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Chapter Text

The crow came to Ava’s window five times before she began to consider that it might be an omen. She’d only been sizing up the world for a brief 26 years, but found that things rarely happened many times in a row by accident.

Mary dismissed the idea as she was dismissing most things in those days, almost contemptuously. There was no way of saying how long it had been since the two of them could talk about birds and their possible significance peaceably, but it had to be a magnitude of years.

Suzanne, however, entertained her. “They’re cunning,” She said one morning, after the crow had come tapping at the glass above Ava’s bed for a sixth time, “I had a teacher in school when I was a girl say they’re as smart as dogs.”

“Dogs?” Ava said, using her tongue to fish a piece of bacon between her teeth, “No way.”

“Ava, keep your mouth closed.” Suzanne said lightly. She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders, “I’m raising girls, not wolves.”

“Ava’s both.” Mary said from around a gulp of coffee, dodging the piece of flatbread Ava lobbed from across the table with a snicker.

“What would I have to do for some peace and quiet at the breakfast table?” Suzanne asked, but she was smiling. After all those years, Ava had come to know when she was really vexed and when she was just teasing, “My teacher told me that if you give them something, they’ll give you something in return.”

“Give them something? Like money?” Ava asked, “We don’t have that.”

“Food,” Suzanne said, “Or something shiny.”

“How is she supposed to know it’s the same one?” Mary asked. She was already dressed for the day in a loose button down shirt and trousers. Ava wore the same; her’s a shirt of Robin’s egg blue. Like all of her and Mary’s clothes, it had been patched by Suzanne two or four times in all the high wear places; at her elbows and down her arms.

“It looks the same,” Ava shrugged and took a bite of her own food. The kitchen door was open, letting in a breeze, and she could hear the sheep bleating out in the far yard. The chickens skittering. And something out beyond it; the lack of sound that was a sound. The big empty.

“We can barely afford to feed ourselves.” Mary grumbled, slouching into her chair. Suzanne shot her a look and opened her mouth to say something. A baritone, rattling cough escaped her instead.

Mary sat forward and reached for her. “Ava, go to the well.”

And Ava, as she often did, went to the well to get water for Suzanne’s cough. On her way, as she tried to always do, she searched for things to be grateful for.

That the days were longer. That she was a year older. That they still had the homestead. She pulled a pail of water and stared down into her own rippling reflection for a moment before bringing it in.

The talk of the crow got lost somewhere in the grind of the day. Animals got to be fed, the doctor had to be fetched. Was there enough money to pay him? Mary made a tea instead with plenty of honey and peppermint, and got a fire going even though summer had arrived and all the world was warmer for it.

Did they need to call Shannon in to watch Suzanne while the chores got done? No, she would be happy patching clothes by the fire.

Ava rode Cowgirl out to the western fence to fix a hole and she was not thinking of birds, but of JC, of Suzanne, and briefly of Mary.

It wasn’t until they came back, the setting sun at Ava’s back, riding through a creek, that the idea entered her mind again. She looked down as Cowgirl found her balance in the uneven creek bed and caught her own reflection in the moving water.

And then, and only then, she thought of the crow.

Ava waited until everybody had gone to bed to ascend to her bedroom and open the drawer where she and Mary kept the items they had yet to fence. It was fuller at that time than it had ever been before, being that it needed to be sorted through. They’d been putting it off because the idea depressed both of them.

Most of it was worthless or nearly so, but there were a few nuggets of silver glinting at the bottom underneath all the cheap looking jewelry. They’d gotten it from a job on the house of a mine owner. A cheap bastard, as it turned out, but nearly every drawer in the damn place rattled with tiny pieces of silver.

Not enough, on its own, to warrant the work it would take to melt it into something sellable. But she and Mary had kept it thinking, maybe someday.

It felt like they were saying that more and more every day. And it felt like every time they said it they were less sure what they were hoping for.

Ava selected a piece smaller than the tip of her pinky and then crawled onto her bed to open the window. She put the silver nugget on a small porcelain dish she kept bedside for her hairpins and rings and set the dish on the outside windowsill.

It had been put there by Ava, once upon a time, with the hope that they’d have time to plant flowers there. Maybe someday.

When Ava woke up the next morning, she checked the dish. The silver nugget was gone.

*

JC’s letter arrived the next day. Mary brought it in from the post office without saying anything, setting it out on the kitchen table. Ava had to summon a boatload of courage to have Mary read it and even then only at the end of the day, after hours spent agonizing over it.

Nothing was said about the two of them, for which she was grateful. In it, JC only asked if Todd Tradwell could stay at the homestead overnight on his way down to New Year two weeks therefrom, and Ava had written back via Mary’s hand and agreed, feeling like she’d owed JC something after all that had happened between them in January.

Some time later, Ava would come to see the provenance of Todd’s visit as clearly as if she’d known it all along. Everything, she reckoned, had a reason, even if that was the sort of thinking that made Mary roll her eyes. Some things were meant to be known in the instant they happened, others lay in wait for the perfect moment of reveal.

This had to be the latter. Because, in the two weeks it took Todd Tradwell to arrive, things got worse. That might have been fine, except that it had been a long while since the last time they’d gotten better.

The tea stopped working. Suzanne would just cough on through it, cough so much that she couldn’t stomach more than half a cup. She was cold, even in front of the fire. Work became scarce, and so did the trappings of their pantry.

And so that was how he found them; a sick mother, a barren pantry. Mary in a snit that they were hosting at all, on top of everything else. Ava more tired than she’d ever been, being that she was the only source of optimism in the house.

But Todd was, at the very least, pleasant, like all of JC’s friends were. Ava remembered that he’d been mentioned once as a former professor beset by an unplayable gambling debt that was then living life on the road as a door to door bible salesman.

Ava had no fear of being sold any bibles or lectured on the notion of God. JC and their kind were not of true believers; they were opportunists. Ava included. Mary included.

When Todd appeared at their front door, he sure was dressed like a bible salesman. His dark hair was slicked back, his shirt pressed, his trousers without fault. The only imperfection on him were the dark yellow stains just barely visible underneath his arms.

And it made Suzanne happy to have him, as she had not had company in years that wasn’t Ava or Mary or Shannon. She insisted that they all sit at the kitchen table and play Texas Hold ‘Em for spoons, and they broke into the whiskey in the top cupboard before it was dark out.

“You’re a friend of JC’s?” She asked, then clicked her tongue, “I’ve known him since he was a little boy. Did he tell you that?” Todd shook his head, “He was the most ill-mannered child I ever met.” Suzanne continued in that austere way she had, “But also the kindest, so I forgave him for it. He’s a good boy. A good man now, I suppose.”

“Yes ma’am,” Todd answered. He was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, hands clasped in his lap. “He sure is. Good folk. Sure speaks highly of your daughters, as well.”

“JC’s a smooth talker,” Ava said, leaning back into her chair. She was inwardly pleased that JC still talked about her at all.

Todd looked at her from the corner of his eye, not unkindly, and she was acutely aware that he knew exactly what had transpired between them. “Not sure I ever heard him say a word he didn’t mean.”

“Everybody who’s ever met Mary and Ava likes them,” Suzanne offered, all pragmatism with just a hint of pride, “That’s their gift, if they’ve got nothing else.”

“Gee, thanks, ma.” Mary said wryly, and Suzanne winked at her.

Ava said, “We had a decent upbringing.”

“I can see that.” Todd agreed.

The coughing started again then. Ava had been waiting on tenterhooks for it since Todd arrived, and when it happened it was all at once a relief and worse than she imagined.

Suzanne heaved with it, her small back shaking. Mary went to her, kneeling by her chair and rubbing at her back.

“I’m sorry, Todd,” Suzanne said between gasps, fist pressed to her mouth, “I haven’t been feeling my best recently.”

“Oh, that’s alright, ma’am. No trouble at all.”

“I’ll take her to bed.” Mary shot Ava a look, “I think we ought to talk tonight, Ava.”

Ava knew without asking that it was time to turn out the drawer and decide what to do with it. To talk about the doctor. And to talk about California. Half of the junk in there would get them laughed out of the pawn shop.

She brought it downstairs anyway, long after Suzanne and Todd had retired for the evening. Mary had forfeited her bedroom for their guest and so Ava found her laying sullenly on the couch, blanket strewn over her lap, staring into the fire.

“Let’s go into the kitchen,” Ava said as she passed, nudging the back of the couch with her hip.

There, they dumped the drawer out. $50 lay scattered across the kitchen table in the form of jewelry, mostly chintz, and some lace ladies’ items, which was a telltale sign that they were getting desperate. Ava took one of the rings - lapis lazuli she hoped - and pressed the gem to her lips.

It felt warm. Plastic. $45 lay scattered across their table, maybe less.

“Robert told me about this place. I went and saw it last week, said I was doing a water survey.” Mary placed a survey map on the table with a circle on it. Ava studied it.

“Who are they?”

“Bonners. New oil money. Found a well on their land last year.”

“So they’ve got shit.” Ava pushed the paper away from herself, “Maybe some nice jewelry, assuming one of them has common sense, but shit otherwise.”

Mary collapsed into the chair next to Ava, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, “What else have we got? This is shit.” Mary took up a handful of what Ava was rapidly beginning to think might all be costume jewelry, “And I nearly got eaten by a dog to get it.”

Ava put her head in her hands. “I know.”

“How the hell are we going to get west with this? And the doctor, Ava, he says that—”

“Pardon the interruption, ladies.” They turned toward the doorway to see Todd Tradwell in his trousers and linen shirt, pipe box in hand. His hair had sprung free of whatever pomade he’d wrangled into it, and a curl stuck up here and there on the crown of his head. Made him look approachable, Ava thought. “I couldn’t sleep and I thought I might smoke my pipe away from your mother’s bedroom.”

It was too late to clear the table of their spoils. He’d seen them. Was looking at them even then, with a curious eye.

Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Ava shrugged.

“Of course, yeah,” She said, nodding to the chair across from them, “Be our guest.” She ignored the hot look that Mary gave her.

Todd settled himself across from them and began to take the fixings out of his box and pack his pipe. None of them said anything for a long moment, the jewelry sitting conspicuously between them.

“Doing an inventory?” He asked lightly, “The two of you don’t seem like the jewelry type.” Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Mary shook her head and shrugged. “What do you two do?” Todd laughed, “C’mon, I’m a friend of JC’s. Not the law.”

“Houses.” Ava said, being that there were very few legal explanations for their spoils. “Big ones. Rich folk, oil money.”

“Victimless crime.” Todd nodded. He puffed on his pipe. In the background, from Suzanne’s room, there was a deep, rattling cough. “Does she know about it?”

Ava shrugged. Mary wiped her hand over her forehead. “She doesn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Must be good at it.” He looked back down at the jewelry. Worthless in price, high in volume.

“The best.” Ava responded because, once upon a time, when the state had been booming and oil and mines had been popping up and making poor men rich, they had been. Between the two of them, they could hit a house a month and take in $400, sometimes $500.

“When I spoke to JC, though,” He continued, “He said the two of you were in need of coin.” At the strained silence that ensured, he put his hands up, “Promise I don’t mean any offense. But I don’t have anything to offer you for your hospitality except for information.”

“Information.” Ava deadpanned, her shoulders tight and raised.

“If the two of you are experts in the art of burgling and yet find yourselves in a monetary bind, it tells me two things.” He put up a fist and extended one finger, smoke training from the corners of his mouth, “One, that you are running low on houses to be burgled at an acceptable risk-benefit ratio, and two,” He extended the other, “That you are in a situation that requires a certain amount of cash at a certain time. Am I far off?”

Another booming cough from the bedroom. Ava shifted in her seat. Todd smiled. “Meaning what? If that were true, which I’m not saying that it is.”

“Meaning that perhaps it’s time to explore other ventures. On a limited basis, of course. You need coin, a lot of it, I’m assuming. I know of something that might get you that coin — higher risk than burglarizing, but much higher reward.”

“How much higher risk are we talking?” Mary queried. She was stretched out almost catlike in her chair, hands folded in her lap. Eyes riveted to Todd.

Todd brought a match to his pipe and heated the tobacco, puffing on it. “I have a cousin by the name of Snyde lives up by Bozeman. Runs a very successful ranch, has one daughter. Catherine.” Another puff, “Seems that she became quite taken with one of their ranch hands last summer and got the idea in her head that the two of them were going to get married.”

Mary said, “So far I’m not seeing where we fit into this.”

“My cousin sent her off to a convent up near Chinook, seeing the danger of a poor ranch hand marrying into the family. However, he has heard tell by word of mouth that the poor boy followed her up there like a lost dog. Has been knocking on her window talking about running off together.”

“We’re not going to kill anybody.” Ava said.

“Not asking you to,”

“We’re not in the art of intimidation, either.”

“Not asking for that.” Todd shook his head, “My cousin tried to go pick her up three weeks back, thinking maybe he could take her to a relative in Oregon. But, of course, seeing as nothing is ever easy—Mother Superior wouldn’t let him in. Said she wouldn’t be letting any man take one of her novitiates by force. Even if it were her daddy. And if she didn’t want go, she didn’t have to.”

The picture was beginning to take shape in Ava’s head. “Not killing,” She said, “Kidnapping.”

“If you want to call it that.” Todd shrugged. “My cousin is willing to pay a certain sum of money to anybody who can get Catherine from the convent and bring her down to Bozeman. ‘Course…” He took a deep breath, “…I can only imagine that a couple of women could do that more innocuous-like than a group of men. Less danger to Catherine, too, I reckon.”

Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Once, in their shared girlhood, they had been able to speak with just their minds. What an odd time, Ava thought, for them to rediscover that ability. What a fitting one, too.

She thought and Mary thought of Suzanne and who would stay with her while they did such a thing. She thought of how the two of them might even logistically accomplish taking some poor girl by force, Mary being all bark and no bite, and Ava pretty much being in possession of neither. She thought of the one gun they kept on their stone mantle that had only been used to scare off coyotes. They didn’t even bring it to do up houses.

Mary was a shit shot. Ava was worse. Could they even pretend that wasn’t true?

Ava thought of California. And she thought of the ocean. And she thought about prison.

“I understand,” Todd offered, “That this is a decision that may take some thinking on. As I said, I have no money to offer you for your hospitality. But I can tell you where the convent is, and what room Catherine is staying in. And I can tell you that if you intend to act on this information,” He paused, wetting his lips, “Well, I’d act soon.”

*

Todd left the next afternoon and Mary, as she did when she had something to digest, retreated to her room. Ava knew that she had a journal she kept in there where she puzzled through things she couldn’t puzzle through with Ava, that list getting bigger by the day.

It was coming September and the weather that day was beautiful; not sticky hot, no coldness of autumn. Ava took Suzanne out to the front porch and sat her down in her rocking chair with her shawl, sitting beside her on the top step, working her pocket knife around the skin of an apple. Not fixing on eating it. Just looking for something to do with her hands.

In front of them, the world stretched, so mighty and untenanted that it was almost frightening. Ava thought of all the things living out there, the snakes and the crows and the bears and the coyotes, and thought about how they were really just one of them. Out here surviving.

“Hey, ma,” She asked, throwing away a scrap of apple skin. Suzanne hummed. Ava shook her head, “Nevermind.”

“Sweetheart,” Ava only got called that when Suzanne was being really, terribly serious, “You know I like to hear what’s on your mind.”

It was true. Suzanne had been doing almost nothing but listening to Ava talk since she was wee. Ava thought of it and felt that old, familiar ache in her chest. She sniffed, wiping her face with the patched sleeve of her shirt. “You ever think about if we’re good people or not?”

The creaking of Suzanne’s chair paused, “What do you mean?”

“You know how we don’t go to church, and how when food gets low sometimes we’ve got to poach off of the neighbor’s land, and…” Ava thought of the houses they’d broken into, lined up in her mind all in one row, and said nothing more.

“Ava,” Suzanne’s voice was even and syrupy, “Why are you troubling your mind with such stuff?”

Ava hung her head. She thought of her childhood, of sleeping in that big upstairs bed when she was small. Of how Mary used to come upstairs and lay next to her, singing her a lullaby. Of Suzanne holding her when she was still small enough to be held.

“I just wish that love was a little easier,” Ava said, “And that I knew how to do the right thing.”

“Come here, child,” Ava did, leaning her cheek against the comfort of Suzanne’s skirts, and sighed when she felt her mother’s hand in her hair, “If any one of us knows how to do the right thing, it’s you. And if you’re not sure, I’m not sure anybody ever could be.”

Ava stared out onto the horizon. “Ma?”

“Yes, Ava,”

“How would you feel if Shannon came to stay with you for a week or two and took care of the place? JC offered Mary and I some work driving cattle up at the ranch.”

There was a brief pause in which Ava was sure—no, beyond sure—that Suzanne knew exactly what they were about to do. She tensed.

“Well, that sounds alright, Ava,” Suzanne said, “If that’s what you think is best.”

*

Todd Tradwell had left detailed instructions as to where and how to find Catherine. But, being that Ava could not read a stitch, she devised a rhyme to help her remember. Catherine Snyde, her door’s second on the right side, wonder what it is it hides?

Mary hadn’t paid it any mind. If Suzanne had known, she might have declared it whimsical.

They’d set up camp in the woods out by Box Elder, a half a day’s ride from Chinook. The gun Ava had taken off the mantle and stuffed into the band of her trousers along with a length of rope that would have to do for restraints in a pinch, if needed.

The plan had been hastily conceived of in whispers in front of the fire. The two of them riding up to the convent would be too conspicuous. A single Black woman riding up too would raise attention, so better it be Ava while Mary remained behind and made camp. Ava would come back with Catherine, and they’d ride together to Bozeman.

On the night before her ride to the convent, they ate jerky around the campfire while the horses milled about behind them. Neither said a word about what Ava was about to do, though when Ava laid down on her blanket to sleep she had the feeling that they hadn’t decided to do it until that evening. Not really.

Up until then, they could have gotten on their horses, turned around, and ridden south back to the homestead and Suzanne and a life of grinding, inconsequential work. Maybe they would have stopped by JC’s farm on the way and had a laugh over a few pints of beer.

You’ll never believe what we were about to do, Ava would have laughed, it was a silly idea though, wasn’t it?

But Ava’s mind had turned, as she supposed Mary’s had, to Suzanne. And as she rolled on her side and rubbed her cheek into the fabric of the blanket she thought, yes. Yes, tomorrow I’m going up to that convent and I’m leaving with a girl.

No, I’m leaving with Catherine Snyde.

When Ava finally fell asleep, she dreamed about she and Mary, riding south. Just the two of them. In the dream, she supposed, there was no Catherine Snyde. In the dream, they were laughing.

*

The convent lay five miles north of Chinook. Ava went for a first pass in the daytime, to mark the route in her head, and found it interrupting the expanse of plain with nothing before it, nothing after it, and nothing to either side but for a herd of bison grazing in the distance and a few patches of scrub.

An eyesore, in Ava’s opinion. Back in New York, she’d seen the grand catholic churches with stained glass adornments and naves filled with gold and precious stones.

There were no such luxuries on the frontier. Of the two buildings that stood huddled together, one was four-stories with white clapboard where the nuns slept, and the other was smaller with a steepled roof. The church.

She gazed on it from a distance, counting the windows, trying to guess which one might be Catherine’s.

Ava slept a spell under a tree and returned in the evening, planting Cowgirl out of sight about a half mile from the compound. She walked up the dirt road by the light of the moon and her own memory, thinking how fortunate it was that the night was so clear and that the sky was so goddamn big.

She had brought a few things in case she found the doors and the windows locked, but Ava suspected that the only thing the Sisters of Ursinus had to worry about this far out were bison and the occasional lost grizzly. Neither of which could be stopped by a locked door.

‘Round the back of the convent there was a door, and a few feet away from that a water pump. Ava gazed at it, hands on her hips, then lifted her eyes to the rows of windows above. All of them dark. Perfect.

Catherine Snyde, her door’s second on the right side—

Ava tried the door handle. It pushed inward without resistance.

Wonder what it is it hides?

The room it opened into was a kitchen. Ava tried one of the floorboards for squeakiness and then, finding it quiet to her satisfaction, stepped inside.

It was darker in the guts of the house than it had been on the dirt path with the moon, and so Ava had to move cautiously. She put her hands out and felt along a stove, then the brick of a fireplace, then an open doorway.

From the windows at the front of the house, she could see that the room that lay beyond was a cafeteria-style dining room. And that to the side of it was a staircase.

The third floor, Mary had said. Ava ascended the stairs to the second, the revolver in her waistband feeling heavier than it had a few minutes prior. She crossed the hall to the adjacent staircase.

Halfway to the third floor, Ava’s eyes adjusted. At first she thought they’d grown used to the darkness, but then she realized that it was lighter halfway up the staircase than it had been on the second floor.

She paused, foot on the sixth step, and considered the possibilities. One of the sisters could be awake. Ava opened her ears and heard nothing more than the prairie winds rattling the window glass.

Somebody had just forgotten to snuff all the candleholders that lined the walls, more likely. She continued up, to the seventh stair, then to the eighth. Then Ava’s boot touched the landing, and she turned to the third floor hallway.

For no reason at all, when Ava saw the light burning outside the second to the right door, the crow crossed her mind. She was wondering what it had done with that silver she left out for it.

Though she’d thought that sleeping that night in Box Elder was the last time she could have changed her mind, Ava realized that the true last time was then, right then, approaching the door and putting her hand on the handle. Gunmetal cold on her hip, rope half tucked into her underwear.

Ava opened the door.

When she saw the girl for the first time she thought, there you are, Catherine. Catherine was standing in the candlelight of her bedroom, dark-haired and slack jawed and so pretty that for a moment, Ava nearly forgot where she was and what she was going.

“Can I help you?” Catherine asked, then squinted. Ava closed the door behind herself and saw that Catherine was wearing an overcoat over her dressing gown, the flaps hanging open. Then, she took in the rest of the room—a suitcase lay open on the floor, clothes hanging out of it. A book lay on top, and on the dresser as well. Peeking out from her nightgown were a pair of fine, brown leather boots.

“Were you going somewhere?”

“I was just—who are you?” They were whispering, the two of them, and Ava thought how odd it seemed that Catherine wouldn’t want anybody to hear them either. “Are you from Ennis?”

“Where the hell is Ennis?”

“Language,” Catherine hissed, “Don’t you know that this is a nunnery?”

“Sorry, Sister.” Ava said, contrite only for show, “Where are you headed?”

“None of your business.” Catherine frowned, “And I’m not sure why I should tell you when you won’t tell me who you are? I mean, honestly,” Her voice took on a scolding tone, “A woman dressed like a cowboy vagrant has just exploded into my room at 2 in the morning and asked me where I’m going? Were you raised in a barn?”

Ava paused, chastised, “Well, kind of.” Something occurred to Ava and she wrinkled her nose, “He didn’t tell me that his cousins were British.”

“He? He who?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ava said, “But I’ve come to take you back to Bozeman. Now, you can come quietly or you can cause a fuss. But I’d really prefer it if you chose the first option.”

She groped into the back of her pants for the gun, took it by its handle, and drew it. The only indication that Catherine registered what had just happened was a slight lift in her eyebrows.

“I’m not gonna hurt you.” Ava said.

Catherine said, “Is that so?” Her eyes going to the gun.

“It’s a precaution. To make sure we get out of here smooth-like.”

“If you’re looking for money, I have bad news for you. Have you ever heard of a vow of poverty?”

With her free hand, Ava groped again and retrieved the length of rope. She’d half tied it to her underwear inside of her pants, having nowhere else to put it, and she thought it might be a good idea to apologize to Catherine for it, considering it was still warm from her skin, but then thought that some things were better left unaddressed.

This inspired more shock on Catherine’s face than did the gun. Yet still she made no noise. Ava didn’t even have to tell her so.

“Who are you?” Catherine asked again, “What do you want?”

“I want you to come with me. Quietly, like I said.”

“Why me?”

“Look, I know you like this fella. But you’ve got your family down there in Bozeman Godawful worried. And I’ve been promised a fair bit of money if I see you get returned.”

Catherine’s posture stiffened, her head tilted, “Do you think I’m Catherine Snyde?” She shook her head just slightly, “I’m not Catherine Snyde.”

Ava’s eyes roamed her face, looking for any sign that she was not telling the truth. She came up with nothing. “This is her room.”

“She left the convent. A week and a half ago. She got wooed away by a ranch hand. Silly girl.” Goddamn, it was possible that this woman was lying, but the whole thing tracked with what Todd had said. And did Ava really think that some flighty daughter of ranchers could come up with a story like that on the fly? Plus, the accent. Ava felt her heart start to thud in her chest. What the hell was she going to do? What were they going to do? “I took her room. And I’m afraid that you will find that I, like every other girl here, am poor as the dirt I’ll someday return to. Which may convolute your plan to procure any money from taking me.”

She was looking at Ava now dead in the eye, and speaking with total conviction. Ava again noticed how pretty she was, how a dusting of barely-there freckles lay across her nose, how her face, even serious, was soft at the jaw and dewey-skinned. The way she talked rang in Ava’s ears like a set of shimmering bells.

“You look disappointed.”

“Well, we had a plan. Sort of a complicated one.” The woman clicked her tongue in mock sympathy, and Ava, hearing the false note, twisted her face into an incredulous smile, “Are you making fun of the woman holding you at gunpoint?”

“You seem more interested in talking than shooting.”

“Thinking out loud.”

“You need money.”

“It’s a universal problem, I guess.”

“But you need it more than most, or you probably wouldn’t have gone through the trouble.” The woman’s face softened into something that could have been mistaken for empathy. “I hope you find it.”

A feeling that Ava hadn’t experienced in some years washed over her. It was true defeat. She would have to ride back to the camp, she supposed, empty handed, and then back to the homestead with not even a dollar between the two of them.

They could come up with a new plan, yes. With a new scheme. But there was another resource they were running low on, something far more finite than money; time. How many more weeks would it take to come up with they money they needed for Suzanne? How many months?

She swallowed harshly. It felt silly to cry in front of the woman who was still standing at the wrong end of her gun. “You too. I hope you—” She glanced around. There was a skittering in the back of her mind, something about the woman. Maybe Catherine. Maybe not. Something about the way she was standing there getting ready to go. “It’s a nice room, though. Nicer than I would expect from a nunnery.”

“Hm. I’ve always found it a bit prosaic, I suppose. Uninspiring.”

Something about those words stopped the copper rising in Ava’s throat. Her ears pricked. Her eyes narrowed. Her eyes slid again to the suitcase, to the nightstand. “What’s your name?” She asked.

“My name is Pearl Archer,” The woman, who’s name was almost certainly not Pearl Archer, replied. “And I’m the daughter of farmers from Santa Rita.”

“What are you reading?”

The woman’s mouth twitched. “What?”

“You’ve got an awful lot of books, is all.”

Her mouth twitched again, and this time she tilted her head, just slightly, to glance over her shoulder at the suitcase. Never fully taking her eyes off of Ava. “The House of Mirth.”

“Ah.” Ava widened her eyes slightly and bobbed her head in a nod, “And who would that be by?”

“Edith Wharton.”

Ava said, “You’re a long way from Santa Rita.”

The woman’s mouth was still this time. “There aren’t many Catholic churches that take novitiates in Montana.”

“Now see,” Ava sniffed, “I myself am, as you say, poor as the dirt that I will someday return to. From Gallatin County. Ever heard of it?” The woman’s eyes flashed, “What I cannot figure is why a poor girl out in Santa Rita would use a word like prosaic. Or why she’d be traveling with so many damn books. They must have a hell of a school out there,” Now the woman was frowning, deep lines appearing at the corners of her mouth, “As for me, I can’t read a stitch. Funny how people can be the same and different at the same time, isn’t it?”

The whole time, Ava was looking all around the room, all around the woman, for some sign of who she was. It was still possible that this was Catherine, and that Catherine was simply

more cunning than Todd had prepared them for. She’d found that most of the time, when people were telling a whopper, there was a clue as to the truth near at hand.

Her eyes traveled over her face, to her ears, down the slope of her neck. And then—

“What’s that?”

The woman shifted, “What’s what?”

“You’re wearing something under your nightgown.”

There was a brown leather strap at the woman’s shoulder, a sliver of which was exposed by the downward slope of her nightgown and overcoat. She shrugged as soon as Ava said it, trying to move the garment back into place.

But Ava had already caught the scent. She tucked the rope half into the pocket of her trousers and retrieved instead her pocket knife, flipping it open, the blade glinting in the candlelight.

“Easy,” She said to the woman’s slightly wild expression, “Just stay still, alright?”

Ava approached her, moving the blade of the knife underneath the leather strap. It must have been cold, because goosebumps rose around it. The woman’s nostrils flared. Her jaw tensed. “What do I have to do,” She whispered, close enough that her breath was hot and sweet on Ava’s cheek, “For you to go on your way and for me to go on mine?”

It was easier to say nothing in response, and it only took a moment of pulling before the thin leather of the strap snapped. There was a slithering sound as it slid from the woman’s body, then a dull thud as the bag attached to the end hit the floor.

They both looked toward the doorway, and both stood still for a moment. Ava wondered if, like her, the woman was listening for the sounds of waking or footsteps from the other room.

When a second passed with only silence, Ava stooped, gun still pointed and took the bag. It was a simple satchel, thin and folded on top like an envelope with a button snap. It was awkward to pull it open with one hand still holding the gun, but Ava managed it. She peered inside.

What she saw made Ava’s heart leap, skip a thousand beats, then plummet down to her stomach and back up to her throat. Maybe they weren’t as fucked as she’d first imagined. “Awful lot of gold and cash money in here for a poor girl from Santa Rita.”

“You can have it,” The woman’s face had turned a lovely shade of red, “You can have all of it. Even the bag.”

Ava shook the bag somewhat and angled it, inspecting the lining, “I’m not a genius, as I said, but I suspect this tag would have your name on it, yeah?” She lifted her eyes to the woman’s, “And maybe where you live? Or whereabouts?”

“It’s worth at least five hundred dollars, five-ten if you sell the bag.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I stole it,” The woman blurted, and then, sensing that Ava did not believe her, “I found it on the side of the road.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re pointing a gun at me.”

“And I’m awfully sorry to be doing it.”

“Then stop. You seem half-decent. I suspect you don’t really want to be doing this. Is that true?” Ava shrugged. It was true enough. “The girl you want isn’t here. And I’m not going to tell a soul. You could get off scot free—find some other rich woman in some other convent.”

Yes, Ava supposed. She saw real desperation on the woman’s face and heard it in the way she talked, quick and quiet. She felt that little twinge of something that she had most anytime they did something criminal, even if it was just breaking into some oil baron’s house, which according to Mary and Ava’s own moral compass was only a crime as a technicality.

She took no pleasure in it. Ava did not like making people unhappy, nor did she like upsetting them. But, thing was, Ava was desperate too. And there was a plan forming in her mind for how they could salvage this situation.

The girl could be Catherine. Or she could be a daughter from a rich family who might pay a certain sum of money to see her return. Either way, Ava wasn’t leaving without her.

“Sounds like you were fixing to leave anyway. Can’t say I blame you. So this’ll just be a detour, eh? Turn around.” The woman’s body was still, but her eyes were darting around the room, “I said turn around. Face the wall and put your hands behind your back.” Ava said again, trying to be harsh the way Mary had taught her to say it. It took a lot of practice to achieve the tone without bursting out into laughter. She even pulled the hammer on the gun for good measure. All show.

But the woman, who had not been there to witness Ava pulling the gun fireside, saying turn around, missus, and nobody gets hurt, then bursting into cheeky laughter, turned and faced the wall, putting her wrists behind her back, and when Ava approached her, gun tucked into her pants but close enough and hand that she could draw it if need be, she whispered, “You’re making a horrible mistake.”

“Am I?” Ava murmured, putting the muzzle of the gun to her back, “Walk downstairs. And be quiet about it.”

*

The moon was still bright when they rounded the front of the convent, their boots soft against the grass. The woman in front and Ava behind, gun pointed at her back.

“Hell of a pair of boots for a nun.” Ava commented.

“Rattlesnakes,” The woman replied dryly, “Don’t care much if you believe in God or not.”

“Good to know.” They fell back into silence. “So what is your name, anyway? Since we’re going to find out anyway.” No response. “We got a long way to go, you know. Might as well get to know each other a little. Or it’s going to feel much longer.”

“How about this. You tell me where we’re going, I’ll tell you something. Not my name.”

“Fair enough. We’re going to meet my companion. Can’t say exactly where.”

“And from there?”

“Depends on how cooperative you are. Got to find out where your people are from before we can properly put you up for ransom.” The woman scoffed, and Ava saw the back of her head bob with an eye roll, “Given your piss-poor attitude I suspect we’re going to be together a while. I hope you like sleeping under the stars.”

“My apologies for not being more accommodating to my captor. I’ll try to cheer up.”

“Look, worst thing that’s going to happen to you is you’re going to be camping a few days. You’re gonna be fed, watered, and cared for. And at the end you’ll go running home to mommy and daddy—or wherever you were headed before I so rudely interrupted you.”

“It was rude.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? This is a hell of a regretful situation and I hate to be putting anybody out. But sometimes life leaves you no choice. Does that make you feel better?”

“It does, actually.”

There was another silence. Ava decided to leave this one be, considering that she’d riled the girl so much that she was beginning to feel riled herself. It wasn’t anger exactly, more like agitation, or a state of alertness.

“There’s nobody who’s going to pay a ransom for me.”

The woman said it so quietly at first that Ava had to strain to hear her. “What?”

“There is not a person,” The woman repeated, “In the whole state of Montana who would pay a cent to see me return home. You picked the wrong girl.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not.”

“O-kay.”

There was a scuffling sound as the woman stopped, nearly cutting Ava’s step short. She stumbled and came a half inch from colliding with her body.

The woman turned. In front, it was obvious that everything on her was askew. Ava didn’t get the feeling that she was the type to be disheveled much. She held Ava’s gaze in a vice grip.

There in the moonlight, looking at the woman’s face, Ava realized that it had been a long time since she’d seen a person so beautiful.

“Nobody is going to pay for me. Not a dollar. Not ten dollars. Not my parents. Not anybody.”

It was the queerest thing, because to Ava’s ear, it really didn’t sound like a lie. But was it the truth? She wasn’t sure she’d go that far.

Even stranger was that Ava found herself wanting to believe the woman, although there was nothing trustworthy about her, and although she couldn’t even be bothered to be honest about her name. Has it really been that long, she thought, since a beautiful woman paid me any attention? Even negative attention?

She thought about the satchel that she’d re-tied around her waist. Five-hundred-and-ten dollars. It wasn’t nothing. But it sure as hell wasn’t Oregon money. It wasn’t California money.

Ava kept the muzzle of the gun steady, “Turn around,” She said, “And keep walking.”

*

Cowgirl was right where Ava’d left her, grazing on a patch of tall grass. Her brown coat was almost red in the moonlight.

“We’re going by horseback?” The woman asked when she saw her, turning to look at Ava, “How far?”

Ava shrugged, “We’ll ride through the night, probably get to camp by 6 or so.”

The woman’s shoulders slumped, “I haven’t slept a wink all night.”

“Won’t hold it against you if you need to take a doze on my shoulder.”

The woman snorted. Said, “Hardly,” And the whole thing had such a private school meanness to it that Ava wondered how this woman ever thought she’d get away with claiming to be some poor nobody from Santa Rita.

She smiled, thinking about it, and the woman frowned. It was clearly not the reaction she’d been looking for. “Well, I’ll need to…” She gestured with her head into the distance. Ava’s gaze followed her, squinting.

“You’ll need to…”

An eye roll. “I’ll need to—have a moment, privately, to—”

Ava’s eyebrows lifted in understanding. “Oh. You need to take a piss.”

“Oh my word. Forget it, I can wait.”

“No, no. Jesus, I’m not a sadist. You can go behind those bushes over there.”

The woman blinked. “Like this?” When Ava’s face betrayed her lack of understanding, the woman continued, her words more biting: “Are you going to hold my skirt up for me?”

She did not imagine that a blush was what the woman was looking for, but it was what she got. She noticed too, even with how dark it was. Ava saw her notice. Though thankfully, as a rich woman of an unknown province and a nun, she didn’t seem to read anything into it beyond embarrassment. “You think I was born yesterday?”

“Where am I going to go?” The woman asked. She made an attempt at a gesture that was aborted by her bound wrists, “I have no idea where we are. We’re in the middle of nowhere. I’d get eaten by a coyote before I found another person.”

She wasn’t wrong. And Ava, as she had said, was no sadist. The crueler she was the harder she’d find it to justify what they were doing, and the act of handcuffing this woman and putting her at gunpoint had her almost at her limit.

Ava was distressed. The woman was distressed. And Ava had the sense that a little bit of kindness might go a long way toward making them both feel better.

She approached her. The woman lifted her wrists behind her so that Ava didn’t have to get too close to undo the knot.

“No funny business,” Ava said as the rope fell free. The woman rubbed at her wrists. She looked Ava dead in the eye and Ava, again, was struck by her.

“I’m a nun,” The woman replied, as if she hadn’t been lying and weaseling the whole way out of the convent, “Remember?”

Then, under Ava’s watchful gaze and the point of her gun, the woman turned, she walked a few feet forward to a patch of scrub, and she broke out into a run.

“Fuck,” Ava said, “Fuck fuck fuck—”

In the fraction of a second it took for Ava to realize what was happening, she’d disappeared almost into the darkness. The woman was fast. But Ava, years of chasing a variety of things — cattle and dreams and women and — was faster.

She sprinted, dirt crunching under her boots. The woman started to holler. “Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me—” And then Ava’s arm closed around her waist, drawing her in.

The woman’s feet lifted from the ground, her back pressed to Ava’s front. She started to kick.

“Leave me alone!” She hollered again, “Let me go! You lout.”

“Lout?” Ava could smell her hair. She had to dodge an errant elbow before she became too lost in it, “Lout? Are you—ow, hey!” Another elbow, this one making glancing contact with her cheek. It was hard enough that Ava reared back and the woman managed to squirm free of her grasp, landing face down in the dirt.

Before she could raise herself higher than her elbows, Ava was on top of her, front draping over the woman’s back. They struggled against each other, limbs tangling, bodies bucking.

The woman was fierce. But Ava—

The woman broke free again, crawling a foot forward before Ava took her by her skirt, then her ankle, flipping her so that she was on her back and Ava was straddling her hips. Ava managed to get both of her wrists in the grip of one hand and pin them to the woman’s stomach.

She noticed that, in the struggle, the woman’s nightgown had rucked up almost around her hips, exposing an expanse of thigh. Ava used her other hand to yank it down.

“Oh, how chivalrous,” The woman spat, “You imbecilic brute—”

Ava barked out a laugh, “I understand that nuns aren’t supposed to swear, but if ever there was a time—“

“—you could have at least bathed before you forced yourself on me, and washed your teeth. You smell like a wet dog.”

A frown settled on Ava’s face. She tilted back some. “I wash my teeth every day.”

“Liar.”

“Listen, lady, we can tussle here on the ground all night if that’s what you want. That’s not going to change anything.” She leaned in, moving her face mere inches from the woman’s. Swimming in the blunt force of the resentment she saw there. Hatred, almost. That was fine. This was a kidnapping, not a popularity contest. “I know what you want, but what I want is for you to get on that horse. So you’re getting on that horse. You know it and I know it.”

To Ava’s surprise, the woman lifted her head from the dirt. They were only an inch apart, tips of their noses close to meeting. “The question is,” the woman said, “Which one of us wants it worse.”

“Yeah,” Ava said, the word coming out breathier than intended, “Are you willing to take the odds that it’s you?”

They remained locked like that for a moment, the two of them breathing heavy through their noses. Then the woman let her head fall back to the dirt and turned it, no longer meeting Ava’s eyes. She stopped struggling.

Ava tied the rope back on her and helped her off the ground with a grip on her elbow that the woman shook free of as soon as she was steady on her feet. She began to march back toward the horse without Ava needing to say a word about it.

“Hope that little stunt was worth it.” Ava said once they were back beside Cowgirl, untying her from the tree.

“Well,” The woman responded, looking off into the distance for a moment before turning back to Ava. Her eyes went to the butt of the pistol poking up from her trousers, “I know now that you’re not going to shoot me.”

Ava’s eyebrows lifted. She sucked her teeth. She thought back to the campsite, to practicing a meanness that was not innate. No, she was not going to shoot the woman, annoying as she was proving herself to be. But Goddamn if the woman wasn’t supposed to know that.

“Got a hell of a mouth on you.” Ava commented, tugging at Cowgirl’s saddle to test its security, “Wanna try and run off again? Test that theory?”

The woman said nothing. She stared at Ava. Ava stared back at her, trying her best not to betray weakness.

Then, the woman reared her head back, shot it forward, and spat directly on Ava’s face. It landed wetly on her cheek and Ava could only stumble back with a cry of surprise, wiping it from her cheek.

As she was taken off guard, the woman descended upon her. She took advantage of the fact that her hands were now tied in front of her body and began to beat at Ava with her fists.

She was petite but mighty and her blows, even restrained, hurt. Ava was able to keep her just barely at bay, but she knew with one wrong step she could end up on the ground. Or, more likely, with the woman using her head to crack Ava one between the eyes.

Without thinking about it, Ava drew the gun from her trousers. The woman in her fury did not notice. Ava pointed it to the ground on their left, pulled the hammer, and shot.

The sound reverberated through the grassland. It reverberated through the woman, too, who started back. For the first time, Ava saw fear on her face. She swallowed back bile with a heady kick of self-disgust.

