Heath’s stride to the front door was purposeful, controlled, but then he stumbled once outside on the porch. What was wrong with him? What the hell was he doing? What had he just declared to his brother, his confidant and friend? Was this to be their own civil war? He had to think. He’d grab Charger and head out. No, he tugged angrily on the hair at his crown. He couldn’t leave Jemma to the wolves, be they of the Barkley' or Tapps' den. He’d take to ground, sleep under the stars. That always cleared his brain. He started walking, head hung wearily, unconsciously moving in the direction of her cabin, only stopping a long time later when he stumbled smack into a large tree.

From inside her home, in front of a cozy fire—HER cozy fire, lit not because it was cold but because she had the ways and means to light it—Jemma cocked her head. She’d been practicing her letters by writing down the words that she’d learned by listening to Heath and the Barkleys, when she had been interrupted by a sound. Not one that she was frightened of—indeed a sound that she was somehow wedded to. She thought about finding a lamp, and then laughed at herself. “You ain’t had no lamp for years, but you gonna find your way by one now?”

She quietly unlocked her door, wrapped her shawl around the soft comfort of Heath’s shirt, and hoped she didn’t have to go far because she was shoeless. She cocked her head and her heart to hear it again. And there it was, off to her right. It was the sound of sorrow. She let her bare feet pick their way in the dark, knew in her belly who she’d be finding. He had his back to the tree, was hugging his knees to his chest. She knelt beside him slowly, carefully, not wanting to startle him. She reached a gentle hand up and stroked his face.

“Why, Heath,” she whispered, “you be cryin’.”

He felt for his cheeks, found the telltale water there, and then sucked in a sudden ragged sob. He was terrified for a second. When had he started crying? Hell, when had he last cried? What was wrong with him?

She knelt beside him, wrapped her thin arms around him, pulled his head to her breast. “You cry as long as you need. And don’t be scared. I one time cried for three days.” Her voice was a husky song. “Didn’t even know I was doin’ it half the time. Cooked and cried, sang and cried, laughed and cried. But some little part of me was afraid I’d never stop.” He nodded his head despairingly, the buttons of her night shirt—his shirt—rasping against his ear. How did she know his one secret terror?

That if he ever started truly crying he’d never stop.

She gently tipped his chin up. “But you know what?” she whispered, pulling his hand up, pressing it to her own soft cheek. “I stopped, see? No water here. Not today leastwise.”

And then she bent low over him in a gesture that stole his breath, made his stomach jump, with its intimacy. He found himself cradled in her lap, wrapped in her arms, surrounded by her hair. And she gently licked the track of his tears. She was crooning, humming. “See, my pretty blue Heath. I cried and I stopped so I know you can too.”

It was too much. It was all too much. He moved around, twisted her beneath him, crawled up her torso, and they were suddenly a tangle of crooning and humming and tears. Muscled arms, taut bellies, and hair. He pressed her down into the grass, her nightshirt moving up with him. What the hell was wrong with him? Stop this, Heath.

“Don’t stop Heath,” she murmured. And her lips were nibbling his, worrying his, and then her tongue was searching his mouth. He responded fiercely, still hiccupping sobs deep in his frame. “Take me inside,” she whispered huskily. “My first sweet time in my first own home.”

He stood shakily, swept her into his arms, stumbled into the cabin. They never made the bed.

After, with one finger he stroked her flushed cheek, traced her plumped upper lip, found and toyed with a stray copper curl. Her eyes were closed, her voice a husky drone. “I do believe you jes’ made me see colors that can’t rightly exist.”

“Boy howdy, Little Girl” he croaked in slow reply.

“Boy howdy?” she barked a sudden laugh at the expression. “If you don’t beat all.”

And then he was laughing as hard as he’d been sobbing. “Maybe, some day, I’ll have to try that crying thing again,” he gasped out, moaning at the pain that the laughter—and this recent wonderful overexertion—had caused his ribs. He felt wrung out and full and bruised and as clean as fresh snow.

“Oh, it’s highly recommended by those in the know,” she winked. “Maybe you could cry some more round about lunchtime. And maybe after dinner when I get me my next break for the day.”

“Sure,” he nodded. “I’ll probably be sobbing to bust a gut come lights out tonight.”

“Speaking of, Heath Barkley, you best be getting back to that fancy house of yours. Your mother would tar me outright and make me eat the feathers if she sees you sneaking in from this here little cabin in the woods.”

His eyes twinkled as he lay back, arms crossed behind his head. “Well, then, I do believe I’ll stay here all day. Just to get the talk muscles really working around here again. Been a while since there’s been some really good Barkley gossip.”

She had been toying lightly with the blond curls on his chest, but she broke off to laughingly punch him in the side. “You get your narrow behind out of my house ‘fore I kick you out.”

He turned to her, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Alright, I can see how it is. Use a cowboy up and then send him packing.” He floundered for his clothes, puzzled at how one of his boots had ended up hooked over the water pump at her sink, shrugged as he tugged his pants on. But before he left he knelt down beside her where she still lay, cuddled in a quilt before the last dying embers of the fire. He buckled on his holster, then pulled his gun, handing it to her carefully. “I want you to keep this. I’ll feel better knowing you have it.”

“Aw, Heath,” she gave him that merry flash of ebony eyes, “and some men give you silly things like flowers and rings.” But she accepted it. At the cabin door he lingered, his head lowered almost bashfully, his hat circling in his fists.

“See you at lunch,” she laughed, waving him away and rolling over to catch an hour’s sleep before she had to start the breakfast breads.

Heath ambled slowly towards the house, grinning wildly to himself… a grin that hurt his face. Then he frowned. Guess he owed Jarrod an apology about the “not doing anything wrong with her” speech. And about the fact that he had indeed left his common sense back in a field with a dusky girl and her bees some days ago. What the hell had he just gotten himself into? Nothing he could easily get out of, that’s for sure. But not because of Jemma, he knew—if he never glanced her way again she’d probably shrug and go on about her business. It was because of himself. He realized that this wasn’t something that he wanted to get out of.

But hats off to Jarrod’s stark wisdom—the two worlds would never reconcile. He’d been a fool to pretend otherwise. So where, then, would he leave this freshly beating heart? In the fancy house in front of him, or some dream home in his future? Their future? ‘Cause it sure couldn’t be left at Jemma’s graciously loaned cabin on the expansive Barkley ranch.

He sat down heavily on the grass. Dropped his head into his hands and thought... dreamed lazy dreams that meant everything and nothing. Maybe he and Jemma could stay with Hannah while he sussed it out. Strawberry would be less painful with Jemma’s spark there, and it would be only for a short time until he scouted out his prospects. Of course, the two would have to be married if they expected to share a bed anywhere near Hannah’s roof. What were the laws about miscegenation in California, he wondered mildly. Didn’t rightly matter. He knew they could be married in Mexico. Even knew a good Padre there. And Jemma sure would make him some pretty babies… once he got some more meat on her bones. He had no doubt she couldn’t even conceive in her current scrawny state. Scrawny but oh-so-gorgeous in every part and parcel.

