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He had taken the woman who turned away when dignity required it, stayed when he asked, prayed when he could not, and told him the truth when everyone else was too afraid to breathe wrong near him, and he had offered her a place in his life as if she were a solution.
Useful.
That was the word she had used before. Her family had grown used to her usefulness.
He had done the same before he even knew the shape of her heart.
A sound escaped him, low and furious.
He grabbed at the blanket with his left hand and yanked. It did nothing. He wanted to throw the cup, the towel, the table, himself. He wanted his body back so he could pace the room until sense returned. He wanted to ride hard through rain and leave his shame somewhere out by the south crossing.
He could do none of it.
The door opened again.
“Get out,” he snapped.
“It’s me,” Bass said.
“Then get out louder.”
Bass stepped in and shut the door behind him. “That sounds like a no.”
Jesse kept his face to the wall.
The chair made a scraping sound as Bass sat in it. It was the chair Eden had vacated.
That made Jesse angrier.
“Don’t sit there.”
Bass looked down at the chair. “This chair offends you?”
“Yes.”
Bass was quiet a moment. “Miss Whitcomb left the clinic.”
Jesse’s fingers tightened in the blanket.
“She had her shawl on,” Bass continued. “Emily went after her. Carolina too.”
Jesse said nothing.
“What did you do?”
Jesse closed his eye.
There it was. Bass, seeing through walls as usual.
“Nothing.”
“That lie wouldn’t fool Simon, and he once spent ten minutes looking for spectacles on his own face.”
“Leave it.”
“No.”
Jesse turned his head enough to glare at him. Pain sparked behind his eye. “I said leave it.”