Ava, with her free hand, took the woman by the shoulder, “I could tussle with you all night, miss. Before you proceed, better be sure that’s what you want.” licked her lips, “Let you spit on me a few more times too. I don’t mind.”

The woman’s face crumpled, “You’re disgusting.”

“Yeah, something like that. Gonna get on the horse? Or want to keep testing the theory that the next bullet will land somewhere nonfatal but nonetheless painful?”

The woman said nothing, nor did she try to run. Ava mounted the horse and then reached for the woman, taking her again by the elbow. “Just grab her by the saddle a bit—yeah, there you are.”

They managed together to hoist the woman’s body up. She’d clearly had experience on horses, which helped. Ava couldn’t see her, but she could feel the weight and warmth of her body against her back.

Best not to dwell on it. “Ready?” Ava asked, rhetorically. The woman said nothing. She tapped her heels into Cowgirl’s side, and they rolled onward.

Chapter Text

The woman did not sleep once on their journey. Ava marked it as the first full truth that she’d told.

They rode down past Box Elder in silence, Ava taking a sort of scenic route down through the brush and the stream and the trees. It wouldn’t matter if the woman knew where the campsite was, but it wouldn’t do for them to encounter another person along the way.

Ava thought about how she might pitch the existence of this woman to Mary. She’s not Catherine Snyde, she might say, but she could be. Maybe. Hell of a liar, makes it hard to say. Mary would be heartened by the bag. At first. The five dollar bills were something, surely, but the rest of it was what Mary would have called illiquid assets and thus useless to them in their venture.

“We’re getting close.” Ava offered when they neared the stream. She could see black smoke from Mary’s fire rising above the trees and could hear the distant babbling of water. The woman hadn’t asked, but she surprised Ava by answering.

“Who is your companion?”

“Think I’m stupid enough to tell you her name?” A beat of silence. Ava scoffed, “No reason to be rude.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Ava twisted her body to shoot a dirty look behind her, “You said enough.”

“Holy shit, I was starting to wonder what happened to you.” It was Mary’s voice. She jogged up from the fire, her suspenders down and flapping in the wind.

“I’m right on time.” Ava argued. She took Cowgirl up to the bedrolls and dismounted, running a hand over her forehead, “Listen, I got good news and interesting news.”

Mary’s face had been one of cautious excitement. It slid off her face like a slab of butter from a hot griddle. “How do you mean interesting?”

“Maybe I ought to help the lady off the horse first.”

“I’m fine up here, thank you.” Came the woman’s prim response.

“Oh, you gonna stay there all night?” Ava asked, her attention detaching from Mary’s furrowed brow.

“I’ll stay as far away from the two of you as I can get.”

“Again I’m gonna ask how stupid you think I must be to let you sit up there on that horse even with your hands tied?” Again the woman’s silence was deafening, “And for another thing, your legs must be sore. Just—there.”

The woman, after a moment of resistance, let Ava take her by the elbow and help her slide from the horse. She landed on the ground with the thud of her boots and a wobble in her knees. Seeing her face for the first time in hours, Ava noted bags forming under her eyes.

“This is Catherine Snyde?” Mary asked, her lip twisting, “Not really how I imagined her.”

Ava’s hand moved to scratch the back of her head. “About that —”

“I am not Catherine Snyde. As I tried to tell your companion, Catherine left with her suitor some weeks ago.”

Mary’s eyes widened, “What the hell? A–” Ava shook her head once, and Mary bit back the syllables of her name, “What were you thinking? Who is this?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing, she won’t tell me. She could be Catherine, just—lying, is all.”

“I am not—”

“And here, look at this.” Ava took the satchel from her waist and held it out, exposing it to Mary’s incredulous gaze. “She was wearing this when I found her.”

It took a moment, but Mary reached out and grabbed the bag. Ava saw her eyebrows lift when she felt the weight of it, then saw her cautiously open the flaps. When she peered inside, she reared back immediately, as if she’d smelled something foul. But she was smiling.

“Hol-ly—how much do you figure is in here? She was wearing this?”

“Five hundred, she said. But I don’t know. She could have been lying.”

“Here.” Mary stuck her hand inside and came out with a gold ring. She handed it to Ava, who stuck it between her teeth and bit down. Tasting the metal. Feeling it’s telltale give, the soft malleability of money.

“It’s real.” She said, handing it back. “What do you want to bet we get $25 for that in Helena? But wait—look inside. Look at the tag.”

“Too busy looking at all the fuckin’ jewelry. And five dollars, too.”

“It might have her name on it. Where she lives, maybe.”

This whole time, the woman had been standing in silence. But her gaze was pinned to them and it had the acuity of a knife, or a gun pointed with malice.

Mary paused. Then she shook the bag and looked around the lining until she found the tag. Her eyes moved over the words.

When she read them out loud, Ava’s eyes slid over to the woman. She found her with that look of hatred on her face, same as she’d had when Ava pinned her to the ground. Christ, she wore it beautifully.

“If found return to Beatrice McBride, Ennis, Montana.” Mary looked up, not at Ava, but at the woman—no, at Beatrice. “That your name? Beatrice McBride?”

The woman didn’t answer. Her mouth thinned. The heat in her eyes flashed, boiled, became so intense that Ava swore she could feel it like coals against her cheek.

“Yeah,” Ava said, “That’s her name.”

“You don’t know that.” The woman spat at the cadence of an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Like she was a half second away from chewing it off, “I could be anybody. I told your friend, I stole it. How could you possibly know?”

Mary and Ava looked at her, and then exchanged a glance between themselves. Suddenly ashamed, Ava looked down at her boots.

“Dunno how, but this one has a way of knowing stuff like this,” Mary said, “When people are lying and when they’re telling the truth. It’s just one of those funny little things.”

“Well, if you believe her, and you believe that bag, then I’m not Catherine. And I’m not the girl you’re looking for.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Mary agreed, “But what that does make you is a woman with a lot of money in a bag with her name on it. And some very nice boots on her feet. What do you think?” She asked, glancing to Ava. Ava kept staring at her feet.

“I think it’s enough that we keep her for a little while longer. Try to figure out what to do.”

“Yeah,” Mary said, “Reckon I agree with that.”

*

Once settled, Ava felt exhaustion creep over her like a warm blanket.

“We have a dress for you.” She told Beatrice, who had slipped again into a rotting, festering silence, “Socks. You could, uh, wash yourself down in that creek. Relieve yourself. Whatever. Then we can have some breakfast and get some shut eye.”

What she didn’t say was that the dress was hers. It was crafted by Suzanne’s hand, and it would certainly land two inches too short on Beatrice, and perhaps be too tight. But they’d brought it anyway, going by the credo that something must be better than nothing.

For a moment, Beatrice didn’t answer. Then her stomach gurgled and she huffed, standing. “Which way?”

“We can go down to that rock there. Let me just get your things.”

They went down to a place on the bank that was out of Mary’s eyesight but close enough that she could hear if Ava hollered. The gun was still stuck in the band of Ava’s trousers, warming the skin at her hip.

When they arrived, Beatrice stood, looking peevish. Ava realized after a moment what she must be thinking. She opened her mouth, stuttering ineffectually for a moment.

“Just take my clothes off.” Beatrice said. Her voice had less bite in it than it had only moments ago, as if she’d used up her day’s supply. Her eyes were heavy. “Take them down to the rope, then take the rope off.” When Ava hesitated, she rolled her eyes and continued, “I’m so exhausted I can barely see straight. And I’m not about to run off in my underthings. Please,” She shook her wrists, “I just want a bath and some food. I’m tired and I’m scared.”

“Why do you always do that?” Ava asked, “You always overdo it at the end. Pearl Archer.” She trailed off, squinting, “I know you’re not scared of me.”

Beatrice’s eyes narrowed, but the look was exhausted of its venom. “Do you have any other insights you’d like to share?”

“Nope,” Ava shook her head, “Lift your arms.”

Beatrice did. Ava hesitated, then drew the chemise and the robe as far as they would go before being stopped by the rope, which she undid, freeing her of the clothing altogether.

Underneath, Beatrice wore a silk camisole with rosebuds on it that ended above her navel and plain white underwear that extended from high on her stomach down to her middle thighs. Ava averted her eyes, toeing at an invisible rock.

“You can look.” Beatrice offered, moving toward the bank of the stream and the large boulder that rested next to it, “I’m used to it. And it’s not like you’re a man.”

Ava cleared her throat once, twice, three times, keeping her gaze planted on the ground, “I’ll give you your privacy.” And then, realizing to her own personal chagrin that giving her privacy would have been impossible: “As much as I can.”

When she chanced a glance up at Beatrice, she was sitting on the rock and giving her a strange, taut-eyed look. It wrinkled her nose sweetly.

Before they’d left, Ava’d had a chance with Wilma Birtwell, who’d tried to get Ava’s hands up her skirt behind the ring toss booth at the county fair while her boyfriend tried to win her a doll. She’d said no for reasons that felt chivalrous at the time but now, considering the way she was eyeing the girl she’d recently taken hostage, and who had a peck of understandable sore feelings on the subject, just seemed silly.

She’d placed a towel and a nubbin of soap on the boulder for Beatrice as well as a rag torn from a clean shirt. Beatrice forewent the soap and used the rag to rub creek water under her arms and over her legs, and to splash it on her face.

For a moment, it almost seemed as though Beatrice forgot that Ava was watching her, and that she hated Ava, and that she had a reason to be guarded. Her body relaxed in the same moment that it was touched by the water, her shoulders slackening.

Ava found a log a few feet away, far enough to give the illusion of privacy, and settled herself on it, wondering if Beatrice was closing her eyes and imagining herself as a normal girl bathing at a crystal clear stream on a warm late summer day. It sounded nice.

Ava felt a presence next to her on the log. She didn’t turn her head. “Going to let the campsite burn down?”

“I can see it from here.” Mary shifted so that her elbows were resting on her knees. “We need a plan.”

“I know.”

“This is a long way from what we talked about.”

“I know.”

If Beatrice was listening, she was doing a good job of pretending she wasn’t. Ava watched her shake out her braid and run her fingers through her fine black hair.

“We could just take the money,” Ava said, “Let her go. Give her the $5 so she can catch a train back wherever she was headed.”

“Headed?”

“When I found her, she was on her way out of the convent. Leaving. Wouldn’t tell me where.” Ava sucked her teeth, “Girl leaves a convent at 2 AM in the morning, $500 in gold and jewelry strapped underneath her nightgown. Does that strike you as odd?” Mary said nothing, “Maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe she doesn’t have people, and this is just a waste of time. I mean, where the hell is Ennis?”

“Okay, so we give up and take the money. Let’s say it’s $500 — minus the fencing fees, $400 — then what?” Mary took in a mighty breath through her nose, “We got food to buy. We got bills to pay. We owe the doctor a debt, plus she needs to get seen again. How much is that?” It was Ava’s turn to say nothing, “Do you remember when we were kids and somebody told JC that if you dug in the ground long enough you’d get to the center of the earth?”

Ava snorted, “Yeah, I remember. We dug out in the yard all day. Suzanne got so angry because none of us did any chores. Still not sure what we were looking for. Or why we were so excited to get to the center of the damn earth — we’d just burn up anyway.”

They both looked on for a moment. Beatrice had stopped bathing and was soaking up the sun on her rock, towel wrapped around her shoulders. “I think once you start on a path you’ve got to follow it all the way down. Don’t you agree?”

Ava considered the ways in which she’d been doing that all her life, walking down to the bitter end of something for better or for worse. This felt different. “You want us to be kidnappers. Real ones.”

“I want our mother to live.” Mary said, and stood, brushing dirt from the back of her pants. Ava found she had nothing she could say to that.

*

Back at camp, Mary prepared a breakfast of thick slabs of cured bacon and biscuits, which Beatrice ate quietly and without complaint. Afterward, she lay on her side on the blanket they’d rolled over the soft prairie grass, turning so that her back faced Mary and Ava.

“Think it’s a good idea to leave her without the rope?” Mary asked. Her own plate had only been picked at.

“She’s barefoot.” Ava said through a mouthful of biscuit, “And making her sleep with it on seems like cruelty for no real reason.”

They said nothing more. The noon sun crept overhead, and when Ava lay on her own blanket she had to move one of her arms so that it rested over her eyes.

She thought of saying something more to Mary. There’s something not right, was the first thing that came to her head, there’s something not right with that girl.

But she wasn’t just that girl, was she? She had a name now, Beatrice. And before Ava could open her mouth to vocalize it, and without realizing, she’d drifted off into a dreamless sleep with the shape of that name in her mind.

*

The sun was going down over the far mountains when Ava woke, jolting up onto her elbow so fast that she frightened herself. Her eyes turned to Beatrice, still asleep on her blanket with her back to her captors. Then Mary, who had scrounged a few logs to add to the crackling fire. She was sitting on her saddle bag with a map stretched over her knees.

“Morning, sleeping beauty.”

“Hmm.” Ava crackled, rubbing at an eye with the heel of her hand, “Timeisit?”

“Half past six.” Mary responded without looking at her wristwatch. She tossed a piece of timber atop the fire and it crackled contentedly, eating and licking at the bark.

“Is she…?”

“Dead asleep. Has been for hours. Snoring.”

As if prompted, Beatrice’s back expanded with a rattling, dainty snore. “Ava…”

Ava’s finger flew to her lips in a shh gesture, “You don’t know if she’s really sleeping.”

“C’mon now. She’s been kidnapped, robbed, and ridden through the night with the foul likes of you.” Mary jutted her head toward Beatrice, “And somehow I haven’t pegged her as a master of deception.”

“Shouldn’t underestimate people.” Ava slid into an upright position, resting her chin on her knees and gazing into the fire. “What’s on the map?” Mary turned it toward her and Ava saw where she’d circled something in black coal. “That Ennis?”

Mary nodded her head. She moved her finger up a little. “And you know where this is?”

Ava’s heart skipped a beat. “No way. We’re not dragging him into this.” She shook her head.

“It was his friend gave us the idea in the first place. I know something happened between the two of you — ”

“It’s not that.” Ava interjected.

“Whatever it is. You don’t think that due to the fact that he lives 10 miles from Ennis, he might know a thing or two about what’s going on down there? Anyway, he’ll have a little bit of work.”

“We’ve got a whole bag of money.”

“We’ve got five dollars cash and some jewelry. What are we going to do with her while we fence it?”

The fire crackled, filling the gaps of the silence that ensued. Ava and Mary stared into it.

Ava hung her head between her knees. Said, “He’s not going to be happy with us showing up out of the blue with a hostage.”

“We’ll stay at the barn in the old field. The one they don’t use anymore. That’s what you call plausible deniability, I think.”

More silence fell between them. “She said that there was nobody to pay a ransom for her.” Ava said after a spell. She felt Mary’s eyes on her.

“You think that’s true?”

A shrug. “It might be.” Ava lifted her head and spat into the dirt beside her, “Like I said before, maybe the whole thing’s true and she stole that bag. Maybe she is just some poor nobody from nowhere.”

“Takes one to know one,” Mary said, “You didn’t answer me. Do you think she’s telling the truth?”

“I think she’s a liar. And I think people only lie like that when they’ve got something to lose.”

“Like money.”

“Maybe like money. Could be money.” Ava paused and lifted her head, “So that’s it, then? We’re doing it? We’re gonna—take this girl, find her family, ransom her off?”

“Figure we go to Ennis, ask around, discreet like. Can’t be too big a place if neither of us have heard of it. Write some sort of letter. Choose a place for them to drop the money, have them bury it out in a field with a marker or some such. Give the girl back after. Whole thing will take a week, maybe two.”

“And what about when she tells her family about the two girls took her hostage?”

“We’ll be in California by then.” Mary said.

“I just can’t shake this feeling. Where was she going? What if — “ All the what-ifs that had ever existed in the world rattled through Ava’s head, so much so that she could not settle on just one to speak out loud. So she said nothing, and stared up at the fading skyline. “Clouds coming in from the west. Looks like a storm.”

Mary squinted up. “Too bad mom isn’t here. She always knows. Says it makes her bones hurt when the rain is about to roll in.” They sat for a moment, thinking about Suzanne and her bones, “You keep watch. We’ll leave before the sun comes up.” Mary reclined back onto her blanket. “We’ll be at JC’s before noon.”

*

In the morning, Beatrice decided on silence. She ate her portion of leftover bacon and biscuit in silence. She stuck out her hand to receive the rope in silence.

She didn’t ask where they were going when Ava and Mary loaded the horses back up. Only looked out over the creek in her just slightly too small dress. She said nothing in her own defense when Ava tied an old bandana around her eyes so she couldn’t see the way to JC’s.

Beatrice even got on the horse without complaint, something that gave Ava pause. It seemed a little too complacent. Given the circumstances, anyway.

“Not gonna ask where we’re going?” Ava asked as she nudged her heels into Cowgirl, picking up into a little trot behind Mary. Beatrice’s body was hot against her back. She said nothing in response. “Storm rolling in.” Still nothing. “It’s got a roof. Where we’re headed. We’ll be dry and warm. So.”

“Well, good. I’ll still be hog-tied and kidnapped. But at least I won’t be rained on.”

“Now there’s a silver lining.” Ava responded lightly, her mouth tilting into a smile.

“We’re going to your home, then.” Beatrice said, feigning nonchalance. Failing.

“Just a place we know. You’ll like it, I think. Grasslands. Big sky.” Not knowing why she was saying it, that Beatrice would like it. Only that she felt like she needed to.

“This whole state is sky.”

It was the most conversation Ava had gotten out of her in two days. She was desperate to keep it going, and at the same time not sure how. “They got sky where you’re from?” She asked. Beatrice’s accent was not of Ennis, which was not unusual. Montana was crawling with people not of there.

As soon as she said it, Ava knew it was wrong. Beatrice stiffened beside her. “No.” Was all she said in response, and they rode on in silence.

*

It was six hours of good road to Judith Gap and another half hour of back paths to the barn on the unused field where the grass was growing back up. They stopped at the gap in the fence that they’d trampled through a hundred times.

“You take Cowgirl and Beatrice to the barn.” Ava said, “I’ll be back soon.”

The main house was a sprawling log cabin set on acres of grassland bloated with bleating sheep and mooing cows, all fat and happy and cared for. As Ava rode up the main path, she could hear the sounds of a ranch in constant motion; of cattle hands hollering and dogs barking. The smell of hide and grass.

JC was out on the porch before she could dismount Hatchet, suspenders hanging lackadaisical on his hips and cigarette in his mouth. His dark hair was pushed back and waxy with sweat. He stuck out a hand to hail a ranch hand when Ava came to a stop in front of the house.

A young boy scurried over and took Hatchet. Ava mounted the steps to the porch and stood in front of JC, sizing him up. They said nothing for a moment.

Then, she struck out her hand and plucked the unlit cigarette from his mouth, sticking it between her lips.

JC smiled, eyes twinkling. “You’ll be needing a light, I expect.” He said, voice burnished as ever. “Come on, then. I’ll make you a coffee, too.”

*

The kitchen was a place of memories, and inside of it Ava caught the scent of a hundred poker games played, whiskey drunk, kisses exchanged. It was big, meant to hold JC and his two rowdy brothers, feed them, warm them around the bulky wood stove. It was the stomach and the beating heart of the house. It nourished and it held.

But by then it was just JC. Kitchens like that were meant for children, and children’s children. Those days, the help sat around that big table, or sometimes friends. On that day, Ava did, feeling small as she placed herself square in the middle of something that was meant to hold eight or ten head while JC fussed with the pot on the stove.

“Have to say I didn’t expect to see you back around so soon,” He said, pouring boiling water into a mug. The room filled with the smell of coffee, “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Probably should be,” Ava responded, pulling the linen collar of her shirt up to her nose, “I smell like shit.”

The mug clattered on the table in front of her, then JC collapsed in the chair across, his own mug in his hands. He shoved an ashtray over to catch the ash from her dwindling, purloined cigarette.

“So, what. You were in the neighborhood and came through for a bath?”

Ava raised her eyebrows, “Is that so unbelievable?”

“Well, yes. Seeing as last time you came through here, I asked you to marry me.” JC stretched his hand out and Ava handed him the cigarette, smoked down low enough that it could have singed his knuckles. His next words were muffled around the butt, “And you said no. So.”

“I was hoping that might be water under the bridge.”

JC flicked the cigarette into the ashtray. “Never said it wasn’t. But it does leave one awfully curious.”

“Say a girl had gotten herself into a pickle.”

A laugh erupted out of JC, knit together mostly from incredulity. Ava thought if she listened hard enough, she could hear a little suffering there too. Like he maybe thought she’d come back to say yes. “Yeah, not hard to believe.”

Outside, there was a crack of thunder. The rain was minutes away. Ava frowned. “I’m serious, JC. I need you to hear me out on this one.”

JC’s mouth twitched. “I’m always hearing you out.”

“Do you remember the friend who stayed with us at the homestead a couple weeks back? Todd Tradwell?” JC inclined his head, “He sort of told us about this job…”

“On a house?” Ava averted her eyes, but she could still feel JC looking at her, “Or what, opium?”

“There was a girl, up in a convent by Box Elder.” Ava took a deep breath, “And Todd told us that her father would pay a certain sum of money to see that she made it down to Bozeman.”

“Oh, what the hell, Ava?” JC shook his head, “She’s not here right now, is she?”

“See, that’s the thing — ”

JC stood from the table and went to the window, hands on his hips. His face was a terse frown. “He told me he was going to put you two onto some work, but I thought it would just be — shit, I don’t know. At least this girl’s dad knows where she is, I guess.”

Ava hung her head, “Like I said, that’s the thing.”

She recounted the whole sordid tale while JC looked on out the window, not making eye contact with her. Ava figured it was for the best, because she didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes. Saying it all out loud made it feel worse, somehow.

When she was finished, he was quiet for a long while. “You said this girl — you said she’s from Ennis?”

“We think so.”

He shook his head, “That’s no place for the two of you.”

“So you know it.”

JC finally looked at her, gaze hard. “I know of it. And I can see why she might be in a hurry to leave.”

“So you were moving opium there.” Ava guessed. JC said nothing, so she figured she’d gotten it right. “Do you know the family? The girl’s name is — ”

“I don’t want to know her name.” JC snapped, “I don’t want to know anything about her. Jesus, Ava. If you keep fighting your good nature, someday you’re going to start winning.”

Ava dipped her head. “That’s not fair.”

“You’re right.” JC said because he was, if nothing else, honest, “But that doesn’t change anything. I told my brother when he died that I was going to clean up and take care of this place,” He paused, strain showing on his face for the first time. “And I’m not in any hurry to start letting him down.”

“You’ve done a good job. A great job. You’ve— ” Ava sniffed, “The place looks great. This wasn’t a good idea, but I’m glad I got to see it. See how well you’re doing.”

JC hung his head, hands still on his hips, and scuffed a toe against the floor. “I’m not—look, I got a herd of cattle that needs to be driven to the far north field. It’ll be a long trip, but I’ll pay $10 if you or Mary can leave this afternoon. Was going to have one of the boys do it, but they’re not as tough as you two. Wanted to wait out the rain.”

Ava nodded, “Won’t say no to that. Mary’ll go, I’ll stay with the girl.”

“Alright then.” JC shook his head, then returned to the table, slouching into his chair. He reclined in it, arms crossed.

“What’re you looking at?”

“Just trying to see if there’s something different.” JC offered, “Can’t believe the little girl who was too sensitive to shoot a squirrel kidnapped a whole person and dragged her down here.”

Ava snorted, “She’s a pain, the girl is.”

“Oh, no shit?” JC laughed incredulously, “And how would you act if you got kidnapped.”

“I’d be smart enough to mind my business.”

“You don’t even do that now.” JC responded. His voice bled with indulgence. It was so warm Ava wished she could reach out and touch it. Touch him, maybe.

She thought about all the times she had touched him, and felt a throb that she would never visit those places again, nor would she ever know the future in which they still knew each other in that way.

They sat there for a while, just looking at each other. Outside, the rain started to fall.

*

Mary left with Hatchet to start the drive, a waxed jacket on and hat on her head. Ava watched her go from the mouth of the unused barn.

They’d made camp in the hayloft, stretching their blankets over piles of hay and lighting the swinging lantern suspended from the ceiling. When Ava ascended the ladder, she found Beatrice there on a blanket, hands tied in front of her and staring into the distance.

“You alright?” Ava asked as she slid onto her own patch of hay. Beatrice didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at her. Her eyes were fixed on the lantern, swinging back and forth with the wind. “You cold? Hot?”

“Bored.” Beatrice intoned without moving her eyes. Ava couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a lie. Beatrice’s face was blank, but there was a flicker of something in her expression that told Ava that all was not still.

“I brought cards up. We could play a little.” This earned Ava the most withering look she had ever been on the receiving end of. Not for the first time, she found her mind turning toward Beatrice’s origins; who else had suffered the blow of that glance? Was that how she looked at her parents when she was being denied something she desperately wanted, how she looked at boys who were being too forward with her?

Before she could stop herself, Ava’s mouth twitched into a barely-there smile. Thinking about Beatrice and all the ways she’d perfected that glare made it seem so charming. Not the intended effect, surely.

Instead of hardening, Beatrice looked briefly disarmed by the smile. Her brow unknitted and her mouth slackened, just for a flicker of a second, before pulling together again. She turned back to keep looking at the lantern swinging.

Ava blew out a long breath. “Alright then,” She said, reclining back on her makeshift bed, “Silence it is.”

*

The rain slanted down on the barn roof and the lantern swinging above them had the effect of highlighting the spite that seemed native to Beatrice’s face. She had the rope on and so there was little chance of her getting off the loft without risking a thirty odd foot fall. Ava could catch a little shut eye if she wanted, but she found herself restless.

“You can stop staring. I’m not going to try and make the jump.” Beatrice said, like she’d been contemplating it, which Ava reckoned she had done. The thought made her mouth twitch.

“You’re more interesting than the ceiling.”

“Save the flattery.”

“Can’t say that I intended it as a compliment.” For that she got a minor serving of side-eye, but Beatrice went back to ignoring her.

Ava sighed. Rolled onto her back. Tried out the ceiling as a change of scenery. “This would go by a lot faster if you’d just…”

“Just what? Rolled over for you?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s what you’re saying.”

“We’re not bad people, my friend and me.” Ava flipped to her side, putting her cheek onto her fist. “We’re just in a…bad situation.”

“So am I.” Beatrice said, and although Ava capped the sentence off in her head with a thanks to you, it never came.

“You were before we came into the picture, too. In a bad way.” Ava said, not a question. Beatrice averted her gaze down to her boots. “What is it? You could tell me now. We’re going to find out, anyway.”

“What difference would it make?”

Heart sharp, Ava sat up on an elbow. She was sure she had hay sticking up from her hair, but she didn’t care, “I’d never send an innocent person into a situation where they were liable to be hurt. If it’s that, you gotta tell me now.”

Beatrice sucked her teeth. She worked her jaw for a moment, moving it to the left, then the right. She dropped her head and she shook it.

Ava studied her all the while. Beatrice was educated, but Ava was getting the inkling that she was also smart, which was a different and altogether more ornery beast.

“Telling me the truth might go a long way in improving your situation.” Ava continued.

“And who decides what the truth is? Is it you?” Beatrice snapped, her head turning, “Why would I tell you anything? You clearly have your heart set on taking me back to Ennis. So take me. See what it gets you.”

“There’s a reason you don’t want to go back.”

“Of course there is,” Beatrice said, like Ava was the stupidest person in the world. Maybe she was, “You think that if I told you what it was, you would understand. Or have some kind of answer.”

“I don’t think it. I know that for a fact.”

“And that’s why I can’t tell you.” For a moment, Ava thought Beatrice might lash out at her again. Try to take her over the edge of the hayloft, perhaps. Her fingers twitched near the butt of the gun in her trousers.

But Beatrice’s shoulders slumped instead, and she turned her head away from Ava. “I’m tired.” She said, “And I’m going to sleep.”

*

Ava awoke to the hushed whisper of her name from below.

Beatrice was on her side, bound wrists curled under her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered as she slept, her chest rising and falling.

Ava poked her head over the edge of the loft. Below, Mary raised a hand in greeting, and then gestured for Ava to come down.

“Is she asleep?” Mary whispered once Ava’s boots made contact with the straw-covered wood. Ava hesitated, turned her eyes to the ceiling, then nodded. The rain was still pelting down from overhead, preventing them from going outside. “How did it go?”

“Fine.” Ava said, “But I think we need to move on.”

“Move on where, Ava?” Mary used her teeth to pull off the thick hide gloves she wore and threw them to the ground with a slap. There were raindrops rolling of the brown hide of her jacket. “We’ve got 10 more dollars in our pocket then we did before, but we don’t know anything else about who she is or where she came from.”

“Let me talk to JC one more time.” Ava put her hands on her hips and kicked the floor. “Maybe he’ll…”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

They stood in silence. Ava spat on the floor and raised her hands, resting her forearms crossed on the top of her head. Mary didn’t seem angry. Just frustrated.

“We’re so close.”

“I know.”

“But there’s something weird about that girl. It’s been putting me on edge.”

“Mary — ”

“No, Ava, really. She’s smart. Smarter than the two of us, probably. You haven’t noticed?” Ava turned her head to avoid Mary’s gaze, which of course piqued her interest, “You have noticed.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“What have you two been talking about up there?”

“Nothing. This and that.” In the silence that followed, Ava couldn’t get her mouth to stop motoring, “She’s interesting. Not that she’s telling me much. But what she is telling me is interesting.”

Hesitantly, Ava lifted her eyes to meet Mary’s. If Ava had a built-in lie detector, Mary had a built-in Ava detector, one that was finely tuned and deadly accurate. “Jesus Christ on a cross,” Mary whispered, “You’re sweet on her.”

“Am not.”

“Are so. Lord God. We’re fucked.”

“We’re not fucked. It’s nothing. I just think she’s—“

Mary’s jaw unhinged, “You think she’s what?”

Ava cleared her throat. She stuck her thumbs in the belt of her pants and resumed taking an interest in the wood slats of the floor. “She’s interesting. Did I say that already?”

“Yeah, Ava.” Mary said, “You said that already. We kidnapped her, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know.”

Mary opened her mouth as if to say something more. Ava didn’t try to stop her. She probably deserved whatever tongue lashing she was about to get.

But Mary stopped herself in the next second, and her face went sisterly.

“I’m not trying to be unfair to you. And I guess I get it. She’s just the type you go for, anyway. And you’re not one for going against your nature.”

“Th—wait, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“But you’ve got to keep a tight lid on it. I mean it. This is the last fucking thing we need.”

“I get it. I’m not going soft or anything. I’m just —“

“You already are soft.” Mary interjected, not unkindly, “I just need you to keep pretending you aren’t for a few more days. That’s all. For Suzanne.”

Ava reached out and put her hand on Mary’s shoulder. Mary covered it with her own and they stood like that for a moment, together and each thinking of the mother they shared.

“I’ll talk to JC again,” Ava said, squeezing her hand, “I’ll figure it out. We’ll be gone by the time it gets dark.”

*

Though it had been months since she’d last been at the ranch, Ava still had a general idea of JC’s schedule. Of his comings and goings. It was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to shake; a tickle in the back of her head that told her he would be up tacking the horses, or in the house having dinner with the crew.

9 PM meant a cigarette in the kitchen. Late enough in the season now that the fire in the potbelly stove would be going and he’d be warming his stocking feet by it, long lost in thought.

Once upon a time, those thoughts would have been about her. Maybe they still were.

“Ava.” He said when he opened the front door. Socks on his feet, cotton henley on. Cigarette tucked behind his ear. “It’s late.”

“Yeah. Well, uh, we were fixing to leave in the morning. Didn’t want to go until we talked.”

“Not much to talk about.”

“There is. We left it in a bad way last time, JC. Let’s not do it again.”

The kitchen was warm, the fire in the stove roaring. They sat across the table from each other, neither saying anything for a long time.

“Where’s your hostage?” JC asked after he’d smoked down his first cigarette in silence, voice prickling and irritated. Ava shrugged. Her hands were knitted between her thighs, nails digging into the skin at the back of her hands.

“In the barn with Mary.” She took a deep breath and gathered all the courage she could find, finite a source as it may have been, “JC, I’m sorry. Before anything you have to know I am. I haven’t always done right by you. And I’m sure I’m not doing right by you now.”

“Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?”

“This is for Suzanne,” Ava’s voice broke over her name, “You’ve known her for longer than I have.”

“I’d do anything for that woman. And I’d do anything for you. Ava, I’d take care of you. I’d take care of Mary and I’d take care of Suzanne.”

Ava shook her head, “JC — ”

“No, don’t say my name like that. I want to know why. Why you’re always picking the hard way. Why you’d rather take some poor girl for ransom than be with me.”

“Because your plan is to bring her here to die.” Ava found more resentment in herself than she’d ever known she had. She leaned forward, pointing a finger at JC, “You want to stick her in that upstairs bedroom and let her die.”

JC’s lip trembled once, briefly, and he said—with no malice, he said, “Because she’s dying, Ava. I want to bring her here to have some comfort and peace with me and her daughters. One of whom I happen to love awfully. Is that such a damn crime?”

“No,” Ava shook her head, “No, no — ”

“Yes. I’m sorry, yes. And I don’t know what that quack doctor is telling you —”

“He’s telling me that there’s hope. That maybe if we could get her someplace with better air. Damper —” Ava wiped at the tears that were forming at the corners of her eyes with the back of a hand, “—Damper air for her lungs, like in California, or in Oregon, that she could get better. Not this shitty place with its shitty dry air. That’s what it is. It’s the damn air. And you — ” More tears, more wiping, “—you just want to trap us here. You think the solution is a husband. If you really loved me as much as you said, you’d want me to try. You’d understand why I have to try.”

JC was crying too, she realized when she was able to look past the deep chasm of pain that had opened up in her chest. His tears were quieter but no less keen.

She felt awful immediately, like her words were the slip of a knife and this was the pain that followed when it nicked your finger. Ava opened her mouth to apologize. She willed the words to come.

Before they could, JC stood. He walked to the other room, and she heard him rifling through something. When he returned, he had a paper.

A map, she realized when he placed it on the table. A surveying map.

“You know that plot of land my brother had before he moved out to Brainerd,” JC said, tracing the blue vein of a road with the tip of his pencil.

“Uh, yeah.” Ava sniffed, “He had tenants out there.”

“For a while. But that’s the thing about Ennis. The soil was bad, and there was no water for a well, and they left. Couldn’t find anybody else to rent it. And when he left, he couldn’t find anybody to buy it. The house is still there, though.” He circled a spot on the map, “Abandoned, but it’s there. And it’s two hours on foot to Ennis.”

“JC…” He pushed the map toward her. Ava hesitated, not sure if she should touch it or not.

He paused before saying the next part, “The only people I know down there are a couple of priests by the name of Father Whittaker and Father Vincent. They’re…” He twisted his face up, “Shit, Ava. I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“Some people just—just aren’t right, you know what I mean?” He clenched his hand into a fist and then opened it, spreading his fingers wide, “They’re con men.”

“So are we.” Ava pointed out, but JC shook his head.

“Not like us.”

“So what kind of con exactly are they running? Stealing money from little old ladies? Or what?”

JC looked at her. He pushed on his chair so that it rocked onto it’s back two legs and held it there, contemplating something. He crossed his arms, sticking his hands underneath his armpits.

“You know what an exorcism is?”

Ava laughed abruptly. “An exorcism?”

“You know — ‘the power of Christ compels you’ — that bullshit? That’s what they do. Priests, you know?” He shook his head, “Except it’s all fake, of course. What they really do is load the girls up with wine or coffee laced with laudanum until they’re shaking and throwing up and put the whole thing on like theater. Then the families pay them under the table for their services. Well, Father Whittaker. Vincent was his ‘trainee’, I think.”

“And you know this,” Ava said, “Because you were selling them the laudanum?”

“I thought they were just fucking around. But after a while I got to be pretty sure that there was a reason they were only doing it to girls. Drugging them up ‘till they couldn’t see straight or remember anything.” His face twisted, “I even heard that one of them had accidentally killed somebody out in Silver Bow, before he made it to Ennis. Didn’t want any part of that.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because Ennis is a poor little place. There was silver there once upon a time, and now there is none, and the soil is bad, and their wells are dry. We’re talking about a group of people who believed so much that God meant for them to be where they were that they killed every Indian in a ten mile radius, or shipped them off to who knows where. And then the land turns against them. That’s the kind of situation that has people start looking for men who do that sort of thing,” JC said, “Paying ‘em to put some meaning to their suffering. To the big cosmic betrayal of it all. Got a daughter that’s talking back? Doesn’t want to do her chores? Must be a demon. Back when I knew them, every family with a girl in it had been paid a visit by those two.”

“So you think she knows them.”

“I think that if you’re telling me that this girl is a pain in the ass, and if she’s good looking, then it’s a near certainty that they’ve crossed paths in one way or another.”

Ava sat with this for a moment, her head swimming.

“You didn’t hear any of this from me, alright?” JC continued, “That’s all I ask. I’m straight now. Don’t need the law showing up on my front porch.”

He kicked his chair forward and leaned over the table, resting one of his hands on the map between them. Ava reached out and covered it with her own.

“You’ll always have a place here, Ava. When you’re done trying.” He looked down at their hands, overlapped. “Maybe that makes me a fool. I don’t know.”

Later, as she rode back to the old barn, Ava thought about that. About love and foolishness. It was easy, on one’s lonesome and in a big, wide, quiet world, to get lost in questions that had no real answers.

Mary was half-asleep by the time she reached the loft, deep in her own contempletude. They didn’t say much except to pass the gun between them.

She thought Beatrice would fall asleep with Mary when she rolled over on her pile of hay, but she didn’t. They sat up together in silence for a while, the only light cast from the glow of the lantern.

“This place,” Beatrice said, “It’s owned by a friend of yours?” Ava eyed her askance, equally shocked by the fawn-legged attempt to initiate conversation and annoyed at the attempt to get information. Beatrice shook her head slightly. “Sorry. I was really just curious. You seem upset.”

“Not upset, just…get lost sometimes. Wondering what the hell it’s all for.”

Without looking at her, Beatrice said, “What is it all for?”

And Ava considered this question. Considered all the ways in which answering it would be unwise. But the last few months had been so lonely, and she was unused to loneliness, even at the places in her life where she’d been worn the thinnest.

There were the salad days, when she and Mary and Suzanne lived together, poor but happy, and then there were these days, with Suzanne sick and Mary retreating into a protective meanness, where they were poor in every way a person could be. And who to tell? It was all a shout into the wind, anyway.

“We got somebody at home,” She said, “I guess you could call her our mother. She took my friend and I in after our parents died. Raised us.”

“Does that make the two of you sisters?”

“Yeah,” Ava said, “We’ve been fighting each other and making up since we were ten years old. I think that does make us sisters.”

“But…”

“But she got sick a year back. Coughing, trouble breathing. When we finally got enough money to get her seen by a doctor, he called it cancer. I don’t know anything about that stuff. We’ve tried everything. Every medicine we could possibly get the money for, but…” Ava shook her head, and when she turned she saw Beatrice looking at her. Gaze unwavering. “She’s worse, somehow. And the last time we took her to see the doc, he said—he said one thing we could try was getting her out of here. Out of Montana, to some place with better air. Wet air, he said, like the kind you get by the ocean. I’ve never lived right on the ocean, so I don’t know if I’d like it any, but it’s worth a shot.”

Mary snored gently in the background. Ava barely noticed. She was too fixed on Beatrice.

For a moment, she thought Beatrice would say nothing. Or perhaps something snide. She steeled herself for it.

Instead, Beatrice reached out with her bound hands and took Ava by the elbow. It was the first time she’d initiated touch between the two of them, and it exploded through Ava like a thunderbolt. She only had a second to worry about what was happening—to think about the gun—before she realized that Beatrice was only turning her arm to examine her shirt.

To look at all the places Suzanne had mended it with new fabric. The patchwork. Beatrice touched it with a finger.

“Did she do this for you?”

“Yeah.”

“I can tell she loves you, too,” She said, “Just from this.”

Ava hated how much that morsel of kindness, of understanding, unmoored her. How it made her forget about their circumstances and want to take Beatrice in her arms. To hug her.

Embarrassed by the emotional outburst, even though it had only happened inwardly, Ava bit it back.

“My mother is dead, too.” Beatrice said before Ava could shame herself further. She was still looking at the patchwork on Ava’s arm.

“I’m—Beatrice, I’m real sorry to hear that.”

“She did it to herself. So I guess I can’t be too sad, given that she got what she wanted.” Try as she might, Ava couldn’t quite figure where to keep her attention. On Beatrice’s fingers toying with the fabric of her shirt. On her words, which had a dream-like quality. “What are you going to do with the money when you get it? Other than move, I mean. Certainly you’re thinking you’ll have more than enough to get to California.”

Ava swallowed harshly. Why did it feel like a question that had a correct answer? “I just want to find someplace where we can all be together. Me and my sister and our mother. And anybody else who wants to join us.”

Beatrice’s eyes found her’s. Her face was like an optical illusion. Ava couldn’t tell if it had gone soft or unbearably harsh. “Is that all you think about all day? Other people?”

“Food, sometimes.”

It was a joke. Beatrice didn’t laugh. “Do you think it did something to you, your parents dying?”

“I guess it did.”

“Do you think it made you into a kidnapper?”

Ava pressed her lips in, “What the hell kind of question is that? Did your mother dying do something to you?”

It was then that she realized that Beatrice’s hand, once fiddling, was now gripping the fabric of her shirt. Ava looked at it. Fixated her gaze there. She was suddenly and inextricably afraid to look Beatrice in the eye.

