Page 14 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Ringless Married Women

T he malady of the cows spread and festered, like Decker’s thoughts ate away at him—sun-sickness, Willa’s reappearance, Laurie.

Laurie.

Laurie, Laurie, Laurie. Our curse or my distraction?

He was sure the sun had plunged fiery fingers into his brain, crisping any common sense beyond recognition.

Peculiarity seemed to be the tune of today, first with the damn cows and the sun sickness skipping over Decker as if deciding there were better places to be.

Stranger still was Laurie challenging the line between boldness and discretion. Attempting to invite yet holding him away.

“Do you want to know me, Decker?”

The most senseless part was that Decker hadn’t immediately laughed at the idea.

The four of them returned late that night to help Mr. Gibson—Safine, armed with eclectic treatments, Willa, carrying extra supplies, Cricket, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows and wincing at the state of the cattle, and Decker, who dug his heels into the stinking mud and got to work .

A steer bellowed as Decker caught him around the horns and wrestled him to the ground so Willa could spread Safine’s concoction on his hide. “Haven’t gotten a chance to talk much since you got here. Never thought I’d see you again outside of a grave,” he said.

Willa’s face turned stiff, unreadable. “Whitton’s to blame.”

“Jacob Whitton?” The last time Decker had seen the prestigious doctor from the Queen’s army, Whitton had been in black coattails, staring down the barrel of Willa’s flintlock.

“Somethin’ happened after we saved Grace and left that bastard at the altar.

We stayed in New Orleans until Grace was old enough to be my mother.

I never changed.” Willa was distant, her recollections coming out clipped.

“Grace’s heart eventually gave out and I found a nice place to bury her and moved on. Still didn’t get old.”

Decker faintly remembered the soft-spoken woman that had commanded Willa’s attention. A pang of bittersweet jealousy rose in him at the privilege of growing old, but it was overshadowed by the ache of Willa here, not aged a day since he’d seen her last.

“Sorry to hear that,” he said.

Willa took a rag soaked in the solution from Safine, who had no interest in their conversation; if Decker guessed, he’d bet they knew each other well after going to Silver Creek together.

“After Grace passed there was nothing for me there, and I spent some time further south in Mexico.” Willa hesitated before she met his gaze.

“I started hearing things about an old, odd fella. Sounded like Whitton. Grace said he had gone completely mad by the time we caught up to them at the church. Obsessed with replacing parts of people to live longer. He tried it with her—she had the scars to prove it.”

Decker had heard rumors of surgeons gone mad, convinced they could make a person better . Willa wasn’t the only one that had far outlived her age, if Jacob Whitton was still around. Maybe he’d found some truth in his hunt for immortality.

He frowned. “And you think he’s the reason you haven’t aged a day, even though he never touched you?”

“I got nothing else to go on.” The steer lowed and struggled as she scrubbed the rag across his hide.

“Thought they were all shit-filled rumors until I almost caught him. He must have left the house in Santa Fe right before I found the address. Men and women carved up, missin’ things they shouldn’t,” she said, dropping her voice.

The steer scrambled up after his hide was soaked and Decker wrestled another one to the ground. Willa crouched, her tattered red coat flowing behind her like a testament to the blood she’d spilled.

Willa didn’t back down from anything—only malice and determination ever snapped through her slate-grey eyes. In the dim firelight, he thought he saw a flicker of uncertainty.

“I should have died with Grace. Next time I love a woman I want to rest with her. Maybe God’s just keeping me alive until I can find the evil bastard and put an end to it all.

” The bitter smell of Safine’s concoction masked the smell of rot as Willa slathered it on the steer.

“All I know is he headed North. Maybe towards that new city, Winnipeg.”

By the sound of her, even God himself wouldn’t be able to save the doctor .

Revenge is a powerful thing.

But was it enough to keep an old friend alive?

“Could be hiding out in the hills or near the old mines at Amaretto,” he said. “You’ll be leaving if you don’t find him?”

