Page 157 of The Widow and the Wanted

“I see,” he says. “I was passing through Fort Gibson to return home. I thought I could make sense of it somehow if I could only see it with my own eyes.”

“Make sense of what?”

He sighs, as if I’ve backed him into a corner. “This arrangement.” His expression sours, as if the word has an unpleasant taste.

Boone laughs.

“Is something humorous?” Alfred asks.

Boone stays silent. I see the tension in his shoulders, the veins and sinews in his forearms as he quietly tightens his fists.

“You were offered a position, Okee,” he says. “A lawful one. Meaningful work. Work suited to your education. Your abilities. I made inquiries on your behalf.”

“I know.”

“You were meant to come to Okmulgee.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Behind him, the Wild Card sign creaks in the late-summer wind. Next door, the Gemini is quiet in the afternoon heat, sleeping off the night before. Inside the shop, Boone stands very still.

I think of spring. Of the letter I did not write. Of the road to Okmulgee opening once the mud dried and the creeks lowered. Of the respectable position waiting like a clean, freshly spun noose around my throat.

“I did not come,” I say, “because you made the terms plain.”

Father’s hand tightens on the head of his cane. “I offered you work.”

“You asked me to abandon Boone.”

I feel Boone staring at me now, but I do not look away from my father. The shop seems to narrow around the words.

Father’s expression draws tight, a faint disgust moving across his face. “Enough⁠—”

“No. You came here to understand, so understand this. Boone is not a habit to outgrow. He is not a wartime attachment. He has stood beside me through every low, lawless, godforsaken season of my life, and I love him.”

“Perhaps he was useful to you in war,” Father says, almost pleading. “I understand that. But he is not your equal, son. You do not repay a man by lowering yourself to him.”

“Careful,” I warn him. My blood pumps molten hot, hot enough to consume me if I let it. I cannot let him see me falter.

But he presses on. “He’s catered to your appetites and you have mistaken it for love.”

I don’t miss Boone’s faint wince, an almost imperceptible drop of his head, as if a part of him always feared this could be true.

That is what does it.

“What appetites, Father?”

“Do not play the fool.”

“Say it.”

A flush works beneath his beard. “Sodomy,” he says at last, low and clipped. “Buggery. Infamous conduct. Choose the term you prefer. The law has several.”

“I know the law.”

“Then you admit it.”