“Yes.” Beatrice said.

“When I was talking to my friend,” Ava said, “He said he knew something about Ennis. About a couple priests that live there by the name of Vincent and Whittaker.” She looked at Beatrice’s profile. Beatrice was still studying her sleeve, “You know them?”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“Look, I know you’ve made up your mind about me. I get that. But I’m not unreasonable. And if,” Ava’s eyes slid over to Mary’s slumbering form, “If somebody hurt you, if one of those guys did something—something funny to you, just tell me.”

“Nobody hurt me.” Beatrice said, “Vincent and Whittaker least of all.”

“You just said you didn’t know them.”

They made eye contact again, finally. Ava pulsed with it. It reminded her of the feeling she got when she was out in the woods and there might be an animal watching her; a cougar crouched down low in the brush.

“Whatever it is you think you need to hear to feel okay with letting me go,” Beatrice said, “That my father beats me, that I’m pregnant, that those priests did something so horrible to me that you can’t even say it. I’m not going to be able to give it to you. I think, at this point, that we’re just going to have to follow this path together down to the end. Don’t you?”

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Gently, she pulled her arm from Beatrice’s grip. Beatrice held on for a second before letting go. “I’m sorry that we’re doing this to you,” She said, “I really am.”

“I know you’re not bad people.” Beatrice said, “But you’re unlucky.”

“What does that mean?”

Beatrice shook her head once. She averted her eyes, breaking the heady thread that had stretched between them. The barn felt colder because of it.

“All the things that have happened to you,” She said.

Ava wondered if she also meant all the things that were still to come.

*

That night, Ava dreamed of convergences. She dreamed about the wind descending upon the prairie grass, of ripples that looked like waves in an ocean, broken by the mountains.

She dreamed about the crow coming to her window, of the promise of food for an empty belly. Of silver pouring into porcelain cups. And of the white clapboard convent stark on that empty plain, and the room in that convent.

Of Catherine Snyde. Of Beatrice. On that night, in that room, with a suitcase. With her shoes on.

Lastly, she dreamed of the farmhouse she had not yet seen, sitting tall on dry, barren soil. Abandoned. Empty. Waiting for them like an open, hungry mouth.

Chapter Text

It was a full day’s ride and they made it in seven hours, taking no breaks and eating jerky from the saddlebags as they went. She’d explained the situation to Mary that morning, standing far away from Beatrice as she did. Ava told her about Ennis, and about the priests, the last part because she thought Mary might be interested in the drama of it all.

Ava had nothing but the map and JC’s description and a compass. But they were out in God’s country, meaning empty, and any man made structure stuck out like a sore thumb. That was how they first noticed the old, time-eaten fence, and the house that lay beyond.

It was a two-story Victorian, the paint on which had been worn away enough that Ava figured somebody had stopped caring long before they abandoned it. It sloped to one side like a drunk sleeping a night off in jail, surrounded on every side by gray sky and flat, brown grass.

Inside, they were pleased to find that all the furniture had been left. There was a sofa in front of a fireplace and a kitchen through an archway on the opposite wall. A room upstairs for sleeping.

Beatrice was quiet on the ride, almost docile. The whole way, she’d eaten when Ava had eaten. She’d gotten on and off the horse when told. And when they sat around the table discussing their plan, she stuck close to Ava and made no protest in her own favor.

And so she was allowed the rope off again for so long as she was shoeless and somebody with the gun was near. Allowed to roam the property with them, inspecting the books and crannies. It tickled at Ava in a way she couldn’t quite articulate. But they were so close; close to Ennis, and close to the end.

That was how it felt, anyway.

“I’ll walk into Ennis tomorrow,” Ava said as they sat around the kitchen table, deciding things, “And ask around. Unless you’ve had a change of heart and want to save us a day of trouble.” She looked to Beatrice, who only hung her head and avoided eye contact, making that option unlikely. “Once I find out, I’ll go back and post the letter. Easy. We’ll be here two days, three tops.”

Mary knocked on the wooden surface of the table.

They brought in the blankets from the horses, not very much trusting the old linens. Mary claimed the couch in front of the fireplace and let the two of them have the bedroom, which had a bed and an armchair big enough for Ava to sleep on.

“It’s better for me to be down here in case she tries to make her escape out the front door,” She reasoned, though in reality Ava suspected she wasn’t keen on spending another night sleeping within mere feet of the two of them.

A few nails and a hammer found in a kitchen drawer took care of the bedroom window as an option for flight, which Beatrice watched wryly from the doorway.

“A bit overkill, isn’t it?”

Ava turned, gesturing toward her with the hammer. “Exactly something a hostage would say.”

An even more welcome discovery was a pile of old wood, which Ava went to with a hatchet around the back door to make kindling.

From behind her on the steps, she saw Mary offer Beatrice a cigarette from the front pocket of her shirt, to which Beatrice shook her head. She was reading a book she’d nabbed from the upstairs bedroom with her bare feet stretched out in front of her. The two of them looked almost companionable.

Ava was thinking about it when she brought the hatchet down to split the small log, and as she did so her shoulder spasmed. She grunted, slouching.

“Alright over there?” Mary called, smoke curling from her nose.

“Why don’t you come take a turn? My shoulder is shot from sleeping on the ground.”

“You know my aim is shit. I nearly took off a finger last time I chopped wood.” Mary replied, a smirk playing out at the edges of her mouth. Ava fell back from her kneeling position onto her behind.

“I’ll do it.” Beatrice offered, shutting the book around one of her fingers to keep her place. “I chopped wood all the time back home.”

Ava and Mary exchanged a glance. Beatrice snorted.

“You think I’m going to come at you with an ax? I want to have dinner just as much as you two.”

“It’s a hatchet.” Ava said absently.

“You’ve got the gun.” Mary offered, “Figure she could only get a disfiguring swing in, not a deadly one.”

“I’m not the brightest,” Ava said, resuming her previous position, “But I’m not that stupid, either.”

They brought wood in by the armful and left the hatchet resting on the mantle of the fireplace, and they had a roaring fire for dinner by the time the sun had disappeared. Again, Ava was struck by how affably the three of them broke bread.

Was it the house? The fact that the three of them were no longer sleeping rough? The proximity to the end of the journey? Had Beatrice given up?

Ava watched her from the corner of her eye as she chewed her meal of dried meat stew and flatbread Mary had fried up on a stone. Her braid, after days of harassment, was finally coming loose, and her cheeks were bright and pink with warmth and sustenance.

It was how alive she looked that unsettled Ava, how vital. Like she was a boxer fattening up into the next weight class. And she just couldn’t shake the feeling that Beatrice wasn’t one to give up. Not easily. Not without a fight.

*

Being Beatrice’s designated chaperone had its complications. Of course.

“I’ll just—” Ava stood in the corner of the bedroom, hands shoved in her pockets. “I’ll turn around.”

“Whatever you want.” Beatrice murmured absently. She was pulling at the back ties of the dress. Ava turned and took in the wall before she could make much more progress.

There was a soft shuffling sound as the fabric hit the floor, and another as Beatrice donned her nightgown. When Ava turned, she was lacing the front.

“You two don’t sleep in pajamas?”

“Makes it a little more difficult to fix a daring escape. Or to stop others in their own.” Ava waited for the tart reply. There was none. Beatrice moved to slide on top of the bedspread instead, pulling their woolen blanket over herself. “I’m just sleeping on the armchair, anyway. Not much need to get comfortable.”

“Suit yourself.” She reached and took the book she’d been reading earlier and opened it across her knees.

This left Ava standing in the corner of the room feeling rather like a scolded child. Never had she and Beatrice been this alone; closed door, room dark but for a lit candle. Mary downstairs in front of a no doubt roasting fire. Window nailed shut over Beatrice’s head.

And Beatrice didn’t seem to give two figs for any of it. She did not even appear to feel disgust or anger. Her reaction was one of total apathy.

Ava slumped into the armchair, pulling her own blanket over herself. They sat without a word passing between them, the only sound the turning of the pages in the book.

“Anything good?”

“Hm?”

“The book.” Ava shifted. “It’s good?”

Beatrice turned it to look at the front cover as if she’d forgotten what she had been reading in the first place. “It’s called Much Ado About Nothing. Have you heard of it? Or Shakespeare?” Ava shook her head. “Essentially it’s about people falling in love. And one woman in particular who dislikes a man very much because he’s a fool — and then marries him.”

Ava laughed abruptly. “How’s that figure?”

“It mystifies me as well.”

“Must be a hell of a second act.”

Beatrice turned the book so that it lay face down on her lap. Her attention was now singularly on Ava. Something Ava thought she might have wanted, but found herself unprepared to handle.

“You’ve never read a book, have you?”

“Not as such. My sister reads to me sometimes. Dime store shit about cowboys, far beneath your tastes, I’m sure.”

“Rich women can’t like cowboys?” Beatrice raised one eyebrow. Ava shifted, that scolded feeling returning tenfold.

“So you admit that you’re rich.”

Beatrice didn’t entertain this, as Ava suspected she would not. “How come you never learned?”

“To read?” Ava shrugged, “No point.”

“That can’t be true,” Beatrice’s head was tilted against the headboard. “That can’t be the whole truth, at least.”

“Now why would I go and do a thing like tell you the whole truth?” Ava half-joked, to which Beatrice only stared in a way that made Ava feel like maybe she’d never successfully told a joke in her entire life. She swallowed. “My parents died when I was about four. Then I was in an orphanage, in New York City. And I guess nobody ever thought I was worth teaching. Then, when I came out west,” She shrugged, “I guess I sort of figured out that they were right.”

“Right about what?”

“That I wasn’t worth it. I mean,” Ava sucked a deep breath in through her nose, lost in thought, “When I try to imagine it, I think about — clean clothes, warm house, enough food, and time to just stretch out and,” She shook her head, “Read. And to try and picture myself, with all that? It’s silly.” Beatrice didn’t respond, and Ava figured it was because she had embarrassed herself. So she decided to dig the hole deeper. “You ever wonder if, I dunno, you got born accidentally into the wrong life? Like the midwife switched the babies and there’s some other little girl out there in New York doing all the things I can only imagine. And I’m here, doing this. Badly, cause it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing. Like maybe in another life I’m out there eating fruit and reading books. And I have so much time — I don’t know.”

When she dared raise her gaze to Beatrice’s face, Beatrice’s eyes were glassy and her lips were parted. She opened her jaw slightly as if to say something, and then shut it.

She opened it again. The words that came out, Ava was sure, were not what she had initially intended to say, “I like books because they take you to different places. Even if technically, maybe, you’ve only ever been in one place.”

Her voice was so small. So empty of ridicule, that Ava could hardly believe it was Beatrice. “Sounds nice.”

“In a way. And if you ever do want to learn…I think everybody deserves to live the life that they think they’re supposed to. Even you.”

“Pretty generous of you. You work for the book industry or something? You’re talking this up to me like you’re going to get a cut.”

Ava then got the surprise of the century when Beatrice’s mouth lifted into a smile. It was the first one Ava had seen on her, ever, and it came so inauspiciously that she almost missed it.

Beatrice turned her head back to the book, righting its face, and hid it just as quickly as it arose. Stole it from Ava’s greedy line of sight.

“Just an enthusiast, I assure you. I can read some of this to you, if you’d like. To pass the time.” Beatrice tilted her head, “Unless you’re tired.”

“No! No. Uh, not tired. I’d love to hear a piece.”

“There are no cowboys.”

“Well, uh, I imagine I’ll find a way to cope.”

Beatrice cleared her throat. “‘I thank God and my cold blood; I am of your humor for that,’” Still looking at the book, she ran a finger down the page as she read, “‘I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.’”

“Jesus,” Ava laughed, “Who said that.”

“The character’s name is Beatrice,” Beatrice said without a drop of irony. Ava laughed again. If she didn’t know any better, and if the light in the room weren’t so low, she would have said that Beatrice might have been blushing.

“Any relation?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s pretty good.” Ava said, “‘I’d rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.’ I’m going to keep that one.”

“Keep it?” Beatrice asked, and Ava tapped her temple, as if to say, up here.

Beatrice rolled her eyes and looked back to her book. But - and Ava knew that this one was no trick of the light, no little play acting of shadow - this time, she was smiling again.

*

Ennis was little more than a long dirt road hewn in with clapboard houses and shops. Beyond that, great sterling mountains loomed in the distance. Ava glanced up at them, boots squelching in the mud leftover by the previous days’ rain, and wondered when exactly they’d stopped giving up their bounty.

She was used to mining town streets that writhed with people. To the sounds and smells of activity. Such was not the case in Ennis, who’s singular drag had but one other person on it, either drunk or high on opium and stumbling in the general direction of a building that might have been the saloon.

Ava paused for one moment at the mouth of the town, a chill washing over her. She glanced behind her on the road she’d come in on, face twisting.

There were a few buildings lined up; she walked past each of them, peering into the windows until she spotted one that looked to be the General Store and entered.

“Howdy.” The woman at the counter greeted her, not looking up from her paperback book. Two other people browsed shelves on which inconsiderable objects had been spaced out as to make it seem more fulsome.

“Hi.” She replied breathlessly when she reached the counter. The woman made eye contact with her for the first time.

“Can I help you?”

“Uh, packet of tobacco please. Whatever’s cheapest.”

“Five cents.”

“That’s fine, thank you.”

While the woman busied herself behind the counter, Ava pulled a nickel from the front pocket of her shirt and set it down on the surface between them. “You happen to know where the church is?”

“Which one?”

“Dunno. I’m looking for a Father Whittaker.”

The woman, who had been bent over taking the box from a glass case, stiffened. She stood straight and slid the tobacco to Ava, taking the nickel.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?”

Ava adjusted the bandana tied around her neck. Smiled. “How could you tell?”

“I never forget a face. And I’d recognize yours.”

The questions were starting to feel more probing than friendly. “Well, yup. Just passing through. The church?” Ava prompted, tucking the tobacco into her satchel.

“Any particular reason you’d like to know?”

Ava said, “To tell you the truth, I’m looking for a family that might live in the area. Maybe you know them, if you never forget a face. The McBrides?”

The person standing next to Ava browsing a case of pocket watches turned their head, taking notice of the conversation. The store clerk’s jaw tensed. Her shoulders tightened.

“What are you trying to find the McBrides for?”

Ava smiled again, trying to dial up the charm even as the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up stiff. She rattled off the answer she’d prepared for this question: “I heard they’re in the market for help keeping the horses. Friend of mine said so. Thought I’d inquire.”

The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed. She leaned against the glass of the counter with one elbow. “I wish you people would leave that poor man alone. All of you think you’re so damn clever.”

“That poor—sorry, ma’am, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Father Vincent is at the Catholic church at the far end of the main road. It’s the only white building in town.” The woman shook her head, “But he’s not going to tell you any more about the McBrides than I will.”

The man next to her was gawking at them, having given up on pretending he wasn’t listening.

He was tall. Skinny. Slick and shiny and pockmarked. He reminded Ava of a log that had been pushed around too long in the water, been bleached of its color and riddled with holes.

And his gaze made her feel awful. Ava avoided it, dipped her head.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can see I’ve done something to offend you — ”

“You bounty hunters,” The woman continued, “Are as bad as vultures. Picking at the carcass of this town. You got your tobacco, so you can move on now. Nothing else for you here.”

Bounty hunter, Ava thought, not really assigning meaning to the words - not yet - too befuddled by them - and left the shop.

*

The church at the end of the road in Ennis looked so similar to the one she’d found Beatrice holed up in that Ava had to wonder if there was some kind of common floor plan being scuttled between Catholics in Montana. It was one building, a gold cross glittering atop its steepled roof like a crown.

Ava stared up at it, hands in her pockets. The words bounty hunter rolling around in her head like loose marbles. Then, she went inside.

At the front of the church, a ragtag choir was assembled and flipping through paper songbooks while their conductor worked on a hand rolled cigarette.

The room was otherwise empty except for a woman sitting in the very back pew, dark-haired with a waxen face. She looked twenty-five, like Ava, but a brittle twenty-five, like some of those years had been hard won.

Her dress was fine, made of purple silk. But it looked like she’d been wearing it for several days, and there were stains on the front of it.

Ava sat next to her in the pew, close enough to speak but far enough that it wouldn’t make the woman uncomfortable. At the same time she did, the choir in front of them swelled into song.

Ava became lost in it for a moment. They were spare but talented, and their voices filled the room to its high ceilings.

When she came back to herself, she turned to the woman and found her with tear tracks running down her cheeks. She reached a hand into the pocket of her shirt, produced a handkerchief, and offered it over.

The woman looked at it if Ava had offered her a pile of human excrement, then at Ava. She had a severity in her eyes that reminded Ava of Beatrice.

Oh sinners, let’s go down, let’s go down, come on down, the choir sang, oh sinners, let’s go down —

“Sorry,” Ava said, realizing that, for the second time, she’d made some social folly without realizing it. She crumpled the handkerchief in her fist and retracted it, “Sorry, miss, but do you happen to know if Father Vincent is in?”

The woman’s face sharpened further, “What the hell do you want to see Father Vincent for?” She whispered, then sized Ava up with her eyes, “Are you here alone?” Ava nodded. The woman leaned in, “It’s not worth it. Whatever good they’re telling you it’ll do, it’s not—”

“Lilith—” An older woman came out of a doorway to their left and approached them. At the sound of her voice, the girl, Lilith, shook her head and stood. Ava noticed that she was wobbling a little. “I have your medicine. It’s time for us to go, dear.”

“You should get out of here while you still can.” Lilith whispered, and then she was gone.

For a moment Ava could only sit, feeling stunned. The choir was still singing, undaunted by the conversation. She eyed the door that Lilith’s mother had just come out of, then stood and went through it.

The door lead to a corridor with another door at the end. This one had a wooden plaque on the front wide enough to hold two names on top of each other. The top one, Ava saw, had been scribbled out.

As she was looking at the letters of the bottom one, trying to decide what she thought they might mean, the door swung open and a man appeared in the doorway, his clerical clothing finely pressed and spectacles sitting low on his nose. “I didn’t have another appointment scheduled this afternoon.”

“No. Sorry. I didn’t schedule one.” Ava said once she’d finished startling. The priest didn’t look all that surprised to see a strange woman on his doorstep; annoyed, perhaps. Ava wiped her hands down the front of her pants, then extended one, “I was hoping I might have a few minutes of your time. You’re Father Vincent, aren’t you?”

Father Vincent studied her hand with a look of faint disgust, then nodded. Ava retracted it.

“I have a busy afternoon.”

“I promise I won’t take long.”

“You’re not from Ennis.”

“No. I just came in from Southwater.” Ava swallowed. “I just had a question for you about a family that lives around here. The McBrides.”

Something registered on Vincent’s face. His jaw worked for a moment, a sway of indecision. Then, he stepped aside and gestured for Ava to enter.

The office was cramped and reeked of living. Whiskey and sweat hung low in the air, and a damp, uninsulated musk. Ava could see empty glass bottles lining dark wood shelves otherwise occupied by what she assumed were religious texts and idols of Jesus and Mary.

Vincent gestured across an imposing desk where two wooden chairs were arranged. Ava settled into one, watching as he checked a gold pocket watch before finally turning his attention to her, sliding into his own chair.

“Sorry again for the intrusion, Father. But I’ve been looking for work for some time now and I had heard…” Ava shifted in her seat, “…heard from a friend that the McBrides were looking for a stable hand.” Father Vincent’s eyes flashed, but he kept his expression impassive. “Was hoping I could get pointed in the right direction, and I was told there’s a preacher around here who knew the family.”

“I’m not a preacher.” Father Vincent commented lightly. He took a cigarette from the pile of papers on his desk and lit it with a match struck against wood. Acrid smoke wafted into Ava’s face. “I’m a priest.”

“Even better.” Ava attempted a laugh that emerged hollow and awkward. She coughed to cover the end of it.

“Who’s the friend?” Father Vincent propped an elbow against the edge of his desk, relaxing back into his chair. “Who told you about the McBrides? If they know them, surely they’re from around here.” When Ava said nothing, he jolted his neck to one side with a crack, then rolled it from side to side. “Aren’t they?”

“I don’t think so. Seasonal work.”

“Ah, yes. Seasonal work doing what?” When Ava paused for longer than a second, Father Vincent extinguished his cigarette and leaned forward. Ava got a whiff of him. A lack of bathing covered by cheap cologne, undertones of tobacco and hooch. Her nostrils flared. “Perhaps you want to tell me what it is you’re really here for.”

Bounty hunter, Ava thought again, her mind stretched in several different directions. And then something else the shopkeeper said occurred to her. “The name that’s scratched out on the door out front,” Ava said before she could stop herself, “That’s Father Whittaker, isn’t it? Where did he go?”

Father Vincent, for the first time, looked disarmed. He leaned back slightly. “How do you know about Father Whittaker if you’re not from around here?” He studied her for a moment more, “You don’t look like you’re lying. And you don’t look like a bounty hunter. No.” He shook his head, “Too small, unless you’ve got a posse with you. And you can’t have been a friend of Beatrice’s. She didn’t have those.”

Hearing Beatrice’s name out of this man’s mouth sent an ice hold current running through Ava’s belly. “I told you, I just heard from—”

“A friend, I’m sure.” Out of the corner of her eye, Ava saw that the hand he’d been using to smoke his cigarette was toying with a gold statue of Jesus with his arms magnanimously outstretched sitting on the corner of his desk. “I find it interesting that whoever sent you down here with that half-cocked story didn’t tell you that Charlie McBride hasn’t let a soul into his property since Beatrice left. Barely even the people who were already working for him.” He squinted, leaning forward across the desk. Ava instinctively leaned back, away from his wretched smell. His eyes roamed over her. “Maybe you do know Beatrice. Do you? Have you seen her?”

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Father Vincent leaned back and Ava felt the knot in her chest uncoil. She realized that she’d been sweating.

“Come in.” Father Vincent said without taking his eyes from Ava, and a woman opened the door just enough to poke her head in.

“Father, the choir is done with practice. They wanted to know if you would come in and do a prayer with them.

“Thank you, Alice. Tell them I’ll be right there.” Vincent smiled. When he did, Ava saw rows of crooked teeth, one of his canines replaced with silver. They all looked on the verge of going rotten. The sweat started again. “Do me a favor, would you? If you do see Beatrice?” Not able to look at his grotesque smile and without really knowing why, Ava’s eyes went back to the gold statue of Jesus he’d been toying with, “Tell her it’s time to come on home.”

*

Bounty hunter, Ava thought as she stumbled out of the church into the blinding daylight. She took in gulps of fresh air, if you see Beatrice, tell her —

Who could a bounty hunter be looking for? Whittaker was gone, so it was possible that it was him, but there was also the implication of some event that had happened — of Beatrice’s leaving. Ava supposed that there was one good way to find out.

After being pointed in a few different directions, Ava found what she was looking for. It was posted up outside the saloon, covered from the elements by a shallow tin roof.

A board on which any Wanted poster that might be of interest was posted. Ava hardly knew why she was there, being as she couldn’t even read any of them.

But she browsed the ones with pictures all the same. If it were Whittaker that was wanted, she’d be shit out of luck. But she tried to see if she could perhaps recognize, on the sun-burnt face of some anonymous man, the slope of Beatrice’s nose, or a hereditary dusting of freckles.

She was looking so hard that she almost missed it when it was right in front of her. And when she did see it, it took her a moment to really see it — who the person was on the poster. It felt too odd to be true.

In the picture they chose for Beatrice, she was much younger. Ava guessed 16, based on the softness of her face and the frills on her dress. She wondered, while her brain was still catching up to what it was seeing, why they hadn’t used a more recent picture if they could certainly afford to have taken one.

Ava reached out and pulled the paper down, holding it in front of her face. In the absence of being able to read the words - though she certainly could tell what they might say - she stared into Beatrice’s eyes, almost blurred out by whatever process it took to make copies.

“Looking for somebody?” Ava startled and turned to see the man from the shop. This time, to her chagrin, she noticed that he had a companion. He was as square and thick as the man from the general store was thin, and the two of them standing together was would have been comical, if Ava was in the mood to laugh, “Heard you asking after the McBride girl.” He gestured with his head at the poster in Ava’s hands, which she crinkled in an effort to take Beatrice’s picture from his line of sight. “It’s alright, darlin’, I’m not going to take it from you. Do you know something about Beatrice?”

Her eyes darted between them. “Why would I tell you if I did?”

“Because,” The man from the store took a step closer to her. He almost blocked out the sunlight, casting a deep shadow over Ava, “I can’t imagine a little thing like you bringing in the likes of her all on your own.”

The smell of him, even in the open air, was making her long for Father Vincent’s office. “What the hell did she do that’s got all of you so worked up?”

She said it mostly to herself, but the words sent Tall and Thick into peels of laughter. At least it got Tall to give her some breathing room. “She don’t even know. Women,” Tall took in a massive, phlegmy snort, then shot it onto the dirt, “Are really good for abso-fucking-lutely nothing.”

“Why don’t you read the poster, sweet cheeks?” Thick said from behind Tall, his scintillating contribution to the conversation. Ava narrowed her eyes.

“Thanks, I’ll do that.”

“You know, this bounty hunting thing doesn’t work out…I’ve been looking for a wife,” Tall’s eye dragged over her then. Ava felt his leer like the unwanted touch of a stranger. She recoiled from it. “‘Course, got to be able to use your mouth for more than smart talking.”

Ava’s hand went to the band of her pants. But, of course, the gun was back with Beatrice and Mary.

“Splendid! Tiny!” A woman stuck her head out of the bar, “Are you bothering this lady? Don’t think I need to remind you that there’s a lot of work that needs doing in here.”

Ava looked at the woman and then back to the men, who were both flushed and looking hangdog. “Which one of you’s Splendid?” Ava asked, and Thick pointed to Tall. She snorted. “Your mother’s got an interesting sense of irony, doesn’t she?”

“Cunt.” Splendid spat, shouldering past her and toward the saloon. Ava smiled, folding the poster and tucking it into the back pocket of her pants.

She’d take it back to Mary. Mary would know what to do.

*

The muddy ground made the walk back just as hard as the walk there; what was meant to be two hours took three. The whole way, Ava was so concerned with what had just happened that she didn’t spare a single thought to what would be waiting for her when she returned.

Her first inkling that something was wrong came when she noticed that the front door was hanging open, slamming open and shut in the breeze. Ava swore and marched up onto the porch.

Mary was in the living room, by the archway that led to the kitchen, clutching at her forearm with a hand.

“What the hell happened here?” Ava asked, eyes scanning the room for Beatrice.

“She bit me.” Mary gritted out through clenched teeth. Ava looked and, indeed, there were two rows of indentations on Mary’s forearm. A pearl of blood was forming at the corner of one.

“Where is she?” Ava asked, shouldering past her and into the kitchen.

“Where is she?” Mary’s voice trailed behind her, “What happened to how are you? How’s your arm?”

She was in the kitchen, tied haphazardly to a table leg and sat on the floor like a scolded child. A dribble of blood running down Beatrice’s left nostril and a shadow under the same eye told of an unspoken altercation.

“You hit her?” Ava turned back to Mary, who rolled her eyes.

“She bit me.”

“She’s right.” Beatrice’s voice was light and even, given the circumstances, “I deserved it.”

“See? From the horse’s mouth.”

“To be fair, I was kidnapped.”

“Enough,” Ava said, “Both of you, Jesus. How am I supposed to think?”

“I want her gone,” Mary said, to which Beatrice scoffed and rolled her eyes, “I want this finished. Of all the girls in Montana we could have kidnapped, we picked the feral one. What did you find out in Ennis?”

Ava’s eyes slid over to Beatrice. To her banged-up face, her scowl. Her bare feet planted in front of her on the floor. She was watching Ava with as much interest as Mary was, if not more.

The flier burned a hole in her back pocket. Ava considered pulling it out right then and showing it to Mary to read, but what would Beatrice do? What about the broken skin on Mary’s arm?

Something wasn’t right, that much was clear. And there was no way that they were going to suss it out with Beatrice sitting there, sloppily restrained.

“Nothing.” Ava said, averting her gaze to the floor. Not quick enough not to see Beatrice’s eyes narrow. “They weren’t in. The priests.”

“Goddamnit.” Mary ran her hands down her face. Beatrice continued saying nothing. “Not in—aren’t priests always supposed to be in? What if you needed to give confession? Did you ask anybody else?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? And how to answer it in a way that would cull Beatrice’s suspicions? “No. I didn’t want anybody remembering that I was going around asking about Beatrice. Somebody could put two and two together. Unlikely, but — look, I’ll go back tomorrow,” Ava offered, trying to keep her eyes off of Beatrice. She knew somehow that she’d know Ava was lying, “They’ll be back, I’ll figure it out.”

“And tonight?” Mary, who had no qualms herself shooting daggers at Beatrice, said, “I’m not sleeping in the same house as her.”

“So let me go.” Beatrice volleyed back.

“I’ll sleep in there with her again.” Ava said, “She’ll be tied up. Put a chair under the door handle if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Maybe I will,” Mary shot, then returned her attention to her wounded arm, “Hurts like a bitch.”

They went back up to the room where Beatrice allowed Ava to move her rather like a spiteful doll. She sat where she was placed, and she ate what was fed to her.

Frowning the whole time so as not to seem too complacent, of course.

“Alright,” Ava said, when it was half past 9 in the evening and Mary had retired downstairs, “You’re sleeping in the dress tonight. But I’ll put your book out so you can read it, if you’d like.”

For the first time that evening, Beatrice looked stricken. “No. Can’t I change into my nightgown?”

“Maybe should have considered that before you took a bite of my sister.”

“She left the gun on the table while she put more logs on the fire. There was only one of you. I saw my chance.” Beatrice reasoned, “And I took it. I would think that you, of all people, would understand that.”

Ava did. “Doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to untie you.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re humane.” Ava tried not to get too hung up on the part where Beatrice admitted she wasn’t an idiot, which felt too genuine to be a lie, “And I’m appealing to that. This dress is too small on me to sleep in.”

Ava took a deep breath. She filled her cheeks with it. She forced it out. The flier was a hot coal in the seat of her pants.

She looked over at Beatrice, and try as she might, all she could see was a girl. Ava’s age. Tired, and with a nasty shiner forming under her right eye.

“Give me your hands,” Ava said, “And no funny business.”

“On my honor.” Beatrice responded, giving no indication that she heard the irony in her own words.

The rope came off. This time, instead of turning away, Ava faced Beatrice while she undressed, one hand on the butt of the gun.

Beatrice only hesitated for a moment once she realized that Ava was going to watch. She cheated her body away before disrobing; disposing of the dress first, then her underwear.

Ava focused her gaze on Beatrice’s braid, and then the back of her ear. There was a mole there that she hadn’t noticed before. It disappeared briefly when Beatrice pulled the nightgown over her head.

The white linen fell over her body. It had been through hell, but looked none the worse for wear, despite being white, and delicate.

“You’re awfully quiet this evening,” Beatrice commented, “Are you cross with me? About your sister?”

“No.” Ava said, because she wasn’t; although she was self-aware enough to admit that the idea that Beatrice had been kind only to gain trust glanced at her feelings. In admitting it to herself, she felt even stupider.

She stepped forward with the rope. Beatrice extended her wrists. Ava saw her glance toward the dress crumpled on the floor.

“That’s your dress, isn’t it?”

“Yup.” Ava said, wrapping the rope back around her wrists. She tightened it and Beatrice flinched. “Sorry. I’ll do it a little looser.”

“I’ve never seen you wear a dress before.”

“Doesn’t happen often.”

“Often though for somebody to have made you one. Your mother?”

The ropes were on. Ava took a step back and settled herself into the armchair, but Beatrice lingered for a moment, as if she hadn’t quite caught up to what was happening.

“A friend of ours was having a party. There was going to be dancing. Pants are good for most things, but dresses are the best for dancing.”

Beatrice looked down at the ropes around her wrists as if she were realizing for the first time that she was trapped. She twisted her wrists to the left. Then to the right.

“You did loosen them.” She said. Ava tilted her head.

“You still shouldn’t be able to get out.”

“No, but—I bit your sister.”

Ava tapped the seam of her lips with her thumb. Nodded. “Sure.”

“If I had gotten the gun, I would have shot her.”

Her thumb stopped tapping. “Really?”

“Not to kill. Only if she hadn’t left me another choice.”

“Can’t say she and I have the moral high ground here.”

Beatrice stared at her for one more moment, agog.

“What is it about me,” She asked, “That makes you do things like this? Do you think I’m simple?”

“Do I think you’re simple? No.”

“But you think I’m benign.” A loaded statement if there ever was one. No, on that night, Ava did not find herself thinking of Beatrice as benign.

The way Beatrice was looking at her, no heat spared, made Ava think that she was searching for some inkling that she knew that Beatrice was a wanted woman. Ava kept her face neutral.

“I guess I do. Only thing I know about you is that you’re rich.” She shrugged, folded her arms, “Rich young women aren’t typically particularly dangerous.” Ava paused, considering her next sentence carefully, “Are you about to tell me that’s not true?”

Now Beatrice had settled on top of her blanket on the bed. She rolled to her side, hands tucked down in front of her. The candlelight was soft, too soft for Ava’s liking. It had a funny way of making Beatrice look innocent.

“You wouldn’t believe you if I told you I was.”

Yes, right now, I would. “Nope, probably not. I’d probably say you were bluffing to scare me into letting you go. Or trying to intimidate me into the same.”

“Well, I won’t say anything then.” Beatrice said, so haughty that Ava couldn’t help but laugh.

“Alright, Beatrice, I’ll bite.” Ava said. “Tell me one dangerous thing you’ve ever done.”

Ava was goading her and she knew it; she also knew by the way Beatrice was looking at her that it was working. And maybe, just maybe, the next words out of her mouth would get Ava closer to the truth.

“When I was sixteen I was engaged for a small while. It was two months after my mother died — my father thought that I needed a distraction, and that a husband might do. Sam was respectable but just poor enough to say yes.”

“Did you like him?” Ava asked, and Beatrice shrugged in a way that told her that she had been, at best, indifferent to him.

“I was so lonely. He listened to me, but mostly, I think, because he wanted to kiss. And to do other things. Which I let him, for a little while. Because I liked the parts where we talked. But then, of course, I think it just encouraged him.” Without knowing where it was going, Ava felt a chill go down her spine like she was listening to a ghost story, “And one day, in my father’s study, we were kissing, and he put his hand between my legs. I told him no. He did it again. I told him no. He did it again, but harder, he put his body—he pinned me to the settee we were on, so that I couldn’t move.”

No, Ava realized. Not a ghost story. It was a dare. It was a staring contest. It was Beatrice willing her to blink. She was trying to scare Ava. “For a moment, I was desperate, frightened, hopeless. But then this feeling washed over me that I had never experienced before—it was a hunger. And it was so intense that I thought I might actually be starting to enjoy it, like Sam said I would. Then, of course, I realized what it really was,” Beatrice raised her bound hands to wipe something invisible from her face, “He’d kissed me again, and in kissing me he’d put his bottom lip right between my teeth. Silly, isn’t it, the way men do that? Underestimate you right up until they give you what you need to destroy them.”

Beatrice was clapping her hands in front of Ava’s face. Blink. “So you bit his lip.”

“I bit it off,” Beatrice said, placing a proper emphasis on the last word, “Or I almost did. The surgeon wasn’t drunk that night so he was able to stitch it back together, though it looked an awful mess.”

Ava settled on keeping her eyes open. “Take it you two didn’t get married.”

Beatrice pressed her tongue behind her teeth. In the wrong light, she might have been smiling. “No. And my father never spoke of marriage again, in fact.”

“There’s a silver lining.” Ava said, then, “Sounds like he deserved it.”

A silence fell over them, full of shapes and shadows. Beatrice fixated. “You’re so kind to me,” She said, “That I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure what to say to you half the time — I can’t tell which one of us is a bigger fool.”

A blush warmed Ava’s chest. She was skeptical that it was a compliment.

“I’m just—”

“No, don’t.” Beatrice murmured, sitting up fully on her elbow. Her nightgown slid down the opposing shoulder, “Don’t explain yourself away.”

Ava said, “You didn’t sound happy. That your father never found you another husband.” Eager to misdirect the conversation. Thinking about how much force it must have taken to bite a man’s lip almost off.

“Because I was still lonely. Lonelier than ever. Sometimes I felt that Sam would have been better than nobody.”

Ava, no stranger to terrible loneliness herself, had to take a step back from where she was teetering on the edge. She imagined Beatrice as a siren on the rocks of some distant ocean, her mouth smeared crimson with blood.

This—whatever this was—was just another card in Beatrice’s hand. Ava could see through this piece of sheer fabric that she was hiding behind. As a conman herself, she could see the con that was taking shape along the slope of her naked shoulder.

“You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in a long while that hasn’t made me feel lonely. Maybe that’s odd. But it’s all odd, isn’t it—I’ve never seen a woman that looks like you before, or talked like you. Or walked like you. I’m not sure I could even have dreamed it.”

“Mmhm.” Ava shifted in the chair, folding her lips in. Her heart was doing big-legged gallops in her chest, part excitement, part awareness of danger. How much could she deflect without letting on that she knew how big Beatrice’s motivation to escape might really be? “And what do you think?”

“I’m undecided.”

“Not much of a compliment.”

“Can’t say that I meant it as one.” A zap went through Ava at that, and a second when Beatrice smiled—an acknowledgment of her own joke. Beatrice shifted, getting closer to the edge of the bed. Closer to Ava. “It’s compelling.”

“Compelling, huh?”

“I mean that it leads one to wonder. Why you are the way you are.”

“A curious person, maybe.”

“I am one.”

“Okay, well.” Ava blew out a prolonged breath, “I work all day. Outdoor type stuff, can’t exactly wear a dress.”

“But it’s not just that. You’re so…” With that, Beatrice’s eyes crept over Ava, toes to the top of her head, leaving nothing on her untouched. She’d been so cold before, so indifferent, that Ava couldn’t have imagined such assiduousness from her, “You know what you are.”

“You’re educated. You can probably say it better than I can.”

“Education is relative. I have to imagine there are a fair many things you’re more familiar with than me.”

The fabric under Ava squeaked as she shifted again. The glow of the candles in the room left long, ominous shadows on Beatrice’s face. “I’m not anything,” She said, “I’m me.”

“You say that like it’s so easy,” Beatrice responded, “To just be you.”

“Who am I supposed to be? My sister?”

“You’re deflecting. You know what I mean.”

It was Ava’s turn to take Beatrice in, to examine the feline way she reclined against the bed. Her naked shoulder, which she made no move to cover.

Ava thought of that boy with no lower lip. Or half of one She blinked the image away.

“I’m not deflecting,” Ava said with caution, not sure which brick, once removed, would make the whole pile topple to the ground, “I’m feeling flummoxed.”

“Flummoxed.” Beatrice repeated, the word faint as if she was trying it out before committing to it. Her tongue pressed behind her teeth again.

There was a gust of wind. The candle in the room flickered, but did not extinguish completely. For September, the nights were turning to an unusual and bitter coldness. One that resounded in a room without a fireplace.

“You don’t have to sleep there, you know,” Beatrice offered, “It would be warmer on the bed.”

And for a moment, despite knowing full well what Beatrice was doing, Ava let a quiet fantasy slip by. One in which she did get into bed, and in which Beatrice, now freed, ran her hands over the fabric at Ava’s shoulders and welcomed her there.

She thought of Beatrice’s hands running down her back, over the sensitive skin of her spine. Touching her hips. And then, of course, touching the butt of the gun.

Ava covered her mouth with her hand like she was considering. She didn’t trust her expression. How would Beatrice even know she would be receptive to such a thing?

Assuming she knew what she was doing. In Ava’s brief opinion of Beatrice, she always knew what she was doing.

“When you’re lonely do you often invite strange women to get into bed with you?” Ava asked.

A long pause followed, one in which Beatrice’s expression morphed. It was like a shimmering on the surface of a lake, iridescent and barely there. When it stilled, she had gentled herself.

Instead of answering, Beatrice said, “Your hands are shaking.”

Ava folded her arms, half tucking her hands into her armpits. She tried to square herself off although, truth be told, she was shaking all over, inside and outside. She was sure that even the air just around of her might be shaking.

“Pull your dress up,” Ava said, “You’ll catch a cold.”

Beatrice rolled her eyes, and Ava might’ve laughed had the situation not been so dire, “Yes, papa.”

“Oh, don’t. You can’t do stuff like this, I’m serious.”

“Like what?”

“Like invite people to get into bed with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because someday somebody is liable to say yes.”

“I want you to say yes,” Beatrice said without skipping a beat. She shifted again and Ava thought, if she squinted, she could catch a sliver of nipple peeking out from the top of the fabric. Her chivalry, misplaced as it may have been, kept her focus on Beatrice’s face. “You’ve been so kind to me. Kinder than anybody else ever has been.”

“But that’s not why you’re doing this.” Ava said. Very rarely did she have the pleasure of knowing a statement was the absolute, unequivocal truth, with no gray area in between. She wasn’t even able to relish it in that moment, sick as she felt, “I can’t even decide if I think you know what you’re asking for.”

Beatrice didn’t flinch. “I do.”

“Okay, so what? You want me to come into bed and do what to you, Beatrice?” The question was more probing than it was unkind.

“Whatever you want.”

All Ava could think about was what Beatrice must want. What she must be running from. What she had done.

How she didn’t think she’d been lying when she said she was lonely.

Her mind ran so fast that it eclipsed anything else she might have been thinking or feeling, like Beatrice had slipped inside of her without Ava knowing. A tingle ran up her spine at the thought.

