Imogene stirred her tea.

            “I think I would like to be alone for a while,” Sarah said, and it was decided.

           

            The last few days of the week, neighbors came and went, bringing things they thought would be needed. Lutie brought fresh linens from the Broken Promise so that Imogene and Sarah would be spared the bulk of the week’s laundry, Mac brought a load of wood cut to fit the potbellied stove—though he’d brought them a cord in September—and Mrs. Whitaker brought over more food than the two of them could eat in a week. It was a relief when, in the evenings, there was time for the two of them to sit together, quiet with each other and their grief.

            Trusting to the strength Sarah seemed to have found in her loss, Imogene left for school early Monday morning. Sarah walked with her to the river path. The sun hadn’t been up half an hour, and shadows stretched long over the moving water. Their breath came in clouds, and the frosty air brought blood to their cheeks and noses.

            “I’m afraid winter is here,” Imogene said as they reached the path. “You’d better get back inside before you catch cold.”

            “I will,” Sarah promised. “Let me walk with you a little further.”

            Pleased, Imogene slowed her steps, though she had been late leaving the house. Sarah hooked her arm through the older woman’s and they walked without speaking. The storm had torn the last leaves from the trees along the river’s edge, and bare branches painted a winter scene against the blue November sky. The two women walked on a carpet of mauve and purple. Sarah kicked a clump of leaves, but they were heavy with water and wouldn’t take to the air.

            “We used to make great piles of them when I was little, and dive into them. I like remembering then,” Sarah said.

            “My father didn’t abide leaf-diving.” Imogene hardly ever mentioned her childhood; all her talk of memories suggested she had entered the world through a schoolroom in her late twenties. “Not for young ladies anyhow.”

            They had come to the foot of the hill leading up to the school. Sarah detached her arm from Imogene’s and laid the schoolteacher’s gloved hand against her cheek, but said nothing.

            “Thank you for walking with me,” Imogene said. “I enjoy things so much more when you’re with me.”

            Sarah watched Imogene until she vanished from sight behind the school door. Then, running lightly over the sodden ground, she hurried home. In Imogene’s room she dragged a chair over to the closet, climbed up, and rummaged through the boxes on the top shelf until she found the one she was looking for—a battered blue hatbox with an ill-fitting lid. She carried it to the bed and dumped off the top. Inside was the Colt .45 that Mac had insisted Imogene keep.

            “By the authority of Judge Colt,” Sarah said.

            Using both thumbs, she pulled back the hammer and a mechanism clicked, holding it in place. She held the gun away from her and fired. A bullet smashed into the wainscoting and the pistol bucked backwards. Without hesitation, she pulled the hammer back again and turned the pistol around. She pushed the barrel of the .45 against her breast, feeling the cold metal through her bodice. Steadying the gun in her two hands, she tried to imagine life draining from her, pumping out with her blood, leaving emptiness and peace behind: a quiet, permanent stillness.

            She would be with Wolf.

            Never again would she see Imogene—not in the heaven that Sam’s Bible set forth.

            Suddenly the Colt was heavy; it required too much effort to hold her wrists rigid. Sarah set the gun down on the bed, stroking the metal with her fingertip. “God,” she whispered, then slid to the floor and steepled her hands like a child. “God,” she began again, “what do you want of me?” In the silence she could hear the pendulum clock in the front room. “Damn you, answer me!” she cried, and with an angry gesture, swept the .45 off the coverlet. The gun slammed into the wall and the hammer fell. The sound of the gunshot rattled the window glass and the bullet shattered a pitcher on Imogene’s dressing table.

            The silence in the room seemed palpable until a loud drip-drip ended it; water from the ruined pitcher had made its way to the table edge.

            Sarah pulled herself to her feet and stole from the room. She stopped long enough to gather her coat and bonnet before leaving the house.

            The day had warmed and she was flushed with walking by the time she reached the Indian cemetery. She stopped at Wolf’s grave. Loosing her bonnet strings, she pushed it back and let the air dry her temples. “Wolf, my dear baby, I love you very much,” Sarah said, and looked from the dark earth of the grave to the sky. “But I love Imogene too. Maybe more than’s good. Maybe more than God.”

            She stood for a moment, searching the sky, before she looked back to the pathetic mound of earth. “Is that why you take my children, Lord?” she breathed. Her throat filled with tears and choked off the words. Hardening her mouth, she scrubbed her eyes with the tail of her coat. “If there is a God,” she said defiantly. “Maybe there’s only love.” She looked into the depths of blue beyond the Sierra and grew afraid and lonely.

            “Dear God,” she prayed, “I know you mustn’t tempt the Lord thy God and this isn’t that, it’s just business. If you could show me it wasn’t true that Nate killed Wolf—in a way—I’d put Imogene behind me, marry again. Marry Nate Weldrick.”

            She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the words to heaven. When she opened them she was alone and small under the ring of mountains, the little grave at her feet. “If not, Lord, I’m going to cast my lot with love.” The defiance returned and she added, “Half a year. I’ll listen half a year.”

