"Then that isn't the point."
Rachel closed the trunk. She looked around the room. Small iron bed. Wash basin.
Cracked mirror. The shelf George had built when she was 12. Twenty-seven years reduced quickly when a person only packed what truly belonged to her. Lillian's voice softened.
"Are you angry with me?"
Rachel looked at her. "No."
"You should be."
"For what?"
Lillian's eyes dropped. "For all of it."
Rachel did not ask what she meant. Not yet. There was too much else between them. She lifted the trunk.
Lillian immediately took one end. Rachel almost objected. Then didn't. They carried it downstairs together.
George stood in the kitchen. He looked at the trunk. "Don't be foolish."
Rachel put on her coat. "I've been told that before."
"You walk out because of one argument, don't expect me to come chasing you."
She buttoned the coat. "I don't."
That answer struck him. Rachel saw it. For one instant, he looked older. Not powerful.
Just tired. She almost went to him. Almost. Then she remembered Daisy's name typed into Calvin Price's note.
Rachel picked up the trunk handle. Lillian reached for the other side. "I'll help."
"No."
"Rachel—"
"I need to carry this one myself."
Lillian let go. Outside, evening had begun settling over the foothills. Rachel loaded the trunk into the small farm wagon and hitched the sorrel.
George came onto the porch but did not speak. Lillian stood behind him with both arms folded tightly across herself. Rachel climbed onto the seat. She looked toward the mare pasture one last time.
Three days. She had three days to find some way to keep what she had spent years building. Then she turned the wagon toward Cedar Ridge. The road was still muddy from spring thaw.
By the time she reached town, darkness had gathered between the buildings and lamps glowed behind mercantile windows. Helen Ward was locking the side door of the livery when Rachel stopped outside. Helen looked at the wagon. Then the trunk.
Then Rachel. She asked only one question. "How long?"
Rachel swallowed. "I don't know."
Helen took a ring of keys from her apron. "Room above the mercantile's empty. Bed's narrow and the stove smokes when the wind comes east."
Rachel looked at her. "I can pay."
"I know."
Helen unlocked the outside stairs. Rachel carried her trunk up. The room was barely wider than the bed.
One window faced the main street. There was a washstand. A chair. A chipped pitcher.
An iron stove that looked exactly as unreliable as Helen had promised. Rachel set the trunk on the floor. Below, a wagon passed through town. Somewhere farther down the street, the saloon piano started up.
Rachel stood in the middle of the room without taking off her coat. For the first time in her life, there was no one in the next room expecting something from her. No father calling for accounts. No sister asking for a hem to be fixed.
No horse kicking a stall door. No Matthew waiting for an answer. The silence felt enormous. Rachel went to the window.
West of town, beyond the dark roofs, the mountains were disappearing into night. High Mesa lay somewhere north of them. She could have ridden there. Matthew would have opened the door.
She knew that now. That was precisely why she had not gone. Rachel touched the little ledger inside her coat. Two mares.
Four acres. Start again. For the first time, those words were no longer a private dream written beneath a mattress. They were all she had.
And somehow, standing alone in a cold rented room above the Cedar Ridge mercantile, that made them feel more real than they ever had before. Rachel was awake before dawn. The stove had gone out sometime in the night. Her wash water had a skim of ice across the top.
She broke it with two fingers, splashed her face, pinned up her hair, and went downstairs before the town had fully stirred. Helen Ward was already at the livery stable with a lantern hanging from a hook beside the tack room.
"You sleep enough?"