Chapter Thirty-Four
Alexandra had never considered just how heavy hay was.
After all, it was just grass, dried grass even; it shouldn’t have been very heavy at all.
She was quickly disabused of this notion when it came time to feed the horses.
Aidan and Antony had brought in the ones off the range, fearing that they would be rustled, so now there were a good dozen horses at least in the paddock closest to the house.
This was allegedly done to make it more convenient for Alexandra and the children to feed them. Still, Alexandra wondered if this wasn’t some sort of ironic punishment, too.
The horses had always been a distant feature of the ranch—Aidan and Antony tended to them, with help from Danny these days.
Alexandra used them to get from place to place on the rare occasions she left it.
She’d kept a romantic notion of them from that distance: regal beasts running free across the plains, manes and tails flowing, mankind’s noble and gentle companions.
The reality, she was learning, was considerably more complicated.
She’d been confident that she could tend to the horses for a couple of days while Aidan and Antony were away.
She only had to give them hay twice a day and make sure they had water in the big trough.
It wasn’t like she had to remember the exact proportions for a pie crust depending on the quality of the flour and butter, or the outside temperature and humidity. It was just hay and water.
The first morning feed corrected her. Danny had volunteered to give her a hand, and by the time they were done hauling the hay bales, they were both red-faced and sweating. The bands had to be cut on the bales as well, which caused the hay to slump apart like a soufflé taken from the oven too soon.
The sound was apparently the signal for the horses to go from still, placid creatures to snorting, pawing, squealing hungry beasts. They nipped and kicked at each other, establishing a rough social order.
Alexandra and Danny stood and stared at the herd for a moment, panting. “Well,” Alexandra said at last, “at least you and your siblings don’t act like that anymore.”
Danny gave her a withering look, but that only made Alexandra laugh, breathless. “Come on,” she said, putting her hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Let’s get them watered, and then we’ll see about some other chores.”
“I can do it,” Danny said confidently. “I’ve done it before. You go ahead inside.”
Alexandra hesitated, studying Danny. Though his hair was lighter, he had begun to resemble Aidan in a way that she hadn’t noticed.
It wasn’t particularly his looks; by Aidan’s own account, the boy resembled his mother more than Brendan.
It was something in his air, his expression.
He was starting to show that same tight-jawed determination that Aidan frequently wore.
Alexandra stifled a rueful smile, amused and a little sad that Danny had started to borrow Aidan’s mannerisms like an old jacket he wasn’t quite grown into.
She knew what that was like; she’d lived with Lisa for so long, looked up to her so much, that she couldn’t be sure if she had anything of her own parents still in her.
She spoke with Lisa’s phrases and found herself copying her gestures more often than not.
“All right,” Alexandra relented. “Don’t strain yourself carrying those buckets, y’hear?”
Danny nodded, and with his chest puffed up, marched over to the water pump.
She wanted to stay and watch him, to be sure he wasn’t overdoing it, but there were other chores to tackle.
Lisa, who had been firmly on the road to recovery, had taken a turn for the worse again, so all of the upkeep had fallen to Alexandra.
She felt no small amount of shame at having taken her out on the dusty road and letting her help so much with preparations for the event at the ranch.
It had been the air that brought them west in the first place.
Lisa’s lungs had never come right after Philadelphia, and every doctor who looked at her had said the same thing about dry country.
Alexandra had spent six weeks on a train getting her aunt somewhere she could breathe, and then walked her out into the dust to hand pie plates to strangers.
For all the good it did, she thought.
As she made her way back to the house, she caught a glimpse of a piece of a paper streamer here, a discarded bit of pie crust there, a forgotten glass jar nestled in the grass.
She had walked the fields at Gettysburg the summer after the war.
It would be false to set the two side by side, and still the same flat desolation came over her.
She shook herself, bent and plucked up the jar, and carried it back to the house. She had no time for wallowing—Aidan was depending on her, and she refused to let him down.
***
The house was quiet, the children subdued. Alexandra didn’t know how much they knew about the situation, but they clearly understood that something was wrong. There was a tightness around their eyes and mouths. She hated that, as it was similar to how they’d looked when she first arrived.