He chuckled. Cart before the horse, Heath. The girl might not want anything more to do with you. Beyond her next lunch break, that is. He chuckled at himself again, but this time because he was actually blushing over the sudden intimate memories that thought had evoked, memories that jolted his belly.

His soft laugh was interrupted by the cracked ice sound of a pistol cocking. And then his awareness snapped back from his wandering, sleep-deprived world of fancy. His heart raced as he slowly raised his head to take in the sight of the four men who had quietly approached him, all sporting arms. But he steeled his face to belie his fear.

Daniel walked up to Heath, nodded upwards for the man to stand. Heath did. Daniel delivered his own nose-crunching roundhouse punch. Heath staggered to one knee, felt first the killing dull pain, then the sudden gush of blood draining both over his lips and down his throat. He spat out a copper mouthful.

“So how was she Barkley? Taste as pretty as she looks?” Bertram Tyler asked with a wicked smile. Heath somehow knew in a glance that this was the boss of his welcoming party, the one he’d need to get ahead of. Heath wiped a sleeve across his face and stood, his chin up.

“Maybe we could get us a little nibble right now?” Hiram suggested hopefully, neck craned in the direction of the quiet cabin in the far distance

“Nah,” Wynn Tapps stated, although with an obvious touch of nerves. “Too close to day, too many folks getting’ ready to be up and around on this here spread.”

“Wisest thing you’ve ever said, Tapps,” Heath drawled dangerously. Then he cast them each a razor blue gaze. “‘Cause if you touch her, any one of you, I’ll kill you.”

‘Not if we kill you first,” Bertram winked, almost friendly-like. And Heath found himself being forced away from his land, into a copse of trees where horses were waiting. He was gunless, too far from anyone to yell for help. He would have to simply wait for a better opportunity to make his move. He didn’t intend to die. Not today. His future might be a muddle, but it was his. And, he grimly hoped, Jemma’s.

The men had stopped in a small field far away from the ranch, but still on Barkley property. They’d tethered the horses, passed around a flask, and left Heath to sit, guarded by each of their obvious weapons, but alone to contemplate his fate. In his mind he wondered if he’d be able to track a group here if he were searching for, say, Nick. He was certain that he could. The grass was still long and green, not yet scorched by the sun, and so it would have left bent trails. If one knew to look, that was….

Finally the silence was broken as Angel Boy hopped to his feet and began a gleeful pace. “So what are we plannin’ on doin’ with him, Bert? Killin’ him?”

Heath observed that the voice sounded like it was coming through a thick cloth, and that the once child-sweet face now sported two deeply blackened eyes. The once pretty nose was now so crooked that it appeared to be glancing sideways. Nice hit, Heath, he mused to himself silently, and then felt an almost hysterical laugh well up in his belly. He bit it back.

Bertram seemed to think about this a moment, then cleared his throat. “Well, the way I see it, he didn’t throw me off no hayloft in front of some laughing nigger gal. And the way I see it, Wynn there don’t have the guts to kill him. Not then, not yesterday, so probably not now…. Although I’m not gonna count ole Wynn out just yet.” But all the men knew he was mocking Tapps, even Heath.

Bertram turned full focus on Heath. “I know he wants a few more licks in at you, but for his own reasons.” He leaned in close to his captive, whispered almost as if speaking to a confidant, “you know what a man has to prove when he’s afraid of another man. That’s our Wynn.”

Then he sauntered around Heath, sizing him up. “The war is over, Heath Barkley, I will acknowledge that. Dragging that mess up only makes my mind remember stuff it sure ‘nuff don’t want to. But the truths behind the war, they ain’t never gonna be over, regardless of which side played the best game, or had the most money, or got them niggers to fight alongside them.

“My brothers and I, we lost our past, our home and family in that damned war. Now I been asking about you. Know your enemy and all that. Way I hear it, you never had a past to speak of, and you already paid for some of your war crimes in one of our fine southern holding facilities. So, man to man, I’m tempted to let that war lie. To call us even there.”

Heath shot him slitted eyes of ice, while his brain ticked off endless problems and options and possibilities. Bertram continued, “But I’m still needin’ to teach you a lesson, Boy. One time my Granddad, he caught another man with one of his favorite darkies. Now that ‘tweren’t truly the problem, seein’ as it was a white man and a cousin. The problem was this here white man had the… well… a sickness in his soul. He was actually sweet on that, on that…” he turned to Hiram, at a loss, “that what, Hiram?”

“Piece a’ fly-crawled meat,” Hiram offered dryly.

Bertram’s unbidden memories were suddenly flitting over corpses, nigger corpses, WHITE corpses, many of them fallen by his own hand. Strewn here and there. Fly-crawled meat. He looked for a moment as if he were going to be sick, raised a hand, swallowed convulsively and then spat long ropes of saliva into the grass. All of it because of them damn animals. All that death.

He sat down next to Heath, pulled in a ragged breath. “The war is over, Heath, but the niggers ain’t. Maybe we can avoid your lesson altogether. I just need to hear you say that your nigger ain’t worth that cabin you housin’ her in, unless it’s gonna be because she’s there to keep your ranch hands happy. I want you to recognize to me that it’s ok not to lynch some of them gals, but only ‘cause they provide a service that our white ladies shouldn’t be asked to provide. But as for all the rest, the bucks, the dark babies, the old ones, they should all be burnt or shot or strung up, and we should be throwing parties when we watch 'em jerk at the end of the line. Can I hear you acknowledge those truths, Heath? ‘Cause I just been working and working all these years to try to see how someone could think any different. It just ain’t possible.” He looked, honestly mystified. “You GOTTA know those truths. Just look me in the eye and speak ‘em and I’ll know you ain’t lyin’.”

Heath blinked twice. Then he spoke, his voice a scythe. “You don’t need a beating. You don’t even need a jail cell. You’re one of the few men I’ve ever met who plain needs a killing. So let’s just get to this.”

Bertram Tyler paused a long moment. His blue eyes, squarely meeting Heath’s, seemed genuinely sad. But when he spoke his voice was low. “Go take watch Tapps. Let us know if any riders are comin’.”

“I wanna…”

“I don’t give an order twice,” he hissed. Hiram flinched. And then Bertram roused himself, turned to Tapps. “’Sides, you could barely fight the man yesterday. You think them gal hands of yours could land some proper jabs today?”

Tapps reluctantly mounted up and headed off a ways towards the far off ranch. Heath slowed his breathing, sent himself far away in his brain. There would be no getting away from this one, but he had an odd ember of hope that it was a lesson meant to “correct,” not to kill. And with one less foe, maybe he could still turn it to his side. But he seriously doubted that. He was beginning to doubt that at all.

And then the stampede of a beating commenced, Daniel with his lightning, gleeful punches, Hiram slow and thick and methodical. Bertram merely sat back for a time, hat cocked, and watched with dead eyes.

