Harlot

by Victoria Dahl

‡

  They’d only been eating string beans for three days, but God, Jessica was sick of them already. Still, she kept picking them. She set her thumbnail to each stem, popped off the pod, and dropped it in her basket. Melisande was teaching her how to preserve them today, and Jessica would do her best not to make a face at the idea of months and months of string beans. It was food, and it would sustain them, and that was what mattered.

  Two weeks before, she couldn’t have imagined caring about such a thing. The night Caleb had left, she hadn’t even bothered locking the door behind him. If someone had wanted to come and hurt her, she would have let him. Or maybe she’d hoped Caleb would come back and beg her for…something. Forgiveness. Absolution. Love.

  But she’d opened her eyes the next morning to find that she was still alone and still safe, and while cleaning and dressing, she’d realized her limbs felt lighter. Melisande had already put the biscuits in the oven and had been waiting in the garden. She’d glanced at Jessica’s swollen eyes but said nothing, and they’d worked in peace the whole morning. When the sun had finally snuck past the barn and caught them, Jess had felt it in a way she never had before. The hot, pure light on her skin, heating up something cold and dark inside her. She’d stood straight and closed her eyes, and the sun had burned her clean.

  Melisande’s words had burned through her too. You’re still alive.

  Two weeks gone, and she was still alive. And if she had to eat string beans for months and dine on nothing else but eggs from her chickens and milk from her cow, she would. She was alive and this place was hers and she would make it work because she had to.

  She’d paid the taxes immediately, afraid someone would steal the gold from her cellar or that Caleb would return and demand it back. But he hadn’t returned, and that was fine too, even if her heart broke with it.

  It was over.

  Her only regret was that she’d told him she hated him. She didn’t. She’d hurt him badly, and he’d hurt her back, and he was still a good man. And if he was a good man, then maybe she was a good woman too. Maybe.

  As the heat began to take hold of the morning, Jessica snapped a bean in half and popped it into her mouth just for the moisture.

  The garden was small and the cornfield only a little bigger. They wouldn’t grow enough to sell and no one around here would buy from them anyway, but Jessica had been puzzling out a plan.

  She had chickens and a milk cow. She couldn’t do business close enough to home to sell eggs, but she could raise chicks and take them to market a couple of towns away where no one knew her. She could bring her cow along too and see it bred. By next year, she might have a calf to sell, along with more chickens and maybe pickled eggs too. Not a lot, but it would be something. Enough to pay the taxes and feed the three of them. Enough to get a real start.

  The thought warmed her even more than the sun. Her cheeks flushed with strange embarrassment. A start meant she wasn’t giving up. It meant she would go on. After all, plenty of women went through worse than she had and never got a farm out of the deal. Countless women never even got to say it had been a choice. Jessica was done feeling sorry for herself.

  She stretched out her back as she finished with the last beanstalk. They’d be standing over a hot stove all day, but she was looking forward to learning something new and useful. There would be pickles to make soon, and tomatoes to stew and corn to preserve, things that would see them through the year.

  Melisande must have heard the sound first, because her head jerked up just before Jessica heard it too. A rider.

  She narrowed her eyes as she put a hand up for shade, but she wasn’t afraid this time. She wouldn’t let them scare her anymore. If someone came out to bother her again, she’d tack his name up all over town. She’d say she’d found Jesus and wanted to make the sinners pay.

  Smiling in satisfaction at the idea, she waited for the rider to draw closer. Her smile fell when he removed his hat, and all her bravery dropped away and sank into the dry soil.

  It was Caleb. Caleb, who was supposed to be over the mountains by now and never coming back. His horse was equipped for travel and he looked worn and dusty. She didn’t understand how he could be here.

  She retreated one step and felt Melisande’s hand on her shoulder. “You want me to fetch Bill?”

  Jessica shook her head. No, she could manage this on her own, whatever he wanted. She was almost sure of it.