Ava stood. She saw Beatrice’s eyes flash — what she was thinking, Ava didn’t know, but those eyes followed her all the way to the edge of the bed, and down as Ava crouched beside it.

Beatrice slid forward. She tilted her head some, so that she was looking up at Ava through her eyelashes. She was breathing, deep and even, pushing her chest against the fabric of the nightgown.

Ava reached out a hand and touched the fabric that had slid down her arm. She pulled it up until it rested at her shoulder again, Beatrice watching the whole time. Her face betrayed nothing. Not disappointment, not alarm.

And then Ava noticed something; a small white mottling on her chest, just below her collarbone. Without thinking, her thumb struck out and touched it.

It was barely a stroke, but Beatrice’s lips parted and she sucked in a sharp breath. In the confines of that room, it was a sound as loud as a shout.

Ava retracted her hand as if burned. She sat back, close but out of Beatrice’s reach. “It’s a bold move to try to seduce somebody right after you tell them a story about biting a man’s lip off.”

She thought Beatrice might deny it, then realized that denial was probably beneath her. Beneath both of them. Instead, Beatrice looked almost like she could have smiled again. “You seem like the type who might try anyway.” She said.

Once upon a time Ava had asked Beatrice who wanted it more, thinking the answer was obvious. Ava wasn’t good at many things, but was sure that there was nobody who wanted quite as much as she did.

But right then she found herself thinking, maybe it was Beatrice. And all at once, Ava realized that she had no idea how the path they were walking down together was going to end.

*

It was only when Ava was sure that she’d fallen asleep that she went downstairs to the living room, where Mary was sitting up on the couch.

“Better get some sleep.” Ava said, “it’s going to be your turn to keep watch in a few hours.”

Mary snorted. “Fat chance. I think I’ll be up all night.”

Ava settled next to her. She reached into the back pocket of her trousers, taking the folded paper from it. Mary eyed her askance.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll have to tell me.” She only paused for a moment to acknowledge all the ways that this would surely change everything before handing it over to Mary, who took it and unfolded it.

“That’s not…woah. That’s Beatrice, isn’t?” Ava nodded, not taking her eyes from the fierce burn of the fire.

“Read it.” She said, and Mary did. They were silent for a long while after.

“Goddamn,” Mary said, “Did you know about this?”

“No, I—“ Ava was picking at the skin of a cuticle, “—nobody would tell me. Just knew that it was a picture of Beatrice. Jesus, can I see it?” Mary handed it to her and Ava stared down at the blown out print of Beatrice’s face. “You think this is real?”

“It’s a three thousand dollar reward. Sounds real to me.” More silence, “We have to—we have to come up with a plan. This changes everything.”

“I know.”

“Maybe we should—”

“Mary, no. No, she’ll hang for this.”

“She killed somebody.” Mary pointed out, “Maybe she ought to.”

“And you’re comfortable being a direct facilitator in that process? For killing a woman our age? Without having heard her side of the story?” When Mary couldn’t meet her eye, Ava knew she’d struck a chord. “I’m telling you, I think something bad happened to her. She killed that man—that priest—Whittaker, right? That’s what the poster says.”

“That’s what it says.” Mary confirmed. She was staring into the fire.

“So JC said those guys were creeps. Whittaker and Vincent. That they were…drugging girls. And doing other shit. Faking exorcisms.”

Mary put her head into her hands. She was still holding the poster between two of her fingers. “Fuck, Ava.”

“We can’t take her back.” Ava said, “We’d be taking her to her death. I couldn’t live with that. Not without knowing more. I don’t think you could either.”

“Of all the girls in all the convents.”

“What’re you…” Ava shook her head, “Cursing our bad luck?”

“It’s not good luck, is it?” Mary said, “Because yeah, likely we do have to let her go. And who knows what else. So where does that leave us, exactly?”

Ava stared into the fire. “Right back where we started.”

*

A noise awoke Ava from a sleep so thick and dark that, when she remembered it after waking, she thought it must have been akin to death. It was a clattering and then hushed, masculine whispering.

Which was odd, because there were no men in the house when she’d gone to bed that night. She turned her head to Beatrice, who was sitting up, face crumpled in confusion.

“What—” Ava put a finger to her lips and shook her head. There was another crash, then a yelp.

I’ll be right back Ava mouthed.

She crept to the top of the staircase and peered down. The only thing visible through the frame of the wall was Mary next to the fireplace with her hands raised, shirt still ruffled from sleep.

In the corner, she could see the barrel of a shotgun and a man’s thick fingers. Ava retracted as if burned, pressing her back to the wall.

She scurried into the bedroom, where Beatrice was waiting with a look of concern on her face. “What’s going on?” Beatrice said, and Ava pressed her finger to her lips. “Who’s down there?” She said again, in a whisper.

“Give me your hands.” Ava whispered back. Beatrice didn’t need any further explanation to stand from the bed.

As Ava fumbled with the rope, there was a crash from downstairs, then a shout. She swore and tried to work faster, but her nerves made her clumsy. It loosened but it didn’t give.

“Tell me who it is. Do you know them?”

“I’m trying to concentrate.” Ava hissed. There was another crash, and then a scream — a woman’s scream. Mary’s scream. “Fuck. I’m sorry. Stay here.”

“Wait, what? No, get this off of me!”

“I’ll be right back. Stay completely quiet, okay?”

Ava flew from the bedroom, her hand on the butt of the gun in her pants. No thoughts ran through her mind, just the sound of Mary’s scream, and she drew the firearm without knowing exactly what she would do with it.

She came to the bottom of the staircase with the warm wood of the bottom of the gun in her shaking hand, no finger on the trigger. In front of the fireplace, the mountain of a man from before—what was his name, Ava wracked her racing brain before coming up with Tiny, of course, Tiny—smiled.

He shifted his hand around the shotgun he was holding to Mary’s chin, his other forearm constricting her neck. Mary gripped at it.

“There she is.” Splendid emerged from the kitchen, ripping a piece of their jerky from a larger chunk with his foul set of teeth. “So nice of you to join us, Sweetheart.”

Ava swiveled with a jerk of her body. Splendid put his hands up and laughed. They both laughed. “Woah-ho-ho. Lookit that, T, little girl’s got a gun.”

“Let her go.” Ava said, trying to summon the courage she’d found by the fire with Mary. Pulling the gun. Laughing. The courage she’d had in the convent.

Splendid tilted his head back and forth. Ruminating. “Now, see, here’s the thing. After our conversation yesterday, word started getting around town about a girl was going to door to door asking about the McBrides. Too small to be a bounty hunter, knew too much for an outsider.” He took a deep, phlegm-coated breath and brought one of his hands down to tear off another piece of jerky. “Enough to start a man thinking that you might be getting your information straight from the source. Was helpful, the rain. You left nice footprints leading right back here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well then,” Another bite of jerky. Splendid sprayed flecks of it as he spoke. “Guess I can’t really be bothered to let your friend go.”

Ava moved her finger to the trigger of the gun. Splendid’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“If something happens to her, I’ll kill you,” Ava said, “I’ll kill both of you.”

There was a low creak from the top of the steps. All heads turned just as Beatrice’s form disappeared back behind the wall.

Splendid’s smile grew almost as big as Ava’s dread. Before she could react, he had darted past her and up the flight of stairs. “Hey!” Ava shouted after him, not sure if she should take her attention - and the barrel of her gun - fully from Mary and Tiny.

Upstairs, there was a crash and a bang. A short yelp. Within seconds, Splendid had reappeared at the top of the stairs, hoisting Beatrice up in front of him by her waist. She was struggling, unable to use her still bound hands, throwing elbows and legs where she could.

“Hol-lee shit,” Tiny said with a shrill laugh, “You were right.”

“Firecracker just like I remember her,” Splendid crowed as he descended the stairs with her, “What about me, eh? You remember me, Beatrice?”

Beatrice didn’t respond. What Splendid could not see, but Ava could, was that she had managed to loosen her bindings and was loosening them further even as he reached the landing.

“I always liked you.” Splendid continued. They had reached the bottom of the staircase, Beatrice’s bare feet on the wood of the floor. But his arm was still around her, clutching her waist. “Even when everybody else was saying you were a stuck up cun—”

Beatrice wriggled her wrists free. With her newfound mobility, she raised her elbow and threw it back, colliding with Splendid’s nose. It cracked and unleashed a torrent of blood.

“Fuck!” He hollered. It drew Tiny’s attention, who slackened his grip somewhat on Mary’s neck. Just enough that she, too, was able to land a blow right into his stomach.

It might have been more surprise than brute force, but he stumbled back and the shotgun clattered to the floor. To Ava’s side, Beatrice had wrenched herself from Splendid’s grasp and was beating him back. They struggled against each other, stumbling into the kitchen and out of sight.

She looked back to where Mary was attempting to fend Tiny back from getting the gun on the floor. As they staggered, Mary’s foot caught the gun and it slid under the couch, only a sliver of the butt showing from the corner.

“Do something!” Mary shouted, seizing Ava and pulling her up from her stupor. She came back into her body. The feeling of the gun in her hand. The feeling of her finger on the trigger. “The gun—Goddamnit! Shoot him!”

Sweat broke out at Ava’s temple. The house was pandemonium — the sound of the skirmish unseen in the kitchen, Mary in front of her only barely able to stop Tiny from seizing her. Ava closed her eyes. She swallowed. She opened them.

Ava shot. The first bullet pierced a hole in the wallpaper above the mantle, knocking a picture off the wall. Without thinking, she shot again, taking a piece of brick from the fireplace.

“Bitch can’t even shoot straight.” Tiny chortled. He’d gotten ahold of Mary again and was cheating away from Ava, fixing to carry her out the front door, which was hanging wide open, giving Ava a clear view of his profile. “We’ll just take this one too, while we’re at it, eh? Once we get the reward we can do whatever—”

Ava shot again, and this time the bullet grazed the top of Tiny’s ear before lodging itself in the wallpaper. The man screamed, dropping Mary, who landed on her hands and knees on the floor.

“Oh my God,” Ava exclaimed as the reality of what she’d done washed over her, “Jesus Christ, oh my God, I’m sorry!”

Tiny roared, clutching his bleeding ear.

“Again!” Mary shouted. She was crawling away toward where the shotgun poked out from underneath the couch.

Ava turned her face away and pulled the trigger once more. It clicked, empty.

Just then, there was another holler and Splendid appeared at the doorway to the kitchen, clamping a hand over his cheek, where there was blood seeping that wasn’t from his busted nose. “She bit me. That cunt fucking bit me.”

Beatrice came from behind him with a bruise forming on her cheek, underneath her black eye, and something that Ava recognized after a moment was an iron frying pan. As Splendid raged, she swung it, and it collided with the back of his head with a hollow thud.

He wobbled but didn’t fall. “Where the fuck is the gun, idiot?” Splendid yelled, dodging another swing of the pan.

“I don’t—she shot me!”

Woozy from the blow to the head, Splendid was unable to hold Beatrice back when she dropped the pan and began to wallop on him, her blows landing easier and more difficult to dodge.

“I don’t give a shit! Get the gun!”

It was then that Tiny noticed Mary’s odyssey across the floor. He grabbed her by the ankle with his uninjured arm and she shrieked and kicked as he pulled her away and toward the door.

“Fuck,” Ava said, dropped the empty gun, and rushed him. There was no way for her to get the gun without him grabbing her, too. Instead, she attempted to grab at his wounded ear with her hand.

She’d hoped that it would force him to the floor - or at least release his grip on Mary. It did neither. Ava tried again, but even with his injury he was able to deflect her. It was the sheer size of him, and the muscle.

Out of other tactics, Ava did the only thing she could think of to put their size differential to her advantage - she jumped onto his back, trying to physically get him off of Mary and free her to crawl to the gun.

All it accomplished was disorienting him. He floundered, and lurched, but he did not give up his grip on Mary, and the whole debacle sent the three of them oscillating, and finally toppling to the floor next to the door - Tiny half on top of Mary, and Ava atop Tiny.

Meanwhile, Beatrice’s and Splendid’s struggle had taken them in front of the fireplace, mere feet away from the skirmish. They were both locked in a battle to go for the gun, Beatrice only holding a hair of an advantage from her blow with the frying pan.

“How’s your ear, Tiny?” Splendid grunted.

Tiny made no reply - Mary and Ava had managed to subdue him, wielding their own advantage from the gunshot, but it took the both of them on top of him to hold him down, and he fought the whole time like a bucking bull. If even one of them left, they’d start the whole dance all over again.

Splendid turned his attention back to Beatrice. Ava could see only the back of his head, which partially obscured Beatrice’s own expression, but she knew that he was smiling. She came at him and he deflected it with a forearm across her sternum, holding her there.

They were locked in a moment of stillness after what had seemed like chaos overlapping for hours. Beatrice and Splendid stared at each other, each of them breathing heavy through their noses.

Ava realized belatedly that they did know each other. The knowledge of it - and the thought of it - made her stomach swoop.

“Beatrice McBride. I haven’t seen you in an age. Funny how life works, isn’t it?” A pause, more sounds of heavy breathing, “How do you two know her?” He called over her shoulder. Ava and Mary did not respond, but Ava doubted he was looking for one, “It’s just odd, y’know, because her daddy kept her locked up, always did, even before, so she never really had any friends, or a boyfriend, even. Which is a shame. She might be a lunatic, but she is good looking. In fact, older she gets, the more she looks like her crazy bitch of a mother.”

“She wasn’t crazy,” Beatrice said. Her words were shivering and raw, “She was sick.”

“And so are you. Probably should have taken you with her. When she blew her brains out, I mean.” The words lingered in the air like a foul odor. Ava was focused on Beatrice’s face to the point of obsession.

So it was that she saw Beatrice notice the hatchet on the mantle. Her eyes sliding over. Lingering. Sliding back to Splendid.

“She probably should have.” She agreed.

“I just want to know why you did it,” Splendid said, “Before we take you. What’d Whittaker ever do to you?”

“He killed my mother.”

“Your mother killed herself.”

“Only because of what he did. If he’d never — ” Ava saw her eyes go to the mantle again. Saw Beatrice school her expression into something approaching calmness. Her cheeks splotchy and red. “What does it matter to you?”

“Guess it doesn’t, except that you hate to see a good man die like that. You did a real number on him, didn’t you? Beat his head right in, and what was it with?”

“A statue of Jesus,” Beatrice said, without missing a beat, “It was on his desk. It was closest.”

Ava wondered if Splendid ever saw the danger as he waded into it. By then, he was so far out that there was no swimming to shore.

She saw it. Looking back, she even thought she saw the moment that his death went from a hypothesis to a certainty.

“Wouldn’t have happened if your daddy had gotten wise and married you off to some poor sucker,” Splendid said, “But you never been so much as touched by a man, have you?” He tutted, “That’s alright. In a few seconds, when we get that gun, we’re going to be on our way back to Ennis to see you hang. And we’ll have plenty of time alone together on the way. Won’t let her die a virgin, will we, fella?”

Catch an animal in a trap, Ava thought, and it’s going to do anything to get out. Even chew off its own leg. Even chew off yours, if you let it get its teeth in. Idiot.

And then, so many things happened in unison that Ava couldn’t keep track of them all at once.

Splendid, still holding Beatrice at bay, turned his head toward where they’d pinned Tiny down. “Tiny, you sack of shit, shake ‘em off!”

As soon as he looked away, Beatrice snatched the hatchet into her right hand.

She moved so fluidly that he hadn’t even turned around to see his fate sealed. When she raised the hatchet above her head, Ava saw how her knuckles had gone white from gripping it. And when she swung it down, Ava saw how Splendid stumbled back and heard the wet thwack of its collision with his chest.

She looked at Beatrice’s face over his shoulder. Tiny had stopped struggling. The whole room, in fact, had gone so still it was like the earth had stopped spinning.

For a moment, Beatrice had a guileless look of fear on her face, as if at any second she could begin weeping.

But as Ava watched, she took that feeling, whatever it was, by the ankle, and pulled it back down underneath the surface.

Everything started to move again. There was a gushing of blood that caught Beatrice across the white of her nightgown. Splendid stumbled and Beatrice followed him, finally able to wrest him to the ground.

It was clear that, against all odds, the man lived. He made gurgling half-words in the back of his mouth that could have been bitch or cunt, not that Beatrice paid him any mind. She straddled him, that panicked expression returning. The handle of the hatchet sprouted up between them.

She first reached around it and held a hand over his nose and mouth, trying, Ava supposed, to smother him, or to hasten him choking on his own blood. Now that the two of them were laid out on the floor, they could see the whole mess of it.

Even still, Splendid fought her. Ava wished that he would only see death for what it was; a gift Beatrice was trying to give him. Men, she supposed, were often too headstrong to give into such things.

It went on like that for an agonizing minute, Beatrice trying to keep her hands over his mouth, Splendid knocking them away. Blood, sticky and wine red, smeared across the floor and into Beatrice’s hair.

“I’m trying to help you.” Beatrice said. Her hands were so slippery that she could no longer find purchase on his face.

Somehow, Splendid raised his head. His skin was crimson, covered in streaks from Beatrice’s fingers.

There were those low, gurgling half words. Ava couldn’t understand them, but something dawned over Beatrice’s face that said that she had. Something cold and dark. Something that frightened Ava almost as much as seeing what she’d just done to Splendid.

He finished speaking. He gathered in a deep, wet breath. Then, he spat in Beatrice’s face, a mix of phlegm and red, red blood.

Beatrice put a hand to his face and shoved him down so hard that the back of his head audibly collided with the floor. While he lay stunned, she took the hatchet handle in two hands and gave it a mighty yank.

Her hands were so slick that it took two tries to remove it from his chest with a wet, human sucking noise. Ava again wondered why he hadn’t just let Beatrice smother him.

That might have, on its own, been enough to kill him without much other work. Splendid made a rattling sound that could no longer even be disguised as a word.

He put a hand up with the docile limpness of a child reaching for something on a high counter. His open palm collided with Beatrice’s face, large enough that it eclipsed her left cheek and forehead and eye, as if he was making one last feeble attempt to push her off.

Beatrice batted it away like a fly. It left a near-perfect red handprint on her skin. Whatever he had said to her was enough that Beatrice then raised the hatchet and brought it down once more.

Ava looked away as it made contact, but she’d seen her aiming it right over his face. One could assume.

Splendid didn’t move again. He made no noise except for the soft trickle of blood leaving him.

Instead of standing up, Beatrice crawled on her hands and knees over the wet floor and to the butt of the gun.

It was a testament to just how mixed up Ava had become that when Beatrice stood with the shotgun in her hand, when she clicked it open and blinked blood from her eyelashes, and bits and specks of person that were once, but no longer, important, the overwhelming feeling that she had was relief.

And then, of course, Beatrice satisfied herself that there were two shells, snapped the gun closed, and pointed the barrel at them.

Even Tiny took notice. He sat up, body slack. They all gawked at her.

“Alright,” Beatrice said. Her face was cold but her voice shook. She swallowed and said it again, louder this time, and steadier, “Alright, this is what’s going to happen. You,” The gun swiveled to Tiny, “Are going to empty your pockets. Do you have any money?”

“None of your business, you bitch,” Tiny spat, though he made no effort to move toward Beatrice, “I bet you couldn’t shoot a fifty foot target with that thing.”

Beatrice paused. Then, she half-glanced over her shoulder, their eyes following, where Splendid lay with the hatchet handle sticking up from what was once his face like a macabre flag pole.

When she looked back at Tiny, Ava saw that his face had gone completely white. “Do you really want to see me try?” Tiny began to struggle again. “Let him up.” Beatrice barked, and they did.

He stood and turned his pockets out, dollars floating and change clattering against the wood. He pulled the rings off his fingers and let them fall on the floor as well. “Your clothes too. Strip down to your underwear.”

Tiny yelped “What!” At the same time Ava said, “Beatrice — what the hell do you need his clothes for?” Every head in the room turned to deliver her an incredulous look, “What, I just — they’re too big for her.”

“She doesn’t want the clothes.” Tiny grumbled. He was already undoing the buttons on his shirt.

“No,” Beatrice agreed, “What I want is to see the look on everybody’s face at the saloon when you go crawling back there in your dirty underwear. But imagining it will have to do, I suppose.”

Tiny’s shirt fell to the floor and his hands went to his trouser fly. “You’re a rotten bitch just like your mother.”

Beatrice didn’t flinch. “Your friend tried to say something about my mother, too.” He started undressing faster until he was down to just his underwear which were, to Ava’s chagrin, visibly soiled. “You’re going to turn around and you’re going to walk.” Beatrice said, voice still just on the verge of shaking, “And while you’re walking you’re going to remember what I did to Whittaker, and what I did to your friend. Because if I find out you’ve said anything about it, I’m going to find you and do it to you, too.” He lingered for one second, “Go!” Beatrice shouted, and he did, turning and sprinting out the open door.

The gun, Ava thought, the gun, the gun — she saw it only a few paces away on the floor. Beatrice didn’t know that it was empty, she’d been out of the room. If she could just crawl quietly while Beatrice was still preoccupied watching Tiny go —

“Don’t even think about it.” When she looked up, she was met with the barrel of Beatrice’s gun. Her eyes slid over to Mary, whose hands were already raised above her head. Ava raised hers too. “Stand up and turn around. And walk outside, but slowly.”

Ava was glad, even considering the situation, because the room was beginning to smell like copper and something else, something so on the wrong side of human that Ava was only just barely holding back vomit.

The fresh air of the back acre was a welcome relief in comparison. Almost downright pleasant. Beatrice marched them out, still barefoot, and then told them to turn around and get on their knees with their hands still raised.

“Look, I can see you’re angry, and we’re awful — we’re really sorry. But you can’t do this to our mother. She doesn’t have anybody else.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Beatrice said. The wind was blowing her hair around her face, and her nightgown, once white, now red, making her look spectral. “I’m going to take your money and one of your horses.” She paused, face pinching, “I’ll leave you $5 to get home. You were never really cruel to me, so I suppose I won’t be cruel to you.”

“No — ” Ava exclaimed, but Mary cut her off.

“Don’t be a damn fool. We’re lucky she’s not about to bury us in a shallow grave with that idiot in there.”

“You should listen to your sister, Ava.”

Ava stared at her. “I knew it. I knew I wasn’t fuckin’ crazy. You were never really sleeping, were you?”

“I’m a light sleeper. The smallest noise wakes me up. A door closing, or,” Beatrice sighed, “The sounds of conversation.”

Thoughts were racing through Ava’s head at a million miles an hour. This couldn’t be it. She wouldn’t let it end there, down worse than they were when they started. She picked through the facts, every second of the last few days.

She thought of the bag.

“What are you going to do with it?” Ava asked, “The money? The jewelry?”

“Ava.” Mary said through gritted teeth.

“Sell the jewelry, of course. Take the money. Go somewhere else.”

More was coming to her as she spoke. Something taking shape, although she couldn’t say exactly what. “Canada, I bet. That’s why you were in that convent. All the way up there near the border. Bet you gave them a fake name didn’t you? Pearl Archer? Told them you wanted to be a novitiate? You were hightailing when I found you. But you killed that priest,” Beatrice said nothing, “And I’m going to assume that loot is from your house. So if you fence it anywhere in Montana, you’re running a high risk that you’re selling it to somebody who may have reason to be on the lookout for a girl unloading a bundle of trinkets in a hurry.”

“I’m going to sell it on the reservation.” Beatrice said, her face betraying no sign of discomfort. Ava nodded.

“Clever.” She said, “How much did you say it was worth again? $500?”

“Ava.” Mary said again.

“$550.”

“Alright, so $555, if you consider the $5 you’re taking off of us. But here’s the thing,” Ava’s tongue darted out to moisten her bottom lip. Her voice was surprisingly steady considering how hard her heart was hammering, “The Blackfeet aren’t stupid. The opposite, actually. They know that anybody not Indian coming to pawn on the reservation is pawning something they can’t get rid of anywhere else. So they’re going to charge you a premium for their service - what do you think, Mary? 50 percent?”

“Don’t drag me into this.” Mary hissed. After a moment, she shook her head, “Maybe closer to 60, it being you’re a woman.”

“Okay, so that’ll leave you with, let’s say, $275. Not bad. But then again,” Ava tilted her head from side to side, a show of ruminating, “You don’t strike me as one who has done a lot of manual labor. You’re probably not thinking that you’re going to be working on a farm when you get to Canada. Or a mine. No?” Beatrice’s face was finally showing a crack in her facade of indifference. Ava could see it even through the ghoulish handprint she still wore, “Well, I’ll tell ya, being a governess is pretty much the only job in any territory where they’re going to want to see some papers. You know, identification.”

“I know what papers are.” Beatrice spat.

“Well, okay. Then you probably know that they cost money. And fake ones cost more money. $200, probably, plus you’ll need to spend time finding somebody to make ‘em. Don’t suppose you know somebody off the top of your head could do that for you?”

Beatrice’s face slipped back into a steel mask, “Is the point of this,” She asked, “To remind me how little I have to lose by shooting two of the witnesses to what happened in that house and taking all of your money instead of just some of it?”

“Yeah, Ava,” Mary said, “Is that the point?”

“The point,” Ava continued urgently, “Is to make the argument that maybe the three of us could be of some use to one another. Listen, you’re — you’re not a bad person, and you’re not mean, but you’re pretty good at pretending you are.” Ava said, “I think you’re desperate. And look—me and Mary, we know from desperate, alright? You don’t have to hide it from us.”

Beatrice’s face remained stoic. Against the metal of the gun, her knuckles whitened. “You’re wrong.”

But her voice quavered, and in those tremulous syllables Ava knew she was not. “No. Never about things like this.”

And then Ava saw skin-colored streaks forming in the blood on Beatrice’s cheek, and she realized that Beatrice was crying. Face still stoic. Still white knuckling that shotgun like it was going to blow away from a stiff breeze. “I’m dangerous.”

“Yes,” Ava agreed affably, “I have no doubt that you are, Beatrice.”

She said Beatrice’s name almost as an afterthought, and like the first time she’d spoken it aloud, Beatrice had an uncanny reaction to it.

Ava realized how foolish she’d been the previous evening, to hear the story of Sam and his lip exactly the way Beatrice prepared it for her. To think of Beatrice as some sort of cold-eyed killer, hungry for violence.

Right then, she imagined Beatrice as a sixteen year old girl frightened by her own reflection, or hearing her name—especially said with any sort of fondness. She saw her with blood around her mouth, weeping while her boyfriend writhed on the floor.

“I like you.” Ava said.

“How dull,” Beatrice spat. More tear tracks were forming on her face, “How stupid.”

“I don’t think so, seeing’s how you like me too.”

“That was a lie,” Her voice was raised and had that counterfeit malice to it, “You were right before, I was desperate. I heard you talking to Mary about fancying me and thought if you fell for it I might get close enough to the gun to escape. I’d rather die,” Her voice cracked on the word die, “I’d rather die than let you touch me.”

Ava’s mouth filled with saliva, and a taste it took her a moment to identify. She ran her tongue over the back of her teeth. It tasted like copper.

“‘I’d rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me,’” Ava said, “Right? That’s what it was?” At Beatrice’s slack-jawed expression, she smiled, “I told you I’d keep it.”

Beatrice turned her head, eyes closed tightly. There were so many tear tracks on her skin that the handprint was almost gone. Her face was clenched like she was holding in a scream.

“Listen to me, okay? Just let me talk for a second,” Ava swallowed against a dry throat. She could feel Mary’s eyes on the side of her face, “Your dad’s rich. That was no lie, I can tell. All that shit in your bag—you took that from your house, didn’t you? And that was just what you could grab, flying by night. Going as fast as you could. There’s more, isn’t there?”

Beatrice’s face unclenched. She spoke to the dirt. “Yes.”

“How much more?”

“A lot. My father doesn’t trust banks.”

“A number. Anything. Think of things you could grab and take easily.”

“Ten thousand. He buries money in the back paddock, too. More if you got that.”

Ava whistled low, “Ten thousand or more,” She said, “Is more than $500. It’s more than the three thousand Mary and I would get from turning you in. Even split 50/50.”

“Sure. So is fifty thousand. So is a million. Who cares? It’s all imaginary, because we would have to break into his house to get it.”

“See, thing is, you happen to be talking to two of the best house robbers in Montana. Mary and I have been doing this for years, never been caught. Right, Mary?” Beatrice had finally turned to look at them, her face one of open curiosity.

“She’s right.” Mary said, “We hit a house a month. Sometimes two.”

Ava and Beatrice locked eyes. Whatever this was, Ava realized, it was between them. “How do I know you aren’t lying,” Beatrice said, “So I let my guard down and you can turn me in for the money.”

“You don’t, I suppose,” Ava said, “But is that really what you think? And what’s your other option, other than trusting us? You head for Canada on your own now with $500, you’d be lucky to make it as far as Shelby.”

Beatrice paused. Then, she tilted the barrel of the gun down. Beside her, Ava could feel Mary slouch with relief.

“Your plan,” She said carefully, “Is for us to break into my father’s house, steal his valuables and then, what—go our separate ways?”

Ava, who had not known until five minutes before what the plan was, said: “Yes.”

“And your expectation is that I believe that the two of you are…are…world class burglars capable of pulling off some kind of master heist.”

“The superlatives are yours.” Ava said, “I’m just letting you know that technically, this is a job that we are capable of doing.”

“That’s…” Beatrice paused, mouth hanging open, “…preposterous.”

“Maybe,” Ava said, “Maybe not. I’m waiting to hear any better ideas,” She looked from Mary to Beatrice, then back again, “From the peanut gallery.”

Another pause. Beatrice lowered the gun further.

“I’m keeping the shotgun.” She said. Ava nodded.

“That’s only right.” And then, without knowing quite why at first, she shuffled forward on her knees. Forward and forward until she was kneeling in front of Beatrice and her blood red nightgown.

Beatrice stared down at her. Ava stared up.

“When you make a deal,” Ava said, “You’ve got to shake on it.”

“Nobody said we’d made a deal.” Beatrice replied.

“You, me, and Mary. Five grand a person. 50/50 split if there’s more. Mary and I pawn everything and help you get your papers. Deal?”

After a second of silence, Beatrice blinked.

She let the shotgun fall into her left hand so her right was free. She extended it.

It was covered with blood still. Sticky and disgusting with it. When Ava held it, she could not feel Beatrice’s skin underneath.

They shook.

*

The math was done quickly. Back and forth on foot was two hours, and if a man needed an hour in Ennis to wake the sheriff and get a new set of clothes, they had five hours left at the house.

“She needs a washing down.” Ava said, “A proper one with hot water, or the blood’s going to stick. And we need to put this poor bastard into the ground.”

They started warming pulls from the creek two pots at a time on the fire while Mary dug a shallow grave. Splendid’s body was covered with a sheet, then dragged by his feet out into the yard.

On the front porch, Mary had rigged a sheet up on a clothesline to make a sort of shower stall for Beatrice. To protect her modesty against who, Ava wondered, the bison? The thought made her smile.

When the pots were ready, Ava brought them out onto the front porch where Beatrice was waiting, still in her nightgown. She set them down, then dipped her fingers into each.

“Make sure they’re not too hot for you.” Ava murmured. She didn’t get to see whatever reaction Beatrice had to her words; she was turned around, facing the sheet.

“I need your help,” Beatrice said, “To pour the water.”

She took her nightgown off, still facing away from Ava, and threw it to the side. The skin of her back was stained in places like Ava’s hands after she chopped up beets.

“Ready?” Ava said, then poured the first cauldron of water over her head. It ran in rivulets through her matted hair and over her skin. “I’m going to get your back with a rag. Is that alright?”

A pause. “Yes,” Beatrice replied finally, “That’s fine.”

They worked in silence together for a moment, Ava cleaning all the places that it would have been hard for Beatrice to reach. She kept her eyes focused on her shoulder blades and her hands working in a predestined radius.

The blood shrugged off her easier than Ava would have imagined it would. Almost kindly, like a guest that would not overstay its welcome.

When they were finished, Beatrice stood for a moment, shivering and clean. Ava stood behind her, unsure.

“Thank you,” Beatrice said, “For your help.”

“Any time.” Ava lingered, feeling for some reason like Beatrice hadn’t quite said everything she needed to say. In front of her, the sheet rippled like a ghost.

Beatrice proved her right by continuing, “After my mother died, my father hired a maid to follow me everywhere. I wasn’t allowed to be alone; he was afraid that I would become a melancholic like she was.” She shivered again, and Ava reached into the porch railing for the towel, throwing it over her shoulders. “I thought the best part of leaving would have been being on my own, finally. But it turns out I’m still afraid to be alone with myself.”

Without thinking, Ava reached and put a hand on her shoulder. Beatrice flinched instantly, her whole body contracting, and Ava removed it as if burned.

“Sorry.” She said, “I’m sorry. I’ll go inside and get your dress.”

After Beatrice was dressed, Ava and Mary dragged Splendid out to the shallow grave Mary had dug. They took him, one by the hands and one by the feet, and swung him in.

For a moment, they only stared into the hole.

“Oh fuck,” Ava said, jerking a few feet away, “I’m gonna puke.”

“Shit, Ava, no—”

“Sorry, I’ve been holding it in for hours.” Vomit splashed into the brush. Ava wiped her mouth on her sleeve and returned graveside, where Mary was standing with a grimace on her face.

They both stared down at Splendid, the handle of the hatchet still sprouting up from his face. It tented the sheet.

“Don’t you think we should say a few words?” Ava asked.

“For him?”

“Well, I’m not certain anybody deserves to die like that. Even a rotten bastard.”

The wind rustled through the prairie grass. Mary leaned on her shovel, considering.

“Sorry, fella,” She said, “I hope hell is better than the wrong side of a hatchet.”

“Amen.” Ava said, and crossed herself.

Once he’d been blanketed with dirt, they stood a little while longer, though the sky was gray and the air had a chill. There were decisions to be made, unpleasant ones.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ava lied. Mary shook her head.

“Well, considering you made a deal with the devil about an hour ago, I’m thinking as to the potential implications of that on our lives.”

“That strikes me as unkind.”

“Never said I didn’t like her.” Mary spat onto the ground, “But we did just watch her kill a man with an ax, and he did not go quickly.” Ava lodged no argument against this, “Goddamnit, who am I to say? This whole thing was my stupid idea in the first place,” Mary flicked some dirt with her toe. “I don’t even know why you’re still listening to me.”

“Why I’m still listening to you? Mary, you’re my sister. You’re older and you’re smarter.”

“I’m smarter? Look where we are, Ava. Look who we’re with. All because of my plan.”

“At least we’ve got something.”

“We’ve got a fool’s errand.” Mary said, leaning forward. She gesticulated broadly. “We’ve got break into a house with an ax murdering lunatic.” The smile that Ava had been fighting broke over her face. She tried and failed to hide it with a hand. Mary rolled her eyes. “What?”

“I just don’t know when you stopped wanting to have fun.”

Mary opened her mouth to rebut. Something smart, Ava figured, but that too devolved into a smile, and then a laugh, and then they were both laughing graveside.

“I don’t know, Ava.”

“You do.” Ava urged, “Mary, you always know.”

Still leaning on the shovel, Mary ran her thumb over the seam of her lips. The way she did when she was thinking heavy about something.

“We can’t stay here,” Mary said finally, “A proper heist takes a week to plan, maybe more. Plus we need supplies. And we can’t leave Suzanne alone for that long. Not without her knowing how to reach us.”

Ava nodded. “So we take her back. Plan at the house.” A pause, “Does that worry you?”

“Me? No. She doesn’t seem keen on killing women, so much. And I think Suzanne is going to like her.”

“Yeah,” Ava agreed, “I like her, too. But…” She shook her head, “I don’t know. She told me last night that her mother died when she was 16. That Wanted poster implies that Whittaker died a few weeks ago.”

“That’s about ten years of Beatrice unaccounted for.”

“Maybe she’s just patient.” Ava mused, then shivered, “Jesus, it’s cold.”

“I like her too.” Mary said. When Ava shot her a befuddled look, she shrugged, “If you’re going to be different in this world, you’ve gotta be tough. Good for her.” Then she spat directly onto Splendid’s grave and threw the shovel over her shoulder, “Let’s get inside. I’m starving.”

*

The smell that greeted them when they stepped in through the back door told Ava that Beatrice was way ahead of them. They found her boiling something in the kitchen fireplace, cutlery and bowls from the cupboards rinsed and laid out like they were about to dine at the Ritz.

“Sorry if I was presumptuous,” Beatrice said. She was ladling stew into a bowl, “But I found some dried stew in your bag and tried to revive it.”

“Smells amazing.” Ava took the bowl and settled at the table, Beatrice next to her and Mary next to Beatrice, each of them staring into their soups for a moment. It was silent except for the crackling of the fire, which made the kitchen almost too warm.

“I’m not eating mine until she takes a bite of her’s,” Mary said, to which Ava shot her a look that said what the hell? But Beatrice only rolled her eyes, a move that was almost good natured.

She pulled Mary’s bowl over to herself and took a huge spoonful, chewing and swallowing. She pulled Ava’s over to herself and did the same, a little dribble crawling down her chin that she caught with the back of her wrist.

“There,” Beatrice said when she was finished, “Are we okay?”

“Yeah,” Mary said. She was smiling. “We’re okay.”

“We only have a few hours before we need to leave,” Beatrice said, “So where are we going?”

Ava and Mary locked eyes from across the table. Ava shrugged.

“Home.” Mary said. “Our home. We need to regroup. To plan.”

“It’s right outside of Big Sky.” Ava offered. She was watching Beatrice’s face carefully for any sign of apprehension. It betrayed nothing. The impromptu bath hadn't exactly been perfect, but it had done enough.

“Big Sky.” She said, taking a bite of her food and chewing. Taking a deep breath through her nose, “I’ve never been. It sounds nice.”

The road stretched on in front of the three of them. Ava, for all the ways she could see, still couldn’t catch a glimpse of what it looked like at the end.

Chapter Text

Before Ava took the longest trip of her life, the older girls in the orphanage warned her that it was coming.

Later, when she was much older, she would find herself wishing that all such journeys could be similarly portended; by mean little girls like a chorus of oracles. Not that she’d listened back when they told her about the train; not that she was even sure she’d listen if they came back and told her something else.

She hadn’t been at that orphanage long, and hadn’t gone to it quietly. The last mark had been a bad idea and she’d known it, her gut for such things well developed even at twelve years old — but she was fifty cents away from a hot dinner, and a girl had told her that there was a group of children sleeping in a rectory on 54th Street that she could join for a certain price. It was November. The nights were getting too cold for sleeping rough, even for a girl as tough as Ava.

But before she’d even gotten her little hand into the pocket of the man’s trousers, she knew the jig was up. This was not Ava’s first time in police custody, they knew her and she them — nor was it to be her first orphanage, but her third. By then she knew she had no taste for them. Too many rules, and too little oversight. Boys tried to grab for her and girls picked on her because she was small.

But they were better, marginally, than a workhouse, which was the other option for children under 12 who got picked up by the police for thieving. In a few years, if she didn’t get more careful, she’d graduate to regular prison. Ava supposed that she should have come up with a plan for what she was to do before then, but being that her only living relatives had turned her away years before, and that her only real skill was stealing pocket watches and billfolds, she had none and no prospects for one.

This orphanage, the last orphanage, had much in common with its predecessors; it was a large, foreboding building, holding within its innards hundreds of forlorn, unclaimed children and the nuns and priests who watched them like a flock of wayward sheep.

There was a dress code, but the clothes provided never fit quite right. There was a courtyard for playing, but the weather was never quite warm enough. All the girls slept together in one magnificently large room, but there was ever enough space for all of them.

The boys played rough, and the girls did, too, sometimes, but they also told stories, which could be just as bad. That was how Ava heard about the train, in the first instance.

The train had, if the other children were to be believed, come and gone two weeks before Ava arrived, taking with it two dozen or so little children. She would come to find out that this was not, in and of itself, an irregular occurrence; that as the lost children of New York City wandered into that orphanage, so too did they wander out, now and then, onto a train that swept them off to nowhere.

Well, nowhere that anybody knew. The other orphans, for lack of information, had drawn their own conclusions.

“They only take the ones that are never going to get adopted here. They go and get ground up into meat for supper,” Said a girl, Alice, who had red hair and a lazy eye. “They put all of them on a train and send them off to get processed. Like cattle.”

Ava had been around the block enough to tell what was true and what was a story meant to upset her. The train, she thought, was the latter. It was more likely that those children had simply run away from the orphanage to seek their fortunes somewhere else; something Ava had done two times at two different orphanages, and was liable to do a fourth in the near future.

How strange her life might have played out, had she executed that plan. Later on, she’d spend some time mulling over why she hadn’t, and concluded that she’d just gotten tired. Or, perhaps, comfortable. That an orphanage bed was marginally warmer than the November streets of Manhattan. That she had yet to catch lice, that the meals were warm at least half the time.

And so, without realizing it, she slept and ate through her window of opportunity to change her life. She woke with the other girls and did chores and ate when they ate. She bathed once a week and played games with the children who would play with her.

Ava found out that the train was real on a Wednesday afternoon, just past lunch. The priest who ran the orphanage took her aside and told her she was going to meet with Mother Superior, a stern nun of uncountable years with a face like wrinkled muslin.

She thought it had something to do with stealing Vergie Appleton’s dinner rolls while he wasn’t looking and hording them in her bed for when she got hungry in the evening. But, when she arrived in Mother Superior’s office with the priest, the old crone told her to stand with her hands behind her back. She said nothing about Vergie or the rolls or even how she’d tripped Alice in the play yard a few days back.

