead. “We need to talk when you’re awake,” she told Mary, typical of her. Mary gave a nod in response, knowing that something or someone would likely call the doctor away soon enough.
She took the laudanum, and then she went to sleep.
***
The migraine was gone by the time Mary opened her eyes again, little more than a buzzing sensation in the back of her head. She sat up in bed, still breathless from the deep sleep, and dared to hope that the doctor would be gone.
Outside, the familiar pinging of rain began again, Mary’s heart tapping in rhythm with it as her mind briefly flickered back to another time, another place. Another life.
Then, she stepped out of her room, headed for the staircase, and paused once she heard the murmur of voices downstairs.
“She’s become dependent,” Dr. Lancaster said, voice heavy with worry as it traveled from the parlor upstairs.
“I worry that she doesn’t know how to exist without the laudanum.
Perhaps you could try speaking to her again, talk some sense into the woman.
Convince her to take things off her plate, if only because I do not know how much longer she can go on like this.
Maybe if she just sold some of the land. ”
Sophie scoffed. “Would if I could,” she said, “but ever since the accident, well… the girl has something to prove. She would never let anything happen to this place, even if it’s running her into the ground.”
The doctor only sighed. “In time, Mary will have to understand that loss is a part of life.”
Mary’s chest tightened. She gripped the railing of the staircase, her knuckles turning white.
What had happened to her parents was two years ago, and she had made strides since then.
Or at least, she told herself she had. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer,” Mary reminded herself, quoting one of her mother’s favorite verses.
But there was no denying that the ranch was going under. Or that her spells had become more frequent, the work to keep the ranch running piling up in the background at a rate higher than Mary could sort it out, and her days wasted in bed. Well, they had weighed her.
Mary expected what would come next. It was a simple, soft statement that Dr. Lancaster gave, but not a unique one. “She can’t keep doing this on her own,” the doctor said, and Mary found that she could stay silent no longer.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she asked, standing on the landing high above both women as she spoke. The words had torn out of her, falling from her lips in a blunt, frustrated way. They echoed down the stairs, until both Dr. Lancaster and Sophie looked up at her.
The pale looks on their face said everything; they hadn’t been expecting to be overheard.
All the same, Dr. Lancaster rose from her seat. Her voice was as stern and authoritative as ever. “You need someone else around. A husband or a partner—”
“And where would I get that?” Mary asked, feeling bitter at the mere suggestion.
Dr. Lancaster only chuckled, looking so comfortable with herself as she settled there on Mary’s pink settee.
“Put out an ad in the paper, I suppose,” Dr. Lancaster joked, tsking as Mary staggered down the first steps.
“The simple fact is that I can’t give you an easy answer to that question, not knowing you the way that I do, Mary.
To find a partner, you would need to leave this ranch.
Go out and speak to someone other than your father’s old business partners—”
“And what if I don’t have time for that?” Mary asked, a hint of fear rising in her chest despite how she tried to steel herself against it.
“Then I suppose you have to accept the inevitable,” Dr. Lancaster said with all of the calm and patience of a woman whose living was already ironclad.
***
Mary tossed and turned all night, but for once, she knew and could clearly state the reason why.
Dr. Lancaster. The way she had looked at Mary as she laid in her bed, so obviously pitying her. How the doctor had sat beside Sophie, of all people, and the two of them had spoken about Mary as if she was a child who didn’t understand how the world worked.
More than that, though, Mary was haunted by the simplicity of Dr. Lancaster’s proposed solution.
How she had said it so bluntly and carefree.
Mary needed someone else to take things off her plate—she’d known that since she was a young woman, and her father had gotten to telling her about how, before he was gone, he would have liked to see his little girl married.
If only for the security, it would have offered her.
“It’s almost too much for one person to bear,” her father had said, dismissing Mary’s thoughts all those years ago when she insisted that she didn’t need to worry about marriage yet—she had her parents, and she knew how the farm was run.
Now?
Now, Mary was beginning to think that there was some credence to her father’s idea.
She sat up in her bed after hours of feigning sleep. There was no point in pretending anymore; she wouldn’t get a wink. Not while Dr. Lancaster’s words turned over in her head.
“I can’t just go out and find a husband,” Mary admitted with a shake of her head. Twenty-eight was a hard age for a woman to sell herself at, and Mary had all but burned the bridge of marriage with just about every young man in town through years of denying them.
But what Dr. Lancaster had said about the newspaper? Mary could do that.
“Men do it all the time,” Mary reminded herself as she gave in to the urge. She sat up in bed and flicked the oil lamp on her end table, grabbing her reading glasses before crossing the room to her desk.
“Gotta pay per word, though,” Mary sighed, shaking her head to herself as she pulled out a piece of paper and her ink pot.
Her hand shook as she picked up the pen. Never in her life had Mary imagined penning an ad in the paper for a husband. But she had no choice anymore.
She’d keep it short and sweet, she resolved. No fluff. It wasn’t as though she was full of romantic idealism to begin with. Nor that, she winced as she caught the reflection of herself in a picture frame; she could wax poetic about her appearance.
No. Mary had one thing in this world to offer any man, and she just had to hope that it was enough.
“Dear Lord,” Mary said once she had refined her ad, “please bring me a husband… someone good,” she asked, steepling her fingers for the briefest moment before tearing them apart to seal the envelope shut.
She held that envelope as she stood at her window, staring out at the farm that her family had built—her father’s legacy, and what was meant to be her future.
“I’m going to keep this land,” Mary promised. “No matter what the cost.”