by Chloe Garner
The little mare was good-spirited enough, willing to do anything Kayla asked her to, but the woman was inept with reins and with directions, and liked to flick the buggy whip just to amuse herself, making the poor animal jump each time. She tagged Sarah’s mount exactly once and Sarah snatched the whip away and threw it back into the back of the buckboard without comment.
“Big sky, out here,” Kayla observed. Sarah remembered her first days at school, when the thick of trees and buildings seemed to be choking off her view of the universe.
“It is,” she agreed amiably enough.
“What an awful place,” Kayla said. Sarah glanced back at her, but didn’t have any motive to defend her home. Kayla could think whatever she wanted of it. It was worth knowing that she was unhappy, because it meant that Sarah could plan on not relying on the Lawsons for too long; men might have strong ideas what they wanted, but they always ended up doing what their wives wanted, regardless.
“It doesn’t ever rain, here, does it?” Kayla asked.
“Not much, it don’t,” Sarah said.
“I mean, they talk about the grandeur of the mountains, but... they’re just some rocks over there, aren’t they?”
“That’s all they are,” Sarah answered.
“Okay, yeah, they’re big, and, yeah, they go on forever in both directions...”
Sarah had to edge her horse out of the way as the mare’s head turned sharply to one side and the cart swerved as Kayla looked too far to her left.
“Look with your head, not with your hands,” Sarah said. “You’re jerkin’ that poor beast around something’ awful.”
“Oh,” Kayla said. The mare’s head stayed pinned to her shoulder and Sarah reached over, jerking the rein out of Kayla’s hand.
“She’s more like to make it home without you steerin’ than with,” Sarah said. She didn’t say that the mare was smarter than Kayla, but she thought it. For a moment, Sarah took a look at the two of them, from outside of herself, Kayla all form and style with no substance and Sarah rocky hard and capable with no nod to appearances anywhere. She could see why men wouldn’t want her, but she couldn’t for anything understand what would have driven Wade to propose to this bit of flotsam. Was the missing bottom rib really that fashionable, these days?
“You don’t like me, do you?” Kayla asked.
“No,” Sarah said. “But that’s no matter. You’re a Lawson. I’ll tolerate you well enough.”
“You should meet the others,” Kayla said. “You’re going to like them even less.”
“Can’t hardly wait,” Sarah said. Kayla laughed.
“They said you were hard. I didn’t know what that meant.”
Sarah looked at her.
“But you do, now.”
“You don’t like anyone, do you?” Kayla asked.
“You like just anyone?” Sarah asked.
“No,” Kayla said, “but I’ll give anyone a shot.”
That might have actually been true. Sarah kept her eyes on the horizon, watching for dust that shouldn’t have been there, for signs of people she didn’t want to deal with. It was an unlikely day for an attack, especially in daylight like this, but most attacks were unexpected, by design.
“You ever been out of Lawrence?” Kayla asked.
“Once or twice,” Sarah said. “You don’t like silence much, do you?”
“I grew up with five sisters,” Kayla said with a laugh. “We didn’t have much silence. Did you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Three brothers,” Sarah said. “They all died.”
“Oh,” Kayla said. Obviously it was completely false, but it kept the girl from trying to talk to her again for at least a few minutes.
But only a few.
“What happened to them?” Kayla asked.
“What happened to your sisters?” Sarah asked.
“They got married,” Kayla said. “Four of them have babies.”
“Something similar,” Sarah said. “They got shot.”
“That’s not funny,” Kayla said.
“No, it isn’t,” Sarah agreed.
“Wait, you grew up with the Lawsons,” Kayla said. “Where were your brothers all that time?”
“With my pa,” Sarah said. “Elaine Lawson didn’t care what happened to them.”
Kayla’s mind was clearly working at this, trying to make the pieces of what she knew fit together. Sarah enjoyed another stretch of silence.
“You’re a bad person,” Kayla finally said. “You’re lying to me, aren’t you?”
“Everyone lies all the time,” Sarah said. “Even to Lawsons. Especially to Lawsons.”