She shifted on her knees and doused a fresh rag in the wooden bucket. “Don’t tend to stay anywhere long. People start to talk.”

“Not here.” The reassurance was as much for himself as it was for her. “It’s different. The people don’t seem to mind as much about what you are or where you came from.”

She offered a wry smile, voice dipped low. “The fake wedding bands you both wear say you’re a dirty liar, Decker Belmont.”

He returned the smile with an easy shrug of his shoulders, wincing at the healing rawness of his sun-touched skin. “Keeps possibilities open. Folks care more about a ringless woman staying home than a married woman out at all hours with a stranger.”

Safine appeared over her shoulder, sloshing down a steaming bucket for the limp steer under Decker’s hands, and Willa glanced back at her. A rare smile grew on her face. “Wouldn’t say we’re strangers.”

Safine matched her grin.

If Decker was a praying man, he would’ve prayed to anyone who would listen that the heartbreak would mend quickly once Willa moved on. As he was the furthest thing from a praying man, he could only hope.

If the doctor couldn’t be found here, her stubbornness would drive her to finally end the decades of chasing and, once she was finished, he doubted ever crossing paths with her again.

Cricket swore behind them as one of the steers aimed a kick at his head. The broad hoof whistled harmlessly past. His lucky amulet worked once again. A grin flashed across his face as the steer hopped and bucked, and another hoof clipped his hat, sending it pinwheeling into the muck.

Shaking his head, Decker released the steer they’d finished treating and let him charge towards Cricket.

Willa angled her attention to him with a sly smile. “What ‘bout you? Any possibilities you’re keeping open?”

Thomas.

He thought of Thomas Haven.

Long gone, resting peacefully next to his wife, ‘only ever loved one woman’, Thomas.

Decker couldn’t blame the man for his reluctance to love; he knew too well the deeply unsettling feeling of being the only one in the room that looked different, clashing with traditions, religions. Possessing an otherness that set him apart even more than crimson fangs.

A few came after Thomas—strangers, friends, neighbors—but they weren’t much more than a release during the jaw-grinding time in between feeding, when the days turned long and he forgot his sanity.

“No,” he finally answered, shoving down the wrong, aggressively irritating voice that whispered the name of the preacher.

They returned to the saloon early in the morning, bone-tired and covered in muck, and lined up to rinse off the worse of it in the tank out back—much to the ire of Lucy Goosey, who hissed and honked and flapped razor-edged wings as Safine shooed her away.

Mr. Gibson’s cattle would have a fighting chance, and Safine promised she’d check on them soon, but insisted he return them to the Haven ranch to recover once they were well enough for the journey.

Exhaustion sank into Decker when he finally reached his room, and he smoothed a brush through clean hair and coated it with rose-scented macassar oil.

His mind was his own again.

Except for Laurie.

Memories of his hands on him and the rush of his blood in his ears was enough to make Decker crush his duty underfoot like a dropped cigar until he retrieved it, straightened it, and hazily focused on important things.

The salve eased his aches from the train, but the pain didn’t bother him nearly as much as Nathan’s words had.

The venom in his voice now was so unlike the man he’d known running the barber shop down the street.

Always with a fair price—even if some complained—and then one day he’d been gone, the door locked and boarded shut after Elias.

Only to reappear and shove the rest of them into the stark light, as if the Blessing chipping away wasn’t enough.

Decker’s fingertips idly ran over one of the blisters on his shoulder where he’d been scorched. He hadn’t burned, at first, soaking in the taste of the sun on his skin before panic set in .

Nathan may not have been the reason the veil wavered, exposing Ender’s Ridge to the light like a forgotten cask—but he knew something.

Tomorrow .

Tomorrow afternoon Decker would go to the Silver Star and ride the train in the day like a proper, human man. With any luck, the sun wouldn’t burn him, and if it did, he could endure if it meant he got answers.

Today won’t be the last time I see you, Nathan Griggs.