by Lydia Olson
“And who might that be?” Eloise demanded. “Because it was nothing like that, I –”
“And before you deny it,” interrupted Dillion, raising his voice and turning bright red. “How about you explain why Miss Maudie noticed you sneaking back to bed in the middle of the night? Explain to me how you suddenly decided Ryan was not the right man for you the moment Wilson returned?”
“Ryan was never the right man for me, Daddy,” Eloise tried to explain.
“Yes, but he might have been,” Dillion said, still refusing to look her way. “If you had taken a moment to think like an adult, instead of parading around like a child – oh, I should’ve been stricter with you. This is my parenting; I knew I couldn’t do it without your mother around... raising a daughter...”
“Daddy, please look at me,” pleaded Eloise.
“Look at you?” Dillion repeated, laughing sarcastically. “How could I look at you now, knowing what you’ve made of yourself... knowing that you’ve thrown away your honor despite every effort I made to shield you from your own naivety. My daughter, off with a scoundrel.”
“Daddy, please believe me,” Eloise said. “Nothing inappropriate happened between me and Wilson. I went to his room to clean his wounds, and that’s all that happened –”
“Well, I don’t believe you!” Dillion yelled.
As he shouted, Dillion turned around in his seat, and looked Eloise in the eye for the first time since she’d seen him that morning. She hadn’t seen him look so angry with her since she was a small child getting scolded for breaking his farming equipment. The vein in his temple throbbed, he gritted his teeth, and his face turned as bright red as a tomato.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she told him. “All I can tell you is the truth – that nothing happened!”
“I stood up for you against Deputy Wilkens, you know?” he went on. “I believed you then. And what did I get in return? You were hiding the man the deputy wanted to question about a murder! Do you know how foolish you made me look, when I had to tell him that?
“And then, to make matters worse, I find out you’ve confessed to lying again because you didn’t want me to find out you’d made a poor decision! You chose the honor of a wanted man, who you haven’t seen in ten years, over the honor of your father and your family!”
“No, I didn’t!” Eloise cried. “Last night, I heard men threatening to kill Wilson themselves if Deputy Wilkens didn’t find him first. What was I supposed to do? Tell all of them where he went?”
“You could’ve come home with Ryan and never been a part of it,” Dillion pointed out. “Instead, you chose to trust a man who’s been trying to steal our land from us!”
“Well, I think Ryan’s the one who’s been trying to steal from you, Daddy!” she yelled.
Dillion’s jaw dropped as if Eloise had just insulted him directly, rather than Ryan. She furrowed her brow. She couldn’t understand her father’s thought process, or why he was so determined to make a deal with Ryan, and that made her angry.
“Why is it that you’re willing to recognize that he’s trying to trick you into making a bad deal when he’s selling you some equipment, but you can’t see that when he’s trying to buy your own daughter from you?” she wondered.
“Well, I suppose that would’ve been a worthwhile question, if you had asked it before you went off and gave yourself away to another man!” Dillion said. “All I wanted was for you to consider Ryan’s proposal, but don’t be surprised now if the offer is off the table.”
“Good, I hope it is – because the two of you can try to force me into it all you want, but I will never marry Ryan. It was final the first time I said it, and it still stands now!” she yelled.
“How can you continue to put your selfish wants and needs ahead of this family and the ranch, even when you’ve disgraced me?” he yelled back. “Are you incapable of remorse? Ever since we lost Edison, you haven’t shown a single sign of sadness! Where is your humanity?
“And to think, you witnessed a murder last night and you can’t even be bothered to give the dead man – rest his soul – a proper investigation into his murder? Do you think that your childish desires are so far ahead of the rest of us that you can keep putting them before your responsibilities?”
“Daddy, I keep trying to tell you why I did what I did, but you’re not listening to me!” she cried.
“There comes a time when you can’t keep hiding behind excuses, Ellie,” he told her. “If your brother or your dear mother was still here, they’d tell you the same.”
“If my dear brother and mother were still here, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because no one would be trying to force me to marry Ryan just to keep our land!”
“Then perhaps it would’ve been better if your brother was the one who was still here!”
Eloise fell silent. She was shocked beyond reaction and hurt beyond words. Dillion was too angry to regret his words right away, and as much as Eloise knew he was speaking in anger, the damage was done. Suddenly, Eloise felt small and insignificant, and when she heard someone knocking on the door, she was quick to use it as an excuse to leave.
“Eloise, let me answer it!” Dillion hollered as he struggled to catch up to her. “I don’t want you making a fool of yourself any more than you already have!”