Mother Superior told her to open her mouth and she did. She inspected Ava’s teeth before tapping under her chin to shut her jaw.

“Where were your parents from?” She asked, grasping Ava’s face by the chin and turning it left, then right.

“Portugal.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dead, ma’am.”

“Do you speak Portuguese?” Chin still in the woman’s hand, Ava shook her head, “Do you ever think about it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good.” Mother Superior released Ava’s face and stood, dusting off the front of her skirt, “The people out there are good and God-fearing. They don’t want to hear you speaking anything but English. Can you sew?” Ava shook her head, “Can you cook?” Another shake.

Mother Superior looked over to the priest, who shrugged. “She’s obedient. And young. She’ll learn.”

“Out where?” Ava asked before she could stop herself, prompting the priest and the woman to look at her as if she’d just taken the lord’s name in vain. It was difficult for Ava to stand still for so long, and so she had begun to fidget, shifting her weight from foot to foot and wringing her fingers, “What people?”

There was a moment of hard, impenetrable silence. Mother Superior tilted her head and regarded Ava with something like pity.

“Do you have any family here, Ava? Anybody who’s waiting to take you home?”

“No,” Ava said, “No, just my auntie and she had to turn me out years ago. She’s got seven children of her own.”

“Our records tell us that this is the sixth time you’ve been arrested,” The priest interjected, “Since you were nine years old.”

Not sure how to respond, Ava said: “Am I in trouble?”

“No, no,” Mother Superior said, tutting, “No, child. I’m sure you’ve noticed how many children come in and out of this place every day, and how little space we have for them,” Ava’s eyes were going to between Mother Superior and the priest, uncertain if this were a problem she was meant to solve, “And all we mean to do is try to put all of our flock in the best possible place to find a family. You’d like to do that, wouldn’t you? Find a family?”

Well, Ava’s parents had died when she was four or five, and her only other blood relations had turned her back out onto the street by the time she was eight — not that she blamed them any. She was sure that she wouldn’t know a family from a kick in the head, and, anyway, how it would be different from what she normally did in the winter time — find a group of children to stay with, to share coin and bread with.

What she would have been doing in that 54th Street rectory, had she made it there. But she nodded, because she knew that’s what would make the adults in the room comfortable — to pretend that there was a right answer, and that she knew what it was.

Mother Superior smiled, “Yes, so I thought. We’re going to help you. You’ll even get a new dress and a bible,”

As she spoke, the priest walked to a wardrobe in a far corner of the room. It opened with a creak. Ava’s heart hammered in her little ribcage.

When he reached in, he came out with the prettiest green gingham dress Ava had ever seen. It was just her size. He squatted and presented it to her as a jeweler might a fine ring for a fine lady.

Ava stared. How could she not? It had been so long since she’d worn something new, and she wasn’t sure that she’d ever put something that nice on her body.

“Does that sound good to you, Ava? What do you think?”

Ava, looking at the dress, wasn’t thinking that she still didn’t know where the hell she was going. She wasn’t thinking about the train or being ground up for next week’s supper. She was just looking at the dress, too young to know a damn thing better, and thinking that it did sound pretty damn good to her, all things considered.

*

The train was real. This was an unwelcome surprise, but when she asked their chaperone, a young, pretty nun with blonde hair and an Irish accent called Sister Charlotte, if they were all about to be ground into meat for supper, she simply laughed.

“No, child. We’re going to find you families.”

She never said where. Nobody ever said where, not that it would have mattered, as Ava could have conceived of middle America as well as she could have imagined the surface of the moon, or the deep bottom of the ocean.

There were twenty of them of varying ages, each loaded upon the train with a bible and a new outfit. At the beginning, when the train was full, their journey west was full of shrieking and laughter and Sister Charlotte’s pathetic attempts to keep order.

After a day or two, Ava realized that the train was not cattle steerage, but more like a bread man’s truck, delivering them like so many loaves across Pittsburgh and Piqua and all the tiny, rickety places in between.

There would be adopters were farmers, mostly. When the train stopped in a place, the hoard of them would be brought to a playhouse, or a community center, and they’d stand in front of a group of adults one by one and say their name and a fact about themselves — a skill, usually, like sewing or cooking, or some might read a passage from the bible as proof of their obedience — and then the farmers would come and do much as Mother Superior did, checking their teeth and their nails. For the boys, the muscles of their arms.

The babies went first, devoured by the hungry arms of barren couples in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Then went the boys, from strongest to most effeminate. By the Dakotas, there were six of them left; Ava and a boy named Crisoforo who spoke primarily Spanish and could not pass as a white child, even though they made him answer to Christopher — a shameful farce that embarrassed everybody involved. A family in Murdo, South Dakota laid claim to him.

Then there were the twins, Alvin and Ana, who might have been picked off as early as Indiana if they’d been willing to be separated. But if one was selected without the other, the twin left behind would through such a cacophonous fit that the selected would need to be returned. They finally found somebody willing to take two somewhere in the middle of Wyoming that probably had a name, but not one that Ava could remember.

That left Ava and a boy named Tommy. He was nice enough, but Sister Charlotte had called him simple, and Ava supposed he was. He didn’t speak for much, nor did he read, and as it came down to just the two of them, he wasn’t much for playing games, either. Perhaps, Ava thought, he was wondering, as she was, why nobody in a dozen towns in eight states had wanted to take him.

And as they breached into Montana, the train car empty except for Ava and Tommy, Ava found herself having a thought; no, they were not grinding up orphans for meat when they took them away to come on the orphan train.

But what happened to children who took the ride and didn’t get selected? It wasn’t something she’d not considered until then, as they pushed onto what felt like the other end of the known world.

Just then, the door rattled open and the conductor stepped out, the gold chain of his pocket watch rattling against the fabric of his finely pressed suit. “Big Sky!” He called into the empty car, “Coming into Big Sky!”

Ava started when she felt a hand on her, turning to find Sister Charlotte at her back with a hand on her shoulder, “Are you alright, dear?” She asked, “You’re white as a ghost.”

Swallowing against a dry throat, Ava managed to rasp: “I’m fine,” All the while thinking, how did I let myself get here? It was like she’d been sleeping the last few weeks, first letting herself be taken to the orphanage, and then letting herself be taken onto the train.

In the last few minutes, she’d woken with a start. Ava realized that she was some unfathomable distance from her home, and she realized that she had no idea if she would return—best case, some poor farmers would take her to live in Montana for the rest of her life, out there among the trees and the big empty plains and nothing to look at for miles. No tall buildings, no woman on the street corners selling fruit and newspaper.

Worst case, she reached the end unwanted. God, and then what?

“Dear, you’re shaking.” Sister Charlotte said. She had come around to lean next to Ava, her hand still resting on her shoulder, “What’s troubling you, child?”

“What happens,” Ava managed out in a small voice. She darted out her tongue to moisten her lips, “What happens if we get to the end and nobody wants me?”

Sister Charlotte blinked. On her shoulder, Ava felt her hand squeeze, then release. She was silent for just a second too long, and kept her face just a little too impassive—Ava knew that whatever she was about to say would not be the truth, “Why, put that thought out of your head. A sweet little thing like you, in that lovely dress? I would be surprised if you didn’t get snapped up in an instant right here in Big Sky.”

And so on they pressed. Sister Charlotte took Ava to the train bathroom and observed her as she washed her face and pulled a brush through her tangled hair. They walked down a busy dirt road, Charlotte and Ava and Tommy, until they arrived at a community theater.

Again, Ava was made to endure the humiliation of standing on a stage in front of a sparse crowd of adults, their eyes hard. Again, she was made to say her name.

Ava opened her mouth to say it. She meant to say it. But a feeling overcame her, one she hadn’t had in years—or one that she’d been able to push down, deep down, the deepest down that a child ever could—even as an adult she could not name it, although she came to know that it shared a family with despair.

She looked out onto all the waxen, dirty faces of those onlookers. She looked at them looking at her like she was a lame, discount head of cattle, a pity call at a livestock auction. And then, for the first time since she was perhaps five years old, Ava found herself scanning the crowd for the face of her mother.

It lasted only a moment, the delusion. It was the soft-handed reaching of an infant searching for a pacifier, something to suck on, something for comfort. And when it was over, and Ava remembered that she had no mother, nor any father, she began to cry.

From the front row of the audience, Sister Charlotte stood. “Are you alright, Ava?”

Ava couldn’t speak. She wailed, forgetting to even be embarrassed enough to cover her face, and balling her hands into the skirt of her dress. It was so worn by then, so dirty, that she felt a wave of shame for ever having coveted it.

“She’s had a long day of travel.” Ava, with her eyes shut, could feel Sister Charlotte next to her on the stage. She felt a pair of hands on her shoulders, then she felt herself being led off. “How about we bring Tommy up for now, shall we?”

Ava was hiccuping and sniffling when they stepped into the fresh air and around the back of the theater. It was a shabby little alley with wood cabins lining it, and it reeked of piss.

Sister Charlotte stooped in front of her, hands on Ava’s shoulders. Her eyes were very blue, Ava realized. Blue eyes showed worry the easiest, and Sister Charlotte seemed very, very worried.

“Ava,” She said, “Listen to me, I know you’re upset. You must be so tired. But—listen to me now, child, no more crying—but it’s important that we find you your people out here. And we can’t do that if you go up there and make such a fuss, can we?”

“What if there are no people for me?” Ava said in a shivering voice. She’d stopped weeping, but with the knowledge that she could start again at any moment, “All my people are gone. It’s just me.”

“Put that thought out of your head this instant. It’ll only make you melancholy,” Sister Charlotte tightened her grip, almost shook Ava some, “None of us are alone in this world, for better or for worse. But how will you ever find who’s looking for you with a face like that? There now.” Charlotte took a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and wiped it across Ava’s face, taking with it snot and tears, “That’s much better. Lovely girl, aren’t you?” Ava sniffled. “Listen to me Ava, I’m going to go in and see how Tommy is getting on. I want you to stay out here for five minutes and pull yourself back together. Then you’ll come in, and curtsey, and we’ll try all this again. Shall we?”

The thought of trying it all again made Ava’s stomach sour, like she could throw up. But she nodded instead. “There’s my girl,” Sister Charlotte smiled and stood, dusting off her skirts, like the matter had been all but settled. “There’s somebody for you here in Montana, Ava. I can feel it.”

When she was gone, Ava stood in that reeking alley. How did I get here? She wondered again. She was looking at the cabins. At the cracks between them. Her head had started to ache from all the crying.

How did I get here? From being a nancy. Lazy. Not fighting good enough when they took her to the orphanage. Not running away when she had the chance. Not telling the headmistress where she could shove her ugly green dress.

The gaps between houses. Small, but so was Ava. She could slip right between them, fast enough that probably nobody would see her. Probably, nobody would care.

Who said Ava had to go back into that playhouse? Who said she had to trot herself out, beg to be rejected by a group of people she’d never met and was unlikely to ever see again? She was Ava Silva. She’d lived on the streets of New York City since she was five years old.

So how hard could Montana be? Could she not, she supposed, commit one or two acts of petty burglary, and buy a train ticket back east, on her own terms? Without fear of being ground into pate?

Yes, her shoes were already worn. Yes, her dress was dirty. But with a twelve year old’s logic, Ava thought—yes. Yes, I can make it.

Charlotte had said that, for better or for worse, nobody was truly alone. Which wasn’t true, of course. Ava was alone. Ava could make it on her own. She didn’t need Sister Charlotte, and she didn’t need pity.

She took a step forward. Then another. Then, Ava slipped between one of the gaps in the cabins, and she was gone.

*

On the third day of the second longest journey of her life, Ava woke on the ground with the smell of that dark alley still tickling her nose. She turned on her side and directly into Beatrice’s gaze.

“You,” Ava said, sitting up on an elbow, “Really don’t sleep at all, do you?”

“We’re passing by Big Sky today.” Beatrice replied. Ava smiled.

“Too excited to sleep?”

Beatrice made no answer, looking into the distance instead. The sun was oozing into the sky off beyond some distant mountains, the air bordering on too cold. They’d chosen an uninhabited patch of grassland to rest on, over which they could see everything in either direction.

They’d made for strange bedfellows, the three of them. On their first night, Ava had gone to sleep and dreamt that old Splendid had risen from his grave still draped in his sheet, still with that ax handle sticking out of his face, and chased her all about the yard. She woke shivering and pale.

When she’d sat up, Beatrice was awake, too. She also had a reason to be mistrustful, Ava supposed, it being that Ava and Mary could decide at any minute to cut their losses for the $3,000.

When she did sleep, she slept wrapped around that shotgun like a lover she was extra sweet on.

They hadn’t talked about their plan on the first night as they rode hard and fast from Ennis, from the house, from every bloody thing they’d left behind there. But in the morning, with the daylight upon them and miles between them and their misdeeds and warm coffee in their stomachs, a plan did begin to take shape.

“There are two issues as I see things,” Ava said, leaning back on her elbows with her boots kicked out in front of her, “First is how we’re going to hit the McBride house when Tiny’s probably told every man, woman and child in Ennis about what he saw. They’ve probably got every able bodied man in the town on the lookout.”

“We’ll have to lay low.” Mary was whittling down a stick to nothing with her pocket knife, not making eye contact with either Ava or Beatrice. “For at least a couple weeks. Hell, that might even be cutting it close.”

“Which brings me to my next issue—”

“Jesus,” Mary said, “I need more coffee before we keep talking about how many damn issues we’ve got.”

“What you’re going to tell your mother about where I came from.” Beatrice interjected. Mary didn’t look up from her stick. “Right? I’m gathering that she wasn’t aware of this—plan of yours. To kidnap me. Does she even know what you two do? The houses?”

Ava blinked. “No,” She said, “And it’s best she don’t find out now.”

Mary said, “Well, so that puts us in a pickle. Considering we told her we were up doing a drive at JC’s this whole time.”

“So we tell her she’s a friend of JC’s. Right? He has people coming in and out of there every damn day,” Ava paused, then she scrunched up her face, “Come to our house to do what though?”

“She’s a friend of JC’s fallen on hard times and she needs a place to stay for a couple of weeks before her new job starts. She’s gonna be a maid or something, up in Bozeman.” Mary continued for her, still working on her stick, “Maybe she comes from a real hard life. Dad that beat her, or something.”

“Alright, so we’re bringing Suzanne another mouth to feed for two weeks.” Ava kept twisting her face, chewing on things. The plan, as it had done when she was pleading at the other end of Beatrice’s shotgun, was taking shape out of thin air as she spoke, “Unless — we sell off some of that jewelry. Not all of it, damnit, a little bit,” She hastened when Beatrice opened her mouth to protest, “We sell it. Suzanne won’t accept money but we can fill our saddlebags with two weeks’ worth of food. And we can tell her that we thought Beatrice might help her a little with the house, in exchange for her keep. And then, at night, we figure out how the hell we’re going to get $10,000 out of that house.”

“Help with your house?” Beatrice’s face pinched so tight it looked painful, “Your master plan is that you take me back to your house to be your maid?”

“Never said anything about you being a maid,”

“Now, I take Beatrice’s point,” Mary said, looking up from her whittling. She’d sharpened that stick to a fine point and was using it to gesture between Ava and Beatrice, “But I think what Ava might be trying to get at is that the more harmless you seem the less likely anybody might be to suspect that there’s something more to you than house help.” She raised an eyebrow in Beatrice’s direction, “Don’t you think?”

Beatrice pursed her lips, “I think you two just don’t want to do your own laundry.” But she didn’t say no, either.

“So if that’s the plan,” Ava said, “That means the plan is that we leave Beatrice in the house with Suzanne alone most of the time, being that one of us can’t always be there.”

A silence fell over them. “We need to trust each other if this is going to work at all,” Beatrice said finally, in a small voice, “Even if it’s just a little bit of trust. I trust that you and Mary aren’t going to turn me in to the sheriff. Can you trust that I’m not going to do anything to harm your mother?”

Ava and Mary looked at each other. Mary shrugged, shook her head, then stabbed her sharpened stick into the soil, “Figure we don’t really have another choice.”

They talked very little and moved very fast for two more days. Sniffing around each other the whole time like junkyard dogs.

Sometimes, Ava would think that it might be nice if they all got to talking. Got to know each other a little bit. Then, of course, she thought of what she’d seen Beatrice do, and got uneasy all over again.

“Can we go there?” Beatrice asked, tugging Ava back to the present.

“Mm?”

“Big Sky.”

Ava was digging through her knapsack, hoping to see something suitable for breakfast. There was no wood around to make a fire, and thus would be no coffee, which was a crying shame.

“Who’s going to Big Sky?” Mary yawned, rolling onto her back and stretching. She squinted over and Ava and Beatrice.

“Us, I guess.” Ava pulled out a rock hard biscuit and split it in half, handing part of it to Beatrice.

“Some of the stuff in my bag,” Beatrice said, taking the biscuit. She chewed and swallowed fully before she spoke. “We can sell it there, can’t we? For your mother. For the story.”

Ava and Mary made eye contact. Mary shrugged, folding her hands across her stomach. “When she’s right, she’s right. And anyway—if I don’t get some damn coffee, my head is going to explode.”

The road into Big Sky was as familiar as a well-loved pair of shoes. The uninhabited melted into the inhabited, from vast prairie to a path lined by dude ranches and signs that Mary read aloud as the rode past, killing time.

“Authentic Wild West Experience,” She said, and shook with laughter, “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“What’s that mean?” Beatrice asked from behind Ava as Cowgirl trotted along.

“Tourism,” Ava said, suspecting that Beatrice might not be well-acquainted with the idea of people just going to a place for fun, “That’s the business here. Making people pay to sift for fool’s gold out in the river and such,” She shook her head, “About as close to a con as one can run legally, I figure.”

“I don’t know if I agree,” Beatrice responded primly, “Maybe people know it’s all for show and they like paying anyway. For the fun of it.”

“Well,” Ava said, cheeks heating, “There’s a perspective.”

The terrain changed, too, as they got closer. The mountains crept forward and what had been empty five miles ago became dotted with trees and patches of buttery yellow flowers. They found a secluded spot next to a stream and stopped, letting the horses have a drink while they colluded.

“I’ll walk on to Big Sky. Got anything in particular you want me to take?” Mary asked, bending backward to stretch her back.

“We sure this is safe?” Ava asked.

“Hank’s discreet. He won’t ask any questions. Especially if we can unload something innocuous. Nothing with your dad’s name inscribed on it or anything, alright?”

Beatrice had the knapsack in her hands and was rifling through it, producing a gold ring and a necklace with a sapphire pendant. Mary and Ava inspected them, then judged them suitable for selling.

“It’s just you going?” Beatrice asked. Ava had already sat down at the bank of the stream and put her aching feet into its lazily moving waters. She peered up at the interaction with interest.

“Wouldn’t do for somebody to recognize you. It’s a beautiful day. The town’ll be packed.”

Beatrice looked back at Ava as if she expected her to disagree. Ava was surprised to clock an expression of disappointment on her face. “She’s right. Way too risky.”

After Mary left, Beatrice joined her at the bank of the stream. Behind her, Cowgirl and Hatchet browsed the grasses and the fresh waters and flicked their ears against mosquitos.

Beatrice was staring into the water with intentness, her knees pulled up to her chin, and Ava was staring at her. How long had they been traveling together—a week, all told? And this might have been the first time she was alone with Beatrice, the real Beatrice, not some feint she was putting on to intimidate Ava.

She looked sad, Ava thought.

“You really wanted to go to Big Sky, didn’t you?” Ava guessed. Beatrice turned her head and looked at her for the first time, mouth terse.

“No.”

“Yeah, who’d want to go to a place like that,” Ava picked up a pebble and tossed it into the stream in front of them. The water absorbed it with a plump, wet sound. “Full of people and stores and different sorts of things to do—”

“Why are you teasing me?”

“Because you’re lying to me about something silly,” Ava said, “After all that, that just happened.”

The words, of course, conjured images of all that. And Ava remembered, as she did sporadically, that she needed to be afraid of Beatrice.

All those days, and it still didn’t come easy to her. Not like the instinct of an animal running from a predator, but with the mundanity of remembering to put slop out for the pigs. A chore.

“It doesn’t matter, we can’t go.” Beatrice said, staring down into the water, looking not very much like an ax murdering lunatic but like a sullen girl. Ava surprised herself with how much easier the empathy came to her than did the fear. “Who cares if I want to or not?”

“I do,” Ava said, and Beatrice finally turned to her, brow furrowed.

“No you don’t,” She replied just as quickly, “You’re just scared of me. You’re trying to appease me,” They both paused, taken by the truth of it — and, to Ava, the way the statement was technically correct but not quite right. Beatrice glanced away again, “Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to hurt you. We can just sit here until Mary comes back.”

“‘Snot that,” Ava said, “Not that I’m scared of you. I just never saw somebody do something like that, or…” She wetted her lips, “…for myself, I’m not one for violence. Looking at it, or doing it.”

“A bold statement from the woman who held me at gunpoint for the last week.”

“I would never even have shot near you,” Ava said, “I guess the jig on that one is up.”

“A regular Barrymore.”

“A who?”

“Nevermind.”

Another silence, this one less strained. Ava thought again of her dream. “You know, this was the first place I came. When I got to Montana. I was on this…” She sucked in a deep breath, “…big train, full of kids. And they dropped us off here. And I hated it,” Ava laughed once, ruefully, “Big Sky. It was the tiniest, shittiest place I thought I’d ever seen. But then, later on — but only a little later — I came back. With my mom. And it didn’t really seem so bad anymore. The whole world, actually, felt a little less bad. It can do that to you, I guess, going to the right place with the right person. Shift your perspective, like.”

She turned to look at Beatrice, but Beatrice was already looking at her. Her eyes were big and shining like she might be about to cry at any second, and, fuck — “Sounds nice,” She murmured — fuck. Ava was about to make a stupid decision, wasn’t she?

This time Ava said it, “Fuck,” And then, “You know what, hold on.” She stood, padding with her wet feet over to Hatchet. She untied Mary’s saddle pack and produced a blue paisley shirt, then a pair of trousers, tossing each to Beatrice, who caught them in fumbling arms.

“What are you doing?”

“Put those on. And I think she’s got — aha!” A wide brimmed hat, the one Mary had worn to drive the cattle at JC’s. Ava tossed that to Beatrice too. “At first glance, they’ll think you’re a man. At second, they’ll just think you’re a rancher.”

Beatrice hesitated. “You both said it’s too dangerous.”

“One half hour.” Ava said, unsure who she was justifying herself to, and pulling a pair of dry socks from her own saddle bag, “The horses need a brushing anyway, and we’ll look at the shops.”

Mary’s clothes fit Beatrice better than Ava’s did, and when she wore them she did look sort of boyish. Ava regarded her.

“With that shiner,” She said, hands tingling with all the effort of holding back the desire to touch, “You look tough. Don’t think anybody’s going to be messing with you.”

They walked on. As the road into Big Sky got busier, Ava could feel Beatrice tense up beside her. They each walked a horse, guiding it by its reins, and avoided other pedestrians and stage coaches as they shot by in either direction. By the time they got to the mouth of the city, they were walking shoulder to shoulder with a mess of people.

Once the horses were squared, they merged into the throng on the main road. All around them, men shouted their wares, their trinkets and their once in a lifetime experiences. A weekend at a dude ranch here, panning for fool’s gold in the mountains there.

Ava noticed that Beatrice had frozen behind her. She turned to find her stunned, standing among the stream of bodies like a rock in a stream. One hand was picking at the opposite sleeve on her shirt.

She smiled. “Hold onto the back of my shirt.” She said, “I won’t lose you.”

“Where are we going?”

“Trust me.”

They wove their way down to a place Ava knew well, if only because it was where Mary went to pick up their more tawdry paperbacks. She assumed they might have things more up to Beatrice’s speed, too.

And Ava was right, because within minutes of entering the book store Beatrice had zeroed in on a shelf in the middle. She selected one and opened it, sticking her nose in almost to the spine. Ava observed her as she walked the perimeter, pretending to peruse the books.

“Ava.” Beatrice hissed after a moment. Hands shoved deep in her pockets, Ava peered around the shelf to where Beatrice was standing, still holding her book, “Can you ask him if he has Mrs. Dalloway?”

“Mrs. Who?” Ava’s brow knitted. Beatrice flattened her mouth.

“The new Virgina Woolf. He’ll know what you mean.”

Ava meandered back to the counter, hands still deep in her pockets. She cleared her throat to get the shopkeeper’s attention. “Excuse me, do you have Mrs…” Her eyes slid over to the shelf that Beatrice had tucked herself behind, then back to the shopkeeper. “The new Virgina Woolf?”

They purchased it. Beatrice clutched it to her chest when they stepped back out on the road, like she thought it so precious that somebody might see it, recognize it, and steal it from her. No longer did she timidly walk a half pace behind Ava, clutching her shirt. They were side by side, strolling bravely ahead.

“What’s it about?” Ava asked. Beatrice looked over at her.

“I don’t know. I only know about it from a review I read in The New York Times,” She eyed Ava, “You’re from New York City.”

Ava tucked her hands into her pockets, looking around at the other stores, “Sure am.”

“It’s big, right?”

“Sure is.” Ava looked up at Beatrice, a lopsided grin on her face.

“Bigger than here.”

“Probably by a thousand times.”

“My father always said he was going to take me when I was a little girl,” Beatrice said, “But he never did.” She paused. She’d caught Ava looking at her. “What?”

“Look at us, having a whole civilized conversation.”

A tut, “Not if you insist on making a fuss about it.”

“You just seem awfully animated.”

“A bath and a new book will do that. And freedom from captivity. Oh,” Beatrice stopped in her tracks. Turned her head, “What’s that?”

Ava knew the sign she was looking at by heart, even if she couldn’t decipher its exact meaning; the curl of the letters, the pale blue behind the black lettering. She was thrust back so suddenly to her dream, to the memory of how small she had been, that she stopped in her tracks to look up at it.

Beside her, Beatrice stopped too. She glanced up at the sign. “‘Johnson’s Aviary’,” She read, then looked to Ava, “Have you been here before?”

She said, “Yes,”

“They sell birds?” Ava nodded, “How novel. Can we go in?”

A sense of trepidation had overcome Ava. As a child, the store had been a place of wonder. It was swollen with beautiful, exotic things she’d never witnessed, or even thought of.

But just then, thinking of those things in cages made her stomach flip. Beatrice, clearly not sharing the same hesitation, walked up the shop steps. Ava followed her.

Inside there was the same cacophony that Ava remembered from going there as a child. The place was full floor to ceiling with bird cages and smelt of it, too. A person almost couldn’t walk between them; Ava herself felt her sleeve snagged by the mouth of a chattering parrot as she trailed behind Beatrice.

Ahead of her, Beatrice looked enthralled. She’d reached the middle of the show room, where canaries chittered from the ceilings, and macaws clanked against the bars of their enclosures with their beaks.

As Ava watched on, she stared up at the canaries, brand new book still clutched to her chest. All around them the clamor continued. As a child, Ava thought it almost musical — the sound of a hundred birds singing at once.

But as she listened on, looking at Beatrice as Beatrice looked on at the birds, it didn’t sound quite right, the chirping of the birds. Not as good, and not as musical. Ava, hearing it as an adult and watching Beatrice as she did, couldn’t help but think that it sounded an awful lot like screaming.

*

They were accosted within seconds of stepping out of the shop.

“Hey!” The sound startled Ava. On instinct, she took Beatrice by the arm and moved her body in front of her. But when she turned, it was only Mary, barreling toward them with a cross look on her face. “Are you two out of your damn minds?” She said when she’d gotten closer.

“How did you find us?” Ava asked.

“I saw the horses at the ferrier and asked Toby.” Mary responded through clenched teeth, “And he said he’d seen you with a Chinese-looking fellow in a paisley shirt headed toward the book seller’s. I deduced. What the hell were you thinking?”

“Nobody knows who she is. Toby said it, she looks like a man,” Ava explained weakly, “And the horses needed looking after.”

“We could all be killed, Ava, if somebody recognized her. Hung from our necks—”

“It was my idea,” Beatrice interjected from behind Ava. She looked Mary dead in the eye. “I wanted to come for a book and I talked Ava into it. She didn’t want to.”

Mary deflated some, her eyes flicking between the two of them. Finally, she shook her head, “I need to see more common sense from the two of you if this is going to work at all.”

Ava reached out and clapped her on the shoulder, “I thought you’d given up the search for common sense years ago.”

“Hope springs eternal.” Mary grumbled under her breath, but leaned into it when Ava slung an arm over her shoulders.

“Come on. We’re all here now, and we’ve got food to buy. Let’s swing by the market, eh?”

“Sunk cost fallacy,” Mary groused, then, “Fine. But pull the brim of that hat down,” This was tossed over her shoulder to Beatrice.

At the market with fat pockets, Mary and Ava did what they hadn’t in years. They picked out fresh meat, dried beans, fruit. Sweets, even. They bought food until they were sure it wouldn’t all fit into their saddle bags, and strolled back to the ferrier with their arms full.

There was a strange feeling sticking to Ava’s ribs as they walked the horses back through the main street and onto the path that led to the homestead, saddlebags full. She realized that, against all odds, it was peace.

“We all clear on the story?” Mary asked once they were on a more remote stretch, the three of them walking side by side. Ava was crunching an apple that hadn’t fit into the horse’s bags.

Ava and Beatrice both nodded. “Beatrice bought herself a book to pass the time,” Ava said.

Mary shot her a withering look, “Just because we’re going to have to play house for a little while doesn’t mean we should let our guard down,” She said, “The longer she’s with us the more danger we’re in. We need to plan this thing, execute it, and get out.”

The peaceful feeling curdled under the heat of reality, but it didn’t quite die. After all, they were still headed home, weren’t they? Home to Suzanne. Home to Suzanne with food enough for two weeks or more. That hadn’t happened in years.

“What are we going to call her?” Ava asked after a minute. Mary wrinkled her nose.

“What are we going to call who?”

“Beatrice.” Beatrice perked up, “We can’t just call her Beatrice, can we? What if they figure it out?”

“Suzanne hasn’t left the house in nearly two years. And where the hell would Shannon find out about who killed what priest in Nowheresville, Montana? No offense to Ennis,” Beatrice snorted, “Plus, I got used to calling her Beatrice.”

“Nobody asked me,” Beatrice said, “But I’ve gotten used to my name as well.”

“Alright,” Ava said, “Beatrice it is.”

The three of them walked on in silence.

*

The homestead came into view while the sun was still high in the sky. The road leading up to it was quite forested, pine needles brushing them as they rode, and broke into an open meadow right as the little log cabin with smoke puffing from its chimney appeared.

“They’re home.” Ava said when she saw the smoke. Her heart started to beat a little faster. When she turned to Mary, her brow was knit and she was frowning.

There was no turning back, was there? Not from there.

When they came within a few feet of the front porch, the door swung open and Shannon came spilling out. She had an apron on and there was soot on her face. She held an arm up to shield her eyes from the sun, then her shoulders slumped with what Ava hoped was relief.

Shannon turned toward the open door. “They’re home!”

What followed was such chaos that nobody noticed Beatrice; or if they did, they were too consumed to say anything about her. They entered the front room, which was small and cluttered; with five people in it, it had a sense of overfullness. They stood around the two seater sofa and the rocking chair in front of the fireplace, the ceiling with its log beams over their head. Doors to the left and right lead to the kitchen and to the bedrooms.

Shannon hugged Mary first, then turned to Ava, cupping her face in her hands and inspecting it.

“Alright, Shan,” Ava giggled, swatting her away, “We were only gone a week.”

Then it was Suzanne’s inspection, and this they took the most seriously. Ava embraced her, trying to discern if she was skinner or had put on more weight. She let Suzanne inspect her shirt and her skin for tears or bruises, all the while she was inspecting Suzanne—had she lost more hair? Was she coughing? Was there color in her cheeks?

It was when Suzanne laid eyes on Beatrice for the first time, over Ava’s shoulder, that Ava saw Beatrice for the first time as well—at least, for the first time as an outsider must have seen her. To Ava, the little details of her had faded into the background.

But, of course, somebody laying eyes on Beatrice for the first time would notice the still-prominent shiner under her eye immediately. And the one Mary had left on her cheek besides. They would notice her braid, how tangled and dirty it was from near a week of being shaped and reshaped from unbrushed hair. And they would see—ah, yes—they would see a smidgeon of blood that Ava had missed during her hasty bath, sticking in a crust right underneath her hairline.

That, and the shotgun she wore slung over her shoulder. Shit, Ava thought.

It was Shannon who broke the silence, “Who’s this?”

Beatrice startled. She’d been hanging in the background while the four of them greeted each other, and when Shannon pointed her out she opened her mouth as if to say something, shut it, and then wrung her hands in front of her.

“Uh, ma, Shan, this is Beatrice. Beatrice is a friend of JC’s. She was…staying at his house while we were there on the drive.” Mary and Beatrice were both staring at the floor, being no help at all. Shannon’s eyes narrowed.

“Why’s she wearing Mary’s clothes?” Shannon asked in a sharp voice. “And what’s with the gun?”

“Well, see, there’s the thing—”

“She’s fallen on hard times,” Mary interjected, still looking at the floor, hands on her hips, “Got pregnant, out of wedlock-like. Daddy kicked her out, then she lost the baby.” Mary’s eyes lifted and caught Beatrice’s, who was glaring at her. “No need to be ashamed, darlin’. Nobody will judge you here.”

“My goodness,” Said Suzanne, “What happened to her face?”

Silence. Beatrice opened her mouth, but Ava cut her off before she could say a word.

“She don’t like to talk about it, you know. But her daddy wasn’t a very nice man, let’s leave it at that.”

Ava and Beatrice locked eyes. Beatrice then looked back to the floor, scratching her cheek as she did so.

Shannon still wore a frown on her face like she was smelling something rotten. “I’m sorry to hear it, but what’s she doing here?”

“Well, see, she—Beatrice, I mean—Beatrice found a job as a maid up in Bozeman. But they don’t need her for oh, another two weeks or so. So Mary and I, we sort of thought—we thought she could maybe stay here, with us. As a kindness. And I know what you’re thinking,” She hastened before Shannon could say anything else, “But she gave us some money and we got more food then we could probably eat in a month. And she can help Suzanne keep the house. It’s getting harder for her, you know, with the—”

As Ava was speaking. Suzanna had moved around her to stand in front of Beatrice.

“Can I see your face, dear?” Beatrice glanced ever so briefly over Suzanne’s shoulder to Ava, then glanced back and nodded.

Gingerly, Suzanne touched over the skin of Beatrice’s bruised cheek with her fingertips. She tutted. “You poor thing.” Then, in a move that gave Beatrice a physical jolt, she cupped her cheeks. “I have something for this. Give me just a moment.”

There was a cabinet sitting under the front window that looked out onto their front porch. It had a lace runner and a lantern atop it. Suzanne reached into one of the drawers and produced an amber container of some salve, which she brought back to Beatrice, who was watching with wide eyes.

“Now, this may tingle a little, but it smells nice. I’m just going to apply a smudge of it—”

“Ava, Mary?” Ava tore her eyes away and back to Shannon, who was looking at them sternly. “While they’re occupied, would you mind helping me bring in some laundry?”

There were sheets and dresses and trousers rippling along clotheslines that crisscrossed the back porch. Shannon stomped out ahead of Ava and Mary, pulling down a shirt and hanging it over the crook of one of her arms.

She spun. Ava and Mary both started, “Alright, what the hell is going on here?”

“Like we said, she—”

“Enough, Ava.” Ava’s jaw clicked shut, “What you tell Suzanne is your business, but don’t lie to me.”

“She’s telling the truth, Shan.” Mary interjected. Shannon’s eyes fell to her. Her mouth tightened and her head tilted. “What we said in there, it’s all the truth.”

A silence. Shannon’s face puckered. She pulled a sheet from the clothesline and threw it on top of the trousers. “How long have we known each other?”

“What? I don’t—”

“How long, Ava?”

Ava looked at her boots. Scratched her cheek. “Our whole lives. We’re neighbors.”

“Our whole lives,” Shannon repeated, “All these years and I never said anything. Figured what you two were doing wasn’t harming anybody. But now you’re bringing home,” Socks came down with a snap of the clothespin that held them. Shannon tried to toss them onto the growing pile on her arm, but they floated down to the wooden deck, “Strangers. And where’s that black eye really from? That blood on her face? The shotgun?” She stopped yanking fabrics down for a moment, looking from Ava to Mary and back again, “Hm?”

“Shannon—”

“Don’t, Mary. You of all people. You never lied to me before, in all these years I’ve been living next to you. Since we were girls,” Ava figured that, if there was ever a time that she might have broken down and told the truth, it would have been then. She felt so awful that she figured she could have told the whole wretched story. Wept in the telling of it. She folded her lips in and swore she could taste it, “So I guess it’s got to be pretty bad, huh? Whatever it is you’ve done this time.”

“We haven’t done anything,” Mary repeated. Shannon scoffed and shook her head. She finished taking the clothes from the line, dumped them into a basket, then picked the basket up and shoved it into Ava’s arms.

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am,” She said, not to Ava, but to Mary, “And neither is Suzanne, by the way.”

Then she spun on her heel and stomped off the porch, the fabric of her skirts billowing behind her. Mary stood frozen for a moment, then seemed to jolt into action, dashing after her. “Shannon, wait —”

“Mary, don’t—we’ve got to—ah, shit.” By the time Ava got to hollering, Mary and Shannon were already much past the tree line. She shook her head and spat, turning and bumping open the door to the kitchen with her hip. “Mom? Beatrice?” She called, stomping through to the living room, “I’ve got the—oh.”

“Oh, Ava, good. Are there a pair of stockings in there? Ava?

In front of her, Beatrice was standing on an inverted apple crate. She was looking about astounded as Ava felt, her arms stretched out to either side of her, while Suzanne knelt at her front and pinned the fabric of a brown, ankle length skirt. Over Beatrice’s upper half was a soft blue blouse speckled all over with little yellow flowers.

The gun was sitting well away, on top of the cabinet with the lace runner. Ava looked at it and wrinkled her brow, then glanced back to Beatrice.

“How’d you get her to do that?” She asked Suzanne, still looking at Beatrice. Beatrice made a face as if to say, help me. Her cheek was shiny from Suzanne’s salve.

“She needs a dress, doesn’t she? Or were you planning to just keep her up here in Mary’s old clothes?” She stuck in a pin and Beatrice flinched, “The stockings, dear.”

“Right, sorry.” Ava dropped the basket to the floor and squatted beside it, digging in. She kept one eye up on the tableau playing out before her, “You haven’t felt well enough to work in months.”

“All the excitement is doing something to my constitution. There.” Suzanne put in a final pin and rose to her feet haltingly, taking a step back. “How does that feel—ah, don’t move too much. It’s full of pins.”

Ava pulled one white stocking, and then another. She passed them over to Suzanne, who deemed them fine, on short notice.

“It feels perfect. But really, Suzanne, you don’t have to—”

“Ah, ah. No niceties, please. I find them exhausting. Ava? What do you think?”

Well, Ava thought she looked a picture, pretty as. And when she lifted her eyes to Beatrice’s face, Beatrice was colored just a shade beneath beet red.

Catching Ava looking at her, Beatrice squared her shoulders. For whatever reason, when she looked at her, Ava realized that all she really wanted was to have a cold beer in front of the fire with her sister and her mother. To talk about what she’d done while they were gone, and did they need to call the ferrier up, and so on.

And so gazing up at Beatrice in that flattering dress, that feeling of almost cloying sweetness that followed seeing her—all it did was make Ava tired. To think on how far she had to go. And to think on all the things they’d done to get there.

“Where’d you get that get up?” She asked, putting her hands to her hips.

“It’s mine.” Suzanne said.

“I never saw it before.”

“And you think you’ve seen every article of clothing I wear? It’s from when I was almost your age. I was very popular back then, you know.” Suzanne was standing back, one hand on her chin inspecting her handiwork, the other slung around her waist and holding the stockings.

“Here we go,” Ava said with a smile, then to Beatrice: “She gets nostalgic.”

“And you will too when you’re an old woman.”

“You’re not old. For God’s sake, are you going to unpin her from that dress? Poor girl can’t even get her arms down.”

“Oh! Yes. Now, Ava, I want you to go over to the well and fetch up some water and put it on the fire.” Suzanne stepped behind Beatrice on the apple crate and began undoing the buttons at the back of her blouse. Ava averted her eyes before she could get too far.

“Why?”

“So Beatrice can have a bath.”

“A bath.”

“For one thing, Ava, she’s got about a year’s worth of dirt stuck underneath her fingernails and blood on her face. For another, it sounds like she’s had a difficult few weeks. Come now.”

Beatrice’s voice, feeble: “It’s really alright—”

“Not another word from you, dear. Go on, Ava. Get the tub, too.”

“Guess it’s not a question of whether or not she’s staying,” Ava said, and she heard Suzanne’s almost shocked reply:

“Well, of course she’s staying, Ava, if she’s got nowhere else to go.”

Beatrice bathed where they all had bathed since they were little girls; in the kitchen, in the big brass soaking tub they kept out in the shed. From the living room, they could hear Suzanne humming as she went to work on the skirt.

Ava leaned against the unlit stove, looking at Beatrice, who was submerged up to her shoulders. Something about the water, cloudy with soap, and her wet hair hanging around her shoulders, made her look young.

They’d been sitting in silence for a good ten minutes, and Beatrice hadn’t met Ava’s eye once, though she hadn’t asked her to leave, either.

“Your mother is very…” Beatrice shifted, the water sloshing against the edges of the tub. Was she being shy, Ava wondered? It was an odd concept for a girl like Beatrice.