“But they don’t lie to you?” Kayla asked. Sarah shrugged.
“‘Course they do,” she said. “I just know better than believe ‘em.”
The girl was so soft. Sarah wondered if she’d get hard or dead first.
“Things are different here,” Kayla said.
“Anyone told you to ‘spect otherwise was lyin’ to you,” Sarah said.
“They said it was...” Kayla started, then stopped. Sarah grinned.
“You can say anything they said,” she told Kayla. “I heard it all before.”
“They said I wouldn’t like it here,” Kayla said.
“And yet you came,” Sarah said.
“I love Wade.”
“‘Parently Yip loved his wife more,” Sarah said. It was cruel, but she was bored and short-tempered, and the girl had hit her horse with a whip.
Kayla shuddered.
“Cassandra was a sociopath,” she said. “I can see why Yip married her, but I’m not going to say I’m sorry they stayed behind.”
Sarah looked back over her shoulder at the frothy cream puff with her very first stirring of respect. Someone who could dislike someone else that strongly had hope.
“Jimmy approve the marriage?” she asked. Kayla frowned.
“I didn’t ask. Did he have to approve of me?”
Sarah looked back forward again.
“How long you been married, Kayla?”
“Fifteen months,” Kayla said. Sarah shook her head. It was a big ask, looking for a girl Kayla’s age of maturity to leave behind everything she knew and come to a place like Lawrence, even if Jimmy could get the train running again. A girl like Kayla who couldn’t control a horse if her life depended on it, which it more’n likely would, someday.
“Yes,” she said after a minute. “If’n I know the boys like I did, Jimmy had to agree ‘fore Wade even proposed.”
She looked back to see the effect. Kayla was looking at her empty hands. Shoulda had reins in them, but the mare was much, much better off now that Kayla had given up trying to be in charge.
“The Lawsons aren’t like any other family I’ve ever met,” Kayla said.
“Nope,” Sarah agreed. “Not in your big city, and not ‘round these parts, either.”
“They’re good men,” Kayla asserted and Sarah laughed.
“If you think the Lawsons are good men, you ain’t met any,” Sarah said.
“You think they aren’t?” Kayla asked.
“I know they ain’t,” Sarah said. “Good men get stood up and shot by men like the Lawsons. The Lawsons are survivors, and powerful men. And we need both kinds. Men like the Lawsons kill other men like ‘em. Good men can live and let live.”
“It wasn’t like this in Intec,” Kayla said.
“I was,” Sarah said. “You just didn’t see it. Big city like that puts a nice, pretty cover over all the stuff like this. ‘Round here, we ain’t got time for pretty covers.”
“Or dresses, either,” Kayla said. Sarah actually laughed at this.
“Nope, we ain’t got time for pretty dresses, either.”
Kayla sniffed, a sharp little noise that drew Sarah’s attention, and then another tiny measure of respect. She’d tipped her head back, her pointed little nose finding more air.
“I’m still going to open the shop,” she said. “They all think I’
m no good for anything... that I’m not any good at anything, and I’m going to show them.”
“You know how to make a dress?” Sarah asked.
“I do,” Kayla said excitedly. “It isn’t very popular anymore, because of how easy it is to get nice clothes, but my mother was, still is, one of the finest dressmakers in Intec. If you want a custom dress for an important event, you talk to Inge Turnlake. Everyone in Intec knows that.”
“And that just rubs off, does it?” Sarah asked. She glanced back, keeping the side brim of her hat low so that Kayla couldn’t see her face. Kayla was offended.
“No. What kind of a child do you think I am? I worked with my mother for twenty years before I met Wade. Since I was old enough to sew. I know my business as well as any person on the continent.”
Sarah shrugged.
“I ‘spect we’ll see.”
“That you will,” Kayla said, folding her hands primly over her knees. “You just watch that shop window.” She paused. “You know what? You’ll buy a dress from me, too, someday. Not some work dress. A nice one. One to make you look pretty.”
