Chapter 40
Lula
Three Forks will just have to tend to their own ailments this morning. I flip the sign in the shop window from OPEN to CLOSED and help Mr. Collins toward the stairs.
Not because I am feeling charitable enough to invite judgment into my parlor, or because I enjoy inviting Okee and Boone’s contempt, but because the man is swaying on his feet, muddy from collar to cuff, and half the street has already slowed to stare through my windows.
Momma has offered her best laudanum, and until it arrives, Mr. Collins needs a chair, a closed door, and fewer witnesses to his pride losing its battle with pain.
Our rooms above Wild Card Apothecary are humble, but they are ours.
At the top of the stairs, just beyond our private landing, sits a main room that serves as a parlor, dining room, and office in a room barely large enough to support such ambition.
A cinnamon broom at the entrance offers a pleasant greeting.
Three small windows overlook the street below, framed by floral chintz curtains.
The wood plank floors are creaky but clean.
Mr. Collins shuffles inside, staring at every domestic detail with curiosity, as if he were expecting Gomorrah but wandered into his grandmother’s sewing room instead.
His gaze moves over the shelves Okee mounted on the far wall, where our trinkets sit neatly organized and freshly dusted—a tintype of the three of us, a set of carved horses Boone whittled, a blue glass bottle catching the morning light.
An ornate cast-iron stove sits in one corner near a velvet settee, worn on the arms from leaning with a book or cup of tea. A pair of Boone’s boots are shoved underneath.
Then Mr. Collins’s attention settles on the open bedroom door, where our room is visible in pieces: the low ceiling, the washstand, the blue-and-cream quilt I finished in June.
Ordinary, all of it, except for the bed.
Two full mattresses sit pushed together on one broad pine frame Boone built himself. The modest room has little space for much else, save a clothes chest and a trunk at the footboard.
Mr. Collins stops when he sees it.
There is only one bed. I imagine the arithmetic troubles him.
He clears his throat and looks away.
I hook my foot around the leg of the cane-bottom chair and drag it out from the table.
“There,” I say. “A chair I don’t mind if you muck up.”
His mouth tightens, but pain has already done its work. He lowers himself into the seat with one hand braced on the table and the other gripping his cane. Mud flakes from the hem of his coat onto my clean floorboards.
Boone remains near the landing, arms folded, jaw set hard enough to crack walnuts. Okee stands by the shelves he mounted himself, so still he might be another rifle hung on the wall. Only his hand moves, fingers curling once against the edge of the wood.
No one speaks.
Below us, the shop bell gives a bright little ring.
Momma’s voice rises from the shop. “Lula?”
I step to the landing before she can come up calling worse. “Up here.”
Her skirts whisper against the stairs. A moment later she appears with a small brown bottle in hand. Pearl follows behind carrying a glass of water.
Goldie pauses at the top, taking in Mr. Collins, the mud on my floor, Boone at the landing, and Okee standing silent by the shelves.
Her eyes flick once toward the open bedroom door. Then back to me.
“Laudanum,” she says, and places the bottle in my hand.
“Thank you.”
Pearl gives me the water and retreats half a step, wisely saying nothing.
I measure a dose into the glass. Mr. Collins watches the dark drops spread through the water as though he might object, but another twist of pain grips him before pride can find its feet. He takes the glass with a trembling hand when I offer it.
“Thank you,” he says, resting both hands over the head of his cane. The laudanum will need a few minutes. Until then, we are all trapped with one another and the life he has seen too much of to pretend it is not real.
“May I?” I offer, my hands hovering just over his spine.
He replies with an exhausted wave of his hand, as if he no longer has the energy to protest. My fingers feel up his spine while he sits stiff as a fence post. Nothing appears broken. A strain, most likely.
“What happened?” Momma asks.
Okee shoots her a look.
“Oh,” she says with a raise of her eyebrow and an amused smirk. “Who says mischief only happens after dark? I ought to start waking up earlier.”
Mr. Collins draws a measured breath.
“I only tried to understand,” he says.
Boone tilts his head and squints. “I ain’t never known understanding to improve from a cane upside the head.”
That’s when I notice the bruise on Okee’s cheek. No wonder Okee has been giving me the stink eye since I helped his father out of the mud and invited him into our home.
“You struck him?” I ask.
“It is a father’s right to discipline his child.”
My hand swings back before he even finishes his sentence, and I crack him across his face. Everyone gasps, except Momma, who cries “Ooooo,” with excitement.
“How do you like it?” I ask.
He holds his cheek, and for a moment, I expect him to strike back. I hold my breath and tense up for a blow but he lowers his hand.
“You struck me,” he says.
“You bet I did. Okee is not a child, and you will not raise an unkind hand to anyone in this household.”
His gaze wanders again, as if to challenge the definition of the word.