  God, he looked so serious as he slowed his horse and eased it only a few steps closer. What could he want from her now?

  He dismounted and kept his hat in his hands as he drew near.

  “I’ve already spent the money,” she said tightly, hoping that would send him away. “Taxes. It’s gone.”

  His eyes moved to Melisande, then down to his boots before he met Jessica’s gaze again. “Could we speak in private?” he asked, the words even and not angry.

  Jessica glanced over her shoulder at Melisande, hoping for a moment that her friend would tell her what to do. But Melisande only widened her eyes in question.

  “I thought you’d left,” she said to Caleb instead of answering him.

  “I had,” he responded, which told her nothing.

  Jessica wanted to say no to his request, but if she sent him away, she would spend weeks wondering why he’d returned, and she’d only just started sleeping peacefully.

  She couldn’t refuse him. She knew she couldn’t. “All right. We can sit a moment. In the parlor.”

  He led his horse toward the front porch, but Jessica cut away to circle the house and enter through the back. She ran a damp towel over her face and hands, straightened her pinned hair. She wouldn’t see him with sweat dripping down her brow and her hair wild about her head. After the way she’d screamed at him like a madwoman, today she meant to be serene, or act it, at least.

  Her heart wasn’t serene. Why is he here? it cried. She ordered it to be still and silent. Her orders meant nothing. Her heart shook as badly as her hands did as she drew a pitcher of water from the pump at the sink.

  Why is he here?

  She’d find out as soon as she gathered enough courage to walk to the front door.

  Thank God she’d already paid the taxes. If he asked if there was any left over, she’d lie.

  She carried the pitcher to the front room, but her steps slowed as she neared the door. She allowed herself one deep breath and then she reached for the latch. When she opened the door, he was there, and she nearly dropped the heavy pitcher at the sight of what he held. “What…what are those?” she stammered.

  He looked down at the small bouquet of wildflowers in his hand like she’d confused him. “Flowers of some sort?” he asked, as if he didn’t know the answer himself.

  She stepped back, shaking her head, slightly panicked by the pretty yellow and white blooms. “Why would you bring them?” Was he being cruel? Mocking her?

  “I saw them in a meadow a few hours back. I thought you’d like them, so I tucked them into a saddlebag.”

  “But why?”

  He took a deep breath, his knuckles turning white against the bouquet. “I’ve come to apologize. To you. For everything.”

  “Everything?” she breathed, wondering if that meant the worst, that he knew the whole of the awful truth.

  “Jess…” He gestured toward her with the flowers, but when she cringed away, his shoulders slumped and he bent to leave the bouquet on the porch. “May I come in?”

  She waved him through, stepping back so he wouldn’t get too close.

  He stood awkwardly next to the two spindly chairs that made up her parlor furniture, not sitting until she’d poured two mugs of water and taken a seat herself. He’d paid to use her cunt, but he wouldn’t take a seat while she was standing.

  Men were so damn useless.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She pressed her hands around the cool mug. Her jaw clenched so hard that her head ached. “For what?” she managed to ask.

  Please don
’t know the truth.

  He bowed his head as if he didn’t want to speak. “It didn’t come to me ’til I was halfway over the Sierras. Until I’d been alone a good long while.”

  Please don’t know.

  “I thought about some man hurting you, about the way it happened…”

  No.

  “I thought of someone hurting you, and Jess…how could I hate you for that?”

  What did that mean? “As you pointed out,” she said past numb lips, “I chose it.”

  “But you were right. What you said. You might have done something bad, but you were scared. Desperate. What I did was just…just to pass the time. And I did it to some woman just as desperate as you. Some woman trying to stay alive and fed. It didn’t matter to me why she let me.”

  Jess could feel that this was something good. Something she’d never expected to hear, from him or anyone else. Someday maybe she’d be thankful for it. But right now it felt threatening, a hope she didn’t want to believe in and didn’t want to know. Was that all he’d come back for?