“Ain’t got no time for pretty,” Sarah said.
“Maybe not now, but someday,” Kayla insisted as the Lawson house came into view.
“I ain’t ever going to be pretty,” Sarah said, mostly to herself, turning the black horse to watch Kayla make her awkward way off of the buckboard.
“You have good bones,” Kayla said, coming to peer up at her as a young man raced across the yard.
“Miss Kayla,” he called. “You weren’t supposed to leave on your own.”
Sarah hid a smile behind her hat.
“I wanted to,” Kayla answered, still looking up at Sarah. “If you decided you wanted to be pretty, you could be. All you have to do it ask, and I’d love to help.”
Sarah swung down off of her horse, letting the young man take the animal’s reins after he finished unhitching the mare.
“And why would you do that?” Sarah asked. Kayla grinned.
“I like a challenge,” she said. Sarah shook her head.
“This place is gonna beat that enthusiasm right out of you,” she said.
“We’ll see about that,” Kayla said, opening the front door to the Lawson house and letting Sarah in in front of her.
––—
Sarah sat in the front room, her hat hanging off her knee and her duster hanging on a peg in the front hall somewhere where a man she didn’t know had taken it.
Jimmy wandered through at one point, but didn’t say anything to her. This made her smile. He was making a point. She made a point of not noticing him any more than she would have, any other Lawson on his way to another part of the house.
Thomas came in a few minutes later.
“Sarah,” he said. “Didn’t know if we’d get to see you today.”
“I made my grand entrance ‘bout fifteen minutes ago,” Sarah said. Thomas grinned, sitting on the corner of a couch.
“Heard you came by yesterday, too. And that Petey was his normal self.”
“Charming as always,” Sarah agreed.
“How have things been?” Thomas asked. Sarah stared him down and he looked away.
“Apart from that,” he finally said.
“Apart from thieves and bandits killing most everyone you knew, when you was here last?” she said, driving the knife in as far as she liked.
“I know, Sarah,” he said. “I can see it plain as you like.”
“You married?” she asked. He shrugged.
“Never got around to it. You?”
“Never found someone I could tolerate,” she answered. He grinned again. Thomas was four years younger than Jimmy, the youngest of the Lawsons save Yip - another two years younger - and Sarah had loved him as a child, doted on him. Her first memories were of Elaine pregnant with Thomas, Rich and Wade bullysome twin two year olds, Peter too busy for all of them, at eight. Thomas had grown up a tender spirit, as headstrong and impulsive as the rest of the Lawson kin, but in surprising ways. He’d caught some of the boys from town beating a deformed puppy when he was only three or four and he’d torn through them like an electrical storm. He’d loved and cared for that puppy for years, before it succumbed to its deformities.
“I’m glad to be home,” he said. “And I’m glad you’re okay, after all this time.”
She was tempted to point out, again, that it was no thanks to him or his brothers, but she left it unsaid. He leaned out over his knees, resting his elbows on the long limbs. He’d turned into a fine man.
“So how are things?” he asked again.
She shrugged.
“People scrape by. Make do with what they got.”
She thought of Nina and the Joiners, making do with a lot less today than a couple of months before.
“With you,” he said. She frowned.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” she asked.
“You aren’t happy,” he said. “Anyone can see it.”
“Who in hell expects to be happy?” she asked.
“I do,” he said. She let her face soften a fraction.
“‘Course you do,” she said. “Good thing you managed to avoid an entanglement.”
“Oh, I’ve been entangled,” he said, smiling. She raised her eyebrow and he grinned. “Life isn’t ever simple, is it?” he asked, standing as a heavyset woman came into the room.
“Dinner is ready,” she said, nodding at Thomas and leaving.
“You ain’t getting off that easy,” Sarah said. “I want to hear about this.”
He shrugged.
“Not a lot to tell. I had a girl, I lost her.”
“You love her?”
“Would I ever do anything halfway?” he answered, leading the way from the front room down the impressive front hall to the dining room. They hadn’t eaten here, when she was young. They’d eaten in the kitchen, at a long table made out of raw wood that Elaine favored. Now, they sat at an elegant, finished table big enough to seat twenty and allowed staff to bring them food.
