“Don’t go!” she croaked. She could not bear to be left, could not bear the emptiness. The spaces inside the house were as terrifying as those outside it now. “Please… don’t go, Angie,” she said. Angie turned, her face twisted up with pity.
“Oh, Caroline!” she sighed, embracing her neighbor. “My heart is breaking for you, it truly is,” she said, and Caroline wept, her body sagging helplessly against Angie’s.
“I… I can’t bear it… I can’t bear it!” she cried, and her anguish seemed fit to pull her slowly to pieces. Magpie dropped her face into her hands and bowed her head in sorrow.
But Angie had to leave at some point-she had a family of her own to look after. Magpie was around as much as she could be. She slept on a folded blanket in the main room, with William beside her. His cries in the night woke Caroline in a panic because they were so loud and unfamiliar. She thought coyotes were inside the house, or that Corin was back and crying in pain. But once fully awake a persistent, dull lassitude returned to her. One night she peeked at Magpie through a crack in the door and watched the dark-skinned girl nurse the baby by candlelight, singing so softly that the sound might have been the breeze, or the blood moving in Caroline’s own ears. She felt the darkness at her back like a threat, like a ghoul she was too afraid to turn and see. The darkness of the empty bedroom, as empty now as everything else. The ache of missing Corin, as she lay in that dark bed, was like a knife lodged in her heart, slowly twisting. So she stayed at the crack in the door for a long time, clinging to the candlelight like a moth; and eventually Magpie stopped singing and changed her posture subtly, just enough to show that she felt herself watched.
The heat of high summer was hardly worth fighting now. Caroline did as she was told, and ate as long as Magpie sat with her and forced her to. In the evening, Magpie spoke softly of unimportant things as she undressed Caroline and brushed out her hair, just as the maid Sara had once done. Caroline shut her eyes and thought back to that time, to the dark spell after her parents had died and how she had thought that she would never again feel as lost and sad as she did then. But this was worse; it was much, much worse.
“Do you remember the time my father took us to the circus, Sara?” she murmured, with the ghost of a smile.
“Who is Sara?” Magpie asked sharply. “I am Magpie, your friend, Mrs. Massey.”
Caroline opened her eyes and caught the Ponca girl’s gaze in the mirror.
“Yes, of course,” she said tonelessly, to hide the fact that for a moment she’d had no idea who or where she was.
As she went about the chores, Magpie took to putting William into Caroline’s lap. She did this particularly when Caroline had not spoken for several hours, or was not responding to questions, her face fixed and unchanging. The child, by then ten months old, soon began to wriggle and climb about her person, and she would be forced to take hold of him, steady him, and focus her attention on him.
“Sing to him, Mrs. Massey. Tell him the story of the Garden of Eda,” Magpie urged; and although Caroline could not find any stories or songs in her heart, she did find traces of a smile for the baby, and her hands woke up enough to tickle him, to hold and reposition him. She did not wince when her hair was pulled. William regarded her with his curious, velvet dark eyes and grinned wetly from time to time; and from time to time Caroline gathered him up and held him close, her eyes shut tight, as if drawing strength from his tiny body. Magpie hovered nearby when she did this, ready to take the child back when the embrace grew too much and made him cry.
Throughout the summer, Caroline spent long hours sitting out on the porch, tapping the runner of Corin’s rocking chair with her toe and then shutting her eyes, listening to the sound it made as it creaked to and fro, to and fro. She tried not to think. She tried to not wonder how things might have been if she had not blamed the coyotes for her fears in the night. She tried not to wonder how things might have been if she had not had that nightmare, if she had not been afraid of the wild, if she had been a stronger person; a better, more adaptable person. A braver one. Any other kind of person than the kind that sent a husband out to die chasing wild dogs. She wept without realizing it, and went about with her face encrusted with salt. And she had no child of his to keep and raise and speak to with quiet sorrow of how bronze and gold and glorious its father had been. Not even this trace of him was left to comfort her. She stared into the wide, far horizon and let herself be afraid of it. All day she sat, and was afraid. It was the only way she knew to punish herself, and she felt that abject misery was no worse than she deserved.
Some weeks later, Hutch came into the house with a respectful knock. Had Caroline not been so remote, so inward facing since Corin’s death, she would have noticed the man’s suffering, and that he avoided her, shouldering the blame for Corin’s accident upon himself. He was thinner because he could not bring himself to eat. The accident had cut him too deeply. The lines on his face seemed deeper, although he could not yet be thirty-five. Guilt weighed heavy upon him and grief was ageing him, stamping its mark on him, just as it was on Caroline, but she did not have it in her to offer comfort. Not even to Hutch. She made coffee for him and noticed, solemnly and without satisfaction, that she had finally brewed a good strong cup, not weak, not bitter, not burnt. She pictured Corin sipping it, pictured the smile that would have spread over his face, the way he would have complimented her on it-slipping an arm around her waist, planting a kiss on her face. Sweetheart, that’s the best coffee I ever tasted! Even her smallest triumphs had made him proud. Thoughts like this made her sway. Thoughts like this knocked her legs out from under her.
“Mrs. Massey, you know I hate to bother you, but there are things that require your attention,” Hutch said, taking a cup from her. With a slight wave of her hand, Caroline invited him to sit, but although Hutch turned to look at the proffered chair, he remained standing.
“What things?” she asked.
“Well, with Mr. Massey… gone, you’re the owner of this ranch now. I know that may sound alarming, but it needn’t be. I don’t want you to worry about a thing. I’ll stay here and run it for you. I know the workings of it more than well enough, and I’ve been here long enough to call this my home. Your husband trusted me with his business concerns, and I hope you can too. But there are things I can’t do, and one of those things is pay the hands and riders their wages.”
“Pay them? But… I haven’t got any money,” Caroline frowned.
“Not here, perhaps. Corin always drew the wages every couple of months from his bank in Woodward, and I can’t see that there’ll be any trouble in you doing the same.”
“You… want me to go to Woodward? I can’t,” she refused, as completely as if he’d asked her to go to the moon.
“I’ll drive you. We can stay one night only if that’s what you want; or you can go visiting some of the ladies while we’re there. I think…” Hutch paused, turning the cup around in his hands. “I think you need to go to Woodward, ma’am. I think you need to see some people. I think you need to get some air into your lungs. And if we don’t pay them, those boys’ll go elsewhere. They’re good and loyal, but they’ve had no money for two months now, and that’s just not right. And I can’t run the ranch without them.” Finally, he sipped the coffee, and his look of surprise at its rich flavor did not go unnoticed. Caroline imagined the trip to Woodward, and a great weariness came over her. She rocked back on her heels and fought to keep her balance, grasping the back of a chair for support.
“All right then, if it’s the only way. Corin… Corin would have wanted the ranch to carry on.”