“My bar,” she replies, and she must see how enthused I am about the destination because she also adds, “It was my idea, sodon’t go grousing at him.”
“Doesn’t seem like a particularlygoodidea,” I point out, understanding more and more why she and Cypress are friends. “If someone spots him—”
“Then they’ll be wise to keep it to themselves,” she says. “Trust me on that.”
I roll my eyes. “Everyone talks if you pay ‘em enough.”
“Not if they want to keep living.” She reaches for a pair of gloves in her pocket, pulling them on along with her coat before grabbing the shotgun resting by the door. “Hard to spend money when you’re six feet under.”
“Suppose it is,” I say, granting her that before I let out a resigned sigh. “And I suppose if Cypress is going, then I’m going too.”
This appears to pique her interest. “That so?”
“We have an agreement,” I inform her, crossing my arms over my chest in preparation for an argument. “I’m meant to be keeping him alive. And I can’t do that if I don’t know where he is.”
“Haven’t seemed concerned about that most of the day today,” she points out. “Barely seen hide or hair of you.”
“Figured it was your turn to watch him,” I mutter back, not wanting to get into the real reason I’d been making myself scarce. Which was that Ihadspent all goddamn night wondering where he was while I was lying in that back bedroom, trying to convince myself to sleep.
After my discussion with him yesterday, I really had thought to stay in the barn, but in the end, the promise of a bed had been too tempting to ignore, and I’d swallowed my pride long enough to carry my bag inside and change before supper.
God, I hadn’t been able to remember the last time I’d sat down for a meal in someone’s home. Years at least, maybe not since…before. Some of the families I took jobs for used to insist on itwhen the work was done, but I never wanted to linger longer than I had to, never wanted to take up a place at a table that wasn’t mine, never wanted to hear them talk to me as if I were someone they would have if things had been different for them.
Here though, sitting down for supper with Cypress and Dolly had been…well, it had been nice. It’d been nice listening to them chatter, even if some of the stories Cypress told made me think my hair was going to turn as white as Dolly’s. It’d been nice having something in my stomach that was warm from a stove instead of cold from a saddlebag, even if Dolly kept loading up my plate with more meat and greens than I could ever possibly eat. And as the evening had worn on and everyone continued to sit around the table and keep company, it’d been nice…to watch Cypress with someone he loved, even if I wasn’t part of it.
Because it was clear he did. He cared for Dolly in a way that was impossible to doubt was genuine, in ways she never had to even ask for. Getting a blanket for her when she was cold, putting the kettle on when her tea ran out, grabbing her book for her, helping her out of her chair when her bones had grown as tired as she was by the end of the night.
Was hard not to think I was getting a glimpse of who he really was beneath all of it—all the careful games and clever words. Beneath all that damn black he insists on wearing to every occasion.
The more I watched him, the more I realized coming here really hadn’t just been a social call. It’d been…it’d been that he was in trouble and the first place he wanted to go was home.
And that was something I understood. Something that made me understand him a little better, too, just as I thought I’d wanted. But it was also the reason why, when he’d come back to the table from helping her to her room, I hadn’t wanted to still be sitting there.
This is a job. A business agreement. One that has come aboutas a result of necessity. And I need to remember that. Because lying in a bed at night that isn’t mine, staring at a watch that isn’t mine, and thinking about a person that sure as hell isn’t mine is not going to do me any good.
“You know, you are kinda funny,” Dolly says, pulling me back from the night prior to this afternoon, both of us still standing in her front parlor. “Mainly when you don’t mean to be.”
I frown, struggling to remember what I’d last said before it comes to me. “What?” I ask her. “You don’t think he needs watching?”
“He does,” she replies. “What’s funny is you thinking you have to tail after him to keep him out of trouble.”
“Oh?” I ask, doing my best to intercept the annoyance that wants to creep into my tone while she’s armed, the mean hook at the end of her cane looking as if it could do even more damage than the shotgun. “And what is it I need to do instead?”
“Likely?” she says, moving past me now toward the door. “Just walk the other direction.” She stops as she’s about to reach for the doorknob, and any explanation I was about to ask for gets cut off by her continuing on. “You should know before we get to my place…” She eyes me, then sighs. “Actually, never mind, I don’t think I need to threaten you. Seem to do a fine job making yourself skittish on your own.”
I scowl at the old woman. “I’m not—”
“There he is now.”
I pivot quickly, looking back out the front window for Cypress and the horses until I hear a low chuckle behind me. “You see?” she says, gesturing at me when I glance at her over my shoulder. “Skittish. Come on now, we can wait outside.”
I roll my eyes, but follow her, pulling the door closed behind us once we’re on the porch. “You have a nice spot here close to the river,” I say, an attempt at making conversation since I haven’t had much else to offer as a guest. “Always liked the water myself.Peaceful.”
“It is peaceful. Although I find myself hearing them trains in the distance more and more. Yard they’ve got a ways from here gets busier every year, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep them at bay,” she says as she takes in her property, the plains that stretch on and on until they meet the hills on the horizon. “This place has been in my family for a long time. I’m the last that’s left of them though.” She considers me again. “You the last, too?”
Christ, this must be where Cypress learned it. That knack he has to ask the one question that’ll put you on your ear.
“Thought so,” she replies, not waiting for me to reply while shifting to take some of the weight off what I can only assume is her bad leg on the left. “How long ago?”