“She speaks her mind, yup.” Ava said. She jammed her hands down into the pockets of her trousers. “You’ll get used to it.”

“A little bit like you.”

“I guess so,” Ava nodded, “But then, if that’s the case, maybe you won’t get used to it.”

“I think I am, though,” Beatrice said this very quietly, very preciously. She said it to her own reflection in her bath water, “Growing a little used to you.”

“Ava, where’s—woah, Jesus,” The door to the kitchen swung open and Mary stepped inside, then stopped and pivoted around when she saw Beatrice, “Warn me next time there’s a naked girl hanging out in our kitchen, would ya?”

“You just barged in!” Ava exclaimed, “You can’t see anything anyway.”

Mary turned around, hands on her hips, and shook her head, “Looks awfully relaxing,”

“Suzanne’s idea. Where’s Shannon?”

Mary shook her head and waved Ava off, “On her way home. Don’t we have some,” Her eyes darted to the doorway between the kitchen and the living room and she lowered her voice, “Planning to do?”

“Not now. Later,” Ava said, “After she’s gone to bed.”

“Well if that’s so, we’ve got a ranch to run. The horses haven’t had their exercise properly in days.”

Ava looked at Beatrice, who was watching them from her tub alertly. “What about her?”

“What about her?” Mary asked. She took a cigarette from the front pocket of her shirt and stuck it between her lips, “Is she not here to help Suzanne with the house?”

“She’s right, Ava.”

“Have I mentioned lately that I like her? More and more every day.”

Ava couldn’t respond for a long second. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was pounding. In truth, she didn’t know what it was. It could have been the thought of Beatrice, who had so recently murdered somebody, in the house alone with their mother. It could have been the idea of resuming her daily routine while the sinister machinery of their plan rumbled on in the background.

Whatever it was, it made her palms sweat. She wiped them down the front of her pants. “Do you even know how to do this kind of stuff? I mean like—cooking, and what have you.”

Beatrice narrowed her eyes, and she looked her age again. The softness on her face hardened up and disappeared, “They do teach the high art of home economics even to us silly rich women, Ava.”

“Not what I meant—”

“How about I get her out of your hair before she manages to fit her whole other foot into her mouth, eh?” Mary approached Ava and slung her arm about her shoulders, turning her and steering her to the door. Beatrice raised her eyebrows but said nothing more.

Once they were out in the open air, Mary said: “You two have got to leave each other alone,” Striking a match on the porch railing and lighting the tip of her cigarette, “Like cats in a bag.”

“She started it.” Ava grumbled, and Mary rolled her eyes.

“Don’t make me play peacekeeper. You know it’s unnatural.” A long drag from the cigarette, and Mary blew smoke up toward the graying sky, “Now, c’mon. Let’s get the horses out for a trot.”

And so they got Opie and Cinnamon out to stretch their legs in the ring, and slopped the pigs, and Ava rode along the fence to check for holes. It didn’t take long for it to get dark, even during that long, late summer day. Ava watched the sun set while Cowgirl lapped up creek water, leaning back in her saddle and pondering.

When she came back up to the house, she wasn’t sure what she was expecting. The strained silence of strangers alone together, perhaps.

Far from it. Ava heard the chattering before she’d fully opened the door, kicking her boots off onto the deck.

There was Beatrice, in her new dress. Suzanne had sewn it up nicely and quickly and it looked even lovelier on her than it had in the living room.

The bath had left her looking smooth like a polished stone. No longer was there a smudge of blood on her hairline; it was replaced with a white streak of flour, and granules of it clung to the black of her hair, which she wore down and swept over her shoulder.

She was setting the table. Ava blinked.

“You’re going to catch flies, Ava.” Suzanne said from her place sitting by the potbelly stove. A pot of something good-smelling boiled atop it.

“Nobody’s ever set the table before, I think.”

“Where I’m from, we always set it.” Beatrice responded primly.

“Her rules now, I guess.” Mary’s voice came behind Ava. She was kicking her boots off too. “‘Bout time somebody civilized us, I figure.”

“That’s the spirit.” Beatrice said, straightening a fork in a cloth napkin, “You two are just in time. Supper is ready.”

“Smells amazing,” Ava offered, to which Beatrice glanced up and rolled her eyes once — still a little sore, she figured, from Ava’s stray wondering as to whether or not she knew how to cook.

She did. That was no lie. By the time they sat around it, the table was piled up with stewed vegetables and potatoes and some sort of meat stew. And bread that Suzanne announced that Beatrice had made herself.

There was less than a minute between seating and three pairs of hands reaching, but before they could fill their plates, Beatrice said “Wait—you don’t say grace?”

Suzanne, Ava, and Mary all exchanged a look. Ava sat back. Shook her head.

“We haven’t spoken to God in so long I think he’d be knocked over by a feather to hear from us now.”

“Better late than never,” Suzanne said, and arched a brow and Ava and Mary, “Civilized, remember? Go ahead, sweetheart.”

But by then Beatrice was blushing a furious red. She had her hands gripped in her lap so hard Ava could see one of them turning white. “No, I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”

“It’s good to be thankful,” Suzanne offered, to which Beatrice only colored more, mouth twisting.

“I’ve got one.” Ava said. She took a deep breath and clenched her eyes closed, calling the words up from a dark place in her memory, “‘Bless us oh Lord for these thy gifts that were about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.’” She opened her eyes to find every person seated at the table staring at her with undisguised befuddlement, “They made us say that about a hundred times a day at the orphanage. What do you think, Bea? Blessed?”

Beatrice blinked once, then shook her head slightly, as if clearing it from a fog. The blush on her face was lighter but still there. “Blessed.” She confirmed in a quiet voice, and once again hands reached for food.

“I grew these carrots,” Mary grumbled as she spooned some vegetables onto her plate, “Not Jesus.”

“Thanks to Mary as well,” Ava said, “That better?”

“Much.”

For a moment the only sounds in the kitchen were the clattering of cutlery and scooping of food. Four people around their round wooden kitchen table made the room feel small, and Beatrice had managed to pull down every dish she could find on the shelves that lined the walls. This was a feat, because there was no rhyme or reason to where they put them; some hid behind a pile of maps and other papers, others littered the top of the stove when it wasn’t in use.

The napkins were another minor miracle. Ava wasn’t sure she’d known they had napkins that weren’t the back of her shirtsleeve; her’s had been cut and sewn from a flour sack and said Cole’s Best across the front.

“What are you reading, Beatrice?” Suzanne asked after she’d filled her plate, sipping well water from a tin cup. Beatrice looked up, and then down to where the book they’d bought that day in Big Sky rested beside Beatrice’s right elbow. A smudge of flour on the front cover told Ava she’d been reading it.

“The new Virginia Woolf,” Ava said after swallowing a bite of vegetable, “Right?”

“The new who?” Mary asked, then turned to Beatrice: “We’re not big book readers in this house.”

Suzanne said, “Mary, shush.”

“Well, we’re not.”

“You’re making us sound like charlatans.” Suzanne turned her eye to Beatrice, “What’s the book about, sweetheart?”

Beatrice blinked, looking for a moment like she’d lost her words. Ava wondered how long it had been since so many people had asked her about what she was reading. If anybody ever had. She opened her mouth, then shut it. Then opened it again.

“A woman,” She said finally, “Throwing a party.”

Everybody at the table hummed as if they understood, and dinner carried on. They chattered, and Beatrice let nothing show on her face when Mary and Ava told their spun-up tales of spending the week at JC’s.

The kitchen door was open. The summer breeze was spilling in. An hour passed, and Ava was full, and her head was a little fuzzy from the glass of beer she’d had. The air turned cold. The door shut. Then a deck of cards came out, and they played, and outside the light changed.

“Well,” Said Suzanne after a while. She coughed, once, then wiped her mouth with a napkin, “I think it’s about time I go on down to bed. Leave the young people to it.”

“Come on; I’ll help you over,” Ava said, rising from her seat. “Ladies, want to deal us another hand while I’m gone?”

Mary tipped an invisible hat in assent. Beatrice did not meet her eye.

Suzanne’s bedroom was small and cluttered. Every surface was covered with an unfinished project; a dress, a pair of trousers. A large quilt hung over her vanity, partially obscuring the mirror.

Once she was in her nightgown and in bed, Suzanne said: “Come sit by me for a few minutes. I haven’t seen you in about ten years.”

Ava did. She lit the lamp at Suzanne’s bedside and then sat on the mattress beside her and cupped one of her hands in her own.

“You look well.” Ava said, and meant it, “I haven’t seen you looking so well in months. Maybe it could be that you’re getting a little better, don’t you think?”

“Maybe so.” Suzanne said, not meeting Ava’s eye. She was looking at the flickering light of the lamp, “That girl, Beatrice. I like her.”

“We thought you might.”

“She’s a little nervous, though, isn’t she?”

“She’s had a hard go of it.”

“And you said that she’s a friend of JC’s?”

“They’re acquainted.”

“Odd that I’ve never heard her name.” Suzanne said, and then she was looking at Ava, and she had a spark in her eye. A little knowing gem. “You always go on these long trips, and happen to come upon all sorts of odd people.”

Ava wanted to look away in shame, knowing she was lying. But she’d only ever wanted to be good like her mother was, and how could she have borne the disappointment if Suzanne had known they’d been out thieving and kidnapping girls from convents? Lying felt such a small sin in comparison. “You know work is few and far between these days, and you’ve got to go farther to get it, and talk to stranger people.”

Suzanne said, “Is that so,” All the time her eyes still twinkling. Ava looked down at their entwined hands.

“I had this dream the other night, on our way back, about the first time I came to Big Sky off that train. When we met. Do you remember that?”

“I could never forget it. You were so skinny I thought you were fixing to blow away on a stiff breeze.”

Ava laughed, closed-mouthed and with her chest. She brought her other hand to hold Suzanne’s, so that her mother’s hand was cupped between two of her own. “Why did you do it? And why did you keep me for so long after? You could have just turned me away. Instead you spent money on me and you raised me.”

A long pause followed, and Ava supposed for a moment that Suzanne might say something horrible, like maybe I should have. Instead, she said “Look at me.” And when Ava did, she found her smiling, with that lamp putting deceiving shadows all over her face. “What kind of person would I have been if I had done such a thing?” Suzanne asked, “And what kind of person would you have turned out to be? On second thought, let’s not dwell on it. I like the people we are now, because I did keep you. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” Ava said, half a whisper. Suzanne’s smile deepened.

“There, see. And look at you—now you’ve brought this girl home, whoever she is, out of the wilderness. Maybe that’s just our way, after all.”

Ava felt her heart grow full, because Suzanne had said our way — like Ava was really her’s, and like kindness, or foolishness, was something that could be passed through a bloodline, down from mother to daughter and so on, and so on, forever.

*

Back at the table, Mary had put the cards away and replaced them with one of their maps, a big one, with all the roads in Montana laid out like wispy little veins. She and Beatrice were hunched over it, and Beatrice was tracing one of those veins with a finger.

“How is she?” Mary asked when Ava shut the door to the living room. Ava shrugged.

“She seems better. Haven’t hardly heard her cough the whole time we’ve been here.”

Mary hummed, “Shannon said she started perking up yesterday.”

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” Beatrice asked, looking between them.

“Could be, but she’s had spells of feeling better before.” Mary looked up, and they locked eyes, “So let’s not go getting ahead of ourselves.”

“Yes ma’am,” Ava said, and joined them in looking at the map. She squinted, “What are we looking at?”

“My father’s house is here,” Beatrice said, her slender finger pointing at a spot on the map, “Or hereabouts.”

“What’s he do?” Mary asked. Even with the door shut, the crickets were chirping an awful racket outside. The whole kitchen was spotted with lantern glow.

“He owns a mine outside of Ennis.” Beatrice responded, and Mary whistled low, “Don’t get ahead of yourself. The silver in Ennis has been dried up for nearly two years. The house is a hobby ranch now; he spends most of his time tending to that.”

“That priest told me he hasn’t let a single soul in since you left,” Ava pointed out, crossing her arms, “And I suspect that’s doubly true since what happened at that house.”

Beatrice sucked her teeth, “His groundskeeper is a drunkard who ties the gate chain too loose. One or both of you could slip through easily. The real challenge is going to be finding the valuables. The house is huge.”

“How huge we talking?”

“He had it built like our house in Halifax. A mansion. Three stories, dozens of rooms. And he doesn’t leave his things out for the taking. They’re in drawers, cabinets, safes. Buried.”

“Does anybody live there but you two?” Ava asked. Beatrice nodded.

“We have a full staff of servants. My maid, Irie — Irene —, the groundskeeper, my father’s footman. The cook. And then the boys who run the hobby ranch - they sleep out back in the boarding house.”

“So a whole house of people who could get woken up by us coming in.” Mary said, rubbing her thumb against her chin. She didn’t look worried exactly, just perplexed by the challenge, “This one’s going to be a thinker.”

“Are you friends with any of them? Any of the servants?” Ava asked, “What about Irie? Somebody who might be happy to hear from you rather than turn you into the powers that be.”

“Irene,” Beatrice said sharply, still not looking at them, then, “No. Our relationships were strictly professional.”

Ava and Mary shared a look over Beatrice’s head. Mary raised her eyebrows. Ava shrugged and shook her head.

“Do you know where it is? The loot?” Mary asked, “Or some of it.” Beatrice nodded. Mary’s eyes flicked back up to Ava, “Sounds to me like she’s going to have to come with us.”

“What? No. Where’d you get that idea?” Ava’s brow furrowed, “If we get caught, that’s one thing. If we get caught with her?” Ava brought her hand by her neck and tugged upward, letting her head loll to the side, in a mimicry of the hangman’s noose.

“We’re more likely to get caught without her, bumbling around that big house in the dark.”

“We’re going to be here for two weeks. She can show us. We can remember.”

“I think Mary is right.” Beatrice said, “I agree with Mary.”

“No, and that’s the end of it. Beatrice stays here.”

“Here?” Beatrice balked, “So I can wait three days taking care of your ranch to find out if the two of you are bringing me my money or if I’ve been cheated out of five thousand dollars?”

“Your money? Our money.” Ava hissed.

“Hey. Hey! Keep your voices down. Let’s try to remember that we’re all on the same side here, and—oh, what the hell. What did I say about me playing peacekeeper?” Mary tutted. But Ava wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at Beatrice. And Beatrice was looking right back. For a moment neither of them said anything.

“She comes, we’re increasing our chances of getting killed tenfold.”

“She stays, we might end up in jail and penniless.” Mary pointed out, “And still hung, depending on how cranky the sheriff is, or if that bastard from the house recognizes us. I take her point about sitting back here waiting, too.”

“So she comes as far as Jacobstown.”

“How about this,” Mary said, “Now that we’ve got three of us, instead of two, strikes me that we can hold a proper vote on the matter.”

Ava scoffed, “You two are just going to vote for your idea.” Silence. Mary and Beatrice exchanged a glance, one that Ava did not very much care for. “Fine. Fine. Have your goddamn sham election.”

“All in favor of Beatrice coming.” Mary said, and her and Beatrice’s hands shot up, “All opposed?” Ava raised her hand defiantly. “The ayes have it.”

“The ayes can bite me.” Ava responded, but there was no real malice in it. The first roll of irritability had ebbed so far out that she could only find it if she went searching long and hard. It was, it appeared to her, perhaps not a situation with a right answer, “We still need a sense of that house. The grounds. Are there dogs?”

“That we can agree on,” Mary said, and turned a chair backwards to sit on, folding her arms over the back and resting her chin on them. Ava did the same.

“I can do my best,” Beatrice said, “If you have a pencil and a piece of paper I can give you an idea of the layout. But I’m not much of an artist.”

Her food was better than her art, yes, but they got the broad strokes. Mary smoked one cigarette, then two. Eventually the hours whittled down and there was more yawning than talking.

“I think that’s all I’ve got in me for the night,” Ava said. She glanced up at the clock that sat on the shelf behind the table. It doubled as some gimmicky bauble that was meant to tell you when it was about to storm; on one side were two figurines of Hansel and Gretel, on the other was the witch, and they swiveled and pivoted out, depending. She noticed that it was nearly one in the morning. She noticed, too, that the witch was out. “Where are we putting Beatrice? Living room couch?”

A beat of silence, “Can’t say I love the idea of her sleeping down here, alone, right next to Suzanne’s bedroom,” Mary said, then glanced sidelong at Beatrice. Her expression twitched. Ava thought, incredibly, that it looked like a motion of true regret, “I didn’t mean any personal offense by it.”

Ava looked to Beatrice, who’s face remained impassive save a near-imperceptible tightening at the corners of her mouth. “No offense taken.”

“She can sleep upstairs,” Ava said, “With me. There’s plenty of room in the attic.”

So it was. Beatrice followed her into the living room and Ava pulled on the string that brought down the attic stairs. Beatrice took the ladder first, Ava on her heels. They emerged together into the attic—into Ava’s bedroom.

It was a place that seldom received visitors. JC had joined her up there a few times. Mary too, occasionally, though less and less when they got older. Being there with Beatrice caused Ava to look at its fixtures with a more critical eye.

The bed pushed against the window at the A-frame steeple of the house—did the quilts that covered it look dirty? Had she washed them before she left? What about the ones folded on the rocking chair on the opposite wall?

What had she left in her nightstand, other than the porcelain dish with the silver for the crow—and the rugs, there were so many of them to absorb the sound of her footsteps—did the colors all go together?

And then the books. Oh lord, the books, the tripe that Mary liked, sitting in stacks by an old settee pushed against the far wall. Beatrice was heading straight for them.

“Little cold tonight, don’t you think?” Ava pulled the ladder up and snapped it into place. Beatrice didn’t respond, instead taking a book from the top of the stack and opening it, studying the words. “I’m sure you don’t want to read that.”

“Why not?” Beatrice murmured, not taking her face from the book. She was wandering back toward Ava. Her hair, removed from its braid, hung around her shoulders in rolling waves.

“It’s just not—” Ava swallowed. What was she going to say, appropriate? Beatrice was an adult woman. Somebody Ava had seen commit a murder most heinous not four days ago. “—There are shirts in those drawers there. Clean ones for sleeping. If you want.”

While Beatrice dressed, Ava crouched by the compact wood stove in the corner. She put in the starter wood with a careful slowness and coaxed it to flame. Ignoring the sounds of fabric exchanging behind her, and then the groan of the bed springs as Beatrice rested her weight onto it.

“I can sleep on the settee.” Ava said without turning her head, making her eyes focus instead on the flames flickering to life in the stove.

There was a beat of silence. “That seems silly.” Beatrice said, but there was a shade of something odd in her voice.

Words bubbled up so quickly that they stuck together in the back of Ava’s throat. She’d been thinking often enough about that night before everything had gone to hell, about the trap Beatrice tried to lay for her, and about the way it made Ava feel.

And then the thing that Beatrice had admitted to with her gun pointed straight at Ava—the intent not to kill, but the will to pull that trigger existent nonetheless—I heard you telling Mary that you fancied me—it was a small, stupid detail in the scheme of things. But the further they got from danger, the harder Ava dwelled on it.

After she’d been quiet for long enough that she figured it would be odd to keep not talking, she spoke, “I just wanted you to know…” Ava said, then stopped, running her tongue over her lips. She stared into the rising flames of the fire and tried again, “I wanted you to know, about that thing you said—about be fancying you—I know that’s not—I know it’s—”

Ava had never gotten used to articulating this specific peculiarity, though it had been known to her for as long as she’d known anything about herself. She’d confided it to Mary, having had suspicions going back years regarding her and Shannon, and to JC.

Mary had told her, with a sisterly kind of vigilance, that she ought to keep quiet about it unless she was absolutely certain she was in familiar company. JC had only wondered that such a thing could exist outside of his own fantasies, and both reactions had only made Ava feel terribly lonely about something that she’d once thought might be special.

“—it’s uncommon. And it’s—you weren’t wrong, but—” Ava winced, “I’d never do something to you. Something untoward-like. You and I, I want us to be friends, maybe, someday. I hope that we can be friends someday.” Ava took a breath that filled the chambers of her chest and turned.

In the bed, Beatrice had dozed off sitting up. Her head was lolled on the pillow, mouth slightly ajar, and the book still open on her lap with her hand keeping its place. Ava froze, then she huffed out a quiet laugh.

“Figures,” She murmured, “With my luck.” Then, Ava stepped quietly over and slid the book from Beatrice, shutting it and placing it on the nightstand.

She lingered for a moment, thinking what if she’s faking it again. And Ava remembered the fear for a moment, like a lighting strike.

But Beatrice only slumbered on with soft rattling breaths, and not even the slightest flutter in her eyelashes. And Ava felt that more innate emotion, the empathy. She took a step back, figuring that if Beatrice wanted to feign sleep, she could.

Then she thought that the truth of it all might be stranger and sweeter than Beatrice faking it; that after four days of constant vigilance, she’d passed out within minutes of her back touching a bed, gun still on the cabinet downstairs, dressed in one of Ava’s nightshirts.

Chapter Text

Beatrice awoke to find that Sunday had come again, despite her prayers, which were plentiful and ineffectual to the bitter end.

She broke fast with her father in the cavernousness of their dining room. Just them, at a table built for 12 that had never seen more than five at its fullest, and the unbearable August heat, and Irene standing in the back corner with sweat dotting her brow and darkening the roots of her fair hair.

During the hottest days of the summer, her father insisted on drawing closed all but one of the dark velvet drapes in the room. The one left was opened only a crack; a sliver of warm light pouring through and slashing across the table.

Beatrice watched it, watched the dust motes and flies that buzzed through it. She pulled her spoon through her porridge—back and forth, back and forth—and in the background, the only sound was that of Irene’s leather shoes squeaking as she shifted from foot to foot.

“Well,” Her father said after minutes of silence so long and damp Beatrice thought they might’ve grown mold. Beatrice didn’t look up at him. She kept pulling her spoon through the porridge—back and forth, back and forth—“It’s almost time for church, isn’t it?” Beatrice’s shoulders slumped, her desire for this ever reoccurring part of her life to end outweighing her hatred of attending a church by only a hair, but then her father continued speaking — “Why don’t you get changed into something more suitable while I gather the coach?”

Beatrice looked down the front of herself. She was wearing a fine white shirt, high collared, and a gingham skirt that hit her at the ankle. It covered nearly all of her, even in that heat.

It should have been acceptable. She and Irene had spent nearly an hour torturing themselves over something that would suit.

He was in a mood that morning, clearly. Beatrice pressed a napkin to her mouth—needless, as she hadn’t eaten anything more than some sips of coffee—and said, “Irene?”

“Yes, miss.” The squeaking of Irene’s shoes as she walked over, then the feeling of her arm as it passed by her cheek. The clattering of dishes as she took them, “Come, let’s get you dressed.”

Back in her room, Beatrice stood in her slip while Irene rummaged through her wardrobe. Neither had said anything since they’d left the dining room and Irene would not, Beatrice knew, speak until she was spoken to.

Beatrice shifted from foot to bare foot, wondering if she would say something. She watched Irene’s back, her front half submerged in the cabinet. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to speak to her—the opposite, in fact—only that Beatrice felt that to indulge in something one must first deprive themselves of it, at least a little.

And she enjoyed wondering, now and again, if Irene wanted to talk to her too. If by not speaking, Beatrice was causing her equal pain—something about it excited her in a way almost nothing else did.

“Have you found anything yet?” Beatrice asked finally, in a small voice, and felt her stomach tighten with pleasure when she saw Irene’s shoulders slump as if in relief. When she pulled herself from the wardrobe with dresses slung over a forearm and spoke immediately, as if she’d been keeping the words bottled tightly inside her.

“Lord Jesus—that man is in a snit, ain’t he? First he sent that dodgsasted porridge back three times—I mean, it’s porridge—” Irene paused only to heft the dresses down onto Beatrice’s bed, looking at them with her hands on her hips, and then turning an eye to Beatrice. “—Beatrice. Enough with your hair. God help us if he doesn’t like that, either.”

Beatrice realized belatedly that she’d prised some strands loose from her braid and had been twisting and tugging them. She dropped her hand, but Irene had already crossed the room.

She stood before Beatrice in her servant’s clothes, the apron snapped at her shoulders and the threadbare blue frock underneath. Irene was the sort of girl who wasn’t pretty at first—she was towheaded and brown-eyed, not hazel or chocolate or oak, but the plain, flat brown of settled coffee—and she spoke with the gnarled, twisting inflection of somebody who’d spent their whole life wasting away in some hovel somewhere deep in Montana. One of her top molars had cracked and been replaced with silver. It glinted when she smiled.

But if you caught her in the right light, doing the right thing; concentrating long and hard over a tricky piece of mending, or fussing with the hem of a dress, or, worst of all, praying, her on her knees and supplicant, she became something worse than pretty. Thinking about it made Beatrice aware that there was somebody, or somebodies, out there who wanted to marry Irene, who wanted her to have their children and cook their food.

And thinking of that sent Beatrice down a road from which there was no returning. She’d just barely reeled herself back when Irene reached up, tucking the loose strand of hair behind her ear.

“There. I have a little cousin that does that too. Sometimes she falls asleep sucking on it—her hair, I mean.” That was just like Irene, to reveal information as unimportant as it was strangely charming. She’d already turned back to the dresses on the bed. “Now, what do you think? The green?”

They went with purple, it seeming the most church-like of the colors—Irene’s words—and Irene escorted Beatrice down to the coach where it waited down in front of the house.

Church was the one place that Beatrice was permitted to go without her. And so Irene opened the door of the carriage for her and they waited for one moment, and then two, each of them with bated breath while Beatrice’s father looked at her.

He’d once rejected four dresses, and when the changing had made them miss church, he’d locked Beatrice in her bedroom for the rest of the day, without supper or anything. It used to scare Beatrice, when she was younger, but now thinking of it only made her tired.

This time, he only nodded and gestured with his head for her to enter the carriage. Beatrice looked back at Irene, who smiled, tight lipped and polite, and extended a hand for her to take and step into the coach.

Even for a day that hot, the church was full enough that people stood in the background. Last week, Father Whittaker and Father Vincent had given a demonstration out in the town square, on the stage where the gallows stood on hanging day. They’d called a demon out of a woman in front of a crowd of 100 odd people before sending around the tithing basket and collecting their coin.

Ever since, in front of the church, where a hanging sign read Rev. Fr. Whittaker - Rev. Fr. Vincent — another sign appeared below it. One that read Religious Counseling and Psychiatric Services—Inquire Within.

Beatrice and her father sat in the front pew, as they always did. Father Whittaker took to the pulpit, as he always did. He gave his sermon, which seemed slowed in the heat of the morning.

Those days, Beatrice didn’t think of her mother every time she saw Father Whittaker. His white, wispy hair. His blue eyes. She didn’t think always of sitting outside of her mother’s bedroom while she wept for food, nor did she think of helping her maid empty pans of her vomit into the back yard.

But that morning, she did. She looked at him and thought of her mother’s body as it looked after she’d taken the shotgun to her head in the horse stable. She thought of how it had smelt in there when she’d found her. How the flies had buzzed.

And when it was time to take the eucharist from him, Beatrice knelt in front of Father Whittaker at the pulpit. She opened her mouth. She extended her tongue. Hatred shivered low in her belly like a rattlesnake’s tail.

She wondered, when he placed the wafer in her mouth, if he thought of her the way she thought of Irene. If he considered the men who wanted to wed her, the children they wanted to have with her. If he felt covetous; if he felt angry.

And, as with most things, the evilness of Beatrice’s own nature was revealed to her through observing the wickedness of others. She closed her mouth around the body of Christ and felt him disappear on her tongue.

After the sermon was over, Beatrice stood in the corner of the stifling room while her father socialized. She was not allowed books in the church, nor was she allowed to wait in the coach, so she was resigned to gaze into the distance and let her mind drift to nothing.

On this occasion, she felt a body sidle beside her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Maybe he had been thinking about her, after all.

“Father Whittaker,” She said without looking over at him, certain her stomach couldn’t take it, “Peace be with you.”

“And you, Beatrice.” He said. He never cared to call her my child, like any of the others — it was always Beatrice, “How did you find the service?”

“Lovely, as always.” She murmured, focusing hard on a spot in the distance.

“Really? Not one of my best. It’s hot in here this morning, isn’t it? Made it difficult to focus on the good Lord’s word.”

“It shone through in any case.”

“Beatrice.” Beatrice didn’t turn her head. She kept her focus steadfast. “Beatrice.” Finally, she did turn. He was standing close, looking at her. His eyes, she’d always thought, were too blue. They gave his gaze a frightening acuity. “There you are. I was hoping we might speak for a few minutes. But we can’t really if you won’t look at me, can we?”

Hatred, looking at him. Hot, white, blinding. “Do we have something to talk about, Father?”

“Your father tells me that you’ve been restless recently. Agitated. Moreso than usual.”

“My father doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Beatrice responded curtly, “As he has never taken any particular interest in my emotional state.”

“I think we both know that’s not true,” Father Whittaker said. Beatrice felt her face heat, “Your father is very interested. I heard he let you start giving piano lessons to some of the local children. To help your…constitution.”

“He has only resigned himself to the fact that I won’t be married and thinks that, if not child rearing, women should have some hobby to keep their minds occupied, lest we give in to the baser instincts of our sex.”

“He is a wise man.”

“I have heard others say it, yes.”

The ghost of a smile flashed across Father Whittaker’s mouth, “You really are just like your mother, aren’t you. You even have her sharp tongue.” At the mention of her mother, Beatrice’s stomach soured enough that she could no longer continue even the pretense of polite conversation. Just like her, he’d said, you’re just like her. She turned away from Whittaker. “I’m sorry,” He said, “It was rude of me to mention her.” Beatrice said nothing, “Beatrice, I know—” He started, then stopped. Cleared his throat. “I came over to ask you a favor.”

This startled Beatrice enough that she turned back to him, incredulous. “A favor?”

“Your father, as I said, mentioned your piano lessons. And myself and Father Vincent, we have a client—a child—”

“A client.” Beatrice said flatly, “A client of your…budding psychiatric business, I suppose?”

She awaited another good-natured clip about her mother. Instead, Father Whittaker’s eyes went hard. “I’m trying to help you, Beatrice. Must everything be such a battle with you?” For a moment, his air of congeniality slipped. He gathered it back just as quickly, smoothing the hair from his face. “Your father thought that your mood might be improved by offering help to the less fortunate, and I agreed.”

“Well,” Beatrice said, “I’m glad the two of you decided.”

“I think you’ll be rather impressed with her. She’s reacted very well to our treatment. Especially for one so young.”

“How young?”

“She’ll be eleven in the fall.” Beatrice felt her face contort and had to turn away, “She nearly succumbed, but Father Vincent and I were able to evict the evil spirits from her. Nearly.” When she turned back, Father Whittaker was smiling. His teeth were yellowish and predatory. “I think it will take one or two more visits.”

“And one or two more payments, of course.” Beatrice replied, and smiled back.

Father Whittaker laughed once, bluntly and humourlessly. “I think that you two will have a lot to talk about. A lot in common. Perhaps she can…change your attitude a little. Towards us.”

Beatrice turned her head again, searching the crowd still mingling amongst the pews.

Her eye caught on one. Sam stood off on the other side of the room, speaking with his parents. When Beatrice looked over at him, he turned as if sensing her, revealing his face and his lower lip. It was tight and mottled, a lump of ugly flesh that had once been handsome. A white scar ran in a curve up to the corner of his mouth, tracking the place where Beatrice had torn.

He glanced quickly away.

“I’ve told my father that I won’t allow either of you to step foot in our house again. That won’t change.”

Father Whittaker was looking at Sam, too. Still smiling. “I believe that you told him that you’d bite our fingers off if we came within a mile of your bedroom. No?” He laughed again, this one hearty. The hatred curdled in Beatrice’s stomach. “Some day, Beatrice, you are going to grow tired of this. Just like your mother did.” A buzzing. A fly had puttered into Beatrice’s line of sight and was floating in a line of light cast through one of the stained glass windows. “And we will be there. Until then, maybe helping this girl will help you ease into the idea.”

“What’s her name?” She asked.

“Pearl,” Father Whittaker said, “Pearl Archer.”

Beatrice felt a tingle go up her spine like a cool breeze. Like the touch of the past gone, of the future yet to come. Pearl Archer.

Still watching the fly, she said: “I’ll think about it.”

*

The rest of the day Beatrice spent in a fugue state. She sat in her bedroom, face pressed against the hot glass, watching as her father’s farmhands rode across the flat and golden landscape beyond.

She tried to find joy in the shape of them, as other women seemed to. But, in the end, Beatrice would always succumb to boredom.

The hours whittled away until it was time for Irene to undress her for bed. Time for her to pull Beatrice’s nightgown over her head.

Time for her to don her own nightgown. They’d done this routine for a decade’s worth of nights and mornings. Enough that Beatrice had come to wonder if that wasn’t the reason for her strange affliction—only that one couldn’t dress and undress so often with another person without a strange attachment forming between them.

It wasn’t always obvious. Not always, not every night. A week could go by, or a fortnight, with Beatrice scarcely noticing Irene, naked or not.

But inevitably there came a morning, or an evening, when Irene would undo her smock and then the buttons down the front of her dress, and something would settle over them like heat rising over a lake.

That night it did. It stole into the room like the quick feet of a ghost. She felt it looking at Irene in that threadbare, half-translucent nightgown. It was an earthworm squirming to break free from topsoil, tenacious and ugly and blind.

Then it was time for their nightly prayers, which they did together, kneeling at Beatrice’s enormous bed with its white linens and net canopy pulled back.

Beatrice prayed, again, for a week without Sundays. She imagined that the same God who had allowed her to pass through the curtains of existence and into this life might listen.

And, anyway, the idea of praying to a cruel God made more sense to Beatrice than speaking to a God benevolent ever did. She twined her fingers together and pressed her face into her palms and thought not of Irene and her flimsy nightgown, but of hell and brimstone and a hand coming to smite them all down.

In peace, I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.

As she did every night, Beatrice prayed longer than Irene did. She sunk so deep into the repetition that she scarcely noticed when Irene stood to tidy the sitting area. Sometimes, when she felt the malevolent power of God the deepest, Beatrice could even find herself rocking back and forth as she covered her face.

“It was sweltering out there today.” Beatrice said when she was finished, for no other reason than wanting to talk, and wanting Irene to talk to her. She had decided that she was going to tell her about Father Whittaker, but wasn’t exactly sure why.

Irene hummed. Beatrice heard the sound of papers shuffling as she moved them from Beatrice’s writing desk. “How was church?” She asked.

“Fine.” Beatrice said. Her face was still buried in her palms. “Father Whittaker spoke to me.”

She heard Irene cluck derisively, “That man’s as ugly as homemade sin, and just about as crazy. Hope you weren’t listening to him.”

A long pause, “He asked me to give piano lessons to a girl. A family that he…knows.”

“Oh?” The sound of the top of the writing desk coming down, “For pay?”

“For charity.”

Another silence. Beatrice could feel Irene trying to decide what to say next, “Well, even a chucklehead like him’s bound to have a good idea now and then,” Beatrice pulled her hands away and looked to Irene. She was disappointed to find that the heat hadn’t dissipated at all. If anything, Irene looked more beautiful than when Beatrice started praying, “Nothing wrong with looking out for the less fortunate. What’s her name?”

“Pearl.” Beatrice said. She hadn’t gotten up from the floor yet, and was staring at Irene. Vexed half to death by her, “Archer.”

“That’s a nice name. Pearl. You ever seen one of those in real life? Not so common around here—”

“I’m tired, Irie.” Beatrice interjected. She turned her head and did not look the other woman in her face, afraid of what she would find there. There was a time that she thought, and perhaps Irene also thought, that the two of them were destined for friendship, real friendship. But then, of course, as it did with all things, that demon that slumbered within Beatrice, that made her angry and hungry and gave her a wandering, coveting eye, would never let that come to pass. “Do you mind?”

“Of course,” Irene’s voice was strained, and a hair stung, “Let’s get your hair brushed then, shall we? If you’re done with your prayers.”

Beatrice sat at her vanity, Irene behind her removing her braid. She could see her own reflection in the mirror, and Irene’s chest and the tops of her shoulders. The skin there was tanned by the sun.

She took an ivory brush to Beatrice’s hair once it was free of its braid. The way Beatrice’s chest shivered in response sent a fresh wave of resentment rolling through her.

“Your mother was my mother’s maid, wasn’t she,” Beatrice asked, “Before I was born? And after?”

The strokes of Irene’s brush paused for a single, unsure moment, and then resumed, “Yes.”

“Did she ever tell you anything about her? About my mother, I mean.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Little things, maybe.”

“Little things like what?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t know yourself already.” The brush hit a snag and Beatrice winced, “Sorry.”

“Sometimes it’s nice to hear others say it. My father doesn’t like to talk about her. He doesn’t let the over servants talk about her, either. I think you’re the only one who would.”

A sigh. The brush clattered down on the vanity and Irene combed her fingers through Beatrice’s hair to get the rest of the tangles. The feeling of it sank straight from Beatrice’s scalp deep into the pit of her stomach, like a stone floating to the bottom of a deep, dark lake.

“She told me that your mother was a great beauty. Well, that’s no secret, is it? And no surprise, considering you.” Against her better judgment, Beatrice tilted her head back into Irene’s touch, “She told me that she loved you something awful. You were all she could ever talk about, ever since the moment she found out she was pregnant.”

“And what else?”

“That she still spoke Chinese fairly well. Your father, of course, didn’t like her to in the house, and especially not with you. But she would teach little phrases to my mother and the other maids sometimes, because they found it novel.”

“And what else?”

“Miss,” Irene’s fingers stopped, “Beatrice. What are you fixating on this for?”

“Today when we spoke, Father Whittaker said I was just like her. I want to know what that means. To be just like her.”

“It means that you’re beautiful, like I said, and savvy like she was. And well read, too. She loved books. You already knew that.”

“But she was other things, too,” Beatrice angled her head, trying to catch Irene’s eye in the mirror. Her hands resumed running through Beatrice’s hair, absent-minded now.

To her surprise, Irene was looking at her too. Steadfast and cloudy, like she was in that room and somewhere else all at the same time. “She told me that your mother was very sad. Even before you came. And other things too, that she heard…voices, sometimes, or saw things that weren’t there.”

Those fingers still dragging over her hair, scratching against her scalp. In a split second, Beatrice did give in. She let her head fall back into Irene’s stomach and felt Irene tuck some hair behind her ear, then move to stroke her jaw with the pads of three or four of her calloused fingers.

Just once. Then, she moved her hand to rest somewhere between Beatrice’s shoulder and the curve of her neck. Irene dipped her head in, “Forget it, Beatrice. She wouldn’t have wanted you to dwell on it like this. You’re a young woman with her whole life ahead of her.”

“She had a demon inside of her, didn’t she? That’s what they said. That’s why Whittaker went to her.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Without realizing it, Beatrice had brought her hand up to cover Irene’s on her shoulder. Irene squeezed her fingers. She stroked Beatrice’s thumb with her thumb.

“You do, you just won’t tell me. They thought she had a demon inside of her, and they came to her, and then she started to believe it. And then it drove her mad.”

“Those men are nothing but a pair of cowardly swindlers.”

“But do you believe it? That she did have a demon inside of her? And if I’m just like her, then—”

Irene tried to pull away, but Beatrice gripped her hand. She stopped, “You’re upsetting me,” She whispered, “I hate it when you get like this. It’s so unlike you.”

“Everybody thinks it about me,” Beatrice said, voice quavering, “But nobody will tell me. Not even you—not even you.”

Irene leaned in closer, dipped her head lower. She tried to catch Beatrice’s eyes outside of the mirror. “You’re asking me if I think you’ve got a demon in you? No. No, I don’t think you have a demon in you and I don’t think you’re crazy. I think you’re—ow.”

It was only after Irene jerked her body away, holding the hand that had rested on Beatrice’s shoulder to her chest, that Beatrice realized what had happened. She’d pinched her.

Hard, too, judging by the wetness gathering in Irene’s eyes and the trembling of her mouth. Beatrice stood and pressed the backs of her hands to her eyes, taking a deep breath.

“You shouldn’t talk to me like that. You are my maid,” Beatrice removed her hands from her eyes and pressed her palms to her cheeks, “Or did you forget?”

“No,” Irene responded simply, her voice thick, “I hadn’t forgotten.”

“Go get me a bowl of water for my face, quickly,”

Irene fetched it. Irene brought it. Beatrice splashed it over her face. The most awful, the most wretched thing about it, was that there were still lashes of feeling filling the room. The attachment—Beatrice hadn’t managed to sever the cord. It rolled off of Irene in barreling waves, as if amplified by her sadness.

The urgent need to be seen, known, touched, soothed. To be apologized to. When Beatrice lifted her head from the bowl and looked to where Irene stood, she thought, not for the first time, of taking her in her arms and kissing her.

It occurred to her that she could make Irene do it, just as easily as her father made Beatrice change her dresses, and decided when she ate and when she did not, and when she was alone and when she couldn’t be.

Beatrice could make Irene speak. She could make her be silent. She could pinch her, she could even strike her. If she asked Irene to kiss her, she would.

Of anything, that thought was the thing that broke over Beatrice like a splash of cold water. There was a part of her, she thought, that wanted to be excited by it—but the whole of her was only sickened. The fact that she was capable of the wretched urge to kiss and to hold but not the wretched deeds needed to accomplish such a thing only made Beatrice feel small and pathetic.