After a ragged night of waiting for Heath to return, Jarrod roused the family shortly before dawn. He announced that they needed to meet early, before breakfast. With curious glances, but a willingness caused by the unusual sternness of Jarrod’s summoning tones, they settled into the parlor for coffee some time later. As Jarrod readied his thoughts Nick grumbled that, whatever this was about had sure better be important because he could have caught at least another half an hour.

Jarrod lowered his head, hands clenching the mantle above, then he raised up and took on his courtroom stance. “Heath and I had words last night about his… relationship with Jemma.” Victoria’s head reared and Nick’s face darkened. Audra merely looked dazed. “Strong words,” Jarrod continued. "He left and he hasn’t returned.”

Audra’s voice was tentative. “I saw him leave. I was up late reading; I heard the front door, went to my window, saw him walk into the fields.” Off all their looks she blushed. “He was headed in the direction of the back pasture. I thought he was just taking Jemma something we’d forgotten.”

“Audra,” Victoria’s snapped, “you may excuse yourself now.”

“But…” Audra’s flush deepened, but now it was creeping toward the mottle of anger.

“Now.” Victoria’s voice slammed a door.

But Audra’s eyes flashed sudden fire and she stood up, fists clenched. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I am not leaving! If Jemma is old enough to travel across our entire country without dying, I’m old enough to discuss this situation with my family in my safe little parlor without… wilting.”

Nick’s two second long piece of fuse was finally lit. “Now that just puts it all right into place doesn’t it?” he growled, winding up. “What a man does, excuse me ladies, with that kind of girl, is his business. But here? In front of the men? Under Mother’s nose? WHERE AUDRA IS GONNA LEARN ABOUT IT? AND NOT EVEN HAVING THE DECENCY TO MAKE IT BACK IN TIME FOR BREAKFAST?”

Through Nick’s rant, Jemma, who had been sent by Silas to call the family to meal, was a stone statue in the doorway. She felt her belly clench and freeze, all of her life of terrors roiling into one dark, looming maw. In its shadow her vision honed in, began to close and go black. In an idle corner of her mind she wondered if maybe she’d been struck blind by a new kind of fear—a fear bigger than all those strings of tiny fears she’d always had to feel for herself just to survive. “Heath!” she whispered.

Victoria suddenly gasped, catching sight of the girl. And as she watched, Jemma’s eyes rolled back into her head and she dropped in a boneless heap to the floor. They were all too stunned to catch her.

Victoria had called for Silas, sent him for the smelling salts and a bit of sweet orange juice. The houseman lingered, horrified, in the background as the family surrounded his grandniece, now prostrate on the fine red settee.

Finally she roused enough to answer Jarrod’s concerned questions. “Yeah, Heath, he did be with me for a time. I went out last night and found him ‘cause… I heard him.”

“Heard him?”

Her voice was a sorrowful whisper. “He was… cryin’.” She took in their stunned glances, and then felt herself stumbling forward with apologies and explanations. “Then I jes’ took care of him. He didn’t do nothing wrong. He was a gentleman.” She was ok with lying because all of her words were truths.

“Crying?” Nick growled, eyes never leaving the girl. “Just what the hell DID you say to him last night, Pappy?”

“Lots kinder things than you said about him just now.” Jarrod’s voice was low but equally menacing.

“Boys, enough,” Victoria ordered. “Tell me again, Jemma, what happened last night? Where’s Heath?”

The girl sat up, nervously bunching and unbunching the shifting material of her skirt. “I don’t know where he be. He left me before morning and I thought for sure he headed here. I know his heart, it was calm when he left me. And his eyes wasn’t fevered no more.”

“What time would this have been?” Jarrod asked.

“Well, I don’t own no watch and I wasn’t ‘xactly outside lookin’ for the moon.” Her eyes flashed a quick spark. Audra was glad that the girl was getting some of her spunk back. She reached for Jemma’s hand, gave it an encouraging squeeze.

Jemma’s face went ashen again. “But, lord, Mister Jarrod, he didn’t even have his gun. He give it to me. In case I had any more trouble with folks like that Tapps.”

“Tapps,” Nick hissed, suddenly on full alert.

“That is a distinct possibility,” Jarrod acknowledged, turning a dark glance to Nick. “Particularly after his run in yesterday…”

“Run in?” Nick hollered an interjection.

“It’s a long story. He was jumped in town by Tapps and three other men yesterday morning.”

“Jumped? Is that why the boy was hiding out all blamed day?”

“They beat him. Because of me,” Jemma whispered. Silas wrung his hands, his face a mask of sorrow.

Victoria cocked her head, then spoke in steadily measured words because Jemma, the girl in question, was now part of what would have been a private family conversation. “I’ve been thinking about this a great deal lately. It’s also possible that he left because this whole… situation… has caused him to relive certain memories. To feel certain… pains.”

Jarrod caught his Mother’s eyes, pressed her with a gaze that marked his agreement. “Our discussion last night definitely also supports that possibility.”

Victoria stood, her small frame a sudden fortress. “Audra, stay with Jemma. Get some juice into her, a cool cloth for her head. When she’s feeling better the two of you can finish readying breakfast. We’ll need it when we all return.”

“’We,’ Mother?” Nick asked with a forbidding frown.

“I don’t think—and I pray I’m right—that Tapps is the kind of man with the sort of bravery or forethought to steal Heath away from this ranch at some random hour in the middle of the night. So I must think that Heath left us because he feels… let down or wounded in some way… and I want to be there when you find him. I need to be there because I feel that I may have been some of the cause for his current state.”

“I hardly think…” Jarrod tried.

Victoria stopped him. Her eyes were pleading, shimmering with the barest of tears. “I’ve felt the need to discuss… things with him as well, Jarrod. And I haven’t. Because of fear. I haven’t let him know of my love for him because of my fear. Maybe if I had…”

Nick gave his mother a quieting hug, pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Let’s just find that boy and get him back. Then we can all eat breakfast or talk or yell, or do whatever the hell it is we need to do to get things back to normal around here. I’ll get some men.”

Silas hurried after Victoria, stopping her before she got to the door. He raised himself up to his full stature, presented his case. “Mrs. Barkley, I’se comin’ too. I can talk to that boy, even if you can’t. He be a stubborn boy, sometimes a foolhardy boy,” Silas took a fond, long look back at Jemma, who sat clasping Audra’s proffered hand, “but Mister Heath and I, we can always talk anythin' through.”

Heath was in a broken heap on the ground. He was awake, feeling the pain finally come in as the last of the adrenaline bled out. It was a giant, menacing fist that squeezed and squeezed until he felt things crunch and settle into places where they didn’t belong. He tried to leave his body for a time, but his ears insisted on staying.

“I got a rope. Can we string him up?” Daniel asked. But he seemed deflated now, finally purged of all his restless energy. Still, Heath felt his bile rise, swallowed desperately against it. A rope? His terror was again a living, crawling thing.