            For minutes she stood still, expecting to be struck to the ground, but there was nothing.

27

            HAVING SWEPT UP THE SHARDS OF BROKEN PITCHER, PATCHED THE bullet hole with baking soda, flour and water, and pasted a picture postcard over it, Sarah waited for Imogene to come home from school.

            “I want to get a job,” she said as the schoolteacher let herself in. “I have to have something to do. It’s time I pulled my own weight, as Mac says.”

            Imogene closed the door and took off her coat. “We can live on what I earn, you know that. We are even saving a little. You needn’t do this for me.”

            “I want to feel I’m helping.”

            Imogene warmed her hands at the potbellied stove. Enjoying the warmth of the fire and the homey smell of supper from the kitchen, she realized she’d grown to like returning at the end of each day to a home kindled with another woman’s work.

            “You help me, Sarah.”

            “I suppose,” Sarah said falteringly. “Yes…I suppose I do.”

            Guilt shook Imogene from her complacency. Even with the toys cleared away, Wolf’s presence was everywhere, from the scuffed chairs to the smudged nose prints on the window. She turned from the stove. “I’ve gotten spoiled, having you to come home to. What kind of work are you thinking of?”

            “Needlework is all I can do,” Sarah replied. “So that’s what I’m thinking of.”

            “I’ll ask at school for you. Some of the girls come from well-to-do families.”

            In the next week, Sarah gathered up her courage and posted notices advertising needlework for hire in the stores, but got no response.

            Her resolve had not weakened, but she was running out of places to post notices when Kate Sills came up with an idea. The youngest girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were too young for the school and needed to be tutored. “What they need,” Kate had said wryly, “is a wet-nurse. The bishop had no business taking them.” There was no money in the budget to fund such a position, but if Sarah would work for a dollar a week and lunches, Kate said she would pay it out of her own pocket.

            Imogene brought the news home like a gift.

            “I couldn’t!” Sarah exclaimed. “What if I can’t do it? Oh, Imogene, what would Kate think of me? Needlework I can do here, with nobody watching me. Teaching? I don’t think so. You’re the teacher, Imogene, I couldn’t teach.”

            “The oldest isn’t even six,” Imogene reassured her. “All you need do is care for them, play with them, take the time with them that the other teachers can’t spare. It wouldn’t be teaching, really.”

            Sarah squared her shoulders. “I’ll do it,” she declared, as if she were promising to rebuild the Colossus at Rhodes.

            Seven girls at Bishop Whitaker’s were under the age of six, girls that the bishop, in his softheartedness, had taken because their older sisters were enrolled and the mothers had pleaded. Sarah was to take them from eight-thirty in the morning until noon, the hours when the other teachers were the busiest. One of the recitation rooms was set aside for her use. “When the weather is better, you can take the girls out of doors if you like,” Kate had offered. Secretly, Sarah felt she’d be let go before winter was out, but she put on a brave face.

            The first morning, Imogene walked her to the recitation room and introduced her to the children assembled there. The little girls greeted Imogene with boisterous affection. Seven sober faces bobbed and seven stiff curtsies were dropped for Sarah. “See you at lunch,” Imogene whispered as she left. “They are going to love you.”

            As the door swung shut behind Imogene, the eldest, Maybelle, a pigtailed child of five and a half, stepped forward. “Why do I have to be with the little kids?” she demanded. Two of the very little girls started to snuffle because their feelings were hurt.

            Sarah’s heart sank.

            Nobody would talk except to say something spiteful. Finally, Sarah separated the two older girls and gave them each a stack of picture books. The youngest she let play together, happy to have them occupied and moderately quiet.

            By ten o’clock the smaller children were bored with one another and had started to squabble. Before the morning was out, Sarah had all seven isolated, each scowling over her own pile of pictures.

            Imogene rescued her in time for lunch. The moment she opened the recitation room door, seven voices piped, “Miss Grelznik!” and there was a mad rush of children to hide in her skirts. Sarah was not far behind.

            “It was awful!” Sarah wailed over the soup. “They hated me. I’ll never be a teacher until they invent rooms with more corners. I ran out of places to send them, they were so bad.”

            “You don’t have to do this,” Imogene reminded her. “Do you want to stop? No one will think less of you for it.”

            “No.” Sarah took a spoonful of soup. “I want you to help me make up a lesson plan.”

            “Sarah, they are just babies—”

            “I don’t care. Maybe they don’t need a lesson plan, but I do.”

            “We’ll do it first thing after supper,” Imogene promised.

            That night it was Imogene who cleared up the dinner things while Sarah pored over sheets of foolscap. Near midnight, Imogene came to stand behind Sarah’s chair, resting her hands lightly on the younger woman’s shoulders. Sarah leaned her head against the schoolteacher and closed her eyes. “I’m almost finished,” she sighed.