Page 15 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

The Silver Star

W illa left before daybreak, and then Cricket, not nearly as quiet as she had been.

They would both be back, as they didn’t say goodbye.

Safine was in no state to run the saloon today, thin-tempered and short after Willa left, and so Decker heaved the saloon door closed behind him, wincing at the twinge in his back. The salve worked, but more slowly than usual, as if his own body fought it overnight.

“Decker?”

Shit.

The preacher hovered at the edge of the veranda before tripping up it, the afternoon sun burnishing his curls and lighting his smile. “I wanted to—”

“I don’t have the time for your apology, Mr. Lane.” Decker was already heading down the boardwalk towards Ridgewater so the incense couldn’t wrap him in a smoky embrace and drag him back to the chapel.

“A-apology?” Following him, Laurie staggered through his words. “I suppose that is what I came to you for, I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression—”

“Careful, Mr. Lane.” A puff of dust followed Decker as he suddenly stepped into the road.

“Pardon me?”

A rattlesnake coiled on the boardwalk in front of the preacher, taking in the last of the afternoon sun.

Its segmented tail rasped and shuddered, warning him off as it coiled tighter and waited to strike.

Snakes came out late and headed in early this time of year.

Sluggish and snappish when surprised, it was best to always keep an eye out for rattlers on the boardwalk—a lesson his neighbor hadn’t quite learned.

Add it to the list of things Laurie needed to understand about this town if he wanted to stay here.

“Goodness, my apologies—”

If the preacher spent half as much time being mindful as he did talking, he’d be able to see the things that were right in front of his worried face, instead of having to try his luck with his neighbors.

Laurie wouldn’t last here.

Not when the people of Ender’s Ridge were so used to taking care of their own, and Laurie—insistent, proudly stubborn, making-conversation-with-a-snake, Laurie—was the first and only of his unique kind.

Decker ignored the scuff of Laurie’s hurried footsteps behind him and cast a glance at the stockyards to the left. The cattle stood listlessly over fresh piles of hay. Four lay unmoving in the dust.

Safine’s cures could only go so far.

Decker turned on his heel when he reached the bridge. “Can I help you, Mr. Lane?”

He looked strangely affronted at his tone. “I only wanted to have a discussion.”

“I have a train to catch.”

“To Silver Creek? What a coincidence, that’s where I happened to be headed when I saw you.” Beaming a smile that seemed irritatingly real, Laurie motioned for Decker to lead the way.

Laurie was like an itch he couldn’t quite reach, always present and disgustingly alluring.

Jamming money into the hands of the woman at the ticket booth and muttering a quiet thanks, Decker slipped into the faded green interior of the train car and sat at the back. Laurie sat opposite him, folding his coat over his knees.

Decker wasn’t sure if he was relieved that he was on the train this time, or if he’d rather be sprawled across the tracks again.

“You’re going to the newspaper about Ender’s Ridge? The Star ?”

“Going to stop the rumors. No one else will do it.”

“I suppose not.” Laurie’s hands twisted into his black coat, and Decker muffled a sigh as he waited for him to address what lingered between them. “I don’t—I don’t want you to think less of me.” There was a slight tremble to Laurie’s voice.

Decker wanted to find his openness nauseating.

Instead, he found himself patiently listening.

“I came here for a new life, not to try and mend old mistakes, but to create a new beginning, following the path I should have taken.”

“Which path is that, preacher?”

Laurie leaned closer, elbows propped atop his coat as he mirrored Decker’s posture. “A path of righteous celibacy.”

Decker’s lips twitched in amusement. “Lust is permissible, of course.”

His gaze darted away as if worried someone would hear their whispers. “I am only a man, Decker. One who crossed many lines yesterday. I could repent for a thousand Sundays and it would not be enough.”

“The holy book says one moment of repentance is sufficient.”

“The holy book has no commands for the feelings I have. No amount of prayer could fix the things I’ve felt. The things I’ve thought.” Laurie spoke like a tortured man, begging for mercy through lips bloodied by his own righteousness.

The train pulled under them as it rumbled around a curve, and Decker angled himself farther from the window and closer to him.

It was impossible not to be ensnared by Laurie—not when he was so astoundingly mired in self-loathing.