Bertram looked up from where he was pouring a canteen over his bloodied knuckles. “He ain’t touchin’ that gal again. Hell, he’s gonna think all kind a’ ways before he even kitchens with that nigger man.” Heath’s eyes flitted behind his swelling lids, but his heart terror settled back to the simple dull of constant, clever fear.

Tapps had been relieved of his patrol duty by Hiram. He watched Heath’s shattered form with a satisfied grin. “This was some fun. But if we ain’t gonna kill him, you must not think this IS like the real war, Bert. I thought you did.”

Nothin’ is like the real war,” Bertram replied, and then turned a dead gaze off into the distance.

Heath moaned once, heaved a jagged deep breath into a crackling chest that had been only filling itself with the tiniest pants, and then ground a leg into the blowing grass. He needed to get away from the pain in his back… great teeth biting and gnawing in the muscles there. Maybe his stomach would be better for the ground. But he couldn’t muster the reserves to turn over. He couldn’t even remember how muscles did that. Oh god, if he could just vomit and die for a time everything would be okay.

Daniel and Tapps watched him. Bertram, however, was only roused from his dark musings at the sound of Hiram galloping in quickly. He stood, stretched, and then the two oldest Tylers met privately apart from the small group in the grass.

“They’s some riders comin’ sorta close,” Hiram whispered to his brother. “The family, I reckon. Looks like most of them; definitely the men-folk, like you figured. We can take the house easy.”

Bertram nodded and, as usual, took control. “Come on Daniel, we still got work to do. Tapps, we gonna go in and poke around that big house if we can, see what we can get our hands on. We’ll be back in a bit with some goodies—and maybe that gal.” Heath’s living ears heard that, and his will stood up, shook itself of, and began begging his body to find little pockets of cooperation. He needed to hold on long enough to protect Jemma.

“I can’t come?” Tapps didn’t know whether to be hurt or relieved.

“We need you to keep an eye on him. He may have to be our lead outta here for a time, I ‘spect.”

The Tylers mounted up in a unified swing, headed at a gallop across the fields and towards the Barkley mansion. But not directly, no. They had no intentions of being caught by the approaching family as it slowly tracked its missing son. Tapps would take the fall for that one, and would, in fact send the law in the wrong directions after them. Bertram's "rendezvous plans" had seen to that. They’d be in and out and gone before the family—or that nigger gal—knew what hit them.

Audra and Jemma were seated restlessly at the breakfast table. They’d arranged and rearranged the settings several times, Jemma mechanically showing Audra a flashy arrangement they’d once used for one of the grand parties at Rosewood. The girls had heated and reheated platters of eggs, toast, bacon, potatoes, and ham. Now they waited.

“This food be for the hogs now,” Jemma sighed, but her mind was far beyond this room, searching for Heath. “We’se just gonna have to fix it all again.”

“Jemma,” Audra started slowly, her gaze low. “Can you tell me about you… and Heath? What did Jarrod mean when he said that they’d talked about your ‘relationship’?”

“What’d you say if I told you we was the very best of friends?” Jemma’s tone was light hearted, but her eyes were distant.

Audra dimpled. “I’d say that was wonderful. Heath makes friends easily, and has lots of them, but not many truly deep relationships. I’m always encouraging him to find more.”

Jemma looked up slowly, “And what’d you say if I told you we was such good friends that we was gettin’ married and was gonna settle down right here in this big ole house and raise bunches and bunches of little blond, brown grandbabies.”

Audra was utterly thrown. “Well… I’d… I guess…”

“Close that lip, Miss Audra, or you gonna catch a fly. That’s what you get for asking about things like me that shouldn’t be spoke of in polite company.”

“You stunned me is all,” Audra glared, but she was reeling. The girl was lying. Heath and she could never live here if they married. And then she stunned herself further with the realization of the way her thoughts had just leapt around. For some reason, she saw with a start, she had no problem with the image of Heath picking Jemma as a mate… which should have astounded her beyond words. In fact, they’d be... good for each other. But they couldn’t live here, that would be too… what? awkward? dangerous? scandalous?

Her whirling thoughts were startled by the sound of boots making a slow tread across the kitchen floor. She stood and moved casually forward to find out who it was, but Jemma grabbed her in a grip so tight it pained. Wordlessly, Jemma shook a frantic caution at Audra and reached a very quiet hand over the dishes on the table to pick up the heavy crystal sugar bowl which she gripped, lid and all, in one quivering fist. She then reached into the sudden treacherous landscape of plates and goblets and platters and silver, to retrieve for Audra the knife used to cut the breakfast meat. Audra and Jemma both held their breath until it was retrieved without causing the tiniest clatter. Audra accepted it, tucking it almost up her sleeve.

Then Audra finally became aware of the meaning behind the strange, silent ritual that had just occurred before her. She felt raw fear jolt down her back in a rush. Somehow, those odd sounding boots moving ever closer belonged to no one who should have been in the Barkley kitchen just then. And Jemma had known. Audra reached out her quaking free hand and the two girls shared a firm grasp, stepping, footpad by silent footpad, back towards the entrance that led from the dining room into the foyer… away from whatever strangers seemed to be making steady progress their way.

But they hadn’t traversed the silent distance needed by the time the three men seemingly burst into the dining room. For once Audra regretted that the Barkleys were known for their spacious dining hall.

“Well I’ll be,” Hiram grinned. “Looky what we found.”

The girls’ hands delivered an understood signal—run on our next squeeze, fleet and far and together—but the transmitted plan was interrupted by Hiram’s pulled pistol.

“You can both have the nigger,” Daniel chortled. “Look at that pretty blonde one. My god. I never seen no gal like that.”

Jemma squeezed a new message to the hand trembling in her own, found a voice that belonged to some other part of herself. Some bold and sassy, living part. She shifted her form to a mixture, part shuffling slave, part naïve and easy prey. She stepped slightly in front of Audra. “Oh, lordy no. Please leave my Missus here be. Her family, they do anything you want to keep her safe. They pay you anything. She jes’ an angel to them, a pure angel…. I do anything you want.” Even Bertram was sucked in by the performance.

Now Jemma’s terror was truly working for her, closing her mind into a refined point like the devil’s own needle. And supporting this working terror was a wild, galloping glee. If these men were here they weren’t with Heath! And if she could just survive this, and help Audra to survive, she could rest eyes on him even one more time. Even if each of these men took her, all she’d ever need in her life would be to lay eyes on her pretty blue Heath just one more time.

Her glance flashed across the men. The boy from yesterday was tough, she remembered that, but little. The other two, well, one was big and the other just plain dead in the eyes. She’d go for the big one, the only one holding a gun; that would be their best chance for now.

She studied Hiram for a long moment, pretending her gaze at him was one of abject desperation. The kind of gaze that repeated, “I’ll do anything for you, just leave my Missus alive.” Yes, his gaze was now holding hers, thinking of the dark delights to be had. Her hand memorized the placement of his forehead, just between those thick-browed eyes.

And with stunning speed and force she let hurl the heavy sugar bowl.