Thomas, Rich, Wade, Jimmy, and Peter. The only one missing was Yip.
They were men now.
They’d been men when they left, but Sarah still remembered them as boys, remembered sitting at this table and ordering each other about when Peter and Elaine weren’t looking, pretending to be grownups.
Little Peter would sit at the head of the table, as he was now, and drum on it with fists around the butts of steak knives, shouting and telling the others what to do. Jimmy would sit next to him, on the right, as he was now, quiet, just watching, knowing. Sarah didn’t take the indignities of being ordered around as well as he had, though as she sat now, she could see that something was subtly different. Peter looked at Jimmy as he sat. He’d never done that before.
Sarah was across the table from Jimmy, down a couple of seats. Now, there was a woman between her and Peter, a beautiful blond woman with a full bust and a solid frame. She was the kind of woman who could have come from the frontier, though the grace of her motions certainly eliminated any thought that she might have. Peter motioned.
“Sarah, this is my wife Lise. Lise, this is Sarah Todd.”
“I’ve heard quite a lot about you,” the woman said, extending a hand. Sarah shook awkwardly.
“Haven’t heard a thing about you,” she answered. Lise smiled.
“The boys simply can’t stop talking about you.”
“Woulda been nice to know they were thinking ‘bout us before now,” Sarah said.
“C’mon Sarah,” Peter said. “Let’s not start out with a fight.”
“How did you think this was gonna go?” Sarah asked.
“We invited you here to be perfectly civil. You’ve been important to this family for a long time.”
Sarah looked away.
Down the table a bit further, next to Jimmy, were Rich and Wade with their wives. Kayla was in a new dress and was speaking into Wade’s ear with a delighted smile on her face. Rich’s wi
fe was dark haired and dark skinned, and sat with the poise and elegance of a cat, the warmth of a statue.
Around the middle of the table, on Sarah’s side, Thomas sat, across from the dark woman, perfectly content with the space between himself and the others.
“We are home,” Peter said. “We are where we belong, and we are where, if all goes well, we will stay.”
The dark woman might have moved slightly. If she had, it was to push her nose up just a touch. Kayla was right. If Sarah found her annoying, she was going to find the rest of the wives intolerable.
“It’s a... challenging place to land,” Lise said, “but we have a vision for how it’s going to change and become a place worthy of us.”
Sarah snapped her head to look at the woman, who gave her a frosty smile.
“Lawrence is what it is,” Sarah said. “Ain’t no one and no plan gonna change that.”
“Oh, we have intentions, Sarah,” Peter said. “It’s not going to be the kind of place where a woman runs around in a cowboy getup and everyone takes her seriously. Not for much longer.”
“What, ‘cause you come back and say so?” Sarah asked. “Ain’t nothin’ different but that the train showed up and y’all happened to be on it.”
“The train came because we paid a considerable sum of money to make it happen,” Lise said. “It’s an investment. If it doesn’t play out the way we want it to, we’ll go find a place that does.”
“Oh, will you, now,” Sarah said. “‘Cause that’s just the kind of thing a town like Lawrence likes to hear. That if’n it doesn’t change fast enough to your likin’, you’ll bail just like you did last time.”
“I wasn’t here last time,” Lise said, “but from what I understand and from what I can see, they made the only possible choice. No one could really choose to live here. Not anymore.”
“Lotta people did,” Sarah said.
“Not the smart ones,” Rich said. “Anyone can see that.”
Sarah looked at Jimmy.
“You shoulda disarmed me ‘fore I sat down,” she said, “‘cause if he keeps talkin’ like that, I’m gonna put a bullet through him.”
“Look, the food’s here,” Thomas said.
Staff came from the kitchen and started putting plates in front of the family. Sarah hadn’t eaten on formal plates in six years, and it was startling to see the perfect white dishes as they came from the kitchen, bowl on plate, polished silver for utensils.
