"You would have such a nice shape with one."
Reality check. Everyone wore them, and yet I was certain I didn't like them? Or was it just that every decent woman wore one? Darn it, the paradoxes of my memory weren't the issue right now. I'd never tried jumping off a cliff or eating arsenic, either. Probably. Apparently.
"I like my current shape just fine," I said firmly, noting her tiny waist and bustled bum. "It looks wonderful on you, really, but it also looks kind of uncomfortable."
She actually said, "A little discomfort is a woman's cross to bear, to look pretty for her menfolk," and as if she'd made a brilliant argument, she tried to hand the nasty thing to me again. Now I was annoyed.
"Any menfolk who want me squishing my internal organs out of shape to fit some patriarchal society's definition of beauty can go—" Hallelujah! I managed to stop myself from speaking my first version. "Can go find themselves some different womenfolk," I finished, weaker but far more proper.
That mouthful surprised the both of us. Had I suffered some kind of corset trauma in a previous life?
Mrs. Staunton started to look toward the front of the shop. She wouldn't! For one thing, I was her customer, no matter who was paying. For another, the Boss's idea of hell was probably a discussion of woman's underwear. To my mixed relief, I saw that he'd achieved safety by leaving. For a moment, that worried me. What if he'd just been trying to distract me, to make a clean escape? What if he'd been lying about covering the costs of my outfit? What if...?
But of all the people I knew—few though they were—I most trusted him to keep his word. He'd probably just waited to see that I could handle myself, for once, and then left to do something responsible and manly in order to avoid that hated activity of men everywhere: Waiting for the woman to shop for clothes. He would be back.
He had to be, right?
I turned back to Mrs. Staunton, to continue handling myself, and flat-out lied. "I don't have the constitution for a corset."
That excuse she could handle, though it didn't keep her from pointing out that, "Your bow won't be as full, then." Shucks. There went my nomination for Miss Dodge City.
"I currently need practicality over style anyway," I assured her.
But the Corset Incident was enough to keep my burgeoning self-confidence in check. Washing from a pitcher and basin in the "dressing room"—a small storeroom with a hook-lock on the door for privacy, a chest offering basic items de toilette, and the basin stand itself—still felt strange. But what really threw me was turning around, lowering the towel from my face...
And seeing myself in a full-length mirror—a mirror, for the first time in my abbreviated memory. Oh my God.
It was me.
A few days earlier, my immediate reaction might have been horror. I had hat hair. My clothes looked horribly dirty. One spot on my cheek, which I had missed in my face-splashing, made it obvious I'd recently been crying—thank you soooo much for pointing that out and saving me embarrassment, Mr. Jacob Garrison. I was smaller than I'd pictured myself, too. I resembled a kid playing dress-up in her daddy's clothes.
But as my sense of displacement increased, I ignored surface trivialities. And damn it, hat hair is trivial. What was important was, I knew that woman in the mirror! I couldn't give her name, but I knew that I knew it, that it was on the tip of my tongue. I couldn't say where she was from, but again felt certain that I did know. Somehow. Best of all, I knew her! I knew her from a lifetime of washing this friendly looking face, from years of fixing this unruly, chestnut brown hair. My sunburn had smoothed into a golden base tan, with just enough pinkness to brighten my blue eyes, which I also knew, and which indeed did not look stupid. My equally familiar mouth looked even smarter—as in smart-alecky—but was wide and friendly too.
I pointed at myself and said, "Behave," and that mouth grinned back saucily. I knew those straight, purdy teeth. This was the best thing that had happened to me in days!
Eager to turn that me-in-disguise into a closer semblance of the real me, to close the gap between my confusion and my memories, I hurried to get out of Eb Peaves' clothes. Then, blissfully free at long last from the restraint of suspenders, long sleeves, stiff pants, and then the second-skin of long underwear, I got distracted with my, er, toiletries.
The water in the basin didn't look completely clean, but it smelled slightly of roses. Although I'd bathed in an impromptu tent just yesterday, before heading out to the fort, that had been just river water and hard soap. This stuff felt glorious to smooth over my arms, down my legs, across my body. Even the imaginary grime was gone now!
