by Chloe Garner
“No, I can see that you’re really gonna get on well with Lawrence,” Sarah said.
“What, because we eat like civilized people?” Lise asked as the staff left. Thomas slurped his soup off his spoon. “Why wouldn’t they want that?”
Sarah looked at Lise.
“You really got no idea, do you? What these people been through? What the family you married into done to them, when they left?”
“I see poverty,” Lise said. “And I see a path out of it. And I’m quite happy to lead them down that path, if they’re willing to follow.”
“Ain’t gonna cost ‘em but their freedom or their firstborn, either, is it?”
“Thought they already owed you the firstborn,” Rich said.
Sarah looked at him with level eyes.
“I took my right,” she said. “Ain’t no one gonna make me apologize for that.”
“No one’s asking you to apologize,” Thomas said.
“They are, Tommy,” she said. “They’re asking me to apologize for who I am.”
She caught the look from Lise and allowed herself a self-congratulatory smile.
“I seen it in your eye,” she said. “You think ‘cause I’m dressed like I am and cause I talk like I do that I’m under you, somehow. That the boys invited me here out of sentiment and ‘cause of old times.” She took a long look around the table. “I know these boys. Have done since they was little. But that ain’t why none of them want me here. You get ‘em drunk enough to be honest, you ask ‘em why it is that Sarah Todd gotta be here and spoil your glorious return.”
“That’s enough, Sarah,” Peter said. “We aren’t going to talk like that tonight.”
“Maybe you ain’t,” Sarah said, “but I ain’t gonna quit ‘till after you do.”
“Good soup,” Thomas said.
The dark woman was moving the spoon from her bowl to her lips in slow, metered motions, and Wade and Kayla seemed to be enjoying a completely different dinner from the rest of them, but no one else was eating.
“Someone put good effort into this meal,” Sarah said. “Might as well eat it.”
She put her spoon down and put the bowl to her lips, drinking the hot soup in one slow, steady draining motion, just like she would have in front of a fire on the flatlands.
Lise made a slight gagging sound and Sarah thought she heard Kayla giggle. She put the bowl back down and picked up her napkin, dabbing her lips in an affect.
“Enough, Sarah,” Peter said. “You’ve put on quite enough of a show. If you aren’t going to be civil, I don’t think you are welcome at this table.”
“She stays,” Jimmy said quietly.
Everything changed.
Sarah sat back in her seat, weaving her fingers behind her head as everyone else studiously ate their soup.
––—
“Will you come with me to my study?” Jimmy asked after dinner.
“Your study?” Sarah asked.
“It isn’t my father’s, anymore,” he said, standing. She shrugged, wiping her mouth and pushing her chair back with the backs of her knees. She picked her hat off the back of the chair and put it on her head, mostly to bother Lise.
The rest of the Lawson family watched her as she followed Jimmy out of the room and to the expansive space at the front of the house that Peter Lawson Sr had claimed as his personal work space. Sarah had almost never been in this room, and even now it felt sacred.
“You still think of it as your father’s desk?” Jimmy asked, going and getting a bottle off of a shelf and pouring two drinks.
“‘Course,” she said, taking the drink he offered her. She smelled it to evaluate how much alcohol was in it, and was content to find it a weaker drink. He hadn’t picked up the heavy stuff yet.
“It isn’t,” he said, going to sit on one of the hard couches that Peter had selected for himself. The rest of the house was much more comfortable, to Elaine’s taste, but Peter had arranged a very formal business space for himself, complete with hard leather couches with rivets. The couple of times Sarah had been here, she’d wondered at them. As much money as he’d had, why hadn’t he bought something that was both nice and nice to sit on?
“I’m going to replace them, once the other, bigger priorities get taken care of,” Jimmy said.
“It is,” Sarah said.
“No, he died, what six years ago?”
“More’n seven,” Sarah said. Fourteen weeks after the Lawsons had left, to be exact.
“Then it’s your office, your desk,” Jimmy said.
“You should replace them with something local,” Sarah said.
“You have a furniture maker here I don’t know about?” Jimmy asked.
“Coupla the Joiners make some nice stuff. Goodson made something for me, a ways back.”
Jimmy scratched his head.
“Sarah, I don’t want to push them out.”
“It ain’t about that,” Sarah said.
“I know,” he said. “You just want the rest of my family to know I’m not beholden to their big city interests.”
She gave him a saucy look and turned sideways on the couch, putting her feet up. If he was replacing them anyway, she shouldn’t worry about damaging the leather with her boots. He gave her a wry look, but didn’t say anything.
“That doesn’t mean I want a sawhorse with canvas draped over it for my study,” he said. “I have a contact in Mont Blanc who can get me just about anything I want, for household goods, and I intend to get what I want.”
She shifted, not arguing exactly, but not agreeing, either. He sighed and then laughed.
“You do make waves.”
“Ain’t enough water ‘round here for waves,” Sarah said. She could tell he understood the more important meaning of what she said.
“They mean well,” he said.
“Do not,” Sarah retorted. He grinned and sipped his drink.