  “All right,” she murmured, “thank you for coming to tell me that.”

  “Jessica…” The solemn weight of her name pressed the threat harder against her heart.

  “It was kind of you.” She pushed to her feet so quickly she felt dizzy. “Gracious.”

  “Jess.” He sprang to his feet too, his hat falling to the floor. She stared down at it, watching to make sure his foot didn’t shift and crush it.

  “Your hat,” she said as her ears buzzed with fear.

  He stepped forward, his boot nudging the hat a few inches to the side. “Even when I was trying to hate you, I still loved you.”

  Those words snapped her from her shock. She tore her gaze from his hat and shook her head. “No.”

  “It’s true.” He touched her chin, and she watched him, trying to find the lie in his precious face, in the hard lines of his mouth and jaw and nose.

  But his eyes weren’t hard anymore. They were pleading. “I needed what we did to feel wrong. I wanted to make you experience that. But it was beautiful. It felt like you, Jess. I’m sorry if I made you feel wrong.”

  Her eyes welled up. One hot tear spilled onto her cheek. He caught it with his thumb.

  “I wanted to hurt you,” he said.

  She swallowed hard, but more tears escaped. “I know.”

  “I’m so sorry for that. And I’m sorry I left you two years ago. I should have stayed and married you. I should have been brave enough to ask for what we both wanted.”

  Her throat closed up. That was all she’d ever needed. For him to say they belonged together. For him to stay with her. To not have left her. She hadn’t needed him to be someone else, just himself. And now it was too late.

  “I was angry,” he said. “I thought I was doing it all for you. And then when I heard your father had died I took on work I shouldn’t have. I wanted money quickly, so I became muscle for the bosses, breaking heads of organizers or hunting down people who’d stolen from the mine. It was ugly, and I blamed that on you, too, I think.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered automatically, but he shook his head.

  “You never asked me to do any of it. Don’t apologize. That’s not what I came here for.”

  She swallowed hard again, clearing just enough of her throat that she could whisper. “I can’t give you anything else, Caleb.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze traveling her face until he seemed to find something that reassured him. “What about dinner?” he asked.

  The question so surprised her that she managed a hoarse laugh. “Dinner?”

  “I’ve been on the trail a while. I’d love dinner and maybe a bucket of water to clean up.”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s all I’m asking for, I promise. For now.”

  What did that mean? She needed to send him away. She needed him gone and never coming back so she could find some way to forget him, forget what she’d done, forget the life she’d given up. But her mouth wouldn’t form the words to make him leave. Her body refused to step out of his reach. She could smell the trail on him, horse and sweat and dirt, and even that was sweet to her stupid, stupid heart. How could she make him go?

  She pushed the words past her tight jaw. “You can stay for dinner.”

  His wide shoulders lost some of their tension. “Thank you.”

  Backing up, she turned and fled toward the kitchen. He followed. “You’ll need a bath.” She gathered up a rag and soap and a towel to drop into a pail. “The creek’s only a quarter-mile to the west if you cut through the trees. It curves around. Water’s nice and cool in the shade.” She shoved the pail at him.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Dinner is string beans and a rabbit,” she muttered. “Bill shot it this morning.”

  “Perhaps I could set a couple of snares on my way to the creek. Should get you another rabbit by tomorrow.”

  “If that makes you happy.”

  He watched her until heat flamed in her face. “I think it might,” he said. Then he turned and moved away from her, and she could breathe.

  She should have sent him away. All she’d wanted was peace, and now her heart was awake again when she’d needed it to sleep forever. But she still closed her eyes and thanked God that he was back.

  Chapter 12

  ‡

  Caleb floated in the still pool of the creek bend. The lye soap had removed even the most stubborn of the trail grit, and if his skin stung in a few places, at least he was truly clean.