There was a skin cream, slightly oily and waxy but smelling of unidentified flowers, and I rubbed it liberally into my still clean-shaven legs, my arms and elbows, my neck and chest and stomach and my poor, abused-but-healing inner thighs, until I felt wonderfully soft and feminine. And then there was the brush! Not a crude, lopsided wooden comb, but a brush! Sure, I'd washed my hair yesterday too, and dried it in the sunlight, but now I could brush it and brush it until it bounced softly against my neck and shoulders.
And then I put on my new underwear—clean, soft, ruffly. Heaven.
Hurrying again, I ignored how unnatural and inefficient the drawstring waist felt. Instead I laced the pretty ribboned camisole as quickly as I could, wriggled into all three petticoats, and finally turned and looked in the mirror.
The woman there, clean and pampered and happy, was definitely me, and her name was....
Was....
Nope. I was close, so close, as if I could catch it by sneaking up on myself. That's how real I looked, standing there in the white, ruffly, sleeveless underclothes. Now this was an outfit for walking in the sunshine...except the petticoat-skirt should be shorter. It brought out my tan and it felt right, real to me, far more real than general stores and cattle drives and Army forts, and I relished its familiarity.
Then I thought: Lillabit, you're in your underwear.
If I walked out in the sunshine like this, I'd be arrested. If the Boss saw me like this, he'd drop dead from shock.
The realization was a blow—so I went into immediate denial. The petticoats and camisole looked right because I was a well-off Eastern lady who was accustomed to the luxuries of life, that was all. Surely I would look even more like myself once I had the wrapper on.
But the tragedy was: I didn't. Oh, it was a nice enough dress, with long puffy sleeves that cinched at the wrist, and a high collar, and a pretty ruffle that circled the yolk of my shoulders and matched the ruffle that brushed the floor. The front buttoned down to the waist, which wasn't fitted, and hung like a nightgown until I tied on the belt that came with it. The skirt very full and rustly, thanks to those three petticoats—once I turned the top petticoat, so its pillow fell in back, I didn't even look pregnant, though it gave me a big ass. The dress was crisp, and new, and I loved it. But when I spun to surprise myself in the mirror, I didn't look like myself, I looked like Laura Ing...Ingalls!
I held my breath. Who was this Laura Ingalls and how did I know her? But the thought skittered away from me, leaving me staring at a version of myself who seemed to be playing dress-up again, even in clothes that fit. My name was no longer on the tip of my tongue; maybe it had been Laurel or Lauren. My high spirits drooped considerably.
The footwear was worse. The awkwardness of the stocking garters hadn't helped, but those darn shoes... for one thing, they weren't a perfect fit, but I hadn't seen a big selection. For another, they were all buttons, teeny-tiny buttons that had looked great but, as far as practicality went, sucked. I had to use my fingernails to try to hook each one into its proper eye. More often than not, it slipped out before I'd managed. A button popped off and skittered across the floor. I was ruining my brand new shoes!
I came very close to screaming an obscenity, but remembered the last time and caught myself. Calm down, Lillabit. Breathe in the good air, breathe out the bad air. Picture yourself in a soothing forest glen....
It helped. So di
d giving up and tromping over to the doorway back into the store, with one foot stockinged and the other barely into its shoe. Thump, drag, thump, drag. When I opened the door, Mrs. Staunton—who'd been seated at a truly old-fashioned sewing machine—turned and brightened at my transformation. I noticed in her smile that she was missing a tooth, poor woman.
Then she saw my feet, her smile vanished, and she hustled to my side. "Sakes alive! You're only wearing one shoe!"
So much for impressing anyone with my competence. Not being able to dress myself had to be a new low. Well, next to getting arrested. "I can't get the—" I caught myself, and lowered my trembling voice. "I can't get them buttoned."
She gave me the same look Garrison had when I'd confessed to never having plucked a turkey. "What do you mean, you can't button them? Didn't you see the buttonhook?"
Duh-huh. Of course. How silly of me. A buttonhook. "What's a buttonhook?"
