M
eredith
and Erva rushed through the crowded train’s station, trying to find where to buy the tickets. They’d wasted hours wandering through Great Falls, asking whether anyone had seen a tall, dark, handsome sheriff from Plateau. They’d given up for the day and settled into their quarters at the hotel and were having a beer to many stares of the men in the hotel’s bar, when they’d asked a barkeep about Jake’s whereabouts. The barkeep had been shooed away in a flurry by the hotel’s manager.
He’d smeared a smile into place that made Meredith think creep, then proffered to help in anyway possible with an extended palm. Erva understood the gesture faster than Meredith and had given him a small pile of the large paper money of the period. He stuffed it into his pocket.
“Mr. Otus Barth, at your service ladies. And, yes, I know where your sheriff is.” He extended his hand once more.
Erva rolled her eyes, but gave him more money, even though Coyote softly growled under the table they sat in the darkly-lit bar.
“He left,” Mr. Barth said with a wide and disgusting smile, while he patted the money in another pocket of his waistcoat. “He’s probably nearing the town of Helena by now on the train. On his way to Butte.”
He held his hand out again.
“Oh for goodness’s sake.” Meredith tried to argue against continuing to bribe the manager, when Erva placed more money in the man’s palm.
Mr. Barth gave Erva a particularly leering smile then, moseying just a little closer to the blonde. “Now that the lady has out paid all her contenders, I can honestly say there was another man asking for information about your sheriff. Actually, he was asking for misinformation. He paid me to tell your sheriff that he’d left on a previous train. When in fact he wanted to follow the sheriff himself. For another pretty price, I can tell you the man’s name.”
“It was Mr. Bruisner,” Erva said coldly.
Mr. Barth’s dark bushy brows drew up. “Intelligent and rich, you are everything a man desires.”
Erva gave him a wide smile, almost a little flirty too. “And I can castrate a man in less than twelve seconds, if need be. I truly am everything a man desires, aren’t I, Meredith?”
Meredith smiled herself, especially as Mr. Barth straightened and swallowed noticeably.
“What language,” Mr. Barth protested.
But it was difficult for Meredith to keep her grin, when realizing Jake had already left on a train with Mr. Bruisner hot on his heels rather than the other way around.
Back in the train station, even though it was already dark, Erva somehow found the office for purchasing tickets and, apparently having all the money in the world, paid for one of the soonest train rides, while Meredith worried she might throw up. The cacophony from the crowd at the station didn’t help, seeming to push into her roiling stomach. God, Jake had better be okay.
They had already compensated a livery stable for the horses to stay for a couple weeks, thanks to Erva thinking of...well, everything.
Erva gave Meredith her ticket, and she couldn’t help herself, but hugged Erva quickly, while trying to stave off any tears in front of a large horde of what seemed to be almost all men, probably miners, looking for jobs in Butte, the city of copper.
“It’ll be all right,” Erva whispered loudly, trying to be heard above the baritone buzz of the mob.
Meredith nodded and had to swallow more bile down, trying not to grimace in the process. As she wrapped her arms around herself, she thought of Jake for the millionth time. Granted, being with Erva had settled her nerves, but now all she thought about was the mistakes she had made, and now the mistakes she’d made with Jake.
They’d had sex too soon, hardly knowing each other. But she couldn’t do much about that, the damage was done. Or—the odd thought flittered through her mind—what if it hadn’t been a mistake? What if the only mistake she’d made was telling him she never wanted to see him again—all melodramatic like an idiot?
Somehow they boarded the train in a blur. Someone had told Erva she couldn’t board her dog. Erva had nodded and turned, pretending to scold Coyote into staying on the dock of the train station when she’d actually covered him with her skirts. Inside their first-class compartment, all to themselves, Erva shook out her blue dress. Her dog jumped up onto a red-velvet seat, appearing to have a wide smile.
Erva shook her finger at him. “Don’t tell Will you were under my skirts.”
Coyote nipped at her finger but missed.