Eloise ignored her father and swung the door open before he reached the entry. To her surprise and excitement, it was Wilson. The moment Eloise saw him, every emotion she’d felt since leaving his side that afternoon poured down her face in the form of gushing tears.
“Will,” she said through her sobbing, throwing her arms around him.
“Oh, my dear, what’s happened?” he said, holding her close.
“Sorry, I’m happy to see you – but Daddy has said that he thinks it would’ve been better if I’d been the one to die instead of Edison,” Eloise wailed.
“Come now, that’s not what I said!” Dillion retorted, coming to stand dangerously close to Wilson. “Now, if you would, my boy, step away from my daughter.”
“I’m not here to cause trouble.” Wilson raised both hands. “I just wanted to stop by before I left because I had some unfinished business with you, sir.”
“Oh, our business is quite finished,” Dillion informed him. “You’ve sullied my daughter’s honor, and now your back to make your demands, is it? Well, I can’t be bought, and I won’t negotiate your terms. I think it would rather be best if you leave my property at once and do not return.”
“Sir, I know you’ve heard things about me, and I do not pretend that there is no truth to any of it,” Wilson said. “For one, I have the –”
“I don’t care why you’re here!” Dillion yelled. “I suggest you get off my property immediately.”
“Daddy –” Eloise said.
“No, Eloise! You do not get to speak, either,” her father said. “You’ve already made it quite plain that you value this man, in all his flaws, above all else. For a reason I have yet to understand, you insist on creating conflict in this household, and it ends now! Say good night to Wilson, and then go to sleep!”
Wilson tapped Eloise on the shoulder and waved a document in the air. Eloise recognized it immediately as the land deed. Excited and confused, she snatched the document and ran after her father, who had already made his way down the hall.
“Daddy, wait,” she called.
“What is it now, Eloise?” he demanded angrily.
“Daddy, please – look! Wilson’s brought us the deed to our land. This is exactly what we needed – now I don’t need to marry Ryan to keep the land. You can keep it as long as you want, and then I have time to wait and can marry whoever I want! Isn’t this wonderful?”
“Wilson can shine his shoes with that piece of paper, for all I care,” Dillion replied, swatting the paper out of Eloise’s hand and continuing to walk away.
Eloise choked back her tears. As she picked the deed up off the ground, she heard Wilson come to stand behin
d her. She turned around and threw herself into his waiting arms, not sure what else she could do to win back her father’s respect.
“He’s just angry,” Wilson assured her, rubbing her back. “He’ll calm down and come to see reason again.”
“I don’t think so,” Eloise sobbed. “He’s right, you know? I’ve caused a lot of problems for him, and I’ve acted like a child about such important things! I was just scared, and I didn’t know what to do. And now, he won’t even hear me. It’s only natural that he should be angry with me.”
“I know it’s not what you want me to say, but in some ways, you were still a child, even yesterday,” Wilson said gently. “You were a very tough spirit to harness, and I’m sure it made your transition into adulthood just that much harder to manage by himself. I was there when Dillion was still trying to figure out how to reach you, even as a child, and I watched Edison be so much better at it than he was.
“I don’t think he meant to say that he wished Edison were here in your place, I think he meant to say that he wished Edison were here to help him reach you. He has to be very worried that he’ll say or do the wrong thing and lose you like he did Edison... It may be natural for him to be angry, but what is more natural is that he’s angry because he loves you and he doesn’t know how to protect you.”
“He always loved Edison more than me,” Eloise grumbled.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Wilson told her. “Edison spent more time with your father than you did, but it was his choice more than your father’s. I don’t think Edison ever liked being a child. He was all but the exact opposite of you, wasn’t he? Uptight, disciplined, calm...
“But then, Dillion wouldn’t have become so angry with me if he wasn’t desperate to protect you. I’d even venture to say that’s why he prefers Ryan to me. Ryan and Edison had a more practical method to calming your fire, but I always believed your fire wasn’t something that needed to be snuffed out. I think it terrifies him to see you with someone who refuses to snuff it out. But only because he loves you, and he wants you to be safe. He just doesn’t know how to handle it himself.”
“But he’s worried about something that didn’t happen!” she cried. “How can I convince him that nothing happened between us if he won’t even listen to me long enough for me to explain?”
“There will come a time that he’ll listen to the both of us,” said Wilson reassuringly. “And do you know how I know?”
“How do you know? And how did you get the deed back?” Eloise said.
