Page 161 of The Widow and the Wanted

Lula

Three Forks will just have to tend to their own ailments this morning. I flip the sign in the shop window from OPEN to CLOSED and help Mr. Collins toward the stairs.

Not because I am feeling charitable enough to invite judgment into my parlor, or because I enjoy inviting Okee and Boone’s contempt, but because the man is swaying on his feet, muddy from collar to cuff, and half the street has already slowed to stare through my windows. Momma has offered her best laudanum, and until it arrives, Mr. Collins needs a chair, a closed door, and fewer witnesses to his pride losing its battle with pain.

Our rooms above Wild Card Apothecary are humble, but they are ours. At the top of the stairs, just beyond our private landing, sits a main room that serves as a parlor, dining room, and office in a room barely large enough to support such ambition. A cinnamon broom at the entrance offers a pleasant greeting. Three small windows overlook the street below, framed by floral chintz curtains. The wood plank floors are creaky but clean.

Mr. Collins shuffles inside, staring at every domestic detail with curiosity, as if he were expecting Gomorrah but wandered into his grandmother’s sewing room instead.

His gaze moves over the shelves Okee mounted on the far wall, where our trinkets sit neatly organized and freshly dusted—a tintype of the three of us, a set of carved horses Boone whittled, a blue glass bottle catching the morning light.

An ornate cast-iron stove sits in one corner near a velvet settee, worn on the arms from leaning with a book or cup of tea. A pair of Boone’s boots are shoved underneath.

Then Mr. Collins’s attention settles on the open bedroom door, where our room is visible in pieces: the low ceiling, the washstand, the blue-and-cream quilt I finished in June.

Ordinary, all of it, except for the bed.

Two full mattresses sit pushed together on one broad pine frame Boone built himself. The modest room has little space for much else, save a clothes chest and a trunk at the footboard.

Mr. Collins stops when he sees it.

There is only one bed. I imagine the arithmetic troubles him.

He clears his throat and looks away.

I hook my foot around the leg of the cane-bottom chair and drag it out from the table.

“There,” I say. “A chair I don’t mind if you muck up.”

His mouth tightens, but pain has already done its work. He lowers himself into the seat with one hand braced on the table and the other gripping his cane. Mud flakes from the hem of his coat onto my clean floorboards.

Boone remains near the landing, arms folded, jaw set hard enough to crack walnuts. Okee stands by the shelves he mounted himself, so still he might be another rifle hung on the wall. Only his hand moves, fingers curling once against the edge of the wood.

No one speaks.

Below us, the shop bell gives a bright little ring.

Momma’s voice rises from the shop. “Lula?”

I step to the landing before she can come up calling worse. “Up here.”

Her skirts whisper against the stairs. A moment later she appears with a small brown bottle in hand. Pearl follows behind carrying a glass of water.

Goldie pauses at the top, taking in Mr. Collins, the mud on my floor, Boone at the landing, and Okee standing silent by the shelves.

Her eyes flick once toward the open bedroom door. Then back to me.

“Laudanum,” she says, and places the bottle in my hand.

“Thank you.”

Pearl gives me the water and retreats half a step, wisely saying nothing.

I measure a dose into the glass. Mr. Collins watches the dark drops spread through the water as though he might object, but another twist of pain grips him before pride can find its feet. He takes the glass with a trembling hand when I offer it.

“Thank you,” he says, resting both hands over the head of his cane. The laudanum will need a few minutes. Until then, we are all trapped with one another and the life he has seen too much of to pretend it is not real.

“May I?” I offer, my hands hovering just over his spine.