Have you thought of me, preacher? At night, in your bed, unaware I could listen if I wished to?

Long ago, Decker had accepted that his attraction never branched away from men. His love was now as familiar as maples changing from green to golden in the autumn and sprouting again in the spring. Predictable and ancient.

“Perhaps God doesn’t worry as much as the men who wrote the book. You’ve spent a lifetime pleading your love to a God who wanted you to understand how he felt when he formed the earth,” Decker said. “This is what the Bible speaks of, isn’t it? The love he showed all—”

“I went to seminary, I know the text,” Laurie said tightly.

A woman three seats down arched her eyebrows to her hairline at the raised voice.

He was getting to him now. Sliding under his skin with a scripture-edged knife—if there was a hell and Decker wasn’t already in it, he would surely be sent there now with this sense of accomplishment like a pleased cat smashing a glass to the floor .

Laurie fixed his gaze out the window as the gentle hills smoothed to waving, autumn-bronzed grassland. Snow would drift over the prairie any day, cocooning pheasants under folded clumps of bluestem and blanketing rabbits in their warrens.

The man across from him wasn’t ready for the harsh winter.

He was too soft, too unprepared. Laurie pulled the small Bible from the inside of his coat, cracking it open to the New Testament.

Dull black leather arched under his hands, marred with scratches as if his fingernails knew the book intimately.

He never turned the page, as if he thought staring at the words would make Decker’s eyes leave him instead of catching on the way he pretended to read while the tip of his finger rubbed a lightened patch on the book’s spine.

Two hours later the rail reached the bustling outskirts of Silver Creek. White buildings nearly matched the town’s name and the same river curving through home slowed to a gentle trickle, like most of the people here.

Whereas Ridgewater was a pass-through town, hawking wares with a gasping final breath before the next leg of their journey, Silver Creek teemed with the life of a self-made prairie town.

Carriages rattled by the low-slung train depot as the steam engine eased into the station, letting out a triumphant shriek before it shuddered to a stop .

Decker was moving before the wheels locked, anything to get him away from the perpetually aggravating preacher who couldn’t back his own arguments when questioned.

He had bigger things to worry about.

“Wait, Decker.” Laurie shook the stiffness from his limbs and danced around the woman with the arched eyebrows to follow him off the train. “If you could take this to the Silver Star , I’ll be indebted—” he thrust a folded paper at him. “I just—I have a few other things demanding my attention.”

The letter fluttered in the north wind before Decker slid it in his back pocket. He didn’t bother trying to read the tidy words through the thin paper; Laurie’s business was his own, even if he was trying to make him into a delivery boy.

“I’ll see you back at the train,” Laurie said hopefully, shrugging into his coat.

Decker didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer.

To the left a church rose above the town, white steeple and wide doors putting Laurie’s chapel to shame. Bells clanged, one, two, three, four, five, and the chatter of a town easing into the night whispered through the streets.

The last chime of the church bells echoed as the door shut behind two nuns.

One murmured a soft apology when Decker stopped to let them by.

The other only graced him with one flicker of dark eyes under the curve of her habit before they were gone, the scent of antiseptic and old blood lingering behind them.

Decker pressed on, following the telegraph wires.

The Silver Star nestled between the telegraph office and the laundry .

Red long johns and clean sheets snapped from the lines behind the buildings like lye-scented flags.

The doorknob rattled under his hand and when he peered through the dusty glass, the counter hosted nothing but stacks of newspapers and a recently doused lamp.

Slipping Laurie’s note under the door, Decker trailed to the side window, away from prying eyes parading down Main Street.

When Nathan was his neighbor, he was pleasant and dull, keeping to his barber shop and rarely meddling in other business.

Decker found it hard to believe the newspaper would have hired the quiet man as a reporter, and the marks gouged into the windowsill that left chips of brown paint strewn across the ground confirmed his suspicion.

Nathan had used force to spread his message to Ridgewater, if he was truly the one who had printed and delivered the newspapers.

There could be others, but creatures like him usually favored loneliness; Decker knew the late nights between them at the saloon years ago meant little to Nathan, but that hadn’t stopped them from indulging.