  He watched a fat little cloud glide across the patch of blue visible between cottonwood leaves, and he tried to tell himself that he couldn’t want what he wanted. He’d tried to tell himself that a hundred times in the past week. A thousand. Yet what he always wanted was Jess. As much as she’d hurt him, it had hurt a hell of a lot more to imagine never seeing her again. He loved her. He’d never stopped.

  Did it matter, what she’d done with other men? The things he’d done with other women hadn’t changed his feelings for Jess. Those things had been separate, barely even real. Surely that’s what it had been like for her, as well.

  If he could forgive her, could she forgive him?

  He rose up and shook the water from his hair, picking his way over slick stones to the rock where he’d set the towel. The fabric was thin and tattered, reminding him again that Jess wasn’t the pampered young girl he’d fallen in love with. She was different now. A woman. Damaged and roughed up the same as he was. Stronger, maybe.

  Maybe neither of their pasts mattered. Maybe he’d been a damn fool the whole time.

  He dressed in clean clothes, then folded the clothes he’d washed in the stream and set them in the pail to carry back to Jess’s place. He walked the same trail he’d taken out, stopping to mark the trees where he’d set the snares so he could tell Jess where to find them, in case she sent him packing tonight.

  The women were laughing in the kitchen when he got back. He stopped five feet shy of the back doorway and listened for a moment, fascinated by the sound. It was carefree. Teasing. And he couldn’t believe his goal had been to give Jess the opposite of that. To punish her and make her weep. Surely she must have done enough weeping for a lifetime.

  Caleb set the pail close to the stairs and took his wet clothes to hang on the line. Hammering from behind the barn drew him in that direction and he found Bill there, the big man trying to hold a plank steady as he nailed it in.

  “Give you a hand?” Caleb asked.

  Bill nodded as if he’d already known Caleb was there. “This damn cow’s as stubborn as the mule. The grass in here isn’t good enough, I guess, because she sure wants it from somewhere else.”

  Caleb grabbed the plank and looked around at the evidence of multiple repairs to the paddock. “Maybe there’s a bull around somewhere, catching her interest.”

  Bill shrugged. “She never goes far. Just far enough to cause trouble.” They worked on reinf
orcing the fence for an hour, then moved on to rehanging a barn door that had come loose in a storm. By the time dinner came around, Caleb had to take another quick wash. His stomach growled at the smell of roasted rabbit drifting out of the kitchen.

  He caught the women mid-chuckle when he walked in. Jessica blushed and looked away, but the smile stayed on her lips. “There’s not much rabbit, but I’m sure we’ll never run out of beans.”

  “I set snares,” Caleb said. “Three of them. They’re right on the trail, but I marked the trees just in case. I could show you how to set them.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You can probably catch them year-round in that brush.”

  “That’d be a big help.”

  There were a lot of ways he could help here, but he kept that thought to himself for now.

  Dinner was quiet, but for once he didn’t feel uncomfortable at a set table. Bill didn’t say much, but Melisande asked Caleb about California. Then she told stories about Louisiana. She missed the heat, she said, but not much else.

  Caleb helped clear the plates, and the women washed the dishes while Bill wiped the table down. It seemed only a few minutes passed before Bill and Melisande excused themselves and left Caleb and Jessica alone.

  “They stay together out there,” Jess explained as she untied her apron and took it off.

  “They seem content.”

  “I think so. It’s been good to have them here. Safe.”

  “You were alone before?” he pressed.

  “Yes.” Her voice had gone soft like she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “But how did you end up here, in this house all by yourself? You never did say.”

  She smoothed a careful hand over her hair, her eyes locked on a spot past his shoulder. “It was the deal. This house for my innocence.”

  “Who was it, Jess? I’ll kill him if you like. Whoever he is, he deserves it.”

  Her face had been flushed, but now it went pale. “It doesn’t matter. I took the deal. I thought I’d sell the house and move on, and no one would ever know. Not even you. But then…someone heard something. Word spread. And no one will buy a whorehouse for their family. There’s not enough good soil here to make the shame worthwhile.”