Jemma didn’t look to see the result as she turned and shoved Audra bodily from the room. The wet, meat slapping crack was good enough for her.

She and Audra were scrambling through the foyer and towards the front door, sucking in sob-frantic breaths, certain they would catch shredding bullets in the back as they fumbled together with the eternally slipping and somehow giant doorknob. And then they were stumbling into the innocent morning.

Once outside, Jemma felt blinded by the sun, her knees were turning to water. But Audra was the brave one now; she kept firm hold of Jemma’s slick hand and whispered “This way!” The two set off in a low running crouch across the front of the house and towards the gardens.

The Barkleys and the smattering of men that Nick had mustered that weren’t already out on work crews moved steadily forward. The men protectively circled the buggy that held Victoria and Silas, keeping it back while Nick and Jarrod scouted forward for tracks.

“Still think we shouldn’t send Mother home?” Nick asked quietly, eyes flitting steadily at the ground beneath them.

He and Jarrod had long ago concluded that Heath had not simply left in a steam. Charger was in his stall and, while tracing a logical path from the house towards Jemma’s cabin, Nick had found a browned bit of blood in the grass. Blood that led, after a bit more scouting, to a section of trees that had recently housed several horses. He had wanted to send his mother home then, but Jarrod had naysayed it. “She feels bad enough about all of this as it is. Besides,” and Jarrod’s blue eyes were miserable with fear, “we’ll no doubt need her skills and Silas’—and that buggy—when we do find him.”

“This is just taking too damned long,” Nick now growled, but it was an anger born of desperation.

“But not because of that group back there, Nick,” Jarrod soothed. “Tracking is long work, you know that. We’ll find the boy.” Jarrod’s voice had dropped. “We have to.”

Nick pulled the reins tight to turn his horse around once and then twice. His careful eyes finally found the trail again. He looked up with a grin, then startled at the sadness that had settled on Jarrod’s countenance. “We will, Pappy. I promise you we will.”

Bertram was rolling Hiram’s lids up, checking to see if there was anything left in those eyes at all, while Daniel brought him a requested stack of linens to stop the profuse bleeding. “He’ll live. He better. I gotta get him to his mount. Track them but don’t go far. Just don’t let them gals get to no horses.

“And I don’t want you hurtin’ that white one if you can help it, Daniel. You was raised better than that, you hear? You can kill the nigger, but only if you have to.” He gave Daniel an empty gaze as he grunted to haul the deadweight of his unconscious brother to his shoulder. “‘Cause I’m gonna slice little bits off her one at a time once we’re all through with her.”

“We oughta get us to a horse,” Jemma whispered from their tiny, crouched-down perch amongst Victoria’s bountiful roses. Bush upon bush upon bush, it seemed to Jemma in some odd corner of her brain. What a sweet colored place to die.

“That’s the first place they’ll look,” Audra hissed back. “I know this ranch, and if I’m careful we can keep hidden for a long while. When I was little, I used to have to hide from my BROTHERS.” She had made that last sound as if it were like hiding from something far more terrifying than the wild men trying to actually hunt them and kill them—or worse—just now. The irony of it and the raw thumping fear made the two girls giddy and they bit back brays of stupid laughter.

Sure enough, the front door slid open, and the fair-haired young one, after a quick glance around to re-determine that no men were about, narrowed his nervously grinning gaze and set out quietly for the barn.

“Nick must have taken all the hands with him. Just in case Heath HAD run into trouble.”

Jemma blew out a raggedy breath, lifting stray bits of coppery hair that had fallen in her face. “That Nick, he probably a bright enough fella, but never at the right times as far as I can see.”

“Come on,” Audra whispered, taking Jemma’s hand again. The two girls were fairly crawling until they reached the gazebo, where they were allowed to raise up just a bit and still keep cover.

Then the niggling thing occurred to Jemma, the thing that had been whispering at the back of her terror. “Miss Audra, the gun! Can you creep me to my cabin? I got Heath’s gun there!”

Audra bit her lip and craned her head. It was simply pasture between the girls and the cabin. Seeming oceans of it. Sure, there were lots better places to hide around here. But, she realized darkly, those were places for a giggling little girl who was waiting for gallant brothers who would find her and scold her, but then tickle her and tuck her into their arms. Her body was much bigger now, and curved in all the wrong places for hiding. It was a body that those men wanted to rip open to the glaring sunshine and then…. The thought made her blink back tears—not for herself, not even really for Jemma, who must know so much more about such sharp, bloody realities than she could even imagine. Her blinking tears were for that giggly, hiding little girl.

“They’ll be no cover on the way there. We can only run. But we have to make it.”

When Daniel didn’t reappear from the barn, Audra ticked off their options once more, her stomach a clenched fist from the sickening weight of the decision. But the cabin indeed seemed the only way. The girls set out at a lowered sprint, all the while hearing racing troops of leering demons at their heels. Each craned her neck constantly; both blinked away tears encouraged by the whipping of the wind against their faces. And the further they got the taller they got, their feet now nimble through the grasses.

Then Jemma saw Daniel coming from the barn. She almost stumbled in the watching—but for Audra’s frantic grip—as the boy scanned the horizon, then shaded his eyes as he peered in their direction. And then he too was running, straight after them, pumping furious arms. And devouring the space between them with a seemingly effortless lope.

“Dear god,” Jemma gasped as the pain stitched in her side, “dear sweet god.”

Nick and Jarrod, so steadily watching the tracks on the ground, had almost stumbled over the two men in the open field some distance away. At the sight they halted and, although the wagon stayed back with a few assigned men to guard it, the rest of the men surged protectively forward behind their bosses.

“You Barkleys, you don’t come no closer!” Tapps, voice was raw with terror, and he couldn’t decide whether to keep his gun trained on Heath, who lay sprawled and bloody in the grass, or on the men before him. So many men. He felt like a lone soldier facing whole fields of troops.

Nick and Jarrod worked like the team that they were. “Tapps,” Jarrod called softly, “we know this isn’t all your doing…”

As Tapps paused, gun pointed vaguely now at Jarrod, Nick soundlessly whipped his own out and fired, once, twice, three times. Wynn Tapps was dead before he hit ground; his booted feet twitched once and then all was still.

Then Nick swung a lightning leg over his horse, bolted to Heath and dropped to his knees beside him, eyes blazing with sorrow. “I’m here, Little Brother,” Nick crooned, running calming hands down Heath’s twitching arms, then stroking his forehead… the only unbruised place it seemed. Heath didn’t speak, his eyes didn’t open, but he finally lifted a wavering hand, clutched tightly at Nick’s shirt, and held on. “That’s it, boy. You come on back when you feel like it. Or just rest. We gotcha now.”

