She struggled to sit up.  “Why?”  Reeling, she pressed her hands against her eyes.  It was still all there.  She shuddered, her stomach turning.  She couldn’t keep doing this.  She had to make it stop.

“You need to sleep out here tonight.”

“Why?” she said again.  She felt so confused.

“You just do.  Think about what you need and bring it.  Now.”

She wiped at her face and tried to get her mind to work.  Why was he doing this?  She gathered up a shirt, a blanket, the velvet coat.  That was all.  Slowly she stood up and took the two steps that brought her to the back of the wagon.  He reached up for what she was carrying, then waited while she climbed out.  He dug into the wagon behind her for her saddle.

The night was very dark and warm but the cold inside her had returned and she was shivering.  He wrapped the blanket around her.

“Are you going to be sick?”

She shook her head no.  She wouldn’t.  She refused

“I’ve got water anyway.  Drink some.”  He held out the jar.  “The fire’s gone out but I’ll get another blanket.  You’ll be warm soon enough.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, trembling.

“You will.”

Chace carried her saddle over and set it down next to his.  He brought the second blanket and laid it on the ground.  As he watched, she arranged the velvet coat over the saddle.  “Lie down,” he said.  She did, pulling both blankets tight around her.  He lay down next to her wrapped in his own blanket.  “I’m here,” he said.  “I won’t go to sleep until you do and I won’t get up till you’re awake.”

“All right.”  She turned away from him and curled into a ball.  Now the tears were coming.  “Are you still here?”  He moved closer until his arm touched against her back.  “Thank you.”  She closed her eyes.

17

17

Chace kept his gray horse alongside as they traveled.

Charlotte, holding the team in line, let out a shaky breath.  “It’ll never go away from me, you know.”

“With time everything goes away, the things that should, the things that shouldn’t.”  He glanced out at the horizon.  “Today’s a better day for traveling than sitting.”

In the afternoon, Charlotte couldn’t face saddling her horse so they rode on the wagon together.  The air grew humid and a haze covered the sun.  A family of shiny black crows set up an ear-splitting racket in the branches of a dead tree.  Cicadas hummed in the nodding grasses.

“Do you want to talk?” he said.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Not about anything?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Pick something.”

She tried to smile.  “I thought you had a subject in mind.”

“No.  I can go for months without talking.”