“You could leave, you know,” Beatrice said to Irene, her face still damp. Irene had fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “You and your mother. You don’t have to work here. I could convince my father to let you both go, with severance. When I did what I did to Sam,” She swallowed thickly, “My father’s been paying his family for years. You could tell somebody I did something to you. I don’t care what. They’d believe you. I wouldn’t deny it.”

“But what would become of you?” Irene asked without pausing, “With nobody here to care for you?”

Later, in bed, Beatrice thought of her mother again. How on a hot summer night ten years ago she’d gone out to the horse barn with a shotgun and done herself in. Sometimes she wondered, did it hurt? Sometimes it was agony not knowing whether she’d died in pain.

On that night, with Irene snoring behind a curtain in the corner of the room they shared, Beatrice felt certain for the first time that it had not hurt. As she felt the scream inside her own chest threaten to spill over, she thought that her mother’s suicide might have been just that—a long held scream released at the end of a miserable life.

What would her’s feel like, she wondered, when she finally let it go?

***

The next morning, Ava woke with a crick in her neck to an empty bedroom and the sounds and smells of breakfast getting on in the kitchen.

When she stepped in, clad in her trousers and suspenders and the cleaner of her shirts, she was greeted with the sight of Beatrice forming biscuits in a cast iron skillet while Mary and Suzanne read different sections of the newspaper around the table. All greeted her without looking up from their work.

A good night’s sleep had done wonders for Beatrice’s face, which no longer appeared sallow. And the well-fitting dress did wonders for her body; it didn’t squeeze and pinch like Ava’s had, but rather fell over her like a gentle whisper.

Face and hands washed of blood, bruise melting back to the soft color of her skin. Ava could see why a man might be tricked into getting close enough to Beatrice to bite.

That whole day, matter of fact, Ava couldn’t stop noticing things about Beatrice. Instead of pinning her hair back into the same taut braid she’d worn for as long as Ava had known her, she let it down except for a few strands that she pulled back in the middle.

Ava couldn’t help but stay close to the perimeter of the house, where she could observe Beatrice and Suzanne doing the wash and hanging it, pouring out dirty water, sweeping off the back porch. Shelling beans for dinner.

Could it have been true that even Beatrice’s hair hung easier? That her eyes were a little brighter? Ava watched Suzanne point to something in the bowl they were putting their beans into, and saw Beatrice smile, and she saw her stick her finger in and come out with a tiny bug, which she blew off and into greener pastures.

“Ava,” Suzanne called. From underneath Ava, Cowgirl huffed, “Any particular reason you’ve been skulking around? I’ve seen you ride five laps around the house doing nothing in particular.”

Ava colored, “Can I borrow Beatrice for a minute?”

Beatrice looked up from where she was prising open the verdant skin of a bean, then glanced back to Suzanne.

“Go on, girl. I’m not your keeper.” Suzanne said, and she was smiling. Beatrice stood and dusted off her skirt as Ava dismounted Cowgirl, “But don’t be long. There’s a rain coming.”

Beatrice and Ava walked on side by side in silence, the gray sky hanging heavy over them. Cowgirl’s hooves were heavy in the grass.

Ava supposed, after all that had happened, that they weren’t quite sure what to make of each other. Beatrice at least seemed to have retreated into uncertainty.

“Thought I’d give you a little tour, since we didn’t quite get the chance last night,” Ava said, her eyes on Beatrice’s profile, “What do you think?”

“I’m sure that sounds fine.” Beatrice replied. She’d taken a lock of her loose hair between her fingers and was worrying them over it, twisting the end of the strands.

They visited the slop house first, where the pigs lay in mountains of mud, slapping flies with their tails. “This is Bess and Porky,” Ava said, marking the way Beatrice’s nose wrinkled when they entered the building, “We got them a few years back for meat but Mary got attached. Don't ask her about it though, she’ll never admit it. But they live off our scraps so they’re not too hard to keep happy.”

“Porky,” Beatrice said, and the word sounded so odd in her prim accent that Ava almost laughed, “A little circular, isn’t it?”

“She likes her name, don’t you old girl?” Ava squatted before her pen and patted her snout, “I think we have some old apple cores back at the house if you want to feed her.”

Beatrice again wrinkled her nose.

As they walked toward their next destination, a light rain began. Ava removed her buckskin and held it over Beatrice’s head, a reflex that came as quick and easy as breathing, while using the other to guide Cowgirl.

Beatrice tensed. She stepped away from Ava, and Ava dropped the jacket, somewhat startled.

“I’m sorry,” She said, “Just didn’t want you to —”

“That’s alright,” Beatrice blurted. She was looking away and had resumed playing with a strand of her hair, “How many animals do you keep?” She asked. Ava whistled.

“Oh, a cow. A peck of chickens. Sheep. The pigs. And this,” Ava said as they approached the open entrance of the stable, “Is the stable. Where we keep the horses.” It was a long building, open on both ends, with a straw floor and two pens on each side. Ava guided Cowgirl in and opened the metal gate of her stall. “Cowgirl is mine, Hatchet is Mary’s. The other two we rent out to folks in Big Sky who use ‘em for trail rides and what have you.” She clicked the gate shut and turned to find Beatrice gazing at a dappled Appaloosa.

“That’s Opie,” Ava said, “She’s got the best temperament of the bunch.”

“She had very kind eyes,” Beatrice said, tilting her head to look at each of them in turn, then pausing and taking a step back, “You seem to have so much here. Somehow I had imagined…”

Ava folded her arms and leaned against the back wall, “A den of thieves?” She said, and when Beatrice hesitated she shook her head, “No such thing, I think. Just people trying to make it in a hard time.”

Beatrice colored and dipped her chin to her chest. Again she took a lock of hair between her fingers and began to twist it. Ava thought about assumptions, and she thought about how hard she’d been trying for goodness all her life — she wondered if, in her own way, Beatrice was looking for goodness too. What it would look like to her.

“What are you thinking?” Ava asked after a moment. Beatrice lifted her eyes to meet Ava’s.

“How lucky you all are,” Beatrice said, “To have all of this.”

Ava snorted, “No money, though.”

“This is better than money,” Beatrice said, her voice quick and fierce, and then colored and seemed to shiver. Her brow knitted and she turned her face away from Ava, looking back at Opie.

Heat rose into Ava’s chest and curled there, around her heart, like a sleeping cat. She cleared her throat.

“Do you want to feed her?” Beatrice glanced back with surprise on her face, and Ava moved to the corner of the stable where they kept a small bucket of apples and carrots for just such an occasion. She selected a shiny red macintosh and brought it over to Beatrice, placing it into the palm of her hand, “Go ahead, like I said. She’s got a good temper.”

Before Ava could say anything else, Beatrice took the apple, her fingers curled around it, and extended it toward Opie. The heat in Ava’s chest turned sharp as a knife.

“Woah—” Ava didn’t mean to reach, and she didn’t mean to grab. It all happened so fast that there was no telling what she’d meant to do at all. In the flash of a second, her hand was around Beatrice’s wrist, clutching it.

They hadn’t touched like this since that first night as hateful strangers. It was skin pressing urgently into skin. It was Ava’s hand closed totally, the tips of her fingers touching. God, it was—

Something rolled over them like a clap of thunder. It was so big, so sudden, that Ava knew that Beatrice felt it too. She suspected that Beatrice might even be the conduit of it; that all the heat Ava felt melt over her, the tension, might be originating from her.

Beatrice was staring at Ava’s hand, and her wrist, and Ava was staring at her. Beatrice’s eyes crept up to meet Ava’s, her lips parted, her gaze dark.

Ava thought to apologize. She thought to let her go. But when they looked at each other, it occurred to her that Beatrice might not want those things at all.

Did she want, actually, for Ava to grip her harder? For Ava to pull her closer?

But then, a clap of thunder, real thunder. Then, the sound of rain on the slab roof. Beatrice blinked and her face tensed. She shook her wrist free.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.” Ava babbled, still coming back to herself. “The horses—they get nippy with your fingers if you don’t hold them flat. I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have.”

“You’re right, you shouldn’t have.” Beatrice shot back, her voice cold. Ava reeled—hadn’t they been doing better, almost? Hadn’t they reached, at least, some sort of truce? “You shouldn’t touch somebody without their permission.”

“No, I shouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

Beatrice’s face got chillier, as if Ava’s refusal to fight her was a fight in and of itself. “I’m not like that.” She spat.

“Like what?”

“Like you.”

Beatrice’s meaning dawned over Ava, then landed like a punch. Her acknowledgment of who Ava was, and her succinct rejection of it, as if Ava’s feelings were a bug she was flicking disdainfully from her sleeve, somehow hurt more than any of the others before her.

“Never said you were. And I don’t know about you, but my mother taught me always to mind my damn business if something wasn’t hurting me,” Ava said, voice even but becoming clippier as she got angrier, “I know you think I’m some stupid, illiterate hick. And now you think I’m some pervert out to corrupt you. Fine. If you don’t want be civil, I figure we don’t have to be civil.”

When the cloud of anger washed over Ava and she could see again, she found Beatrice with her lower lip trembling. Her face was flushed a bright scarlet; not a pretty blush, but a frankly emotional one.

“This has nothing to do with civility,”

“It sure as hell does. Like it or not, this is my house. Like it or not, you need me and Mary to help you just as bad as we need you,” Ava said, “None of us are getting out of here without the other.”

“That all being true doesn’t make the way you feel not a sin.” Beatrice volleyed back, and Ava scoffed.

“So is killing somebody with an ax, don’t you think? So I’ll see you down there, anyway.” Another clap of thunder, and the rain came pounding down. Beatrice blushed harder, which Ava didn’t think was possible. For a second, Ava thought she might cry again.

But she didn’t. God help her, after a second, Beatrice laughed. It was sharp and surprised. She covered her mouth to keep any further sounding-off inside.

For a moment, they could only stare at each other. Ava thought that it felt like both of them had won, and so neither of them had. The argument a pointless exercise in hurt.

Then, Beatrice turned her head out toward the rain. She moved her hand so that just the tips of her fingers were resting against her lips. “How did I get here?” She wondered aloud, and turned to look at Ava again, her hand now resting at the base of her throat, “You told me that I’m going to hell,”

Now it was Ava’s turn to redden, “Didn’t mean it quite like that.”

“No, don’t. Don’t take it back.” She said, her face unreadable. That was the thing about Beatrice; she was as cool and calm as the surface of a very deep body of water. A lake, say. Except every once and a while, a little fish or something might swim by, and disturb the surface, and a person might drive themselves crazy thinking about what did it. “Thank you for saying it.”

“Now, hang on—” But Beatrice was already looking back out into the rain.

“It’s just about dinner time, isn’t it?” She said, distantly.

Dinner that night was a quiet affair. Ava said grace again—another little ditty she’d learned in the orphanage—The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing—she could feel Beatrice’s open eyes on her when she said it, though everybody else at the table had bowed their heads.

They made a pathetic attempt at talking about the plan after, but it fell to shambles after only an hour. Beatrice made an excuse about exhaustion and took up to the attic, leaving Ava and Mary at the table, Mary smoking and Ava stewing.

“Cats in a bag,” Mary said again after some time of silence, eyeing Ava, “Something happen between you two?”

“Nothing,” Ava said. She was concentrating on a piece of paper where Beatrice had begun to sketch out the innards of her house, spinning it with her thumb and forefinger.

“Ava,” Mary said, then, “Ave,” Ava huffed and rolled her neck, “She didn’t do something did she? To you?”

“Lord, no.” Ava shook her head. She winced as she thought about how she’d explain; “She just—she said something about, you know. When she heard me and you talking about…”

A long silence. Ava felt Mary’s understanding wash over her. Heard her suck in a breath and nod her head, “And what did she say to you about it?”

“Just that it was a sin, you know. That she didn’t agree with it. Basically what you’d expect.”

“None of her damn business, as far as I’m concerned.” Mary smudged her cigarette out onto the table top and made to stand, “I’m going to talk to her.”

“Mary, no—”

“If she’s going to talk to you like that she’s going to have to answer to me after—”

“Mary, sit,” Ava said, and successfully got Mary back in her chair, though the other woman didn’t look happy about it, “It’s not—listen, we got thirteen more days together, don’t we? Give or take?” Mary said nothing, “I think we ought to just keep the peace. She’s entitled to her opinion. Most people share it with her.”

“People are fools,” Mary said, “Short sighted idiots.”

“Well,” Ava said, “Be that as it may.”

She went upstairs not long after. Beatrice was there, sitting on the bed, pulp novel open on her lap. She’d already dressed down into her big button down shirt, which went down to her knees.

Ava managed to get all the way undressed and into her own nightshirt, and recline down on the settee-turned-bed, before she realized that Beatrice had stood and was waiting for her to be finished.

Ava looked up. “Jesus Lord God—you scared me,” She said, “What are you doing?”

Beatrice stood. She took a deep breath.

“I’m apologizing.” Surprised, Ava lifted herself onto an elbow and looked on. “You were right. Everything you said earlier was right; this is your house. I’m a guest here. And…”

“And…?” Ava prompted.

“I don’t think you’re stupid. And I don’t think you’re a hick. The opposite. I haven’t met…” Beatrice shifted her weight from foot to foot, “…I haven’t met that many people. So my frame of reference is small. But you’re the cleverest of any I’ve known so far. And the kindest.”

The admission, even coming from somebody who had not-so-gently reminded Ava that she was not like her, kickstarted her heart.

“I’ll take the compliment. Even with the qualifier.”

“It’s not meant to be a qualifier, I’m just…” Beatrice shook her head and looked down at her feet, as if she couldn’t bear to say the next part to Ava’s face, “Before my mother died, my father kept me in the house like a beautiful piece of furniture that he thought somebody would steal. After, he did it because he thought I was crazy. Either way, I never had any friends. I’m asking you to forgive my poor manners. I’m not sure I know any better.”

Ava studied her, “I’m sorry I told you I’d see you in hell,” Beatrice winced, “I thought we were saying things we felt God awful for.”

“You don’t have to apologize for saying something true.”

“You really do think it’s a sin,” Ava said wonderingly, “Don’t you? A big one?”

Beatrice didn’t break eye contact. Ava saw the tension in her jaw as she clenched her teeth, then released, saw her hand go to twist a lock of hair, then drop. She settled for worrying the skin on one of her fingers, as if playing with an invisible ring. “It’s only that I’ve never heard of such a thing. That’s all.”

But how, Ava wondered, could that have been the truth? The way Beatrice had moved that night in the abandoned house, the way she’d let her nightgown slip—the way she’d gasped—it was a trick, yes, and not a naive one.

“So I’m supposed to accept your apology, knowing that you think I’m sinning all over the place.”

Beatrice wrinkled her nose, “All over the place? Do you really do it that often?”

Ava’s mouth dropped open, “Now you’re accusing me of being loose with my affections, is that it?”

“I’m not—” Beatrice began to protest, then caught on to the half smile touching Ava’s mouth. She paused and shook her head. “You’re teasing me.” Ava pinched her thumb and forefinger together. Just a little. “I hope you’ll accept my apology, knowing that I still have a lot to learn.”

“Alright. First lesson, you’re not going to hell. Neither am I, or if I am, it’s not for the girl thing.”

“I don’t know how you could say that, considering what you saw me do.”

“What I saw you do?” Ava said, and then: “I saw you save my tail, and Mary’s. Those guys were bad news, and they weren’t going to stop,” She didn’t realize just how true it was until she’d finished saying it, “Just because most people would be too chickenshit to do what you did doesn’t mean it didn’t need to be done.”

Beatrice stared at Ava through long lashes, “But you’re still scared of me.”

“You’re scared of me too.” Ava replied. “I don’t know why, but you are.”

“You don’t know why? Because you could wake up any morning and decide to take me to my death.”

“I suppose,” Ava replied, “But that isn’t it, is it?”

Beatrice’s brow knitted. Her gaze skittered away. “I don’t know what else it could be.”

“You’re never quite telling me the truth,” Ava said, tilting her head, “Can’t say I don’t understand your reasons, but hell.”

“You mean about this,” Beatrice asked, “Or about Whittaker?”

“Both, I guess.”

“I killed Whittaker because he killed my mother.”

“Ah, see—but this is what I mean,” Ava said, “‘Cause before he died, I could’ve swore that I heard that pipsqueak say that your mother killed herself.”

Beatrice paused. She glanced down at her bare toes. “What did your friend tell you about Vincent and Whittaker?”

“Couple of swindlers. Real bad ones, though. He said they faked exorcisms, I guess, for money.”

“That’s mostly true,” Beatrice agreed, “Whether their exorcisms were fake is a matter of opinion, I suppose.”

“Seems like a high effort, low reward type of situation.”

Beatrice shrugged, “I once saw them pull $200 off of a crowd for one performance. When they came to visit my mother, my father paid them $20 a day for their services.”

Ava shifted on the settee, “Your mom, huh? That must have been scary for you to see as a kid.”

“What do you know about them? About exorcisms?”

“Er,” Ava scratched her jaw, “Nothing, just about. Never met a devil, so never spared them any thought.”

“They’re more common than you likely think. They exist in most of the world’s religions—although they’re quite prevalent, of course, in Christianity,” Beatrice said, “I spent hours reading about them, after my mother died. The Roman Ritual. The Book of Occasional Services—that’s for the Episocopals, God bless them.”

“I thought those were about getting demons out, not putting them in.”

“Yes. The eviction of an evil spirit from a person’s body. The expungement of rot. What does that take, do you think?” Ava was silent, “You see, there’s no telling, once somebody is possessed, where the demon ends and where they begin. To weaken the spirit, you have to weaken the body it hides in. One must…starve it out. Or beat it out, for instance.”

Ava winced. Her stomach was in knots. “You really believe that?”

“No,” Beatrice said, “And neither did they. But you would be surprised how popular it makes a person when they dedicate themselves to culling the weak from an already dying community. Pulling up the strange, like weeds. The strong headed girls and the sad women. My mother wasn’t well before she crossed paths with Whittaker, but what he did to her made her life seem unlivable.”

“If somebody ever did a thing like that to Suzanne,” Ava said, “I’d pound his head in, too.”

“No, I don’t think you would,” Beatrice replied. The corner of her mouth twitched, “I believe that you’d want to. But I heard you apologize for shooting a man’s ear off while he was trying to kill your sister.” Ava blushed, deep and ashamed. “It’s not the defect you seem to think of it as.”

“I’d like to think of myself as being able to protect my family.”

“Seems to me you’ve been doing a fine job so far, Ava.”

“Did it make you feel better?” Ava asked, “Killing him? You said your mama died when you were sixteen, by my math you waited a whole ten years to do it. So you must have been thinking about it, I guess, all that time.”

“For a minute, yes,” Beatrice replied, “For a minute, I felt better than I ever had before in my life. But then, of course, there are all the minutes that come after.” She paused, “I never thought of that. That I might have to keep living after I did it.”

They were quiet then. Ava figured that there was nothing she could say to that, and nothing that Beatrice likely expected from her.

“Can I ask you something?” Beatrice asked after a second. Ava tilted her head.

“Shoot.”

“There’s a little dish on your bedside table with silver scraps in it. What’s it for?”

“Damn, I almost forgot.” Ava stood and padded over to her bed, Beatrice on her heels. She took the dish and picked the silver off until there was one small piece remaining, then knelt up on the mattress and pushed the window open.

She realized, when the mattress dipped beside her, that Beatrice was kneeling there too. “There’s a crow been coming to my window. Mom told me if you leave something out for them, you can sort of…befriend them, almost.”

“That's true. They’re cunning animals.”

“She told me it might give me something back.”

“That’s also true.” Beatrice agreed. She watched Ava set the dish out on the sill. They didn’t close the window right away, though it was cold. They just sat on their knees, staring out into the vast blackness. “What do you hope it brings you?”

“Hm,” Ava considered, “A million dollars, I guess. What about you?”

Beatrice was silent for a long while. “A million dollars.” She lied, and they both stared out the window, thinking about what their real wish would be, if it didn’t have to be something small enough to be carried in the mouth of a crow.

*

The next time that Ava found Beatrice she hadn’t exactly been looking for her. It was the day after they’d put the silver out for the crow and she’d finished her chores early and decided she needed to sneak off before Mary found her and came up with ten other things that needed doing.

Ava had never been so preoccupied as she was thinking about Beatrice’s mother. It had kept her up half the night, wishing that she had something to say, knowing that there was nothing she could say.

So it was on her way down to a place she could think that she found Beatrice herself hanging a clothesline between two Plains Cottonwoods, her arms stretching up to get the highest on the branch she could.

“Howdy,” Ava said when she approached, “Don’t we usually hang those out on the back porch?”

Beatrice startled and turned, a hand to her chest, “Please announce yourself, Ava, before you sneak up on people.”

“Sorry, hi. It’s Ava.” Beatrice half rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. She glanced back up at the line.

“You’ll get better wind out in this part of the yard. The clothes will dry faster.”

Ava whistled low, “Didn’t realize that you’d come in and start making improvements.”

Beatrice looked at her over her shoulder, “Are you complaining?”

“Hell no,” Ava said, “Just observing.”

“Where are you on your way to? Aren’t the animals up that way a ways?”

“Yeah, well—what’re you looking at me like that for?”

“You’re sneaking away from your chores, aren’t you?”

“Not sneaking away — I finished them. I’m avoiding any new chores that might be pointed in my direction.”

“Aha, well,” Beatrice turned, leaned against the trunk of the tree, arms crossed, “I guess I caught you.”

Ava’s shoulders slumped, “What, you’re going to turn me into the sheriff?”

“Mary? Maybe. Or maybe you wouldn’t mind helping me out here. In exchange for my silence.”

“If you’re talking about tying up that clothesline, I regret to inform you that I’m actually shorter than you, Beatrice.”

“But more experienced in climbing trees, I imagine.”

So Ava tied the damn thing up. Climbed the tree and everything while Beatrice watched from the bottom, shielding her eyes with her hand. It didn’t even take much more persuading for her to do it.

And when she climbed back down and said, “There, can I be on my way in peace?” Beatrice surprised her by responding:

“Only if you tell me where you’re going.”

And they went together, which was even more of a surprise to Ava. Beatrice followed her down to the bank of the river where the grass grew extra high and the Dogwood branches drooped low overhead.

The river moved lazy as a lover’s hands in front of where they lay half hidden in the sweetgrass. The smell coming off of it was clear and bright, mixed with the greenery and the trees and Beatrice’s hair.

Beatrice reclined back on her elbows and squinted off into the distance. Her boots were off and her legs stockingless, and Ava thought it made her look almost fast.

It was funny, that—the way things could look a certain way and turn out to be the opposite.

“Do you come out here often?” Ava nodded her head.

“Sure, to fish. Sometimes just to think. I do a lot of thinking. Once and a while I’ll try my hand at sketching.”

Beatrice turned her head then to look at Ava, and she was smiling, “You draw?”

Ava’s face got so hot that she had to look away, though it was probably crawling up the back of her neck, too. “Here and there.”

“I want to see.”

“It’s nothing special. You’ve probably seen all kinds of great art.”

When she turned back, Beatrice’s smile had faltered. “Not so much. My father wasn’t keen on art. I’m sure what you’ve done will be perfectly lovely.”

They sat in silence for another minute more before Beatrice cleared her throat and continued on, “I’ve been thinking, Ava, about what you said to me…what you said to me a little while ago. About learning to read.” Ava looked at Beatrice again and this time found her, not smiling, but staring contemplatively down at a strand of grass that was wavering in the wind, “Wouldn’t you like to learn?”

“Learn how?”

“I could teach you.”

“Oh, that’s—I don’t know.”

“I couldn’t do everything, of course. Not in two weeks. But your name. Your mother’s name, Mary’s name.” Beatrice brought her gaze up, and Ava realized that she was smiling. It had just been small and too shy to be seen at first. “When you go to California, you’ll want to know already, don’t you think? Or at least have a head start.”

It wasn’t that anybody had ever said no to teaching Ava to read before. But nobody had ever gone out of their way to say yes. “It feels silly to learn now. I’ve done my whole life not knowing.”

“Not your whole life. Just some of it. And the world could be a little bigger for you for the rest—how does that sound?”

It sounded alright, the way Beatrice said it. It even sounded half-reasonable. “I guess you know best. Or at least you seem like you do.”

Beatrice’s smile twitched into something coy, something almost girlish, and yes—there, there suddenly Ava saw her. Suddenly Ava was sure that there was a woman she hadn’t quite had the pleasure of meeting. It made her seem so touchable, like a shiny trinket on a shelf that Ava had to bite her hands back from grabbing for.

“Finally you understand.” Beatrice said, but she said it small, like she wasn’t quite sure of herself, and didn’t meet Ava’s eyes. Ava laughed, and Beatrice’s lips twitched upward while she picked at the grass with slender fingers, “Are you worried about California?”

“I’ve heard it’s perfectly nice,” Ava replied vaguely, “Hot all the time, but that’s alright.”

Beatrice seemed content to let those words linger, as if she knew there was more, but also knew better than to chase it down. Ava felt grateful for that. She wasn’t sure what she would have said, if Beatrice had kept asking, and that uncertainty troubled her.

“Are you worried,” She asked Beatrice, “About where you’ll go next?”

Still staring into the dirt, Beatrice shook her head once. Then, she sucked in a deep breath, raised her eyes to Ava’s, and said, “Yes.”

“You’re going to make it to Canada. Mary and I will make sure of it.”

“It’s not that. Say you’d spent your whole life being told what to do, and what not to do. You’d be a little nervous to start deciding for yourself, I suspect.”

“Well, I guess what you’ve got to figure out first is who Beatrice is,” Beatrice looked at her with a cocked eyebrow and Ava continued, “Y’know, like who is Beatrice? Not who other people decided for you, but you. Does she drink? Does she dance? Does she break men’s hearts?” Beatrice snorted, “Hey, you never know.”

“I guess not,” Beatrice admitted, “But I’ve never done any of those things. I’m not sure where I’d even start.”

“You’ll learn,” Ava said, “It all comes more naturally than you might think. Easier than reading, I reckon. There’s an idea—how’s this,” Ava turned so that she was resting on her elbow facing Beatrice, head in a conspiratorial tilt, “We can do all those things together, to see what you like. I love dancing and drinking.”

“Do you?” Beatrice lifted an eyebrow, “What an utter shock.”

“No need to be pointed. There’s lesson number one,” Ava wagged a finger, “Be nice to your tutor.”

“I’m not sure I see what that has to do with dancing.”

They talked like that for an hour that seeped into another, while the sun made its route across the sky above them. The sweetgrass was hiding them so nicely, or maybe nobody had noticed yet that they were gone, or thought them somewhere doing something useful. Either way, nobody came looking, and when they left they left by choice.

When they walked back up to the house, Beatrice went barefoot, boots dangling from one hand, as if she wanted to keep feeling the earth beneath her feet for a while longer. There, Ava thought again, walking behind her, there, there —

*

Reading lessons began that evening and were an immediate hit with all concerned.

“Finally you’ve talked some sense into her,” Said Suzanne, working on a pair of trousers for Beatrice by the kitchen stove. She didn’t look up from her needlework. “I never could do it when she was a little girl. She was slippery as an eel. You couldn’t catch her for five minutes to eat, let alone read.”

The first order of business involved Ava tracing the letters of her name over and over again where Beatrice had dotted them out on a piece of paper, and then she had to make the sounds with her mouth, which would have been embarrassing had Mary and Suzanne not been observing with some interest and participating.

Mary sat half-reclined on the chair and munched on an apple, every now and then chiming in to say something like, “That one’s a tricky one,” Or, “Nice work.”

By the end of the first lesson, Ava could write her name in shaky capital letters.

“Well,” Suzanne said when she saw it, holding the paper in front of her face like Ava had just drawn the Mona Lisa, “Aren’t you a clever one, Beatrice?”

“What about me?” Ava protested, and Suzanne smiled.

“You’re clever too, sweetheart.”

Being called clever made Beatrice blush. “Ava is a very dedicated pupil.”

“Don’t think we need to exaggerate.” Mary offered through a mouth of apple, and Ava balled up a piece of unused paper and threw it out her.

“Peace, please girls, or nobody is learning to read. Beatrice, I trust you to keep these two in line.”

Beatrice blushed harder. “I don’t know how anybody ever could.”

This got a belly laugh from Suzanne, and then Mary, and then they were all laughing.

After reading lessons it was supper and cards. They left the door open and invited summer in for another evening and talked until the candles burned down low. When Suzanne retired for the evening, the three of them stayed at the table and went through Beatrice’s house again, room by room.

Ava could almost see it in her mind. The great rooms full of riches, like a Pharaoh's tomb. The rooms that had been full of Beatrice, that had been full of her mother. She savored it when Beatrice dropped a small detail—the color of the wallpaper, the pattern of a rug—because it added finish to a story that Ava was still grasping for.

The library, where Beatrice must have spent hours reading. Her father’s bedroom, where her mother must have slept, even just once or twice.

“There’s some money buried in the yard behind the house. Here,” Beatrice said, pointing to a blank space on their sketch of the map, “My mother is buried a hundred yards from the house, and the first pile is ten yards left of that.”

Ava and Mary exchanged a glance, but said nothing. Beatrice drew a small cross over the place in the back yard where, Ava supposed, they’d put her mother in the dirt.

That night, Beatrice read to Ava from Mrs. Dalloway. Ava got a good fire rolling in the stove and pulled the settee in close so she could hear her, letting her head loll against the arm.

It was funny because, ask Ava a month ago, and she would’ve said she didn’t give two figs about what lonely rich women did in their spare time—who was going to buy the flowers for their parties, or whatever.

But listening to the story in Beatrice’s voice, Ava found herself riveted and a little sad. Especially after an evening spent trying to fill in the gaps of Beatrice’s own story, She could have listened to it all night, thinking poor Mrs. Dalloway, and then, out of nowhere — poor Beatrice.

Chapter Text

And so the days started to pass like that, as if they’d been put in a mold and left to set. After two more, Ava was certain that she was correct about Beatrice’s hair, and her eyes. They were gentler.

Moreover, the bruise faded into nothing. Moreover, her freckles started to darken and set into her face. Moreover, she bathed in the creek like the rest of them did when it was reasonably warm enough to do so, and after, when the night took on its chill, she sat in front of the fire and let Suzanne brush the tangles out of her hair.

Suzanne finished another dress for Beatrice, not that she hardly needed one. But Ava thought that she liked finally being able to make up skirts instead of plain old trousers and patched up shirts, and moreover that she liked Beatrice, who was with her those days morning to night.

And then she finished a nightgown, a proper one, so that Beatrice no longer had to sleep in Ava’s big shirts. Then a pair of trousers, for riding.

Beatrice would go out with Opie and Mary, sometimes doing work, sometimes, Ava suspected, doing nothing at all except for talking. They had a matched, gentle sort of churlishness. Some days, Ava would catch the two of them out in Mary’s little garden plot, Mary stooped and showing something in the soil to Beatrice.

That made Ava think of spring and of further out summers, of things that would not ever come to pass—of Beatrice picking ripe tomatoes from the vine and sweating in the kitchen with the rest of them when the sun put its hot hand over the prairie. It made her so hopeful and so melancholy all at once, until she almost felt that she could lay in bed all day doing nothing at all except for feeling.

Upstairs, they finished Mrs. Dalloway in two days and moved on to whatever tripe was on Ava’s shelf. Ava moved the settee in close and then never moved it away, so they slept within mere feet of each other.

“Mary does the voices when she reads to me,” Ava lied one evening, tilting her head, “She does a low one for the men and a high one for the ladies.”

“I hardly think that can be the truth, Ava.” Beatrice replied primly, accurately, but then proceeded to lower her voice all the same.

A week passed in which they diligently created a plan—to slip in past the slackened front gates of the house, to enter through a window that, after years of expanding and contracting with wet weather, no longer latched quite right. They would begin in the library, where Beatrice knew there to be a cabinet with a false bottom.

But Ava found herself no longer quite as interested in it—at least, not as interested as she was in the little domestic play they were putting on for one another.

Two weeks, when they arrived at the house, had felt so long. But on the 9th day, when Suzanne took on a coughing fit that sent her into bed for the afternoon, nobody argued when Ava suggested they delay their departure by one or two, or perhaps, if Suzanne was really poorly, three days.

Time felt so neutral, neither on their side nor against them. And still, there was a sense that all of them were trying to stall it in some way.

In any case, after the 9th day, there was no more planning. They spent their evenings playing cards together instead, or, if Suzanne was well enough, listening to her tell stories in front of the fire. Two or three extra days turned to four, and then five.

Later on, Ava would wonder if the chickens hadn’t turned up dead on that 10th day after Beatrice’s arrival, if all of the misfortunes that happened after may never have come to pass.

Perhaps Suzanne would have lived, and perhaps they all would have stayed together in that homestead—forgetting, measure by measure, that they’d ever had a plan in the first place.

“Something got into the coop,” Mary announced that morning, kicking her boots against the kitchen doorframe to loosen the dirt. Ava and Beatrice and Suzanne were still working on big heaping plates of biscuits and eggs.

Ava wrinkled her nose, “Coyote?”

“I don’t think so. It got all of them.”

“All of them?”

All of them. Ava, having left her breakfast entirely, stood in the coop and counted their little corpses. They’d had 10, and the damned thing had left 9 torn to death. The last one was nowhere to be found. Blood and feathers sticking all over the walls.

“It could still be a coyote,” Beatrice offered from where she stood in the doorway biting at a thumbnail. Beside Ava, Mary shook her head.

“Coyote might have gotten one or two, but the rest would have pecked him off. This was something bigger. And hungrier.”

“What do you think?” Ava asked.

Mary said, “I heard Shannon say when she was over here that her dad saw a wolf stalking the sheep not one or two weeks ago.”

“Fuck,” Ava swore, putting her hands on her hips and hanging her head, “Last fucking thing we need is a wolf.”

It wasn’t the first predator that had stalked their animals, but it disquieted Ava more than any of the ones that came before it. She dreamt of it that night, prowling the perimeter of the house, its big paws making impressions in the earth.

And she saw herself, holding Beatrice’s shotgun but too damned scared to shoot it. When she woke up, she was sweating.

“We’ve got to get Shannon over here,” She said over breakfast that morning, to the alarm of at least one person at the table, “Tell us more about it.”

“She didn’t see it, Ava, her dad did. Not sure what she could say about it.” Mary huffed, her mouth in a terse line. Ava rolled her eyes.

Shannon and Mary had been ever a mystery to Ava, who thought it not quite her place to inquire in the same way that Mary never inquired about Wilma Birtwell or any of the other girls that Ava had engaged in trysts with.

If it were a tryst, between the two of them, it was an awful long one. Sometimes Ava entertained the secret second nature of their relationship. On that day, she was tired and irritable from her dream.

“I don’t know what snit you two got yourselves into, but I’d like to know more about it before it comes for the rest of our animals.”

“I think Ava’s right,” Suzanne chimed, “I haven’t seen Shannon in more than a week. That’s a long time, for her.”

Defeated and outvoted, Mary said nothing more.

While Beatrice had been keeping up her end of the bargain and teaching Ava to read, Ava hadn’t quite gotten around to the drinking and dancing—a visit from Shannon, however, made the perfect excuse. And so they moved the furniture from the living room and brought the hooch down from the high shelf and readied the steaks from the icebox for cooking.

Ava kept an eye on Shannon and Mary when Shannon arrived. She kissed everybody on the cheek, even Beatrice, and fussed over Suzanne, talking about how much new color she had in her cheeks. It was true that Suzanne, at least that evening, had a brightness about her. The coughing spell that had taken her seemed to have abated with a little whiskey and honey.

It didn’t take long for them to crowd around the table and start pouring the drinks. The fire was warm and they were already chattering and Ava was moving about behind them pouring brown liquid from a glass bottle into their menagerie of glasses and mugs.

When she got to Beatrice’s, Beatrice put a hand over the top.

Ava leaned over close so that the others might not hear what she had to say. Her face was half in Beatrice’s hair and, if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought Beatrice might have shivered—just a little. Just enough to be noticeable only to her.

“What are you so worried about?” She murmured. In front of them, Mary took out the cards and Suzanne scolded not until after dinner and Shannon said isn’t she just a brute? And Mary scoffed at them both, and then they all laughed—

“What if I have too much and look like a fool?” Beatrice tilted her head so that Ava’s face was no longer in her hair but, rather, almost against the soft skin of her cheek. There was color there already.

“Then you’ll be in good company,” Ava said, “Considering that the rest of us are fools too.”

There was a moment of hesitation. Of soft, almost tremulous anticipation. They remained together, still except for their breathing.

Then, Beatrice removed her hand from the top of the cup. Ava poured into it. Almost forgot herself for a moment, in the smell of Beatrice’s hair and the soft nearness of her skin, and overfilled it. She felt strangely that she would like to see it spill over and the excess dribble against the sides.

But, she tilted her hand up when the cup was halfway full. “There,” She said, and moved quietly away.

*

The wolf had already eaten a coopfull of Shannon’s father’s chickens, and nearly got a sheep. A young farmhand had seen it, or at least claimed that he had.

“George tries to impress the older men,” Shannon rolled her eyes and took a sip of her hooch, “We try not to take him at his word. But according to him, it was a big beast with black fur,” She shuddered, “I hate to think of it, poor chickens.”

Official business disposed of, they spent the hours after dinner playing Faro and Three-Card Monte, laughing easier and louder the drunker they got.

Ava put her eyes to Beatrice as she set the three cards on the table in front of Mary, eyes dark and cheeks flushed. Her hair had just that day been washed and braided and let down again, a sign to Ava that Beatrice not only had whims, just as the rest of them, but that she occasionally gave into them.

It curled and frizzed. Her dress that day was blue, and cut below her collarbone. Her long, delicate fingers moved the cards about the table.

“Watch her,” Suzanne said, “She’s tricky, this one.”

“Shush,” Beatrice said, smiling. Ava smiled too, and she laughed when Mary picked the wrong card, bested out of a penny.

“I made a promise to Beatrice,” Ava mentioned a little later on, still looking at her. Beatrice met her gaze, smiling, as if glad to only have been mentioned, “That I intend to keep. I think we should play a little music in the front room, what do you say?”

Ava could play the guitar some, and Shannon held her own on the little piano in the back corner of the front room that Suzanne had alleged came with the house. The music wasn’t great, but after a few drinks it was enough that people could dance to it.

“Beatrice,” Ava said, sitting on a stool and strumming her fingers over the strings. Beatrice, who had been speaking to Suzanne, glanced up. Her eyes were glassy, “Get over there with Mary, she’ll show you how it’s done.”

“How what’s done?” Beatrice blinked. Mary, standing in the living room, held her hands up and mimed twirling a woman around in a dance, then dipping her, “Oh, no—”

“Oh yes,” Ava said, and when Suzanne started to shuffle Beatrice toward Mary, she winked at her and received a smile in return, “Told you I was going to teach you to drink and dance. And I’m a woman of my word.”

“I just don’t think I’m going to be very good at it. I’m not very coordinated. And I—” Even as she spoke, Beatrice allowed herself to be taken into Mary’s arms, one resting low on her back and the other holding her hand out, as if the two of them were about to waltz, “I’ll be horrible at it, I’m sure.”

“You don’t have to be good at it, sweetheart,” Suzanne said. She’d settled herself into a chair, shawl over her shoulders, “To have fun.”

Mary leaned over and whispered something to Beatrice, who tilted her head back with an incredulous smile on her face. Shannon played a few staggered notes on the piano to test its tune.

Ava said, “Shall we?” And they did.

When the music keyed up, Mary swept Beatrice off so suddenly that a surprised laugh erupted out of her. They flew around the room, spinning, Beatrice looking down at their feet. Suzanne clapped with the beat.

What a night it was, one of those perfect ones that only happened right before everything went to shit. Full of laughing and people nicely drunk and not yet sick from it. Ava took Suzanne in her arms and spun her around the room, slower than Mary and Beatrice’s ecstatic jaunt but no less joyful.

Ava forgot about the wolf, and she forgot about her own impotence. She even forgot about the house like a crooked tooth on barren land, and the ax, and Ennis. Right then, she was only thinking about how much she loved her mother, and how happy she was that Beatrice was there and that she was drunk and laughing.

Looking back on it, she didn’t even hardly remember how she and Beatrice made it out to the grassy bank of the river. She only knew that it came too late for Suzanne to stay awake and that they’d splintered off into the cool night, Mary and Shannon and Ava and Beatrice, so that they wouldn’t disturb her.

In the light of the big, full moon, Ava could see that Beatrice’s skirt had ridden up again. Higher, this time, than the previous day they’d laid out together. More like when they’d tussled on that first night. Up past her knee, exposing her thigh.

Ava turned her eyes sharply away.

“Ava,” Beatrice said, her voice tilting in odd directions, as if she saw Ava look away and was displeased. Ava looked back, and focused on her face. “What are you thinking about?”

“Moon looks nice tonight, doesn’t it?”

Beatrice’s eyes narrowed. Or she tried to narrow them.

“You,” She drew the word long, “Are lying to me.”

“And you’re drunk.” Ava said, leaning in and wrinkling her nose, “What are you thinking about?”

Beatrice peered up at her. Her features relaxed, became slack with thoughtfulness and booze. “Do you find me handsome?”

“Uh,” Said Ava, “What?”

“Handsome.” Beatrice repeated, accentuating its syllables.

“You mean do I like the look of you?” Beatrice nodded solemnly. Ava sucked on her teeth, “Think you know the answer to that question.”

“But you’ve never said it.”

“You are…handsome. It’s not really a matter of my opinion.”

Beatrice squinted up at the sky. She ran her fingers over a lock of her hair, then brought it up and tickled her own cheek with it. “I suppose you’re right. I am handsome.” Ava burst into laughter and earned a severe look. “What’s so funny?”

