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Theodore smiled tentatively, but warmly. “I agree.” He placed his hat, now twisted and wrinkled, back on his head, which he dipped briefly. “I’m at your service the next time you’re in Minnesota.”

And he was gone.

Maggie stood, a hand at her stomach.

It was a shame, in a way, that she was unlikely to ever be in Minnesota again.

Matthew Bridgers—Bridgers to his friends, to differentiate him from the glut of Matthews in his small hometown in Indiana—had perfected the expression of sincere remorse. He was presenting it to Maggie now, his grey eyes impossibly large and taking up most of his boyish face. All that was missing was a slight lip tremor to complete the look of pathetic regret. “I know we said the widow was the last one for the night, Mags, but he looked so sad.” The grey eyes blinked rapidly, doe-like, and Maggie flattened her lips into a straight line.

“Bridgers, please stop with the theatrics. I just want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.” She slumped further into her chair, a small tin of brandy sloshing around in her hand. She lifted her free one to the bridge of her nose, pinching. She knew it wouldn’t help the headache, but it seemed like the right thing to do, in an annoyingly performative way. “I was caught completely off-guard. I had to refuse his payment.”

“What? Why?” Tom stood behind Bridgers, one hand on his shoulder. “Surely that’s an overreaction. He seemed fine when he left the tent.”

“That’s because I lied to him!”

Bridgers dropped his look of angelic repentance. “You lie to all of them, Maggie.”

Maggie, unappreciative of this fact being wielded like a weapon against her, downed her brandy in one fiery gulp. “He wanted to contact his dead wife. His dead wife,” she repeated at the skeptical looks on the men’s faces. “Who died during childbirth.” Tom recoiled; even Bridgers looked slightly guilty. “I know that I’ve been a bit slippery lately, but I don’t have much more of this in me.” She clanked the tin onto the small, abused table beside her uncomfortable chair (who knew one could craft a chair entirely out of wood knots?) and released what she hoped was a lady-like sigh. She didn’t know why she bothered; these two men were not ones to be swayed by anything distinctly feminine. “I’m tired. And you’re tired. It’s been years of this, and I don’t want to do it anymore.” There was more to it than that, of course; they all knew what had happened, even if they never talked about it.

Their type of people—they called themselves performers, everyone else called them con artists—had a limit. The years of traveling around, never visiting the same place twice without a span of three years passing, wore down even the shiniest of pennies. Maggie’s copper had tarnished a while ago.

“Right,” Tom said, letting go of Bridgers’ shoulder and crossing his arms across his chest. “About that.” If she didn’t know him so well, he might cut an imposing figure. Thomas Murray was a bull of a man, over six feet tall with russet-brown hair he kept at a severe crop. Before they had gone into business together, he had been a dockworker on the east coast and, while his unreasonable muscles had shrunk since those days, he was still larger than most men in whatever room he happened to be occupying. When he wished to actively frighten customers, he had a collection of false scars he affixed to various parts of his face. Children, with their lack of self-preservation instincts, delighted in asking him how he acquired them, and he delighted in making up stories. His favorite was “fighting off a leviathan,” which Maggie always found both preposterous and a bit blasphemous.

“Well, we have been discussing it,”—Bridgers jerked his chin towards Tom, who nodded solemnly—“and we don’t disagree. It’s been, what, Tom, six years of this?”

“Eleven.”

“Eleven! It hasn’t been eleven. Eight maybe.”

“It’s been eleven years, Bridge.”

Bridgers, apparently unwilling to meditate on this, barreled on. “We have decided that we think you’re correct; perhaps this particular line of work has run its course for us.” He tapped on his knee, a sign Maggie recognized as I am carefully choosing my next words. “Tom and I are getting a bit long in the tooth for the con game, Mags.” He flashed a smile.

Warily, Maggie eyed him. Bridgers was shorter than Tom by at least six inches, a lanky and slim scarecrow of a man with wild mahogany hair that always stuck comically out from any hat he tried to wear. Like smoke escaping a candle snuffer, as Tom referred to it.

“And what’s your plan, then?” she asked. “How do you plan to continue surviving?”

“Well,” Bridgers said, settling back in his chair. “We hadn’t quite gotten that far, have we, Tom? But we figure we’re all terribly clever people, and resourceful to boot. So, we shouldn’t have much trouble finding something to keep us in a classy environment.”

On cue, all three looked around the room. It was hardly the worst of their non-stop stream of dwellings, but it was a far cry from luxury. Clean, yes, as much as ancient wood and stone could be, and Maggie made sure to keep their linens and clothes folded and organized as diligently as the boys made sure the food was sealed away, limiting pests. This place had held their record for fewest mouse droppings found every morning, a weak victory.

“Let’s just say,” Tom mused, “that we are going to put the wheels in motion and find a nice place to settle down.” His lips twitched. “Assuming you want to come with us, of course.”

The idea of leaving these men sent a stab of panic through her, and she straightened in her chair. “Of course I want to. I can, can’t I?” She flicked her gaze between them, at the similar looks of befuddlement on their faces.

“Of course, dove,” Bridgers said, smiling. “How could we ever leave you behind? Why, Tom doesn’t know how to fold a tea cloth, and I forget what a tea cloth even is.”

“Tea cloths are not necessary for survival,” Tom murmured, stealing Bridgers’ cup of brandy from him and taking a healthy sip.

“Anyway,” Bridgers continued, unflappable, “we adore you. You know that.”

The brandy was seeping into her like water on a ready field; her eyes grew heavy as a pleasant calm wrapped itself around her. “I adore you both, too.” She yawned. “But I’d love you more if you could fold the towels.”

Chapter

Two

Searching the papers for rooms to rent sent a shock of terror and longing through her. Though the concept of permanence felt foreign now, her childhood had been an exercise in stability until the death of her mother sent things into a tailspin. After her father had followed a few years later, she briefly spent time with an aging great-aunt who barely tolerated her. The only constant in her life since she was seventeen had been the boys, who had swept her under their wings when she was snappish and guarded as a stray dog. They had worked to undo the knots her childhood had left her in; they were still unravelling some of the more tangled bits.