“That’s right,” I say. “This is our home. That we share. The three of us.”
He shakes his head. “I cannot approve. I will not pretend otherwise.”
Boone lifts his chin, but the hurt has already shown itself. “Sir,” he says, voice rough and low, “ain’t nobody here interested in your approval.”
Mr. Collins opens his mouth.
Boone speaks over him. “You can think what you’d like, but Okee’s got a home. He’s got work. He’s got people who love him. If that troubles you, maybe you ought to think on why.”
“Because it is sin,” he says plainly. There’s no accusation in it now.
“Well, I seen what you call virtue and I ain’t much impressed neither.”
Mr. Collins looks at him then. Really looks. Then he stands, slower now, one hand braced on the cane and the other on the table. With careful dignity, he adjusts his coat. Momma retrieves his hat from where it was set on the chair and hands it over with an expression too pleasant to be trusted.
“This way, Mr. Collins,” she says. “Watch it with that cane.”
He takes one step toward the stairs, then pauses at the landing, hand closed around the banister. For a moment, he does not look back at any one of us in particular, only over the room itself—the bed, the stove, the shelves, the three lives crowded plainly into one small space.
At last, he says, “This place is not what I expected.”
No blessing follows. No apology. No softened farewell.
Only that. Though I suspect in its own odd way he means it as a sort of apology.
Then he lowers his hat onto his head and descends the stairs with Momma at his side. Pearl nods at us with a smirk then follows behind. The three of us stand there, still as stone until the door jingles once more.
“Nice of your pa to visit,” Boone says, with a stupid grin.
Okee is standing near the table, one hand braced against the back of a chair. His face has gone strangely blank, as if all the feeling has been scraped out of it. Then his mouth trembles once.
Only once.
Boone’s grin dies at once. “Okee?”
“I’m sorry,” Okee says.
The words come so quietly, I nearly miss them.
Boone blinks. “What?”
Okee draws a breath, but it catches before it can become useful. His hand tightens on the chair until the wood gives a faint complaint beneath his grip.
“I’m so sorry,” he says again, and this time his voice breaks clean through.
The sound of it unsettles me more than his father’s cruelty did. Okee Collins is not a man who comes apart. He is iron where Boone is flame. He plans, endures, observes. Even grief seems to pass through him in private channels, never spilling where anyone might see.
But now his eyes shine wet.
Boone goes still.
“That man,” Okee says, swallowing hard, “had no right to speak to you that way. Those things he said—Boone, they are not true.”
“I know,” Boone says gently. “It ain’t your fault.”
But Okee looks as though knowing is not nearly enough.
He crosses the room and takes Boone’s face in both hands with such sudden care that Boone goes quiet under it.
Then Okee’s face breaks.
I’ve seen him through fevers and gunfights, hunger, fear, and pain that would bring lesser men to their knees, but I have never seen Okee cry.
Boone’s smile vanishes entirely. He stands there with his arms hanging at his sides like he has forgotten what they are for.
Okee draws a breath that catches on the way in.
“You are my home,” he says. “You are good. You are enough. More than enough. Do you understand me? You are wonderful, Boone. I love you. I love you exactly as you are.”
A tear slips down Okee’s cheek.
That seems to bring Boone back to himself. He reaches up and wipes it away with his thumb, clumsy and tender.
“I don’t give a damn what Collins thinks of me,” Boone says, his voice rough. “Long as you’re beside me, and Lula’s here making us miserable and keeping us fed, I got everything I need.”
Okee closes his eyes at that, like the words have struck him somewhere too deep to answer.
Boone opens one eye and reaches for me.
“Come here, wild.”
I go. His arm catches my waist and pulls me against them both. Okee’s hand finds the small of my back. I press one palm to his chest, over the hard pound of his heart.
“I apologize for inviting him in. I didn’t know he’d struck you.”
“Why do you think Okee chased him into the mud?”
Okee shakes his head, as if it no longer matters. His pained expression softens until he lets out a sigh that’s half a laugh. “I can’t believe you slapped him.”
I cover my mouth to stifle a giggle. Whatever grief had been in him does not vanish. It remains there, dark and deep. But something else rises beside it. Love. The fierce kind. The kind that refuses to let shame have the last word. He presses a kiss to my temple.
“Thank you,” he says, then kisses Boone’s forehead. “Both of you. For standing up for me.”
Boone takes his face, kissing his mouth. “Always.”
We hug, holding each other there for a sweet moment. Outside, camp life goes on in its steady rhythm.
Then, after a few indulgent moments I ask, “Are you taking the rest of the day off or are you ready to get back to work?”
The men chuckle.
“Always cracking your damn whip, woman.”
“Hugs don’t buy bread. Don’t I recall you saying something like that?”
“Yeah, all right. Back to work.”