After sending a man on a race into town for the sheriff and Doc Merar, Jarrod knelt on the other side of Heath, took in the full measure of his little brother. He was a dying man undead. His clothes were torn and stained: blood, grass, spit, dirt. His face was hardly recognizable, swelling and broken. And even though afraid, Jarrod gently opened the pale blue shirt, ran fingers down Heath’s chest. It was ablaze, almost burning his hands at the touch—as was his back. All the while Jarrod worked, Nick crooned softly to Heath, holding firmly onto the hand that still clutched his shirt.

As Jarrod moved back to Heath’s chest, his forceful fingers now noted that ribs shifted where they shouldn’t. But the boy’s belly wasn’t swelling; he wasn’t leaking blood from ears, nor gushing it from his mouth. Maybe his insides were okay. Please, god, he has to be okay, Jarrod thought. Our last conversation can’t be what it was. If you cannot fix this whole catastrophe, please please fix him.

Victoria’s approach broke his reverie as she knelt next to them, her hastily thrown together “just in case” medical supplies in hand and Silas bringing up the rear. For a moment she didn’t know where to begin. “Oh, Heath…”

He recognized the voice, frowned carefully, found his tongue. “Mother,” he rasped, “mm sorry dragged ya out here…” but that turned into a coughing and a wet hacking. Nick and Jarrod worked in flawless tandem to help him gently turn just as his stomach came up with a violence that made Heath cry out, then they laid him just as gently down again.

“Hush, Boy,” Nick whispered, “we’re gonna get you home.”

“Home,” Heath mumbled through a thick mouth. Then his swollen eyes slit open. Nick could see a sudden, remembered terror there. “Jemm’….”

“She’s fine, Boy. Restin’ at home. We’ll talk all about her once we get you settled in your own fluffy bed.”

“The… others…. Home!” His bruised gaze pleaded with Nick. “Went… for Jemma,” he rasped. Then clutching Nick’s shirt once more, he relaxed, drifting on the knowledge that his big brother would somehow understand him, even in this muddle. Now he could finally rest, blissfully insentient and almost boneless on the grass between them all.

Nick suddenly grabbed Jarrod, dragged him up, steered him bodily to his horse, summoned a few men with a snapping glance. Curious, but not about to cross this man they knew so well, they all mounted up. “Jarrod, those other men didn’t just hightail it out of here. And Jemma’s with Audra.”

Jarrod almost heard an audible click. “Let’s ride,” he commanded with eyes as dangerous as Nick had ever seen.

Victoria watched them go, for just a moment at a loss as to what to do, how to do it, who to fear for. Then she realized she had help; she needn’t face this alone. “Silas, I need you,” Victoria asked softly. The houseman and his mistress joined together over the broken and bleeding body of their son.

Audra couldn’t believe how fleet the boy was. But then he wasn’t encumbered by terror that made all your limbs feel like they were moving in cold molasses. And each of his taunts and whoops of glee thickened the molasses around Audra’s aching legs, making it harder and harder to reach the impossible cabin.

Suddenly the two girls were slammed bodily from behind. Jemma landed on her chest with a whump, gasped soundlessly and was still. Where did the air go? Her body was a snake-bit rabbit, trying to hop, trying to breathe, and managing nothing but the raw instinctive terror of impending death. Jemma knew she would never find her air again.

Audra had kept her wind, but she had felt something snap in her left wrist as her hand folded sharply beneath her. For a millisecond her black pupils dialed into dots of nothing; she tried to squirm away from the pain, and in so doing found herself being flipped over by their white-haired foe. He was almost a pretty young man, Audra mused oddly, as her bile was rising in her throat.

“He said I shouldn’t hurt you,” the boy was mumbling to himself as he ripped at Audra’s blouse. He needed to see what was under there. Just see. He needed to. “He didn’t say I couldn’t get a gander at something pretty as you, though.”

Suddenly the pain made things clear. Audra remembered the knife, still slid most of the way up her right sleeve, her good right sleeve. In an instant she worked it out and, sobbing, shoved it upwards, hoping for something soft and yielding but glancing it off a narrow hip bone. The effort, which seemed to take the energy needed to sprint up a mountain, was worth it. The boy was off her and howling curses, clutching both hands over the blood that poured from oh-so near his groin.

Then Jemma finally sucked in her first desperate, living breath.

With a growl the boy pounced on Audra again. He was going to gore this one, and make her beg, and maybe leave her alive—because Bertram would want that. But she’d never remember another man besides him. Never.

In some vague part of her brain, Audra heard a scream that sounded like that of a wounded wildcat. She remembered hearing it before and her mind drifted even as her body found old reserves and fought. She’d heard it in a gazebo she thought… yes, she was with poor dead Evan Miles…. He’d been groping her, forcing whiskeyed kisses into her mouth, and some terrified girl had been screaming….

Then Daniel heard a sound of his own. It was to be the last thing in his ever. A meaty, whacking crack that told him there would be no pain, but that he no longer belonged to the back of his head. All of this happened to his ears in the time it took him to die.

There was a long beat, three bodies in the grass. Jemma, stunned, dropped the large rock she’d clawed around for and found. Audra was trying to one-handed push the dead and bleeding thing off of her, listening again to that seemingly distant wildcat screaming. Jemma finally broke her reverie and moved in to help.

Then Jemma’s head reared as she heard the approach of a horse. She was too wise to be hopeful. Indeed, galloping towards them in the distance was the dead-eyed man. “Audra!” she commanded, her own voice a squeak. “Get up, now, we almost there.”

As the two girls helped each other stumble towards their tiny fortress in the distance, Bertram closed and pulled up jerking reins at the sight of Daniel. His baby brother, lying still in the grass, a painting of twitched limbs and skull and blood. His other brother behind him, draped across a horse at that damned fancy house. That fancy house that now begged for a good burning.

He dismounted and felt the first bit of fear that he’d experienced in as long as he could remember. Bertram prided himself on being dead inside. Dead men don’t remember things, or feel them when they do. He turned his brother over, knowing what he would find. Flat blue eyes stared back at him, once lively with imaginings, now grayed and empty and gone. His baby Daniel was gone.

In that moment Bertram Tyler met the death that had resided inside himself to keep him alive for so long. He glared at it, then spat at its feet. He moved further inward to become the Father of Death. The Bringer. And, oh, it would be brung.

The girls reached the cabin. On the final leg of their journey they’d heard a single howl of ceaseless agony and, after, a horse racing behind them—somehow goaded into a speed, their ears seemed to say, that horses should never find. They were too terrified for any more stray glances behind; neither wanted to see what they both knew was coming. Howling Death on his ripping horse. Once inside they slammed the door and Jemma’s quaking hands slipped once, then twice as she finally worked the pretty lock.

In that moment of pause, Audra moaned tears at the grinding pain in her wrist. But she put that away, searching the small room frantically for a place to make their stand as Jemma floundered for Heath’s gun. The glaring window was on one side of the room, the door on the opposite. Only the fireplace stood in between.

In the impossible physics wrought by a sudden impossible knowledge of the world, the two girls, as one, were able to squeeze their thin forms into the cold confines of the fireplace. There was nowhere to go from there, but there was nowhere to go now anyways.

