Chapter Twenty-Six
Even with all the folks walking around her property, Maeve felt a strange sense of loneliness deep within her.
It’d made itself known earlier that morning, a mere speck in her heart while the wagon was getting packed and goodbyes were being exchanged.
But Jed’s soft expression, and the way he’d held her hand long after she’d wished him luck with the remaining casework, had caused that speck to flower into something impossible to ignore.
A bright, aching thing that had rooted its way deep inside her, bloomed and now was searching for its source of light.
“Oh, Lord have mercy.” Maeve sighed, setting her knitting aside as she watched Lila toddle around the living room.
The little girl really was becoming quite the expert, easily managing to cross between the couch and armchair without so much as an unsteady wobble.
An occasional plop onto her bottom, perhaps, but Lila just as quickly pushed herself back onto her feet and began anew.
“What do you think, Lila?” Maeve asked. “You missing him as much as I am?”
“Ah-bah?” Lila asked. She stretched her hands outward, pudgy fingers grasping excitedly at the air. “Aah-bah!”
Maeve smiled, setting her work aside to scoop the toddler into her arms. “Suppose I weren’t really in the right headspace fer knitting anyway.” She glanced at her half-completed blanket, her nose crinkling as Lila’s hand gently patted square in the middle of her forehead.
“Ah-bah!” Lila insisted. “Aaaah-bah!”
“I reckon I shouldn’t have brought him up, huh?” Maeve joked weakly. “It’s hard to stop thinking of him once he gets in yer mind.”
Jed had gotten into more places than just her mind.
Every time she thought of him, Maeve’s heart fluttered wildly in her chest, and her face flushed hotter than the summer sun itself.
Her legs felt like jelly, making it increasingly difficult to both stand up and hold fast to the added weight against her hip.
She moved to the front door, desperate for a breath of fresh hair.
It swung outward with little resistance, revealing the blush-painted sky stretching far out across the Wyoming landscape.
Maeve moved to sit on the closest rocker, her feet gently pushing against the floor as she and Lila swayed beneath the gently encroaching twilight.
Sadie had already left for Samuel’s, who was likely instructing both lawmen and ranchers alike for that evening’s patrol.
That feeling of loneliness caused her to catch her breath, and Maeve couldn’t help but sigh. “Emotions are funny, huh, Lila?”
Lila tilted her head upward, catching Maeve’s face with her eyes as a thin strand of drool ran past her lips.
“I started this whole arrangement with Jed as just that. An arrangement struck between two strangers looking for a stable helper in life.” Maeve took the hem of her apron, wiping the toddler’s face with a resigned grin.
“But I reckon we’re a bit more than that now.
You being our daughter, an’ all. That’s gotta change the feelings between a man and woman…
right? And–and you don’t just share a kiss like we did and resolve to stay as ‘pardners’, right? ”
Lila blinked. “Ah-bah?”
She was asking a toddler for relationship advice. A toddler whose biggest hurdle in life so far had been making sure she put one foot in front of the other.
Maeve let out another sigh, leaning back in her chair as Lila settled eagerly against her chest. She continued to slowly rock them both, trying to shake her feelings free from the cluttered mess of her mind.
‘Do I like Jed as more than a friend?’ she asked herself.
‘Is a husband just a friend I hold dear in my heart?’
Another groan escaped her. She began absentmindedly braiding a strand of Lila’s growing hair, the ache in her mind still in desperate search for its source of light. For Jed’s return home.
“I wish you were here, Ma,” Maeve lamented. “If I’d gotten the chance to talk with you, would you’ve told me how love’s supposed to feel?”
“Ah-bah,” Lila replied matter-of-factly.
Maeve chuckled, abandoning her braid to place a loud, dramatic kiss against Lila’s forehead. “Ye’re wiser than yer years, Miss Lila Mercer.”
Lila made a spectacular scowl. She twisted her body and slapped a hand against Maeve’s face, hard enough that Maeve genuinely flinched. “Ah-bah! Aah-bah!”
“What’s got yer knickers in a twist?” Maeve asked.
Lila replied with another squirmy twist, slipping down off Maeve’s lap and starting across the porch with unexpected urgency.
