What Once We Loved (47 page)

He pushed her arm back up behind her, pressed himself against her. She could feel the hotness of his breath, the smell of passion mixed with rage stronger than the scent of her fear.

Behind her, her fingers felt for the feather of her hat.

“Yours will be the more engaging death. Oh no, I wont quickly snuff out your life, dear Tipton. A kitten should be played with, teased. I'll simply snuff out your will to live. The world will know about Tipton Kossuth. And Nehemiah Kossuth will be laughed from his campaign. All your hopes shattered. Like puffs to the air.”

When Charles said
puff
he released his hand from her arm just long enough to raise his fingers as though a dandelion fluff had been spun into the wind.

It was enough. Tipton bunched the felt hat until she gripped the hatpin. Her fingers clutched for the brass of the dragonfly rising at the end of the tempered steel shank.

In that moment Tipton knew: She could thrust the shank into his neck and take her brother's life. She could end the years of hoping that the future with him in it would be better. But in that moment she knew too: Charles had let a memory, a false memory, drive him down a lonely, rocky road. She was strong enough to live with what was; not be held hostage to what once she'd loved.

With a strength she'd never known she possessed, she wrenched her arm free, thrusting the shanks pointed end across the finely chiseled face of her only brother.

He bellowed like a mad bull, released her.

“Nehemiah wont care what you say about me. He loves me.”

Charles clutched at his face, blood pouring over his fingers. “You hurt me,” he said. The wound ripped from his ear lobe to his chin.

She squeezed out from beneath him.

He whimpered, “You hurt me. There's blood.”

“If you do one thing to injure Nehemiahs reputation, to even suggest that I am less than his loving wife, I will tell them you confessed to starting the Shasta fire. And that you killed Tyrell. I'll have you sent where every day you'll work your lazy, lethal fingers to a bone.”

“You hurt my face. There'll be a scar,” he said.

Someone knocked on the door, and she yelled, “Come in! Come in!”

Flaubert's eyes scanned the room, the blood, her panting, the hatpin still a weapon in her hand. “Are you all right? Is this some play you are rehearsing without telling me?”

“My brother,” she introduced, her breathing rapid as a hunted deer. “He's just done a scene where he confessed to arson and murder. But his plot to kill me has been permanently upstaged.”

19

The sound of her own laughter enriched her. Ruth skimmed leaves from the water barrel and filled the bucket they used for drinking. She supposed it was the giddiness of their success that did it. All of them, working together, making it happen up there on spring ridge, as she called it, saving those mares and her future. Even Burke Manes had been provided just when they needed him. Who could have imagined that a man who lived not far away, who was never lost but “powerfully turned around a time or two” and who carried with him the mantle of a preacher unlike any Ruth had ever known, should show up on their night of misery? Suzanne was right: No eye could see the good God had in store for them.

Ruth smiled as she poured the water into the drinking bucket inside. She came out and nearly bumped her head on the supper triangle, the iron Lura clanged to bring them in from the field. So now she was attributing good things in her life to God. Wouldn't Mazy find that a surprise?

Mazy.
Ruth ought to write, to tell Mazy of all this, but she didn t know how, couldn't even begin to put into words the emotional ride she'd been on.

Even the loss of another mare the first week after the thaw hadn't “pushed her to the outside,” that place where she'd dismount and stand, just watching, as the Giant Stride turned around life's pole without her.
Matthew had noticed the mare with her head low, walking as though her legs were stuck in thick mud up on the spring ridge. He'd led her back to the barn, but they'd been able to do nothing for her, and the mare had died a heaving, wretched death.

“Why did it have to be Puff?” Mariah wailed when she heard.

Matthew held his little sister and just let her cry. She yelled about how unfair it was, how everything she loved got taken. He didn't try to argue. He didn't try to make it all right. Because he couldn't, Ruth decided. It was something about him she'd come to respect: that he didn't always try to fix what he couldn't, that he somehow had the presence of mind to know when to just listen and when to act. For someone so young, that was a marvel.

For someone so young.
It was a phrase she wished didn't pop into her head quite so much. Still, when he leaned across her to reach for the shears to trim the boys' hair and his arm would brush her shoulder or when he asked her to give him the linseed oil to put on the bridle and his hand would linger over hers, she didn't think of his age. She thought about the racing of her heart, the strange sensations on her skin, the dry-ness of her mouth. And then that smile would come, breaking through a silver storm to warm her.

She hadn't ever felt this way with Zane. That courtship had been flattering more than unfolding. She'd felt swept away, not allowed to wade in at her own pace. But this…relationship made her feel like a flower being opened inside a protective hand. No wind to buffet, no pounding rain to strip the petals, no harsh sun to dry her up. She wasn't sure she could trust it or herself.

“Just let it be,” Matthew told her once when she tried to explain her reservations about his age. “I'm what, five years younger.”

“Six,” she said.

They stood watching the horses graze. “What did you want in a partner?” he said.

“I wasn't looking for a partner,” she told him.

“Well, if you had been. What would you want?”

She'd stepped away from him, to avoid the influence of those eyes. He had a full beard now, trimmed daily. “Someone who just took me as I am, I guess. Who didn't try to change me into what they thought I should be.”