Meredith sat close to the dog, needing his ever-present tranquility. Once she began to stroke around his ears, he settled closer, his head resting on her lap. Erva gracefully folded unto the bench seat across from her with an uneasy smile. Almost as soon as they sat, the train rocked into action, pushing southward and picking up speed quickly. The clacking of the iron wheels running over the iron bars made Meredith want to cringe, as if the rhythmic sound was more akin to nails running along a chalkboard.
“We’ll find him,” Erva said reassuringly.
Meredith nodded, but couldn’t look at Erva then. She feared too much to see her own worry reflected.
The train’s car seemed to be too large, even with the two red-velvet bench seats and the latched-tightly-to-the-wall small beds on top of the seats. There was also a slender storage space to squeeze all their saddlebags into. But it was too big of a chamber, too wide. The opposite of claustrophobia. Nothing was crushing in on Meredith. But it might not be true for Jake.
“So tell me more about this Irish fella of yours,” Erva said through Meredith’s turmoil.
She shrugged. “I barely know him. He’s sweet though. I’ve never met a man that was as sweet as Jake. That is, until I met Mr. Coyote here. Yes, I did. Yes, I did.” She ruffled Coyote’s fur along his jaw, and the dog thumped one of his back legs.
Erva chuckled. “You two really hit it off.”
Meredith shrugged once more, paying attention to petting Coyote. “He doesn’t judge me.”
“Jake didn’t judge you either?”
“He didn’t know me. I never told him what I had done in my past life. So he couldn’t judge me.”
She startled a bit when she felt through her skirts Erva squeeze one of her knees. Looking up, Erva’s warm amber-brown eyes had grown wide with concern.
While straightening and getting comfortable back in her seat, Erva said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I talked to Will about you. Oh, I couldn’t talk much. He had to study. But I told him about David.”
Meredith maybe should have bristled at being a topic of the loving couple’s discussions. But she didn’t. She was curious more than anything else.
“Commitmentphobia is a word thrown around a lot about guys like David. But Will isn’t convinced it’s a real phobia. Although, he did state he wasn’t sure and thought about researching it a little more.”
Erva spoke with a lot of pride about Will’s knowledge, and as a psychiatrist and neurologist, he would have a pretty good idea of phobias. It was wonderful to see her friend filled with admiration for her husband. Though it stung a little. Luckily, not as much as it once hurt, filling Meredith with so much envy she worried she’d grit her teeth so hard she’d turn them into pebbles. Now, it stung because she might have had a chance with Jake, but out of panic she’d thrown it away.
“Fear is an interesting motivator,” Erva said, making Meredith wonder if she’d somehow peeked inside her brain. But she continued. “Especially so in relationships. See, the fact is Meredith, I don’t judge you either. I get it. After I talked to you, I came home and talked to Will and researched a bit about commitmentphobics, or whatever they want to be called, and, honestly, I would have gone bat shit crazy if I had been in a relationship with David. One minute he’s telling you how much he loves you and needs you, the next he can’t push you away fast enough.”
Meredith straightened, holding Coyote a little closer, feeling her heart slam into her ribs. “Yes. I never knew what to believe. Sometimes, he acted so loving and kind. He’d say these romantic things. Then, I’d trust him once more. And—wham!—he’d push me away again. But after a few years, you’d think I’d learn the pattern. And sometimes I would. I’d tell him I had to end things, but then...he’d say something, do something to convince me to trust him, to give him another chance. I was such a sucker. So stupid.”
Coyote growled.
“Yeah, stop talking that way about my friend,” Erva said, her blonde brows puckering.
Meredith eyes pricked with tears. It was incredibly sweet that Erva would call her a friend. Having a hard time finding the right words, she said, “You guys.”
Erva cocked her head a little to the side. “I think you judge yourself a bit too harshly.”
Meredith nodded and resumed petting Coyote, feeling how it comforted her internal wounds every time she’d gently stroke the dog.