“Ah, right!” He pulled a stack of deeds out of his pocket. “Well, the first thing I was going to say is because he loves you – your father’s going to calm down and see reason again because he loves you – and also because he’s so much like you, he has to get curious to know what you believe happened eventually.
“As for these... After you left, I took a detour and hid in the bushes near the jail. I thought I should at least try to get this one deed back for you. I made myself known to Lawson and snuck back into the jail after the mob had moved their search elsewhere. When I got there, Lawson was looking through these.”
“You got a chance to talk to him again?” Eloise asked. “Any news?”
“Yes, some of it very important, which is another reason I wanted to stop here before I left. But it’s not your deed, it’s another one that I thought you might like to know about,” Wilson said. “So, I thought we should have a conversation about it – preferably with your father present – because the issue with it is kind of a major and personal matter for him.”
“It’s a personal matter for whom, you say?” Ryan interjected then, from where he stood in the doorway.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Ah, Ryan!” Wilson said, lifting his hand for a handshake. “I did not hear you come in...”
“Clearly,” Ryan said, glaring at him and ignoring his hand.
Ryan’s clothes were sticking to him from the amount of sweat caked onto his body, and he smelled strongly of campfire smoke. It made Eloise nervous, but what was worse was the mad look in his eye. After seeing Ryan’s behavior today, she wasn’t sure if she should fear more for Wilson or herself.
Wilson, however, walked right up to Ryan, smiled casually, and got as much into Ryan’s personal space as he possibly could.
“What’s with the work clothes, buddy?” Wilson asked, patting Ryan on the shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” Ryan shouted, smacking Wilson’s hand away.
Wilson smirked and stepped away ever so slightly, just enough to still irritate Ryan but not enough to arouse a conflict. From here, Wilson looked Ryan up and down, plugged his nose, and opened his mouth as if preparing to comment on the intensity of Ryan’s stench.
“Stop it!” Ryan shoved Wilson into the wall.
“Whoa there, buddy,” Wilson cautioned, taking a full step away. “Just trying to catch up with my old pal!”
“How dare you come here after what you’ve done to this family!” Ryan shrieked. “You have no right to be here, and you have no right to call me a friend after what you’ve done!”
“I haven’t done wrong to this family, Ryan.” Wilson rolled his eyes. “Dillion’s too angry to hear me out at present, but Deputy Wilkens let me go because he believes that there’s more to the story. And I know – for a fact – that I did not do what they say I did.”
“Yeah? Then why didn’t you tell them you had their land deed?” Ryan demanded. “You’ve been here long enough.”
“Not that I have to explain myself to you, but I only agreed to chance it with the land deeds in that game because I saw Dillion’s name written on one of them. It said he was disputing the claim, and I only tried to win them so he wouldn’t have to do that... besides, the sheriff was dumb enough to add property that wasn’t his to the pot, anyway. That was all his fault.”
“It’s always someone else’s fault with you,” snarled Ryan. “You’re always talking about winning this and winning that, but you never take responsibility for your actions when it comes down to it. Half the time, winning those things requires you to get someone else hurt. But you don’t really care about anyone but yourself. I see you for what you really are.”
“And what actions have I failed to take responsibility for?” Wilson asked him. “Winning?”
“You know, it would be better for everybody if you just left,” Ryan continued, as if Wilson hadn’t spoken. “In fact, it would’ve been the best thing you could’ve done for everyone – including Ellie - if you never came back in the first place. Then you wouldn’t have gotten the chance to hurt Ellie’s honor.”
“He did no such thing!” Eloise yelled, hints of distress in her voice. “I never did anything to tarnish my honor, and it really, truly hurts me that you and Daddy both think I did. And Wilson has been nothing but a gentleman. It’s like I said before, he’s just trying to help us.”
“He’s only ever wanted to help himself. Now, Wilson, if you will – here is the door.” Ryan stepped out of the way. “The deputy may have dismissed you at first, but he did tell you not to leave town, and since you disappeared so suddenly he’s reissued the warrant. You can either leave this property immediately, or I will come back with the deputy and whomever else I find involved in the manhunt.”
Eloise and Wilson remained silent. This person standing before them looked like Ryan, but he didn’t sound anything like their old friend. The sheer terror of the unknown prevented them from wanting to test him. Instead, they looked at each other, back at Ryan, and then back at each other.
As they gazed into each other’s eyes, there was almost an unspoken conversation, as if they both agreed that the best decision was to do what he asked. Dillion was far too upset to see reason, and starting an argument with Ryan in his house would only add to his frustration. Not to mention, they both were growing suspicious of what Ryan might be capable of.