They’ve had too much in their little lives, Alexandra thought.
She sighed quietly and looked at Lisa, who was back in her bed. She was sleeping fitfully, her mouth open as she breathed. Her face was pale again. Alexandra had some ipecac on hand, but she was loath to give it to Lisa, who was still thin from her last bout.
Lisa coughed wetly, and Alexandra automatically helped her to sit up, patting her firmly on the back.
She’d seen mothers do that with babies when they had croup, and though she had no idea if it would help, it was at least something to do.
Lisa took a deep, shuddering breath, and the coughing fit seemed past.
Alexandra laid her down gently again, adjusting the quilt. She did all of it mechanically, without any real thought to it. The truth was that Alexandra was too bone-tired to take in any more worry.
That was a lie, and she knew it the moment she thought it.
The worry was there. She had simply run out of anywhere to set it down where she’d have to look at it.
She had done this before—sat in a quiet room and waited to be told what she had lost—and she had promised herself the whole way west that she was finished with sitting in quiet rooms. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw color behind them, and she did not cry, because if she started she did not believe she would stop before the children heard her.
With one arm folded around her waist, Alexandra put her forehead in her other hand, her eyes sliding closed. She didn’t know how long she sat like that, not exactly asleep but not exactly awake either, when she heard a small knock on the door to Lisa’s bedroom.
Her eyes flew open, and she cleared her throat, arranging her face into something neutral and alert. She glanced out the window: it was dark outside, the candle on the bedside table having burned down a bit.
“Yes?” she called.
Quietly, the door slid open a crack, and the children crowded into the gap, their faces lit by a lantern. “They couldn’t sleep,” Danny announced in a whisper.
“We saw a ghost outside!” Bella said, her brown eyes wide with fear.
“Bella, dear, I really don’t—” Alexandra began.
“It’s true!” Bella interrupted, her tone insistent. Her hands were balled into little fists. “Gary saw it too!”
Alexandra cut her eyes to Gary, who only nodded.
“They wouldn’t go back to bed,” Danny interjected. “I tried, but…”
“Why weren’t you in bed, too, young man?” Alexandra asked as sternly as she could while still whispering.
Danny lifted his chin, the light from the lantern casting shadows on his face that made him look much older. “Someone needed to keep watch.”
“From what?”
He looked at her steadily. “You know from what. I heard it, same as you.”
Alexandra did know. She had let herself believe he’d been too far back to hear the whole of it, and she understood now that she’d believed it because it was easier, not because it was likely.
She didn’t have the heart to press him further.
She knew how he hated being lied to, or worse, treated like a child.
“We thought Lisa might like to hear a story,” Gary said. Under one arm, he had tucked a book, and he withdrew it now. The embossing on the cover glinted in the low light: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Alexandra started to object, not feeling that this was really the time for whimsy.
The children all stared up at her, their faces in various stages of fear and worry.
Alexandra glanced around the room—the dark corners; Lisa breathing laboriously in bed; the certain knowledge that outside these four walls, they were all alone.
“All right,” Alexandra gave in with a sigh. Perhaps this is the perfect time for some whimsy.
The children gathered around her, Bella and Gary both leaning with their chins on her legs as they sat on the floor.
Danny leaned against the wall under the window on the other side of Lisa’s bed.
It took Alexandra a moment to realize why he had chosen that position: He could stare right at the bedroom door.
Taking a deep breath, Alexandra soldiered past the way that widened the cracks in her heart. She cleared her throat, and in a clear voice, she began to read.
“‘Mine is a long and a sad tale!’ said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing…”
***
Alexandra was simply and suddenly awake. There was no state of drowsiness, no bleary-eyed half-awareness. Her body was awake, her limbs tense, her heart pounding. She couldn’t account for it, her brain struggling to catch up with instinct.
All around her, the children slept on: Gary had curled up on the floor half-under Lisa’s bed. Bella was at the foot of the bed, positioned around Lisa’s feet. Danny was still under the window, but his head had dropped to his chest, and he was snuffling lightly.