Something moved in the darkness, out near where the water drill sat, paused for the night. Lara’s heart jumped into her throat. It was a man, that much was clear from his silhouette. Whoever it was stopped too, and she could feel his eyes on her.
And she knew it was him.
She moved down the steps, drawing her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “What are you doing out here?” she asked Mr. King.
“I could ask you the same.” He didn’t wear a hat, and in the darkness, she could just make out the way his hair hung over his forehead. He pushed it aside, his eyes on her.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said truthfully.
“Me either.”
They stood in silence for a moment, both looking at the hulking shape of the water drill.
Lara swallowed, and then put her gravest fear into words. “What if it doesn’t find water?”
“It will,” he said.
She looked up at him. “How can you be so certain?”
He shrugged. “It’s the only thing I have to hold on to.”
“It isn’t the only thing.” She let the words linger in the air as she ran the toe of her half-done-up boot over the ground.You have me. That was too much to say aloud, too forward, too . . .everything. Instead, she added, “Arlen and George have come to depend upon you.”
“I’m not part of this family, Lara,” he said, and shivers raced up her spine at his insistent use of her given name. “If there are too many mouths to feed, I’m the first to go.”
Lara pressed her lips together. The thought of him leaving was impossible. “They’ll find water.”
She could feel his eyes on her, and when she looked up, he was smiling. “See, that’s better, right?” he asked. “Doesn’t that make you feel better? It sure does for me.”
Lara returned his smile. “When Belle and I came here, there was plenty of water. Everything was green and the fall was brilliant. During winter, there was plenty of snow. And then . . .” She shrugged. “It dried up.”
“Why didn’t you go back?” he asked. “To your parents? Surely that would have been easier than sticking it out here.”
“It’s . . . well.” Lara shifted and pretended to adjust her shawl. “My opportunities in Ohio were limited.”
“Opportunities?”
“Marriage,” she said, cringing a little at her bluntness. But it was the truth. “No one much cared to marry the girl who asked too many questions.”
“Only questions?”
When she looked up at Mr. King, he was still smiling at her. He knew. He might not know exactly how much trouble she’d found herself in, rifling through one fellow’s private papers and discussing another’s business affairs with a newspaperman, but heknew.
And could she dare think that he liked it?
“No,” she said, and left it at that.
His smile grew even wider. “Surely your sister wasn’t so . . . forthright in investigating her suitors?”
Lara laughed. Belle wouldneverconsider peeking in man’s satchel. “No, certainly not. But I fear my actions as the older sister reflected upon her too. And so we both came here, somewhere no one knew us, in the hopes of starting again.”
She didn’t need to add that it hadn’t worked out so well for either of them, considering neither had found herself married. The drought had ruined all of that, and most of the eligible men had fled town.
“It’s not any easier back home. Papa is struggling, and they have our little brothers to feed. If Belle and I returned, it would make it that much harder on them,” she said.
Mr. King nodded. “Times are hard everywhere.”
“Why couldn’t you sleep, Mr. King?”