“And have I tried to change you?”

“No. It's just…too soon. You need to live your life. How can you know that I'm the one? Maybe…you're looking for someone to look after you and—”

He'd laughed, a big hearty, belly laugh. “Like my ma, you're thinking? Like I'm a kid needing his mama?”

She'd looked sheepish.

“Ain't nothing in the world about my ma I see inside you, Ruth Martin. Except maybe a good heart, even if it does come out sometimes twisted as a rope. And maybe a passel of power to get things to happen. I see that, too, in both of you. But I'm not looking for a keeper. Fact is, I wasn't looking at all. But I found. And I know a gem when I see it. No man with any sense will walk on by a treasure just because it came along the trail when he wasn't expecting.”

“You think of me as a treasure?”

He nodded. “I only wish you thought that way about yourself.”

She'd glowed then, she was sure of it. And she felt a softening that must have shown because later even Lura said she looked different. “Like your jaw came undamped, and your mouth and ears decided to say howdy.” Ruth had grinned. “See there?” Lura had looked at Matthew, then back to Ruth. “So that's how it is?” she'd said, raising an eyebrow. “Not so sure that's wise, you ask me.”

“We didn't,” Matthew said.

Even in late March, when she picked up the thick packet from her solicitor, Ruth's smile held. She would wait to open it until she was alone. She walked through the moist tall grass. Yellow starlike flowers with purple centerlines clustered on foot-high stems. She'd seen them
before, near Shasta. Sarah had brought them to her in a fisted hand. Lura knew their names. She'd have to ask her again.

When she got home, Ruth sat ready to open the fat envelope. She'd written to the lawyer in Shasta, telling him where she thought Zane was and to press for the divorce if he had not yet heard from him. This letter would be the next step, she'd told Matthew. She wasn't just waiting for a thing to happen; she was making it happen. And for just a moment, she let herself believe that her life had turned around, that she could join in and not be bruised or battered, but gently sheltered while she played.

She opened the letter and read and reread it, feeling the smile on her face begin to fade.

Tipton stood serenely calm, a state that turned to frantic when Charles bolted from the door.

“Are you all right?” Flaubert asked again.

It pleased her more than she could say that the first words out of Flaubert's mouth questioned her safety. Almost a stranger to her, yet he was concerned about her protection.

She sank onto the bed, threw the hatpin down, and watched her hand shake. “He…he'll be back,” she said. “He'll get his face sewn up, and he'll return. I've got to leave, get out.” She stood up, turned, stepped on Flaubert's spilled shirts. “I'm sorry.”

Her mind raced. What would she tell her mother? What would Charles say about what happened? He'd never said it was her who'd gouged his ear, not ever. But this. He could use this to hurt Nehemiahs election hopes anyway. And she'd made him mad now, madder than ever. Her finger felt numb. She held her breath.

“The clothes are of no matter.” Flaubert swept off his cape, laying it on the bed. “You are.”

Tipton bent then to pick up the broken pieces of the opium pipe, her hand shaking. She swirled around the room, tossing things inside her carpetbag. She grabbed her few coins, picked up the opium packet, looked at it, then threw it down as though it was hot enough to sear her fingers. What if she had been smoking it when Charles arrived? Both she and her baby would never have survived.

“Its all right, Baby,” she said. “Its all right. Now. My other shoes. My hat. That's all we need. We'll tidy up here. Just tidy up.”

“What will you do?” Flaubert said. Then, “Come home with me. I will take care of you.”

“What? No, no. I…somewhere away from here.” She thought of Esty. Suzanne. No, no. She couldn't go to Suzanne's. She'd been so stupid, so naive. She couldn't face their looks.

“Come with me to the theater,” he said. “Rest in the wardrobe area until you decide.”

She'd shivered. It was ironic, wasn't it? That someone who loved finery and fancy might take refuge amidst the clothes of actors.

“You have to find a place of rest,” he'd said, his voice kind. “For your baby now.”

Perhaps the theater was a good idea. She could stay unnoticed through the night at least. In the morning make her way to somewhere else. She needed to alert Nehemiah. Charles might pursue him.

On Third Street they stood in front of the Sacramento Theater. An outside ladder leading to the balcony broke up the otherwise smooth lines of the square building. “Inside there is a bar,” the actor said. “We will walk past it as though we own it. Never mind who is there taking a drink. Go down the stairs to the right. That is where the actors dress. Once there, you must act as though you belong. The Rays will not be pleased to have a stowaway in their company. I must think of some way to explain…”

“They won't like it that the clothes you gave me for cleaning are ruined.”

He tapped his finger on his long chin. “You will say you are a new
wardrobe mistress I have hired to assist me,” Flaubert said, his hand in the air as though onstage, making a pronouncement. “At least the red-striped pants I must wear for this evenings performance have a perfect crease,” he said. “Flaubert announces it.”

“Do you have another name?” she asked.

“Angus Flaubert.”

She must have blinked. “You dont look like an Angus.'“

“It is a stage name,” he said. “Taken to inspire me. You might wish to take one too. To become something other than you are.”