Chapter 38 #2
“He had a talent for defusing things,” she explains as soon as I start eating again. “Whenever the rest of his group got too rowdy, he’d manage to step in the way in time, get everyone sorted in the end.”
“He can be good at that,” I agree with a slight shake of my head, thinking of him doing the same the night Maddock tried to draw a gun on me. “Maybe too good. Until he isn’t. He doesn’t know when to quit.”
Her frown deepens. “I’m not sure he thinks he can.”
It doesn’t have to be you, I’d told him, and he’d told me we had a differing opinion.
“He thinks it’s his responsibility?” I guess. “To intervene?”
She nods. “I didn’t understand how much until…well, I’m sure you have no trouble believing all my girls took a quick liking to him. Every one of them thought he was sweet as pie. All half in love by the time the week was through.” She chuckles. “Wanted to take him in like a stray cat.”
I do laugh a bit at that, unable to think of a more perfect description for him and the nine lives he seems determined to burn through at an alarming pace.
“The people he was riding with,” I prod, preferring to turn the conversation away from Cypress’s demise. “You said they were a bad sort?”
“They were. Didn’t really know how bad at the time.” She looks down at her hands for so long I worry she’s fallen asleep right before she says, “Cypress though…”
“He knew,” I say, thinking of the way he’d focused in on those two men earlier tonight. The way I’d learned right then the sort they were and been able to tell he did, too.
“The night his old crew left town, they decided to take a few of my girls with them,” she says, a sudden unsteadiness in her voice.
“Took them right from their beds like cowards. I tried my best to stop them. Hit one of them in the back with my shotgun as they were taking off, but the bastard died before I could make him tell me where they were headed. I went after them as far as I could, but when I lost the trail…I didn’t think I’d ever see them again. ”
I close my eyes briefly, knowing that pain all too well. How it feels to lose people and to feel completely helpless while you do.
“Where was Cypress in all this?” I ask, thinking of tonight’s events, trying to marry them and Dolly’s clear affection for him with the story she’s telling now. “He wasn’t part of—”
“I’ll admit to you that I thought he was,” she says, finishing my sentence for me.
“I can still remember catching sight of him looking back at me before he raced off with them, and I wondered how I had gotten him so wrong. How I missed that he was playin’ us all that time.
For weeks, I cursed that boy’s name and all the while…
” Her voice tapers off, wearily. “I still feel sorry for it.”
I’ve stopped eating again because of the look on her face, not sure if I can stomach it right now no matter how good. “What happened?”
She sighs, wincing with the effort of adjusting her chair so that we’re better facing one another.
“My girls showed up again three weeks later. They’d been let loose longer but…
Cypress had warned them not to come straight back.
Told them which way to go and where to lie low.
Gave them food. Money. Everything he could to make sure they got home. ”
“But he stayed?” I ask, already suspecting the answer. “He freed them and stayed behind? Why?”
She stares at me long enough for an earlier part of our conversation to come back to me.
He doesn’t know when to quit.
I’m not sure he thinks he can.
“Fuck.” I stand from my chair, unable to stay still as I begin to wander back and forth, remembering how scared he’d been when I held that knife to his throat, when I’d hit him and he’d told me he’d experienced worse.
“Fuck…he went back to deal with them.” I feel like I want to break something…
someone. “And they got the upper hand on him?”
She nods, watching me pace for a time before she tells me softly, almost gently, “He showed up another week after they did. Must have taken a more direct path, but when he did, I…I barely knew him.”
Everything inside me goes quiet, a waiting tension ready to snap. I see the thin scars on his face now in a new light. “They hurt him?”
“To this day, I have no idea how he even made it here.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat, surprised at how much it’s bothering me to hear this, how much I want to go find people that are likely already dead for a man that a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know. “He tell you what they did?”
“I can only give you my part of the story. He’s never told me his.
Not all of it,” she admits, neither of us missing the grim significance of there being something that even Cypress won’t talk about.
“As I said, he was hurt. Feverish for days. And what he did tell me didn’t make much sense back then. ”
I’m grateful I don’t have to ask this time for her to keep going, for her to know I want to hear it anyway.
“He kept saying he’d lost them. Over and over.
No matter how many times I reassured him that all my girls were back.
That he’d done right.” Her gaze looks past me to another time completely.
“I wanted him to have some peace. Just in case he didn’t pull through.
But he was so insistent on it. Kept trying to get out of bed.
Kept saying he had to find them. That they’d met him in the dark, and he couldn’t leave them. That they’d be looking for him, too.”
“Did he ever say who?” I ask, standing near her again as I lean my hip and brace my hand against the table for support.
“I suppose he did, in a way.” Her eyes flick to mine, searching my face, but her body is starting to sag in her chair, and I can see again how weary she’s getting.
“At the time, I thought it was nonsense. But he’s never wavered on it after all these years anytime I’ve asked him.
Imagine my surprise, then, when he walked up with you…
” She chuckles. “I didn’t get it then, but I think maybe I do now. ”
“Get what?”
She reaches out a wrinkled hand, patting the side of my face. “You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you? You and the little bird?”
The little bird?
“Dolly.” I huff out a breath, sure now that I’ve kept her up too late since she’s not making any more sense than she claims Cypress did. “Maybe you ought to get to bed and we can talk about this later. It has to be past midnight. You should get some sleep. I’ll clean up in here.”
For a moment, she looks like she wants to disagree, but the telltale grimace when she shifts in her chair again seems to convince her. For now.
“Well, someone raised you right at least.” She sighs, missing how I wince before she lets me help her to her feet and walk her toward her room. “Suppose I can see a little more why he’s so taken with you.”
I roll my eyes. “All these books in here are giving you too many ideas, Dolly.”
“Mm.” When we reach her door, she unlinks her arm from mine, leaning on her cane as she eyes me. “Let me know if you want to borrow one. Seems you could use some of those ideas.”
“I don’t—”
“Aiden,” she says, her voice suddenly stern in a way that makes me fall quiet.
“I understand. Really, I do. You’ve had not only a long road but a hard one, and up until now, you’ve done what it takes to survive, but…
maybe while you’re busy keeping Cypress alive, you could try to keep yourself alive, too, hm?
” She pats my chest again as she adds, “Oh, and when you go searchin’, you might want to check the roof. ”
“The roof?” I ask, looking up as if that’ll help me understand the jump from the prior discussion to this one. “Why? It need fixin’?”
“Lord help me.” She shakes her head and opens the door to her bedroom, muttering to herself as she walks inside, “Really must be his looks.”