“Where’re you going this late in the afternoon?
” Maeve immediately closed the distance, scooping Lila back up into her arms before setting her against her hip.
Before she could attempt to calm the fussing toddler, the telltale sound of hooves coming up the path finally caught Maeve’s ear.
A brief panic squeezed inside her chest, and she spun on her heel to quickly retreat into the safety of the cabin.
“Ah-bah! Da-bah! Bah!”
Something about Lila’s tone caused Maeve to hesitate.
She glanced over her shoulder and was immediately relieved to have done so, finally making out the approaching rider as Jed.
“Oh, you smart li’l thing,” Maeve crooned, shifting Lila in her arms before stepping off the porch to meet her husband halfway. “Jed! Hey, Jed!”
She watched as he eased Ash from a canter to a trot, her face numb from how wide she was smiling.
They had to be more than just partners; she wouldn’t have felt so giddy from the arrival of a mere stranger.
She wanted to tell Jed about it, to explain the euphoric joy that flooded every part of her body upon seeing him.
She wanted to tell him how much she cared about him, and how far she’d go to end his business with Thomas.
She wanted to tell him how much she was looking forward to the future, to Lila’s birthdays and the festivals they would visit together as a family.
Maeve wanted to tell Jed all of this. She committed to doing so the minute they were face-to-face.
But as she drew closer to her husband, her good mood immediately dropped away.
Something was wrong. After nearly two months of living with Jed, she could tell just by the look on his face.
There were far too many cracks, hardly anything left to hide behind.
It was obvious that something awful was plaguing him.
“Jed?”
He stared at her, his expression conflicted.
“Hey…talk to me, Jed.” Maeve reached out with her free hand as Lila did the same. Her heart sunk as he pulled Ash’s reins, forcefully putting distance between her and himself. “Don’t do this.”
Jed shook his head. “I-I can’t. I…I dunno-”
“Don’t shut me out again.”
Jed tugged Ash’s reins, directing him to start into a trot right past Maeve. She could only manage to stand upright because Lila was in her arms. Even the toddler understood something had changed, her exciting babble dimming to a confused whimper.
It felt like winter had come crashing down upon her head, snow weighing her body down with its frozen indifference.
“Come back.”
Maeve’s voice came out cracked, and she managed to unstick her feet from the ground to take the first step forward. The next step was fueled by the rage building in her chest, a complete and utter sense of disbelief that twisted itself into a hot anger.
“Get back here, Jed!”
Something had happened. Something had happened, and Jed was trying to hide it from her again.
Maeve stormed around the side of the house and into the backyard, catching sight of Ash’s tail as he slipped into the barn. She adjusted her grip on Lila and broke into a jog, her white-hot fury melting away whatever hurt Jed had initially struck her with.
‘We’re partners.”
She was mere steps away from the barn now.
‘He promised we were partners–!’
Her eyes caught sight of the pasture fence.
A new wave of irritation crashed over her at the sight of a patch of a patch of barbed wire that was suspiciously mangled and bent out of shape.
“When in God’s name did they have the time to–?
!” Maeve let out an irritable hiss. It was pointless to try and guess when bandits, or Thomas, had had the opportunity to try and ruin her fence.
She moved to enter the barn for tools, but stopped and hissed as she remembered her father’s tools had been stolen.
Maeve stomped toward the stump of an old pine and set Lila down, much to the toddler’s objection.
She’d barely gotten out a sob before Maeve pulled her wooden spoon from her apron pocket.
Lila immediately reached for it with a desperate squeal.
“Wait here,” Maeve growled. “I got another mess I gotta fix on my own.”
That’s what it all came down to: an endless line of messes Maeve was left alone to fix.
It didn’t matter how many friends she had, or how much her supposed husband said he cared.
Folks entered the world on their own, and they’d leave the world on their own.
Just like her mother had. Just like her father had.
Just like Lila would have.
The thought pierced Maeve’s heart terribly, and she blinked back tears while her apron around her hand. ‘It ain’t fair,’ she thought as she approached the gnarled barbed ware.