“I didn’t realize you had such a high opinion of yourself.”

“I don’t think it’s a good thing. The opposite. It’s a curse.”

“A curse.” Ava said, raising her eyebrows with a slow nod. Beatrice tried to narrow her eyes again, minimally more effective than her first try.

“Yes, Ava. A curse. I wish you’d take me seriously.”

“I am, I am. I’m sorry. Tell me more about how being outrageously beautiful is a burden.”

Beatrice’s expression relaxed. “You think I’m outrageously beautiful?”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

A moment passed in which Beatrice seemed to consider this, and grow disquieted. She turned her head against the ground, refocusing on the sky. “How can you say things like that,” She asked, “So easily?”

“Because it is easy, if it’s true.”

Beatrice shook her head. “No it isn’t.” She continued to stare solemnly forward. Ava wondered for a passing moment what thoughts might be ricocheting through Beatrice’s mind, then dropped the question. She’d found that most of the time, her guesses as to the workings of Beatrice’s interior life were wrong.

“If you want my opinion,” Said Ava, “Telling the truth might do you some good.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” At Ava’s arched brow, Beatrice sighed and rolled her eyes, “I haven’t lied to you since we got to your house.”

“Bullshit. You just lied to me right then.”

“Not telling you everything isn’t the same as lying. It isn’t at all.”

“If they’re not the same, they’re kissing cousins,” Ava said. She was reclined on her side, cheek resting on her closed fist. “What are you looking at me like that for? You’re always so damn angry with me.”

“Because you infuriate me. You frustrate me. Because you’re so—you’re so smug,” Beatrice said, and Ava gasped, laughing.

“Smug, am I?”

“Yes.”

“How am I smug?”

“You think you know everything. When I’m lying and when I’m not. What’s right and what’s wrong.” Ava paused. She didn’t feel very much like a know-it-all. The opposite, really. “How can you know? How can you know that I’m scared of you, for instance?”

“Because you flinch when I touch you,” Ava offered, “Like a frightened animal.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“I never hurt you, and I never would. You said yourself that you don’t think I’m capable of it.”

Beatrice went almost cross-eyed pondering that. For a moment Ava thought the conversation might end there.

“I don’t like being touched by anybody—I’m not used to it.”

“What about that boy whose face you bit half to death? You said you two used to kiss all the time.”

“Sam?” Beatrice shook her head faintly, “That was different. He didn’t matter.”

It took a handful of seconds for the truth of those words to dawn over Ava. She’d offered it flippantly. He didn’t matter.

Ava felt hot in her chest, thinking about how that meant that Beatrice thought she did matter. Beatrice must have realized it too, the way she went beet red.

Ava didn’t know why she said the next thing. Maybe she was a little drunk and maybe she wanted to stir up a little trouble. Maybe she just wanted, for once, to know what Beatrice really meant. “You didn’t seem to mind it when Mary was touching you either. So maybe it’s just me. Am I really all that bad?”

Beatrice’s eyes flashed. Her expression sobered for one moment, no longer lackadaisical and drunk, but acute and dangerous. She sat up on her elbows. Ava, in a moment of shock, backed away from her, “What do you want from me?” Beatrice whispered, “Just tell me.”

“I want you to tell me the truth.” Ava said without thinking.

“Sometimes I wish you would hurt me. It would be easier than this.”

“Hurt you how?”

“Hit me.” Beatrice said without missing a beat. Had she been thinking about it? About Ava striking her? The thought sent a lash of something through Ava’s body, “Here.” She tapped her cheek.

“I’m not going to hit you.” Ava replied evenly.

“Coward.” Said Beatrice. Her voice was shaking like it had right after she’d killed Splendid.

“Liar,” Said Ava, and they stared at each other for a moment, stared so long and so hard that Ava, for a moment, did see the appeal in slapping her. Just to relieve the tension. Saw it as clearly as if Beatrice’s fantasy had become her own, then disposed of it just as quickly, “You’re a coward, too. Scared of me, who wouldn’t hurt a damn fly. Scared to tell me why.”

“Do you think I like this?” Beatrice whispered fiercely, “Do you think I like being frightened? Frightened of you? I don’t want this. I don’t want to be scared of you.”

“Did you come out here just to insult me?”

“It’s not an insult. You’re so gentle, Ava. Has nobody ever told you how rare that is out here?” Her look became softer and more beseeching. “I have to be careful of doing something that I like enough to want to do it again,” She took a deep, shuddering breath, “Because what if I can’t? What if I just have to go back to the way my life was before? Sometimes I think that would hurt so much that I would die—that it would kill me.”

“What’s going to kill you,” Ava replied, “Is keeping those feelings inside. Letting them turn rotten.”

“They’re already rotten.” When had they drifted so close? In front of her, in the crisp silver moonlight, Beatrice looked moved almost to the point of tears, “How do you do it? How do you do it knowing it could all fall apart in a second?”

“Because it feels good,” Ava murmured, “And because life would be unbearable without it.”

“Sometimes I’ve felt these things were invented for me, to punish me, and everything else, too. Desire.” Ava tilted in until she regained ground, desperate to see her expression as clearly as possible. They were propped up, faces close. Noses nearly touching. When Beatrice breathed deep, Ava felt her chest against her own, “I hate that I was born wanting. But I’m so tired from trying to pretend that I wasn’t.”

Ava didn’t think that she was imagining the way that Beatrice’s eyes were flicking between her eyes and her mouth. She felt her heart start to thunder.

“Well, I know now,” Ava said, “Your secret’s out. So maybe you can take a break from pretending.”

She extended a palm up to touch Beatrice’s face, to cup her cheek. Beatrice reared back. She took Ava’s wrist loosely in her hand.

“I couldn’t stand it if you were kind to me right now.”

In a moment of weakness, of insanity, Ava shook free and used her hand to grip Beatrice’s wrist. She held tight, fast, and pulled Beatrice even closer to her, until their bodies really were pressed together—no longer just flirting with the idea.

Beatrice stared at her for a moment, eyes flashing. Then, to Ava’s astonishment, she smiled.

“Do you want to know why I’m angry at you all the time? Really angry?” Beatrice sounded breathless, excited, “It’s because you know something about me that I don’t. And you won’t tell me what it is.”

“Bea—” How did she do this—flip the tables so easily on Ava? Ava, the one currently holding Beatrice in a vice grip. Beatrice, who had put a hatchet into a man’s face.

“Sometimes when I look at you looking at me,” Beatrice leaned in, in, in, so close that only an inch more would have been catastrophic, “I see myself. My real self. Or I think I do. In the middle of your eye. There, see?” Beatrice’s lips were brushing Ava’s cheek, her nose. Her breath was hot and sweet, and she was looking right into Ava’s eyes. Ava trembled.

Beatrice’s voice was low, broken, desperate: “There I am.”

“And so what, Mary? What are you going to do, rot here all your life?” They startled apart. Above them was the sound of boots in the dirt. Ava regretfully turned and sat up on her knees to see Mary and Shannon a few meters away.

There seemed to have been something of a chase that had ended in the field, Mary with her hands in her pockets and shoulders shrugged up to her ears and Shannon gesturing wildly at her. Ava glanced down to Beatrice, who looked sober and was pushing her skirts down. She mouthed go.

“Everything alright?” Ava called as she rose, brushing some dirt off her trousers. She saw Mary and Shannon’s silhouettes turn to her, “Mary, Shannon?”

“Ava?” As Ava got closer, she could see Mary’s expression all twisted up with confusion, “What the hell were you doing all the way out here?”

“Bea and I were…” Ava trailed off, glancing down to the riverbank where she could just barely see Beatrice’s head popping over the grass. When she turned back, Mary’s brow had furrowed even deeper, “We were just out here talking. You two okay?”

Shannon was looking down at her shoes, face all pinched up and red-looking even in the moonlight. Mary glanced at her, looking soft. All at once, Ava saw exactly what it was between them. It made her heart feel heavy, “We just had too much to drink, didn’t we, Shan?”

“Hm.” Shannon grunted, then glanced up to Ava. Her expression was one of deep focus. “Ava, what is it that you want? I mean, what do you really want—to stay in this house robbing rich people forever?”

“Shan—”

“No,” Ava replied, “No, course not. We’ve just got to take care of Suzanne, and then—” She trailed off, because a look of incredible pity had crossed over Shannon’s face. She looked sad and tired all at once.

“Ava—”

“Shannon,” Mary said her name firmly, but not unkindly, Shannon stopped talking, “Let's leave this between you and me tonight, okay? No need to bring Ava into it.”

“Bring Ava into what?” Ava asked. Her skin was turning cold, and it wasn’t because of the weather. She kept looking between Shannon and Mary for some hint of what was going on, and coming up empty.

One of Shannon’s hands shot out and took her by the bicep. Her look had gone from piteous to keen in the span of a few seconds, “I love you, Ava,” She said, “And I love Mary. I just want what’s best for all of us. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I do,” Ava stuttered, looking past Shannon to where Mary stood behind her, not making eye contact, “I think I do.”

“I should go,” Shannon’s hand dropped, “I’ve got a long walk home.”

“We’ll go with you,” Ava offered, mind still twisting and spinning over what had just happened. When Shannon shook her head, she persisted, “Of course we will, Shan, there’s a wolf out.”

“I’m not afraid of a wolf,” Shannon said, smiling, the smile turning sad, “Goodnight, you two.”

When she was gone. Mary and Ava stood for a long moment by themselves. Mary wasn’t looking at Ava, and Ava knew it was because she was fixing to lie. The thought made her sad and angry all at once.

“What was that about?” Ava asked, tilting her head to catch Mary’s eye, “You didn’t tell her, did you?”

“Shit no,” Mary barked out an incredulous laugh, “No, she didn’t even ask this time. I don’t think she really wants to know.”

“Then what is it?” Ava pressed. Mary did look up at her then, and Ava sort of wished she hadn’t.

“Shannon found this ad for some land down in Colorado. Turns out her dad knows the fella selling it—could get us a decent deal. 200 acres. They used to run a stage coach stop there—a hotel type of place.”

“So?”

“She wants to buy it. She wants us to buy it.”

At first, Ava only laughed. It didn’t feel like a joke, but she didn’t know any other way to respond, “Why would we buy a hotel in Colorado when we’re trying to get out to the ocean?”

In a flash of a second, Mary wore the same pitying look that Shannon had. Ava recoiled from it. “Ava—”

“No, stop it—not you too. Damn it, Mary. It’s one thing coming from JC and Shannon, but not you. She’s been getting better.”

“She’s gotten better before, usually right before she gets worse. You know that just as well as I do,” It was Ava’s turn to look away, to glance up at the moon. She didn’t want Mary to see the tears gathering in her eyes, “It's cheap out there. Cheaper than California and Oregon. We wouldn’t even have to—”

“So then what about Bea? You want us to abandon two people out here that we promised we’d help.”

“We wouldn’t be abandoning them, Ava. We wouldn’t leave until Suzanne—” Ava glanced at her sharply and Mary shut her mouth, “And Beatrice—Bea—you don’t think she’d come?”

Ava felt so shaken by this that she staggered a little, “She’s a fugitive. She needs to get to Canada.”

“I don’t know,” Mary shook her head slightly, “It was just an idea.”

They stood together in neutered silence for a moment, listening to the late summer bugs and the rustling of the leaves. Ava thought of leaving this place, of leaving her home, and wondered if there would ever be a time that she could stop moving. The idea was a nice one, if distant.

“Shannon meant it when she said that she cares about us,” Mary said, “She thinks we’re better than this. Lying, stealing.”

“Nobody is better than surviving,” Ava replied, “I’m going to get that money from Bea’s house. And I’m going to California with Suzanne. It’s your prerogative to come or not come.”

“Whatever we do, we do together,” Mary didn’t miss a single beat saying it, and she looked at Ava the whole time hard and without blinking, “So I guess that’s what we’re going to do.”

It was a victory, but a mean, nasty one. Ava heard the regret in Mary’s voice, in there laying with the truth. What’s right, she wondered, what’s good, what’s the right thing to do.

She looked off in the distance, and saw Beatrice’s head poking up above the sweetgrass and bullrushes. Watching them, even from afar.

*

Ava’s mind thumbed over what Mary had said—Beatrice—Bea—you don’t think she’d come?—as she watched Beatrice, or Bea, trip over the hem of her skirt as she shimmied out of it. Ava was already in her nightclothes, crunched up on the settee and feeling the last bits of her drunkenness drift off to the horizon.

“Ava,” Beatrice said peevishly. Ava looked up at her like, what’d I do this time? “Don’t you think that this has become a bit silly?”

“Uh,” Said Ava, still inebriated enough to not be quite sure what the hell was going on.

“The settee,” Beatrice gestured to it, and to Ava, with an air of disdain, “There really is no good reason for you to be sleeping on it.”

Ava could think of one or two good reasons. But Beatrice had on her scolding schoolteacher voice, which worked on Ava despite the fact that she’d never attended a solitary day of school. “I spread out like a starfish,” Ava attempted weakly. But Beatrice was already pulling the quilt back and slipping beneath it, and moving her body to the far side, not paying her any mind.

So Ava rose, and she slipped into bed beside her, leaving a proper amount of space. Beatrice’s back was to her, and it was rising steadily.

“I meant what I said before,” Beatrice murmured, “If we’re going to do this, I want us to find a way to be…at peace with each other.”

Was that possible? Ava wondered. She and Beatrice seemed the type that would be troubling each other forever. Instead of voicing this, she said, “That sounds like a nice idea.” Because it did—it did sound like a nice idea, didn’t it?

*

“You notice something different about Beatrice today?”

Well, just that morning, Ava had woken up facing her gently slumbering back. She turned to Mary, the two of them waiting for Hatchet and Cowgirl to finish their long drink at the creek.

“No, but I guess I haven’t really seen her.” Not a lie. Ava had slipped out of bed before she’d awoken and worked through breakfast, only stopping in for cold biscuits around midday. She didn’t look at Mary.

“She’s seen you.” Mary said, spitting, “Been watching you all day. Kind of surprised she’s not watching us now,” Ava felt her turn on her saddle next to her, “Somewhere in the bushes or something.”

Ava shrugged, “Maybe I’m just that good looking.”

“Maybe.” Mary paused, “Ava, about last night…”

“Forget it.” Ava said quickly, harshly.

Mary stiffened and seemed like she was ready to say something else. In her periphery, Ava caught her shaking her head, “Alright,” She said, “It’s forgotten.”

Later, Ava did see Beatrice. She was in Mary’s little garden plot plucking bugs from the leaves and disposing of them, and she did not look up to mark Ava’s approach.

She was in her riding trousers, Ava noted, and one of Ava’s shirts. Ava watched her pull a small, squirming beetle from the leaves of an adolescent pumpkin.

“Yuck,” Ava said, and Beatrice looked up at her, squinting against the sunlight. She stood, still holding the squirming bug.

“It’s just a beetle, Ava,” She said, “Honestly.” But lately her scoldings were sounding less like scoldings and more like fond little jabs. She was smiling, anyway, “Would you like to see?”

Beatrice extended the bug out to Ava, who recoiled, “Thanks but no thanks.”

“You can be so silly,” Beatrice tutted. She pulled the little thing back to herself and looked at it, cupping one hand behind it to see it better, “He’s smaller and weaker than you are. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Are you going to kill it?” Ava asked, and Beatrice’s eyes flicked up to her, dark and penetrating as ever. She shook her head.

“These ones are good for the garden.” She said, and crouched, letting the beetle scurry off into the grass. When she stood, a queer silence fell over them. “Ava, about last night—what I said—I’m sorry—”

“You were beautiful last night,” Ava blurted. She thought Beatrice might look away, but she held Ava’s gaze all the same, “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“I drank too much and embarrassed myself.”

“You said you didn’t want to be scared of me anymore,” Ava tilted her head, studying Beatrice’s face, “And that you wanted us to be at peace with each other.”

“I do.” Beatrice agreed, and then shrugged as if to say, so what?

“How did you get to do that?” Ava gestured with her head down to where the beetle had disappeared, “I don’t think many high bred women are out in the garden touching bugs with their bare hands.”

“I just did it. Ever since I was a little girl.” Beatrice paused, “Exposure.”

“Well, you’re welcome to expose yourself to me as much as you’d like.” Ava said before she could register the words coming out of her mouth. Once they had, she paused, horrified, “I mean—”

But Beatrice was already smiling and laughing. Ava wondered where that sullen, desperate woman from all those weeks ago had gone. She hadn’t seen her in so long, replaced as she had been by this girl, easy to laughter and gently holding the things that she could crush without realizing.

“Okay, Ava.” Beatrice simpered. She’d stooped back into a crouch to continue grabbing at aphids.

“Okay.” Ava said, still blushing, still looking, still wondering.

*

The next day, Ava found herself thinking about Beatrice in ways that were different and borderline alarming. To think of her warmly, romantically, was one thing—It was another altogether to watch her go into the yard in her nightgown to hang up all the washing at that tree and imagine pushing a hand up her skirt. Ava could get so consumed by thoughts of sex that sometimes she had to tamp them down for her own sanity. Particularly about women, on whom she found herself singularly fixated.

She’d loved and enjoyed JC, but he’d been the only man she’d ever taken for a lover, and Ava was happy to keep it that way. She’d had to make herself something different for him, particularly when they’d had sex, something softer and more docile. Having sex with him had at first been flush with newness and excitement; in the end, she’d struggled with the rigidity of it as it teetered on the knife’s edge of boredom.

With women she was just Ava, and she could be as unruly and mannish as she wanted. She could be obedient too, could lay beneath somebody while they moved inside her, but only when she decided it should be so.

And it wasn’t as hard as she imagined it might be at first. Most women, if you took them away from the prying eyes of the world, wanted to do it, or to do something like it. Ava had made love to married women, women who had boyfriends, women who had nothing at all. She’d done it hurried in beds, on top of quilts so as to not mess the bedding enough to be noticed. She’d done it in barns, in outhouses, on the babbling banks of several creeks.

But this was not, of course, just some woman. It was Beatrice. She was complicated and frightened and desperate. She was violent.

She was voracious, too, and hungry. Ava had seen her drink in books and Mary’s tutelage about gardening and even the beginnings of an education on sewing, as if she were a bottomless well that no knowledge could satiate. Ava had seen her take snakes from the garden with her bare hands and throw them over the lawn. She was fearless, unfussy.

That insatiability worried Ava. It excited her, too.

She was also, at that moment, looking at Ava. Beatrice was balancing a clothes basket on her hip and regarding Ava where she stood on the front porch, ruminating. It was the big laundry day in which everything in the house got washed, and so Ava too was in her night shirt and long underwear.

Ava looked back at her. Her nightgown had been hand sewn by Suzanne, and it had little flowers all over it. The woman had killed at least two men with her bare hands, and here after a week and a half they had her in a nightgown adorned with daisies. Ava’s mind boggled.

“Are you staring because you want to come help me hang these up?” She asked. The wind was whipping her hair around her face and shoulders. Ava thought about running her fingers through it.

She thought of hanging the laundry and then rolling around the prairie grass in their night clothes. She thought of pushing Beatrice’s nightgown up around her belly and her hand between her legs. She thought of the top of it slipping down to expose one of her breasts, which Ava would lavish with attention. With her mouth, with her free hand.

Ava blinked. She shook the thought away. “Sure.” She said, and they hung the clothes talking about nothing until it was time to walk back to the house.

*

Ava puttered around that day like an agitated dog, trying to do anything to keep her away from sniffing at Beatrice’s skirts at the house. When she returned just before supper, she found, to her horror, Beatrice playing cards with her mother at the table, hair down and nightgown on. There were underclothes on makeshift lines tied to ceiling rafters.

Beatrice had a sucker in her mouth and it clacked against her teeth when she adjusted it side to side. When Suzanne put cards down, she removed it and set it on a little china saucer next to her, as if to suck on it broke her concentration.

“Ava?” Mary was on a stool behind them, peeling potatoes, “You look like you just stepped in shit.”

Ava felt like she’d just been hit by a stagecoach, finding Beatrice here and just as attractive as she was that morning, and her own thoughts just as unruly.

There was a commotion at the table. Suzanne laughed and pulled a pile of spoils towards herself. Ava realized that they’d been playing for buttons.

“Your mother is a card shark.” Beatrice mumbled.

“Hey!” Mary and Ava said in unison. Then Mary clicked in her cheek and tilted her head, eyebrows up.

“See now,” Said Ava, “I’m the only loyal daughter in this house.”

Mary said, “At least I’m honest.” Then winked at Suzanne, who laughed harder.

“I took Ava for two dollars once.” Suzanne said in a half whisper to Beatrice, “Before she even knew what hit her.”

“Can you believe it? Her own damn kin.” Ava was fixing to forget about the whole thing and sit down for dinner when Beatrice twisted her body in her chair to get a better look at her. She was smiling and removed the sucker from her mouth to speak, which then glistened with spit.

“Ava does seem like an easy enough mark,” Beatrice said, smiling, her face creased all over with mischief and good humor. Ava stared. Ava tried to shake herself again from the trance, then found that she could not.

“I’m going to go outside,” She said, then, “To wait for the wolf.”

Everybody in the kitchen rolled their eyes, “Ava, why don’t you give it a rest until after supper?” Asked Suzanne, “Mary’s making potatoes.”

“Well, you think the wolf’s gonna live on our time table?” More eye rolls and groans from the kitchen. Beatrice seemed like she might say something more, but Suzanne stopped her:

“Let her go, sweetheart. There’s no changing Ava’s mind when she gets in a mood.”

And so Ava sat outside against the wood of the house and watched the sun go down and the cold set in. She shivered. She was gripping Beatrice’s shotgun between her knees and looking out on the night. Nothing made a sound.

Then, a rustling. She whipped her head around only to find that it was Beatrice, approaching with a blanket and a steaming mug of something.

“I’m gonna put a bell on you,” Ava said, “Thought you were the wolf.”

Beatrice hummed in a way that told Ava that she wasn’t particularly concerned for her chances, wolf or not, and Ava narrowed her eyes at her. She handed down the mug—broth, Ava smelled—and the blanket, which Ava threw around her shoulders, and then sat down next to Ava herself.

Ava saw that she was wearing one of Mary’s buckskin jackets. They stared off into the distance together for a moment.

“Suzanne is afraid you’re going to catch your death out here.” Beatrice said.

“I have her to thank for the broth and the blanket, then.”

“The blanket,” Beatrice agreed, “The broth is from me.”

“Well, thank you.” Ava was blushing. She could feel it on her cheeks. She sipped the broth, which was hot and rich.

“Why don’t you go inside? I can stay out here with the gun.”

Ava eyed her sideways, “What exactly are you getting at?”

“Between the two of us, I’m the most likely candidate to shoot it, I think.” Beatrice said with no malice. She was smiling.

“Now who’s smug?” Ava retorted, trying to play it off as a tease but smarting a little all the same. Beatrice turned that smile to Ava and she found her rough edges ebbing off.

“I don’t doubt that you could, Ava,” Beatrice said placatingly, “I doubt that you’d want to. There’s nothing wrong with pacifism.”

“I’m no pacifist, damnit, I’m a frontierswoman. Have Mary tell you about that buck I shot last fall, back at JC’s place.” Rather than taking her seriously, Beatrice was laughing good-naturedly, shoulders shaking. Ava found that her laughter made the whole thing less serious than she’d built it up in her head. She relaxed and they sat in silence for a few minutes, looking up at that big, clear sky.

“I don’t know why it bothers me so much,” Ava admitted quietly to the stars, not yet ready to say it directly to Beatrice, “Remember what I said to you back when, about being born into the wrong life? Maybe I just feel sore about that. I should be able to do it. But I feel like I can’t.”

Beatrice was quiet beside her for a while, before saying: “Have you considered that you were born into exactly the life you were meant to have? Maybe the reason you’re here isn’t to be violent. Maybe you were born to be kind and clever. In that case, you’re exactly the person you were meant to be.”

Ava trembled, suddenly certain that she was going to cry, “Well, what sense does that make? When has being kind ever mattered out here?”

“It’s mattered very much to me.” Beatrice said simply, and then Ava did look at her. In fact, it felt like the whole world had turned its eye on Beatrice, all the stars and all the roosting birds. She was that important, that extraordinary, that every living thing should at that moment take notice of her, “In the stories we read, it’s never interesting when the hero knows right at the beginning who they are, or what the right thing to do is. It's better when the reader is rooting for them to figure it out. Be patient—it will come, in time.”

“You sound awfully sure.”

Beatrice’s smile twitched, “A month ago, I might not have said the same thing. But now that I’m here—well, everything seems possible. Don’t you think?”

“Why don’t you come under this blanket,” Ava said, “You’re shivering.”

Beatrice shook her head, already making to stand. “I stayed too long already. Don’t stay out here all night, Ava, I’ve got a fire going in the bedroom.”

“Alright,” Ava said, dazzled to the point of stupidity.

“And when you come up, just get into the bed. It’s too cold for you to keep sleeping on the settee.”

And then Beatrice was gone, walking around to the kitchen door. Ava had given up on waiting out that hungry wolf, but she stayed out for another twenty minutes anyway, just to think and look at the sky for a while.

*

She was certain that Beatrice would be asleep when she got up, because Beatrice fell asleep easy those days. But she was awake, rolled on her side in her nightgown. The stove cast an orange glow around the attic.

Ava fed it with a log and debated her approach to crawling into bed—should she do it quickly, putting on airs that it didn’t matter? That might seem strange, she figured.

“What are you thinking about?” Beatrice asked. She was facing the wall, but twisted her body to look at Ava. Her face was a little bleary like maybe she had been trying to sleep, and a book with a scrap of paper in it to keep her place sat at the foot of the bed.

Ava was thinking about how badly she wanted to touch her, and how strange it was making her act.

In her floral nightgown and sleep ruffled, Beatrice did have a certain air of anonymity. Like maybe she was just some girl from Big Sky, or Ennis, or wherever. Some girl that Ava didn’t really know, but wanted to.

“Oh, just the moon again.” Ava said, and Beatrice’s mouth twitched.

“Liar,” She drawled, then turned back to the wall, “Get in here. I’m tired.”

“Yes ma’am.” Said Ava.

She pulled the quilt over herself and resisted the urge to do something really domestic, like touching Beatrice’s calves with her cold feet. She warmed them herself instead, rubbing them together while she rested a safe distance from her bedmate.

Beatrice yawned. “Any sign of the wolf?”

“We must have scared ‘em off with all our yapping.”

“Mmm.”

“I think the animals will sleep safely tonight.”

“Thanks to you.”

“I was very intimidating out there. You don’t think so?”

“With your blanket and your mug of broth? Ava, you were simply monstrous.”

They laughed, and the laughter was like a spell. It turned everything in that room brand new, including Ava, including Beatrice. Ava listened to the crackling of the fireplace and looked reverently at the baby hairs on the back of Beatrice’s neck. Had she ever looked at them before? Why not? They were beautiful. Short and wispy and dark. Ava wanted to touch them.

“Ava?”

“Mm?”

“Will you touch me?” The question startled Ava out of her reverie. Her eyes focused on the back of Beatrice’s head.

Without answering, she reached a hand out and rested her fingers against the skin of Beatrice’s elbow. “Are you alright?”

“I’m alright.” Beatrice confirmed, but Ava felt her body roll through a wave of tension, “I’m just—do you ever get lonely out here? So far from everything?”

“All the time.” Ava answered without hesitating.

“Will you come closer?” Beatrice asked, and Ava did, scooting in until their bodies were only a hair apart.

So they lay still in the flickering orange light, on their sides, inches of space separating them. The moment became almost meditative with the sound of Beatrice’s quiet breathing, and the feeling of her arm under Ava’s hand.

“Close enough?” Ava rasped, and Beatrice replied:

“A little closer would be fine.”

And Ava went a little closer, until they were all but spooning. Her hand, because of their proximity, moved from Beatrice’s elbow to her hip. It sat there over her nightgown, not holding, just touching.

“I know that earlier you said that you didn’t mean it, you know, when you said I was going to hell—but do you think it might be true? Or that there might be any truth to it?”

“Beatrice—”

“Say the other one,” Beatrice said, “What you were calling me before. And before you answer—I don’t think it would be a bad thing, if you said yes. I think it would be a comfort to hear it.”

“Bea, are you sure you’re alright?”

Instead of answering right away, Beatrice shifted her body back, closing the gap of space between her and Ava’s chest. They pushed together, slotting against one another.

Ava could feel Beatrice’s heart thundering through her back. Her body was tense — it vibrated like a plucked string. Then, she felt Beatrice slacken. She was still tight, her heart still going like the beat of a drum, but she leaned back into Ava and let herself relax somewhat into the cradle of her hips and chest.

Ava paused. She forgot to breathe. Her hand trembled with the desire to pull Beatrice even closer by her hips, and she clenched it into a fist so tight she could feel the half-moons forming in her skin. Beatrice’s hair was splayed wild out over the pillow, against Ava’s face, and she could smell the creek water and the soap and the cool fall air in it.

“Will you—” Beatrice started, then stopped again, “Will you do it again? Touch me, I mean, somewhere different.”

Before she could stop herself, Ava leaned in and breathed deep. Beatrice shuddered. Then, in a moment of further insanity, Ava pressed a kiss to the base of Beatrice’s neck.

“How did that feel?” She murmured, her lips against Beatrice’s skin.

“It felt nice,” Beatrice squirmed, her voice shaggy and broken. Ava had never heard anything quite like it coming from her, “It felt good.” She amended, as if the thought of the kiss had settled and nice was not quite enough.

“Did it kill you?” A short laugh erupted from Beatrice, and Ava laughed too. But it was choked off a half second later, the sound becoming almost pained.

“If this doesn’t work, and if they catch me, they’re going to hang me.” Beatrice said, her voice still trembling, “That will kill me, and then I’ll—”

“Over my dead body they’ll hang you,” Ava insisted. She suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of those bastards killing the woman who could beat Mary at 3 Card Monte and wouldn’t event hurt a bug if the bug weren’t hurting anything. Before Beatrice could continue, Ava did it again, kissing her neck, her mouth slightly open, tongue poking out just enough to get a taste of her skin. Her hand moved from Beatrice’s hip to her stomach and urged her closer to Ava’s front and she felt the broken way that Beatrice shuddered, and the way Beatrice keened at the feeling of it. The vibrating of her back, “How was that?”

“It was good.” Beatrice whispered.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” Ava said, “I’ll take care of you.”

“Do it again.” Ava did. She kissed Beatrice open-mouthed behind her ear, and then lower, near where her nightgown met the slope of her neck. Beatrice pushed back into her like she was afraid Ava was going to turn into vapor, “Again.” She said, perhaps taking pleasure in the controlled way she was able to get Ava to dispense her attention, like a child smashing coins into a candy machine.

This time, Ava sucked the lobe of her ear into her mouth and scraped at it with her teeth. Beatrice’s whole body jerked. Her head lolled back, so that Ava’s mouth was brushing against her temple.

“Again,” This time, Ava pressed a chaste kiss against her cheek. A smile passed over Beatrice’s face, a shallow dimple forming where Ava had just kissed, “Like you were doing before.”

“Anybody ever told you you’re bossy?” Ava murmured into her ear, delighting in the shiver she felt against her body in response. Beatrice nodded without hesitating and Ava laughed, feeling a sense of deep fondness wash over her. “And cheeky, too. But I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Ava meant it as a jest, but it had the curious effect of turning the air in the room dark and thick. Beatrice’s face was still turned up to her, body half twisted back. Ava saw her eyelashes flutter, then the pink of her tongue poking from the seam of her lips. Lost in thought.

“Do you know how many men tried to court me?” She asked rhetorically. Ava looked down and saw that one of Beatrice’s hands had come up to fiddle at the stays of the front of her nightgown. Her voice had lost its tremulous quality and become analytical, like when she was helping Ava parse through a difficult passage of text, “Dozens, ever since I first showed signs of womanhood. They used to follow me on the street. Sometimes they would make it past the front gate and throw pebbles at my bedroom window.”

Lost in thought, she brought the tip of one of the stays to her mouth and brushed it over her lips, “Sounds kind of scary.” Ava said, tracking the movement with her eyes.

“It was.” She paused, “But even so, I never really cared. They were every different sort of man, some of them handsome, some of them rich, some of them educated. Some of them all three.” As Ava watched, the hand playing with the stays started to pull, one by one, until the front of her nightgown was laying open, just barely covering the slope of her breasts. “It simply didn’t matter to me. I was so bored of them.”

Beatrice began to shrug the shoulder closest to Ava’s face out of the sleeve of her dress. Ava tensed, “Bea—”

“Yes?” She shrugged it completely off, leaving her shoulder and breast exposed. The brown-pink skin of her nipple puckered in the cold air, goosebumps dotting everywhere over her collarbones and chest. Ava stared, mouth still hanging slightly open at Beatrice’s temple. She was close to panting. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with me? That I care so much for you and so little for any of them?”

Ava wanted to say there’s nothing wrong with you, but doubted that it would be well received. She moved her head away to kiss the newly exposed skin of Beatrice’s shoulder, obediently responding to the unspoken again.

“You were probably born like this,” Ava murmured after a moment, which was true. Then, she dipped her head in again and bit lightly into the meat of her shoulder, this earning a broken, shuddering gasp. “And it will probably never change about you.”

“I always thought that I was so clever. So evolved. But if it had been you,” Beatrice said, her voice back to that wispy quality—Ava loved that, how powerful it made her feel to take Beatrice’s perfectly curated mask and shatter it—and at the same time, Ava’s hand started to move up toward her chest, “If it had been you—” Beatrice gasped when Ava’s fingers brushed her nipple, and it leveled into a low groan when Ava sucked at the edge of her shoulder, careful to make a mark only where a dress would cover, “—you throwing pebbles at my window. You trying to—God,” Her hips were moving. Just slightly, but they were, and her body was too, rubbing back into Ava as Ava pressed forward into her, kissing any inch of bare skin she could get her mouth on, “—Trying to despoil my virtue to get all my money—”

Despite herself, Ava laughed, “Despoil? I don’t think we’ve gotten to that one yet in reading lessons.” She saw that shallow dimple again on Beatrice’s cheek, underneath the apple-red layers of blush. She looked exposed, turned inside out, raw and throbbing, “What’s it mean?”

“To rob, or plunder,” Beatrice exhaled a shuddering, whining breath when Ava’s fingers gently flicked over her nipple, back and forth, “Or ruin.”

“Lift your knee up a little—there you go,”

Beatrice followed Ava’s direction and made space for Ava to tuck her knee between her legs. “Just bring your hips down now—” And Beatrice did, and their next words overlapped like hands or leaves or tree branches, Ava saying “Yeah, like that,” And Beatrice saying “Oh.”

Ava’s leg was bare, and so she could feel Beatrice’s warmth between the layers of fabric. Beatrice squirmed again, but she was no longer shaking. Her body no longer held like she was trying to maintain some morsel of propriety; she was collapsed into Ava, tangled in her.

“Try moving your hips,” Ava offered, and Beatrice said:

“Give me a second, I can’t—oh.” She’d squirmed in such a way that it pressed her against Ava, which Ava felt but restrained herself from reacting to.

“We can stop,” Ava said, and when Beatrice shook her head against the pillow, she said: “We can slow down.”

Beatrice shook her head again. Ava felt an odd defiance rolling through her body like a current of electricity. “If it had been you,” She continued, and her hips, once stuttering, started in a slow roll, speaking the words brokenly through gasps and small, quiet moans, “If it had been you, I would have let you. I would have opened my window and let you climb up the trellis.” She pressed her hips down, hard, and a choked breath escaped her, “I don’t know what to do, Ava.”

“Just trust me,” Ava whispered, “Just keep doing what you’re doing. I know you’re scared—” Beatrice rolled her hips down hard enough that they both gasped, “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Their hands were now entangled over Beatrice’s chest, as if Beatrice was fearful that it would move.

“Keep talking,” Beatrice gasped, her hips continuing their erratic cant, “Please keep talking.”

A groan escaped Beatrice, low and breathy and desperate. She pushed her hips down into Ava’s knee harder. The only thing between their skin — between Ava and the wet, warm spot between Beatrice’s legs—were a few scraps of fabric.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Ava gasped, sure that she had been saying something else before, and sure that it didn’t matter anymore.

“Ava, please.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Being close to somebody—I know it’s scary, but it doesn’t have to be. You know? With the right person—God,” Another pointed movement of Beatrice’s hips knocked every thought out of Ava’s head. She had to gather them again, “—with the right person, it can be downright pleasant.”

They stopped talking after that. Beatrice’s hips moved and moved, making a sound against the sheets, making the bed creak under their bodies. They filled the room with the sound of their breath, of broken moans, of softly murmured nonsense.

Eventually the movement lost its rhythm, and Beatrice became silent, a breath held in her chest. Ava gripped her harder, knowing that she was close, knowing that she just needed a little push to—

“Stop,” Beatrice gasped, then again, although Ava had already started to push herself away, “Stop—”

They disengaged in a second. Ava sat up on her elbows panting. She thought of reaching out to Beatrice, and then thought better of it in the next instant.

Beatrice, for her part, was laying on her back. She’d gathered her dress back up and was trembling—not faintly, but really shaking all over. From emotion or from the pent up energy of the orgasm that she’d stopped from coming to pass, Ava wasn’t sure.

“I’m sorry,” Ava breathed, “I’m sorry, I should have—”

“You didn’t do anything,” Beatrice’s eyes were closed, her hair curling at the edges with sweat. A red splotch was working its way up her neck, courting her jawline and the lobes of her ears, “I wanted you to do it, I just—” She put the heels of her hands to her eyes, “—I can’t stop shaking.”

“You’re cold. Here.” Ava rose and pulled a blanket from the stack on the rocking chair, laying it over Beatrice, who was still covering her eyes. She stood awkwardly at the side of the bed, “I’ll just—I’ll sleep on the settee tonight.”

“No.” Beatrice said it instantly, urgently, uncovering her eyes and sitting up. She kept the blanket gathered to her chest, “No, I need you here.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“You have to sleep here with me. I feel like I can’t—I can’t—” Ava wasn’t sure whether to feel overcome with affection or like the biggest son of a bitch on planet earth, or both, but she did know that she ought to shut her mouth and get back into the bed. She did, and Beatrice went to her, taking Ava up in her arms and stroking a hand over her hair. Nobody had held Ava like that in years, and if she started shaking a little too, that was her business.

Beatrice never quite finished saying what she couldn’t do. Ava’s presence in the bed, and then in her arms, seemed to pacify her. She quieted and pressed forward, running her mouth gently over the curve of Ava’s jaw, until Ava was sure that they were going to go right back to doing what they’d been doing before they’d leapt apart.

Ava pulled back slightly. What she really wanted to do was kiss her—no, she needed to kiss her, needed it like somebody needed a drink of water on a hot day. She brought their faces close as they half-sat, half-lay, tangled up in each other. She bumped their noses together.

Beatrice, eyes closed, put her fingers to Ava’s cheeks, then her eyelids, then slid them down the bridge of her nose. Lastly, she placed them over Ava’s mouth, forming a barrier between them and the thing that Ava wanted so desperately.

“What are you doing to me,” Beatrice murmured wonderingly. She tapped her index finger against the seam of Ava’s lips. It smelt of grass and laundry soap, “That I feel like this?”

“How do you feel?”

“Sick, giddy. Feverish. A little mean, maybe.”

“That’s just a crush,” Ava said, and grinned cheekily when Beatrice laughed, “I have just the thing for it, if you would move your hand.”

Beatrice’s laugh turned serious. She sobered. “This can’t be,” She said, “You know this can’t be.”

Something occurred to Ava, “You were listening that night, when Mary and me were talking.” A pause, “I wouldn’t abandon you like that.”

“Why not? You barely know me. I don’t even know if you really trust me.”

“Goddamnit, you know why. You feel it too, I know you do.” Ava took Beatrice’s hand and moved it from her mouth, “But if you’re not ready to talk about it, we can just say that you have my word. You have my word that we’re going to make sure you get to Canada.” Beatrice said nothing, nor did she look away. She took Ava in, features motionless on the surface, “So you agree with what Mary and Shannon said?”

“About Suzanne?” Beatrice asked, and Ava appreciated that she didn’t try to play stupid about it. Even if hearing it made her heart hurt something awful.

“Everybody thinks I should give up. JC and Mary and…” She trailed off, unable to complete her sentence. To Ava’s surprise, Beatrice moved a hand up to brush her cheek.

“Have you ever heard the story of Orpheus?” She asked, and Ava shook her head. Beatrice had a way of hypnotizing her out of any kind of melancholy, “It’s an old myth. His wife died on their wedding night and he was allowed to retrieve her from the underworld on the condition that he not look back at her during their journey back to the living.”

“Did he look back?”

“Of course he did. He loved her,” Beatrice paused, studying her, “I think that trying to outfox death is foolish. But if anybody was ever clever enough to try, it’s you. And, Ava, I don’t think I could ever deny you your right to see this through to the very end,” Her hand on Ava’s cheek turned from gentle to gripping. She looked suddenly fierce, “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted somebody to prove me wrong so badly before. Keep going, I think. Go to the very end. I think you should.”

They slept in bed together that night, and that night Ava dreamed not of the wolf, but of rowing across that creek lined with sweet grass and bulrushes. She dreamt of the tree branches covered with crows, watching her boat float by.

Of herself looking forward, of Beatrice behind her. In her dream, Beatrice was whispering go to the very end.

All the way to the end? Ava wondered, realizing even in her dream that she hadn’t even the imagination to conceive of where that might be. She rowed on all the same. She never looked back.