As the massacre of the door began, Audra felt the panic taking over again. She was learning that terror was an ocean, and that it had waves that crashed forwards and then back. “Why are they doing this to us?” she sobbed.

“They doin’ it to me, Audra. They been doin’ it to me all my livin’ life. And I’m rightly sorry that those hatin’ fools can’t no longer see the difference between us two.”

Bertram bodily jolted the door again, the wood at the frame now splintering. Jemma sucked in through her nostrils, and this time used her lifelong mantra as a source of power. She was actually mumbling, in a rage, “Niggers get hung, niggers get hung, niggers get hung….” Audra somehow didn’t notice, watching instead, fascinated, as Jemma steadied her grip, lined up her sights, and then squeezed a shot dead body center of the door.

When the thunder sound cleared, the girls paused, listening with even their skin.

Then there was a dark chuckle from the other side. “Good one, gals. Think you even grazed me.”

Jemma suddenly became the hurricane that Nick had predicted she could be. She was out of the fireplace, boldly and foolishly pacing the length of her room. Her eyes saw everything and her ears heard. Then her mouth joined. “You listen up! If you ever been wise about anything, you listen up! I been raped, and I been abused, and I been just plain treated poorly. And by people far mangier than you. And you know what? I’m right tired. So I’ll kill the first one of you that steps foot in my house. The first one. Nobody can’t hang me anymore than I already been hung.”

There was one more bodily bashing at the door, then it slammed and splintered open. Jemma took stance, narrowed her eyes into cat gashes, and aimed. Before she could squeeze the trigger, Bertram Tyler began an odd dance to the accompanying tune of nearby pistol shots. She held her stance, only curious, as the man dropped. She found herself simply mad that he was pooling blood all over her floor.

Nick and Jarrod rushed into the room, took in the horrific sight of Jemma clutching Heath’s gun, looking for all the world like a hungry gunslinger, and Audra in a state of near undress, soot streaked and cradling one clearly swollen wrist.

“Audra, Honey, are you alright?” Jarrod rushed forward.

“Oh, Jarrod,” Audra was out of the confine of bricks in a wink, threw herself into the home of his arms, finally letting the tears flow fully. But these were sugared tears of most blessed and wearied relief, not those of raw, throbbing terror.

Nick moved in behind the pair, wrapped his own arms around Audra and pressed a long, desperate cheek to her sweet blonde head. His face, squeezed shut and scared and angry, showed Jemma a glimpse of something she hadn’t ever known as an innocent girl. Loving men loving.

Hell, she nearly snorted, was she ever an innocent girl? And how could her mind race around all these thoughts when she found herself fighting against her liquid knees that wanted to collapse for forever? When she found the lifting of Heath’s pistol suddenly an impossible thing for her jellied arms?

She was worrying about how to set it gently down, how to release her bloodless fingers from its grip, when Nick stepped forward to help. His big hands were gentle as he unfolded each delicate finger from the weapon, reached over to lay it on the mantel. And then, to Jemma’s surprise, he held out his strong arms to her. She only started sobbing when she was collapsed against his warm, wide chest.

“It’s gonna be ok,” his voice was a steady thrum over the chirps and murmurs of the ignorant morning that drifted in through the door. The deep voice rose above the muffled, purging sobs of the girls… and neither he nor Jarrod cared whose ears his crooning reached. “You’ll see, Little Gal. It’s gonna be okay.”

The doctor had treated Heath for some hours, finally leaving with the dawn. Yes, he was as busted up as a man could be and still live, but no, he didn’t seem to have that deep killing kind of injury that would need surgeries or true deathwatches. Yes, he would need much nourishment and medicine and patience and love. No, he didn’t seem to be responding to any of those things just now. But with time….

Now the family all sat beside his bed in silent shifts, and ticking minutes may have turned to days for all they knew.

Heath heard them all and knew them all, rode in and out on long, cold waves of pain. But he could not find it to speak. Not until he saw her.

He’s too sick to talk about it, Jarrod thought. But he was thankful for the reprieve. By the time Heath was well he’d have calculated a way out of this morass. He sure couldn’t see it now, but he would by then.

What the hell is going on in that boy, Nick thought. It don’t much matter, ‘cause I love him, but I sure as hell ain’t spending the next nine months tryin’ to get him to talk about what’s buried in that thick heart of his. Nick sighed, knowing he was lying. He’d tend Heath, he’d help him stand, he’d help him get to walking again, and in his own Nick way he’d get the boy to tell him all his one word secrets. Then they’d beat up the bad guys together and Nick’s little brother would be fine.

Once her broken wrist was casted, Audra had refused to be sedated after her “ordeal,” chose instead to alternate her time between Heath and Jemma. No one could tell what was in her mind as she gazed endlessly at Heath; no one knew what she murmured about for so many long hours with Jemma. But often, as she tended her brother, tears would slide unbidden down her cheeks.

They all noticed, but they all found it healthy. Audra needed to vent the horrific things she had experienced, and tears were one way of cleansing.

Jemma was laid up for almost a day, and then was back working in Silas’ neat kitchen. She reverently prepared each tray that was sent up to Heath, but was informed that she couldn’t see him because it might “set him back.” She had no rights to force the issue.

On the third day Victoria sat alone in the parlor, pretending to busy herself with needlework. Instead, she was busying herself with that awful twisting inside. She wanted so desperately to embrace this girl into her home, into her world. But she wanted more aggressively to push her away—which is precisely and clearly what she had been doing. For the first time in a long time she felt like a weak and a fragile woman. She had always been imperfect. Had she always been so weak? Jemma and Heath could be… happiness, snapped off parts of each other. But she loved Heath too much to let the girl near him. Because she loved Heath too much to see him suffer, even if the suffering brought joy as well. That is what she told herself on that day, and as far as a human can search her soul and mind, that was Truth.

Victoria turned her head as she heard the girl approach, took in Jemma’s figure at the entrance of the parlor. Odd, she still seemed, in her soft satin dress, her shining new shoes. And behind her were two carpetbags, one old and one new.

“That new carpetbag be from Silas. Will you take care of him, Mrs. Barkley? He sad to see me go.”

Victoria knew that the word “sad” would come nowhere close to the sizzling brand that must have just been pressed into Silas’s fragile heart. But she moved forward to the issue at hand. “If you’re leaving, Jemma, I feel it’s in some ways my fault. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

The girl merely shrugged. “It ain’t a body’s right to be forgivin’ theyself, far as I can tell. That’s up to the folks that been wronged. All a body can do is jes’ learn and move forward. ‘Sides, youse jes’ one person in a mighty big world.”

Then Jemma stepped closer to her, peered intently into her eyes for a beat. As Victoria gazed back she was startled by the coal beauty there.

“You know, Mrs. Barkley, I never had a man love me before. Not bright love. That’s a good, strong man you holdin’ in that room up there.” Victoria startled as she let her truest fears wash over her; she quivered once, then stilled.