She swept me into the back room and, off the top of the chest, triumphantly lifted what looked like a skinny crochet hook. In my excitement over my transformation, it hadn't occurred to me to wonder why she'd have a crochet hook amongst scented water and skin cream and brushes. She had me sit down, then knelt at my feet and showed me how to use it. She slipped the hook through the eyehole, caught the button, and twitched it through. Done.
She did the next button, then stood and handed the hook to me. Duh-huh indeed.
"How could a full-grown woman not know how to button her own shoes?" she asked...to credit her, plain-old curiosity outweighed the snippiness of her statement. But in fact I was now buttoning my own shoes, though it seemed a ridiculously tedious process. Inefficient; very inefficient.
"I don't know," I admitted, concentrating on the buttoning process. "I was… in an accident. My memory is very bad, right now. Maybe I didn't wear this kind of shoe?" In a sudden burst of hope, I looked up at her. "I'm not sure I remember how to style my hair correctly, either."
If she knew she was being conned, she didn't seem to mind too much. She shook her head at me, collected my farmer clothes to wrap, and said she would give the total to Mr. Collar—including both a buttonhook and a snood. Then she would come back and help.
And she did. The young lady in the mirror still looked more like the mysterious Laura Ingalls than it did me—rather, more than whomever I'd been before I became the equally mysterious Lillabit. But with my hair swept into an easy fall to the snood at the back of my neck, and a few loose curls over each ear—and, of course, me in the full-length dress—I looked proper enough to command the respect of soldiers, prospective employers, doctors to investigate the amnesia, and whatever authorities I could find to assist in my search for home.
While fixing my hair—and then sternly fixing the bow at the back of my belt—Mrs. Staunton had told me that Mr. Garrison had returned to cover the bill, and assured me that Mr. Collar would keep my old things for me until I was ready to collect them. So I took a deep breath to steady myself before emerging from the back room... and beheld an empty store.
Okay, it wasn't an empty store—it was just empty of taciturn trail bosses. It wasn't until my heart sank, deeply, that I realized just how much I was looking forward to Garrison's reaction. Dumb, Lillabit. Very dumb. The Boss meant nothing to me.
That is...of course he meant something; he'd saved my butt more than once. But not the kind of something I should be taking to heart. Fate had made him my oldest and dearest friend, but I was merely his obligation, a task that needed doing and which he therefore was doing as efficiently as he knew how.
That made my sense of anticlimax more than a little pathetic, didn't it?
I smoothed the skirt of my wrapper, reminded myself that the goal of looking good was how it affected me, and headed to the front of the store, trying not to let either claustrophobia or the cornucopia of goods—rakes, buckets, and ridged pieces of metal that I belatedly placed as washboards—disorient me. If I was going to find a place in Dodge City, to survive until I figured out who I was and where I belonged, then I just had to learn to ignore that aching sense that I didn't belong here.
I had no choice but to belong here.
Before I had to ask Mr. Collar the whereabouts of my reluctant benefactor, I spotted the Boss through the big front window, waiting out on the sidewalk. I nodded politely to Mr. Collar. Mr. Collar nodded politely to me. Then I stepped out of the close, shady heat of the store into the open, sunny heat of the bustling main street.
Garrison, hip propped against a hitching rail, was reading something. As the door shut behind me, his gaze flicked up to me and then back to the paper even as he touched his hat in distracted etiquette. Despite my little "the goal is how your appearance affects you" pep talk, my heart sank further.
Or maybe it was just an important paper?
I waited for a couple of cowboys to swagger by—they touched their hats too, and said "ma'am"—then stepped to his side, and just happened to stand close enough to read some of it myself.
To: Mr. Jacob Garrison, care of Charles Rath and Company, Dodge City, Kansas.
From: Thaddeas Garrison.
Yes, I know I should have made myself look away at that point. But I didn't.
Sir: I enjoyed your last letter. I hope this reaches Dodge City before you. I wish I were going to Wyoming with the herd, instead of waiting for Spring. Aunt Heddy—
That's as far as I got before he deliberately tipped the letter out of my line of sight and turned his head to sternly confront my nosiness. Busted!