“You know,” Erva said, “what I read about these guys, and there’s some women who do it too—anyway, what these commitmentphobics do is manipulative. And their scheming patterns adjust to keep hold of the one they are in a relationship with. So you never would know what David would do next—the way he would con you back. You can’t blame yourself for the things David did.”
“I don’t think I do. Well, not any longer. I do blame David. But I blame me for going crazy in the process. For being cruel to you. For stealing your work. For lying. For—”
Erva held out her palms. “I can’t take any more. I’m sorry, Meredith. But I can’t. I get it. You beat yourself up. I do the same thing. I do it because I’m a doormat more often than I’d like to be.”
Meredith shook her head. “You told a man not too long ago you’d castrate him.”
Erva giggled. “Yeah, I’m fine with men. With women...I haven’t had a single female friend in my life, except now I have Fleur and you. I’ve tried over the years to make a girl friend, because I’ve longed for something just like this, like what we have at this moment. I want to talk about Will with someone. I want to bounce ideas off a woman to help me understand him and myself. I have had a best friend for years, my friend Ben. But he’s a guy. And he’s a guy’s guy now with all the working out he does and sports. In high school, he was too skinny and got picked on. But now he’s this super jock, and...God, I’m getting off track. I sound like my mother, running with a tangent in the conversation until I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Meredith leaned over in the boxcar, noticing how it no longer felt too big, and gave her friend’s knee a squeeze. “I think your tangents are perfectly fine. I like knowing more about you. And I’m thrilled you consider me your friend. I want to know more about you and Will. I want to be a good friend to you.”
“And I want to be a good friend to you too.” Erva gave Meredith’s hand a light squeeze of her own.
Then Meredith settled back into her seat, Coyote complaining a bit in the process. “And I’ll be a good friend to you, my puppy. Yes, I will.” She petted down the dog’s back and kissed him on the top of his head. He curled tighter into her, took a giant sigh, then closed his eyes.
“Anyway,” Erva said as she watched the black scenery pass by, very rarely the dark would be broken by a golden lantern glowing in the distance, “what I wanted to say was I understand what happened between you and David. I’m guessing you became so adjusted to the pattern of push and pull from David, you started to do it with Jake.”
“Yes. I think that’s what I did.”
“So, while here on the train, I need to break you from that habit.”
Meredith smiled. “That habit is broken. I mean, I think I’ll always be scared Jake will leave me, especially once he learns what I did. But he deserves to know the truth about me and make up his mind for himself. He doesn’t deserve me pushing him away just because I’m scared. Once I saw him go and not look back—once I heard his horse gallop away—my heart broke in a completely different way. With David, I was always filled with doubt and uncertainty. With Jake, I wasn’t. I
knew
I hadn’t given him a chance. And because I’d thrown away that chance, he’s now getting chased by some asshole who probably was the culprit who stalked me. But—”
“But?”
Meredith took a deep breath. “I don’t know whether this Bruisner guy was really stalking me or not. He was looking at my shower, I think. Not inside my house. At me. Well, Jake thinks he was looking at me, but—”
Erva’s eyes narrowed. “You have a shower?”
Meredith couldn’t help but grin. “I built it myself. It took me months, but I constructed a shower from spare parts and an old boiler I converted into a water heater.”
Erva leaned over and smacked Meredith’s knee gently. “That’s so cool.”
Coyote’s tail wagged in his sleep.
“Thanks,” Meredith whispered. “Jake told me I should patent it.”
“He sounds sweet and smart.”
Meredith beamed. “He is.” Then she shared everything she knew about him, which wasn’t much, but she talked about how young he was, how he had been a lawman before but didn’t like to talk about it, how he missed his family, how he was patient and kind, and apparently a good negotiator since the miners seemed to get along now. She didn’t share her thoughts about Jake while he made love to her, staring down at her as if she were beautiful, as if she were a woman to cherish. He would look straight into her eyes as if he didn’t want to bolt from her the second it was over.