“I did give him your name,” he admits, frowning and sounding tired. “I thought it might make things easier.”
“Easier for him?”
“Easier for me. Harder for him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Today we are adversaries.” His head falls back, eyes closing. “What else did he tell you? Apart from your name.”
I let out a sigh, feeling that I have even more questions now than I did when I first walked into the dining room. “He told me to stay out of sight. And he told me to keep my gun on me.”
“Neither of which you have done,” he points out, the corner of his mouth ticking up before he makes atsk tsknoise. “Shall we consider this the first of our secrets, little bird?”
“The first?”
He hums in confirmation, and maybe it’s the thought that it could be both the first and the last secret I share with him that compels me to finally offer up a different one. “I’m not who you think. I’m… I ran away from home.”
“So did I, little bird,” he responds, cracking an eye open to look at me again. “And you are precisely who I think.”
I sit with him a while longer, watching as his breathing slowly evens out. Rather than wake him, I tuck away my remaining questions the same way I tuck a spare blanket around him, resolving to ask more later today if the opportunity arises. Perhaps ask my other new acquaintance if it doesn’t.
Standing this close to him and with the window lighting his features, I can see the scars on his face clearly now, my chest aching a little bit more at the sight of each. The one high on his left cheek, the one low on the right side of his chin, along his brow, beneath his jaw, the curve between his neck and shoulder. The few open buttons of his shirt give a glimpse of where that last one begins though not where it ends, and I find myself nearly reaching out to touch it before I jerk my hand back.
Why am I letting myself get so wrapped up in this? Why does it matter who he thinks I am? Who he is? Who either of them are? What does it matter if they know one another? By morning, they could both be gone, and I would still be here.
With renewed focus, I tidy up and take the dishes to the kitchen sink, scrubbing until every single pan is spotless. Every counter wiped down and every daydream I’ve started allowing myself about either of them firmly shut away.
Better to pull myself out of it now. Better to never know their names. Better to not ask any more questions. The answerswon’t change my outcome. The answers won’t change that they’ll leave.
I don’t let myself walk back out into the dining room until much later, sure by that point that he’ll be gone, and I tell myself it’s a good thing when he is, even if my heart sinks and then immediately skips at the sound of a knock on the front door. I rush to open it, pinching my cheeks for color and already smiling before I see who is standing on the porch. Then I have to forcibly work to keep the expression in place.
“Deputy Mathews,” I say, pausing in the middle of the doorway in front of the last person I would’ve expected to find waiting with his hat in his hands. “Sorry, I thought you might have been…never mind. I’m afraid Mrs. Jensen isn’t home. You’ll have to come back later. Unless you’d like me to give her a message?”
“That’s no trouble.” Zeke gives me a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m actually here to see you.”
“Really?” I ask, hoping he’s not about to tell me that he’s already found someone to take my bounty when I haven’t even come close to matching the wages. All the more reason to remember my priorities. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“Overheard your employer giving her son-in-law an earful last night down at the saloon. Something about how she had to hire help since he wasn’t taking care of things at home.” Zeke laughs. “Practically dragged poor Jake out by his ear, but I have no doubt he’ll still find his way back tonight.” He pauses to wave cheerily at a passerby who calls out to him. “Had a chance to meet your guest last night, too. You had much chance to speak with him?”
“No,” I say, not entirely sure why this seems like one of those occasions to lie that the guest in question had mentioned. “He keeps to himself.”
“Does he? Seems an amiable sort, though perhaps not thebrightest.” I almost snort out a laugh, only to realize he’s serious as he continues, “Dreadful card player, but then I suppose you can be when you come from his kind of money.”
All I can think is that we have clearly met two very different versions of the same man, and I want so badly to believe that mine is the true one. Thatmineis…
Zeke clears his throat, and I can’t help feeling as if I’ve been caught doing something I’m not supposed to before I step out onto the porch and close the door. “You, um… you said you had something to speak to me about?”
“I do,” he says, looking serious now. “I’ve been thinking. And perhaps, I can see how things might be getting misinterpreted from your perspective.”
“Misinterpreted from my perspective?” I repeat, smoothing out the wrinkles in my dress to compose myself. “Well, from myperspective, it seems that neither you or the sheriff believe that finding my father’s killer is a priority. Does it look different from where you’re standing?”
“Not in the way I’d hoped.” He shakes his head. “I wish you would make an effort to see that I am trying to help you. I have been since the beginning.”
The first day I met Zeke had been the same day I lost my father. As soon as the town doctor declared what I’d already known, I’d gone straight to the sheriff’s office, drying blood already set into the fabric of this same dress while I gave them every detail I could think of. Every memory they could use.
Zeke had seemed equally as mystified by my presence then as he does today. As if he still can’t believe I really intend to cause him so much inconvenience.
“I understand that you don’t think you should give up on this, but you need to go home,” he tells me again, taking out a small piece of paper from his pocket and offering it to me. “It’s what’s best for everyone.”