"Sorry," I said quickly. "None of my business, I know. I just wondered what was so important, so I took just a little peek, and then I...."
He continued to stare, sternness dissolving to something less recognizable, and less certain, on his stony face.
"What?" I asked—and only then realized he hadn't recognized me until I started talking!
I couldn't help it; I laughed, and stepped back so he could get a better look at what he'd bought. So to speak. "So what do you think; do I look okay? Can I pass for respectable now?"
He palmed his hat off his head—and stared at me. What had I done wrong? Wasn't I dressed properly yet? Was it the absence of a corset? Or....
Almost inconceivable, an idea nevertheless struck me full force: Or did I just look that good?
I felt the most delicious tickle of power at that idea.
"I could choose something else, if this isn't good enough," I said.
Okay, tested.
Okay, teased.
He shook his head and swallowed hard, still looking thrown. "You'll do."
Oh stop it you, you'll turn my head. But he was obviously uncomfortable in his role of Sugar Daddy, so instead of teasing further, I put my hand on his forearm and said, "Thank you."
He swallowed again and firmly moved his gaze from my face to just past my ear, and put his hat back on. "No one at Rath and Company's heard tell of a missing woman."
Wham! Good thing his arm had so little give to it, because I had to hang on to keep from staggering under that particular blow. I took a steadying breath; my stomach had to behave. "They get a lot of news there, huh?"
He nodded.
"Well then, maybe we should ask the, uh...the marshal? Is there...?" My fingers tightened on his arm as I looked up hopefully—and suddenly my thoughts, like two pieces of a floating jigsaw puzzle, linked with a tiny click. "Is he by any chance named Dillon?"
Garrison met my searching gaze, as if surprised by the name.
"Matt Dillon," I tried, and it tasted right. The old me was still trying to come through! "That's the second name to come to me today! Marshal Matt Dillon of Dodge City."
But Garrison shook his head, and noted where I still clutched his arm before looking back at me. I ignored the unspoken comment in that; the way my head was swimming, I needed to hang onto something! But then he said "No one by that name," almost gently, and my head stopped swimming to drown instead.
The name had sounded so right! How could I remember so cle
arly, and not have it be true? I shook my head, denying it.
Then he said, "Hear tell Masterson got kilt this spring, but Bassett or Earp might've heard somethin'," and my drowning thoughts started to blur everything—the street, the sidewalk, the block party to either side of us, even his face. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Those names, the existence of those men, meant something too. Something bad.
Something awful had happened.
Garrison caught my shoulder when I started to sway, concern clouding his face in a most unexpected way. But when he tried to turn me back to the store—to get me out of the sun?—I set my feet and fought it. This was too important.
"I know those names too!" I insisted in a hiss, gasping for breath. "Not Bassett, but the others. How do I know them? And they scare me. What—what if I'm an outlaw?"
He smiled. Here I was, about to pass out, choking on thoughts of jail and nooses and train robberies, and he had the nerve to grin? I didn't care how momentarily handsome he suddenly looked when his expression softened. When he asked, "When'd you last eat?" I almost hit him for his condescension.
"This is important!" I insisted, pulling away from his support and only belatedly regretting it. His hand had felt good on me, dangerously so. But at least I was farther from passing out than I'd been before anger gave me a resurgence of energy. "What if I'm running from the law?"
"Get farther on a full stomach," he drawled, and offered his arm.
Two soldiers went around the roadblock I presented, doffing their hats as if they were the ones in the way.
I hesitated between my panicked anger and buying into his calm...and the humor that lingered in his gray eyes, even after the quick disappearance of that smile. Here I was, battling the overwhelming confusion of the big picture—or rather, the big jigsaw puzzle—and he took one little manageable piece and snapped it into place. Lunch.
No contest, really. I glared, frustrated—but I took the arm. The gesture felt surprisingly formal and comforting, all at the same time. Something about the Boss just made him a hard man to panic around.
OverTime 1 - Searching (Time Travel) Page 17