“Will you talk to me like the Sarah I knew, again?” he asked.
“Soon as you turn them out and act like the Jimmy I knew,” she said.
“The Jimmy you’ve always known would never turn his family out, and you know it.”
“I know it,” she said. “Didn’t say they were the same thing.”
He laughed.
“We all knew you wouldn’t like them,” he said.
“Who?” Sarah asked.
“The wives,” he said. She nodded.
“That how you look at them? They can tell.”
His gaze was steady and very firm.
“It’s what they are,” he said. “They aren’t Lawsons. Not like us.”
“Elaine was,” she said.
“No, my mother was a Lawrence,” he said. “Which just happened to be more important than being a Lawson.”
“She was a Lawson, Jimmy,” Sarah said. He rubbed his chin.
“You know...”
She waited. His eyes were distant for a moment.
“She was, wasn’t she?”
“Every bit of her,” Sarah said. “More’n you, more’n Little Peter. Maybe more’n Grin.”
“It isn’t the same, with them,” Jimmy said. Sarah shook her head.
“No, it ain’t.”
“Can you please talk to me like yourself?” he asked. “I can’t tell you how much it would have hurt my mother to hear you talk like that.”
“She died when you was eight, same as me,” Sarah said. “You didn’t know her any better’n I did.”
“You didn’t say I was wrong,” Jimmy said. No, she hadn’t. She stretched her neck and swallowed.
“Fine,” she said, long ‘i’, rather than ‘ah’.
“Thank you,” he said. “Do you have to antagonize them like that?”
“As far as I can tell, they started it,” Sarah said.
“They’re my family, Sarah,” he said.
“I know that,” she answered. Proper diction didn’t make her any softer.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“W
hy did you let them marry those women?” Sarah asked.
“Because they wanted to,” Jimmy said, “and because there’s nothing actually wrong with any of them.”
“You know that Kayla intends to open and run the dress shop in town?”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Jimmy said. “Her mother is a well-known professional at it.”
“So you haven’t got any problem with a Lawson having a trade shop in town?” Sarah asked.
“Why should I?” Jimmy asked.
“Lawsons just haven’t ever done anything that resembled normal work for their money. Unless things have changed.”
“No, we’re still Lawsons,” he said.
“What did you do, for money, while you were away?” Sarah asked.
“This and that,” he said. “Most of it out on the fuzzy gray side of the law.”
“When you aren’t the law itself,” she said. He nodded.
“There are a lot of unpoliced places in the world.”
“None of which have ever had a visit from Lise Lawson.”
“It isn’t her fault that she can’t blend in, in our kind of places,” Jimmy said. “Petey makes a good enough living to take care of her the way she expects to be taken care of.”
“That would make her a cocker spaniel, not a wife,” Sarah said.
“Sometimes I can’t tell the difference,” Jimmy said.
“What’s with Rich’s wife?”
“Sunny,” Jimmy said.
“Not how I’d describe her,” Sarah said. Jimmy gave her a flash of smile.
“No, that’s her name.”
“Wow,” Sarah said. He nodded.
“She comes from a very strict home. Smart, though. Maybe smarter than Lise, I’m not sure. She just... she doesn’t talk much.”
“What does she do?” Sarah asked.
“Keeps Rich under control, for one,” Jimmy said. “You think he gets out of line now, you should have seen him before. He and Wade went off the rails, after we left. Something about her, the way she’s his complete opposite... I don’t know. Of the three of them, she’s the one I wouldn’t lose.”
Sarah rankled a bit at that treatment of Kayla, having met Lise, but she would have said the same thing, pressed for honesty.
“So you’re okay with Kayla being a seamstress,” Sarah said.
“If you think that’s all that shop is going to be doing, you’ve forgotten an awful lot of what you once knew about me,” Jimmy said.
That was more like it.
“This isn’t going to work, Jimmy,” she said finally. He had been waiting for this, she could feel it. She wanted to sit and keep talking to him, about his family, about these plans the Lawsons had for Lawrence, about what they’d been doing while they were gone, but they were just buying time.
Time she wished she was willing to buy indefinitely. But she couldn’t. She was Sarah Todd, he was Jimmy Lawson, and he’d left.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I can’t come back and be the extended member of the Lawson family. It worked when I was eight because of your mother, and it worked when I was twelve because of you. It even worked when I was eighteen and you sent me off to school, because...” she shrugged. They both knew why it had been okay for him to tap into his family’s resources to send her off for training and experience of the world, even if neither of them had been able to say it then and neither of them were willing to say it now. Five years, she’d been gone. Then five years back, the best five years of her life, and then he’d gone.
And broken it all.
“I need you to tell me where the absenta is,” he said.
“You what?” she asked.
“What did you think?” he asked. “That you were here out of some personal obligation I have to you? I missed you. You were and still are the smartest, sharpest woman I know, and I’m hoping you’ll work with me while I get everything rolling again. It’ll make you and me both a lot wealthier than I would get on my own, and we both know it. But what I really need from you, right now, is for you to tell me where to find absenta.”
“I told you I don’t know,” she said.