It wasn’t fair that Lila had to rely on the kindness of a stranger not to perish in the wilds of Wyoming.
It wasn’t fair that Maeve’s father had died.
It wasn’t fair that she never got to meet her mother, and it wasn’t fair that once she finally got an unsteady grasp on her feelings, Jed just as easily tangled them up again.
“Maeve, what are you doing?!”
Jed’s voice cut through her spiral. Maeve blinked, startled to find her arm stuck halfway between the barbed wire fencing.
Her wrapped hand had firmly grasped the sliced bits, staining the apron with growing bloodstains.
A memory forced itself upon her, of the first time her father had tried to teach her wood carving.
How she’d carelessly sliced her thumb, how red blood truly was when it came rushing out of one’s body.
Why had she done that?
Jed was saying something to her, but Maeve couldn’t hear him. She watched as he carefully extracted her arm and tore a strip off his own shirt to wrap her gashes. She let herself be pulled into his side, then dragged back to Lila before Jed placed the toddler on his hip.
Why had she done that?
‘Because it needed to get done.’
“Say something, Maeve!”
Jed’s pleading tone held a biting edge to it–he was furious and frightened all at the same time. Maeve stared at him, her own anger sparking in her chest once again as her expression darkened terribly. “You promised no more secrets.”
Jed stared at her, completely taken aback. “Wh-what?”
Maeve tore her good arm away from his grasp, putting space between them as her anger bubbled into a shout. “You promised we’d talk to each other, Jed! You–you ran away from us! Just now, you ran away into the barn without so much as a wave hello!”
“So you stuck yer hand in barbed wire to get my attention?!” Jed snapped. “What sort of crazy thinking is that?”
“Ye’re the crazy one!” Maeve hollered. “Driving me crazy with this back-and-forth, this will-he-won’t-he nonsense! I–I thought something were different between us! After the circus, that night we talked– I thought we were on the same page.”
Jed’s expression flickered, betraying a hint of guilt.
“You were trying to ignore me just now,” Maeve hissed. “You–you looked at me and Lila like we weren’t nothing.”
He visibly flinched. Maeve knew she’d struck a nerve, but she also knew she was right.
Jed was keeping his thoughts from her, a luxury they didn’t have any more if they wanted to stay on top of Thomas.
Both he and Maeve had to be open with each other, communicate with each other, but he’d already slipped back into his old habits.
And it drove Maeve crazy.
“I–I’m sorry I weren’t in the mood to greet you the exact way you wanted me to!” Jed pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out an exasperated huff. “And what about you? Did you just forget about Lila when you went to catch my attention?”
Now it was Maeve’s turn to be caught off-guard. “I– She were fine. First of all, I weren’t trying to catch nothing, I were doing what needed to be done. And I set her far away from the fence-”
“She does nothing but run, Maeve! You think she were just gonna sit quietly on that stump while you went and mutilated yerself?! What sort of mother forgets something like that?”
Jed’s words struck Maeve like a physical blow. Her mouth went dry, and Maeve felt herself sway in place. The world began to fade out of view, only to be brought screaming back as Lila broke out into a full-blown wail.
“Da-ah! Da– D-Dada!”
Jed looked as if he’d just swallowed his own tongue. They both stared at Lila as she built into a full-blown tantrum, but Maeve could barely hear her screaming.
‘Dada.’
The word echoed in her mind.
‘She…she said ‘Dada’.’
Maeve reached an arm out toward Lila, but it throbbed too terribly to move such a great distance. Her makeshift bandaging had already been bled through, and the sight caused Maeve’s gut to sour terribly.
She wasn’t sure when her legs had collapsed underneath her. She only knew Jed was suddenly at her side, his free arm snaked around her waist.
“Dada! Da-daah!”
The word struck Maeve harder each time it was spoken.
She struggled back to her feet and freed herself from Jed’s hold, determined to walk on her own.
She caught Jed’s misty eyes watering down whatever anger he’d begun to build inside himself.
Maeve’s own fury had long since sputtered out, smoldering now as a horrible, acrid-tasting shame.
‘Why’d I do that?’
She couldn’t stop thinking the words as she and Jed slowly and silently made their way back into the house.