There was an eerie roar in the distance. I jolted—but realized the storm wasn’t in my own time. An apparition engulfed the terrain, a dark shadow swallowing fields, golden wheat melting into onyx-black sand. The homesteading woman studied the horizon, the line of her mouth taut, rawboned fingers rubbing her collarbone. Behind her, a charcoal cloud bulged, broader than a thousand barns, rising half the height of the sky. A moment of terror as she sighted the storm. Then she picked up her skirts, and she ran.
The vision vanished with a snap. Before me, an olive haze spilled from the heavens and blurred over the landscape like pickle-hued watercolors puddling across the sky. It smelt of earth, of centuries and stories and the deep of the underneath.
Tornado weather.
My land, and the women of generations past and future, must be cautioning me. There wasn’t time to gallop home—Cricket and I needed inside, now. With a crack, stones fell from the sky and clattered against the ground. Icy hail battered my shoulders and glistened in the grass like globes of opalescent smoke. We fled the prairie into the wildwood the moment a downpour loosed across the earth. Rain swamped my eyes and sank into my mouth. It tasted of salt and frenzy. As we galloped over broken walnuts, voices lodged in a rumble of wind, the raspy tenor of the earth telling me again her story.Seasons pass, years rush on by.
We burst from the forest and pummeled downhill, Cricket’s black ankles skidding in the surface water. Across the meadow, Stot’s cheery cornflower blue shack waited, smoke coiling from the chimney. The barn door was open, a black cavern in the red arch of barn. Stot tugged a plow inside, his shirt slick with rainwater. His hat tipped skyward—he sighted me. And then he raced forward, mud splashing up to ink his gray trousers.
Chapter Forty-Five
Icrouched before the woodfire. Stot placed a blanket on my shoulders, his hands resting one breath. His shack was cozy, colorful afghans tossed all over, One Eye lounging before the blaze, a knotted rug the hues of sunset warming his oak floor. I ran a hand along One Eye’s back and held off a shiver, the prophetic vision of the homesteader haunting the edge of my thoughts. It was fantastical, I couldn’t explain it, but I recognized her. Not because she kept arriving on my land, but because Irememberedher. The embers crackled; the air scented of smoke and storm.
I was much obliged that the voices urged me to take cover. As we led Cricket to a stall, Stot and I hollered over the wind about the cyclone. His cellar wasn’t large enough for us both, so we’d wait out the thundershaker aboveground.
I rubbed my face, One Eye draping his body over my boots. “I could—” I wanted to check on my animals, but my horses should be safe in the barn and my cows should instinctively migrate to the lowland. Stot removed his pocket watch and placed it on the side table with a clack. Then he lowered beside me.
“Your animals ought to be fine.” His hand swept my jawline, brushing back a loosed curl. “I’ll ride on over, after the cyclone passes, check on them.”
I nodded. A soup gurgled on the stovetop, scenting of spice and potatoes. I went to the window, pulling aside the starchy lace curtain to check the sky. Just the swell of rain clouds and the shatter of storm. I fidgeted with the hoop of my key, the necklace now resting below my collarbone. As he moved about making tea, Stot glanced at my fingers, a faint gentling beside his eyes. He handed me a cobalt flow-blue teacup. I sipped, chamomile sweetened with honey, and looked out the window, the ink of night pouring over his land, a scrawl of lightning to the south. Stot stood behind me, his chest warm against my back. He threaded an arm across my shoulders and tucked me against him, his shirt smelling of evergreens. Thunder rattled the walls. I turned, the bristly blanket snagging on his soft flannel, the firelight turning his eyes hazel.
He was nothing like anyone I’d met before. Others seemed a gesso haze when Stot was full color and texture. I scraped my nails up his nape and touched my lips to the underside of his jaw. He slid his palm along my neck and kissed me, slow and deep. A moment, warmth from the fire flushing my cheeks, then I tugged up his shirt, reached for his trouser button. He stepped back, the hollows of his cheeks deepening. “Are you sure you want this?”
“I think?”
“You know I want you.” Under my blanket, he ran a hand over my hip, brushed the side of my breast. “But I want us to be a choice you can’t walk away from. One that you choose because it’s all the options.”
There were unending options in life, unending people and places and possibilities. I could have stayed in Kansas, I could have fled. That first day in the creek, I could have been kind to him, I could have argued. I could have done so many things. How could the future be just one option? The possibilities seemed endless. But he hadn’t said one option, he’d said all the options.
“All the options?”
“When I look forward,” he said, “I see many likelihoods, but all of them include you beside me.”
The rainstorm rumbled, wind roaring across the prairie. My pulse hammered my throat. His hair was damp, brushed back from his widow’s peak. He asked, “Do you see me in any of your possibilities?”
“Yes.” I spoke instinctively—of course I saw him in my future.
He held my hand, rubbed his thumb across my knuckle. “I want a romance with you, but I would like that to be when you’ve chosen it, not only something that happens in passion, in secret, in the dark.”
I wanted his body on mine. I yearned for those hidden, unlit places—but there was nothing casual or haphazard about Stot. He was as traditional as he was turbulent. Honor and vows mattered to him. Of course I wanted a relationship with him—but marriage wasn’t something decided in passion: It was something rational, something chosen. And watching my parents, I’d seen that marriage wasn’t something chosen once, but daily.
“What about your wife?” I asked. “You never told me her name.”
“Emily,” he said. “My daughter would’ve been Elizabeth, like Emily’s ma.”
I swallowed. “Would you tell me about them?”
“Not now,” he said. “Someday.”
He sat on the couch, settled me across his lap, and wrapped the blanket around our shoulders. “But I reckon you’re wondering, as I said marrying again would dishonor her.”
“You did say that.”
“I did, didn’t I?” He rubbed his scruff. He shifted his weight, drawing me closer. “I don’t think I understood what life could be. Now I can’t figure how a relationship with you, something that feels as inevitable as breathing, would dishonor her. Emily’s gone, and though I’ll always miss her, the love I have for her memory doesn’t brush up to what I feel for you.”
I placed my hand on his jaw, tipped his gaze to mine. “I’m sorry you lost them.”
He studied me, flames pattering across the hollows of his cheekbones. He folded my hand into his, pressed his lips to my knuckles. “Thank you.”