“I’ll take care of the body,” he said. “No one finds out what happened, really, but I need a lot more than that. I need to auction off multiple claims to the highest bidder, and I need to establish a supply of absenta that’s going to pay me kickbacks for keeping them off of each other. And the only way that’s going to work is if I know where the absenta is, and everyone knows that I know.”
“I told you I don’t know,” Sarah said again.
“Yeah,” he said. “You do. “I’m going to send Thomas to you tomorrow with all of the claims records I have here, and you’re going to figure it out.”
“Why would I do that?” she asked.
“Because if you don’t, instead of getting well-heeled speculators and well-compensated prospectors, you’re going to get a bunch more of the same, and Lise and Peter are going to get bored and leave.”
“You would just walk away,” she said. “Again. Knowing exactly what mess you’re leaving me in.”
“If there’s no money here, there’s no money here,” he said. “And I’ll remind you, even though you didn’t say it, that the flood of undesirable men that you’re going to get starting in the next day or so isn’t my fault.”
“No, you just paid for the train they came in on,” she said.
“You needed supplies,” Jimmy said. “Bad. I talked to Granger. If that train didn’t come when it did, you were dead anyway.”
“A bullet or lack of basic necessities, doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in the end, does it?” Sarah asked.
“I’d take a bullet, of those two, any day,” Jimmy said. And he would. She knew that he would. He’d rather go down fighting than by drips and drabs of some form of starvation.
“I can’t promise,” she said. He nodded.
“You won’t,” he said. “Doesn’t mean that you can’t.”
She tried to remember what Pete had told her. The information he’d had in his head about rocks...
“I can’t promise,” she said again. Jimmy looked up at her from something on his desk.
“Thomas will be there in the morning. I’ll come and check on you after a couple of days.”
And that was it. She was dismissed.
“Right,” she said. “And maybe I’ll have something to tell you.”
There was a tic, one that she knew to be humor but that was disguised so well that it annoyed her rather than gratified her. She shook her head.
“Night, Jimmy,” she said, putting her hat on, and with it her accent.
“Good night, Sarah,” he answered.
––—
True to his word, Jimmy sent Thomas over in the morning with a wagon load of books, heavy leatherbound ones with all of the records the Lawsons had kept over the many years that Lawrence had been an active mining town. At first, they alternated between Elaine’s neat, stylish script and Peter’s sharp print, then they switched over entirely to Peter’s record keeping. That would have been when Elaine died.
Sarah found the old maps and put them on the desk next to the one she kept now for claims, making sure that her own maps were accurate enough to use with the Lawsons’ notes. The level of detail on her maps was slightly better, and the landmarks lined up.
As it stood, the area west of town had about fifteen claims on it, some expiring in the next year, some good for a bit longer. In its heyday, Lawrence had had hundreds of claims, some as small as an acre, some as large as a square mile, depending on the importance of the person doing the prospecting. The larger claims were almost useless, given Pete’s description of where to find Absenta, because they may have listed the quality of ore they were pulling out of the ground, but they weren’t specific on where, in the claim, they found it.
The front page of the book, really just a loose stack of papers stuck into the first book, was the report on Pete’s claim.
Jimmy hadn’t been exaggerating. It was the best claim Lawrence had ever reported.
Pete had said there was a pattern. He hadn’t said much else, but he’d said there was a pattern. She was hoping that that pattern was visible when you had the right papers in front of you, rather than only when you actually saw the claims with your own eye.
Types of rock. She sat at the desk with her feet up, looking at his claim analysis. It was going to come down to types of rock.
The survival of Lawrence, among other things.
Pete’s mine could make a company of men rich for the rest of their days. Rich enough to topple the Lawsons. She could read the reports well enough to know what that ore would be worth per cubic yard, and she had been in enough mines in her life to know how many cubic yards of material Pete had exposed, just from the little time she’d been down there.
It might be multiple lifetime’s worth of riches, depending on how far it went.
The problem was that that was a single claim.
Lawrence’s stability had come from the fact that there were lots of little pockets of absenta all over the place, and if you dug a hole and wandered around with a methane lamp long enough, you were bound to find them.
If you’d have accused her of it, she’d have punched you in the mouth, but Sarah was really good with numbers. She’d sailed through her finance classes without trying. Her economics classes were all easy, and she had had classmates who had hated her for how little effort she put into those degrees. Several of the introductory-level classes, she’d only gone for the tests and passed at the top of the class.
She’d put that behind herself, years ago. Lawrence didn’t need financial math whizzes, anymore. Lawrence needed someone who could tend a stockpile of ammunition and use it from time to time as the situation called for it. She found she was rusty, trying to work through the sandstorm of numbers released from the Lawson house.
The stack of books from Thomas wasn’t so much a stack as multiple stacks. It had taken him the better part of thirty minutes just to get it all into the house.
Miners came and went, and when they went, their claims expired. Any time a prospector opened a sales account with the wholesaler in Jeremiah, they got a new lab report on their claim, and they often retested their claims in hopes of discovering that they’d worked their way into better ore.