Jemma’s eyes darkened, but only for a second. “Don’t you worry none. I also know it’s the kind of love that’ll leave a body dead, or worse. So that’s why I’m gonna move on. Not ‘cause of you, but ‘cause of him up there. I just wanted you to know. Who he be.”

“Sit down Jemma.” Victoria meant to be commanding but her voice sounded like a plea in her ears. She nervously patted the seat beside her, was distantly aware of the rush of dust motes that rose and danced in the hazy afternoon warmth. The girl sat, her posture almost regal.

“Do you love him?”

“What you think?” Jemma flashed that gaze she’d playfully given Nick so often… if you ain’t twenty kinds of fool, it said.

There was a long pause then Jemma finally softened, her voice a halting deep whisper. “But I don’t want to be leavin’ him high and dry. He’s had too much of that, I ‘spect.” She was silent for a minute then, as Victoria watched, the girl seemed to crumble, her eyes pooling with bright tears, her glances frantic and aiming everywhere. Then she looked at Victoria, clutched the older woman’s hands, pleaded with her dark, welling eyes: “Where do you ‘spect I could go so’s he could find me if he needed? Tell me you know where I could go?”

And then the girl was suddenly sobbing, folded in half, arms wrapped around her belly, great heaving sobs puddling into the lap of her new peach dress. “I don’t know where to go so’s he can find me,” she quavered.

Victoria moved in, tried a kind hand on the shoulder, and then had to swallow what was left of her pride—of her shame—and wrap the girl in gentle arms. She held the quaking child as she sobbed and trembled.

“I be afraid,” Jemma whispered through the jolting tears. “I hardly never was really afraid in my heart, all those walking times. I was afraid in my body, but never in my heart. But now I be so afraid, Mrs. Barkley, to leave that only thing I ever found.”

Victoria rocked her as the girl whispered the words that would burn forever into her mother’s heart. “He was my best and only thing.”

The parlor was quiet, but for the crooning of the mother, the strangled sobs of the girl, and the impassive ticking of the clock.

He slowly came into awareness again, but quickly wished he hadn’t. He heard the light, musical sound of a rag being wrung out in the bowl beside his bed. Waited for its blessed coolness on his throbbing forehead. Anything to focus away from the burning still in his belly, the teeth grinding throb in his ribs, the sharp catches there with each breath. And moving any part of his face pulled something that should definitely stay… unpulled. He slid his eyes to the side as the cloth was gently laid upon his head.

His heart jolted, causing him a new wonderful pain. “Jemm’?” he mouthed.

She started in talking as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation. “You know what, Heath Barkley. I love you. I ain’t never knowed that feeling before. I think that’s what I walked two years to find. Funny how I thought I would find what love meant with kin—‘cause as far as I was concerned, that story about gals lovin’ men was horse manure.” She gently turned the rag, rubbed its fresh surface with a slow hand so its coolness kissed all of his forehead.

“And here it is, even bigger and better, with you. It’s warm like bread jes’ broke open. It makes my stomach leap like grasshoppers whenever I even see you. I feel all… liquid but thirsty both. Sometimes I jes’ stop what I be doin’ and I close my eyes and I can feel your smell. It’s smoky and your mouf is like sugar and butter and sin.”

She leaned in with a whisper, as if she were about to tell him the world’s most marvelous secret. “One time I got to see fireworks, burstin’ in the sky. Oh, they was red and blue and green, sometimes gold.” She traced a gentle finger down the line of his jaw. “Like fire flowers. My breath was stole. For just that little time I wanted to reach into the sky and touch ‘em, even if they would burn my fingers. But I want to reach in and touch you forever. You, your colors, you could burn me right to death and I be glad.” The words were wonderful, but the voice held the sadness of the ancients.

“So stay,” he whispered, his own voice a rasp as his heart thudded his sudden raw fear. “Or we’ll both go.”

“Nah, my sweet blue Heath.” She wrung the rag out again, placed it fresh on his forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing it’s cold to freeze his heart out. “We’ll be together,” she continued, “but not now. You found your place; I guess I still be lookin’ for mine.”

And then she turned into a scared child, dropped her face into her hands and whispered through her fingers. “I’se lying ‘bout that part. This could be my place ‘cause you the only thing that could ever be my place. But if I stay you always be in danger. You always be protecting me. I would die if you died. And I just started living. You made me live. I can feel the breath in my lungs and it don’t make me sad to be breathin’ it.”

His eyes squeezed shut, he reached out a desperate hand for her. She clutched it, dropped over him, wrapped him in her hair, pressed her lips, so gently, to his bruised mouth. He tasted her, but his muzzy mind wouldn’t let him label it so that he could keep the taste forever.

She murmured through their kiss. “I be so confused, my Heath. If I stay I be more alive than I ever been, but we would surely both die. And if I leave we both be alive but dead too.”

She reared up, looked him in the eyes. He felt her gaze, opened his again in muddied slits. He tried to capture the look of her dark flash of determination, press it into his mind. “We only got one chance. I thought all those folks who be saying ‘praise be’ this, and ‘praise be’ that… well, I always thought they had to be right foolish. But maybe there is a god, and maybe he do be good. If he could make you he must be. And how can a good god not let us love each other again and again and again? In this life and another and on into always. ‘Cause if I love you forever, that must mean forever, so that must mean always, right?”

“Don’t leave me,” he rasped, his Adam’s apple bobbing ferociously to swallow against the rising flood of his heart. Now he could feel her hot tears dropping onto his skin, so many tears, like the tiniest scalding river. Her voice was husky. Husky like that sacred night a thousand years ago. In Jemma’s borrowed cabin on the expansive Barkley ranch.

“I ain’t really leaving you. Mrs. Barkley’s got me some places to go. I promise I’ll be where you can find me. You can loan me paper and I’ll send it back as letters. I belong to you for always, this here heart of mine.”

He nodded, afraid to speak anymore words, grabbed her hand and pressed it on his own heart, to pledge the same to her but without his dying voice. She followed with her head, pressed a tender ear to its raging thump as if absorbing the sound into her very skin. He felt her hot tears roll past his nipple like a kiss.

And then Jemma was gone. Heath closed his eyes and drifted for a time. He searched for a place he’d gone to before, a long time ago it seemed. It was a quiet place inside himself, the place where he kept the box. Sometimes there was a fall stream there, sometimes winter winds. Today it was a shimmering field of bright green grass. He could hear the hum of the lazy bees, maybe the squawk of a little bird fighting with a bigger, peskier one.

And tucked neatly next to a sweet, raggedy picnic lunch that might last forever, no one nibbling it—frozen in the perfect heaven moment of time—was a shining silver box. In his mind’s eye, Heath picked up the box, stroked its icy surface. Then he gently fingered its tiny latch and opened it. In his mind’s eye, he put a simple sheet of paper, imprinted with one word in copper ink. It said “Jemma.” He closed the silver box. He latched it. He set it down. He walked away.

But Heath Barkley did not cry. Because he knew that if he started he would never ever stop.