Betsy took a step backwards and bumped into Joel. He steadied her—and she was partial to his warm hands on her shoulders—and then he went to escort the woman the rest of the way back to their cabin.
This time he entered through the cabin side. Sissy and Laurel hadn’t yet turned in for the night but were chatting quietly over steaming cups of hot tea.
Uncle Fred was all apologies. “I didn’t know he was here, or I would’ve told you up front.”
“Deputy Puckett was with Betsy?” Sissy darted a nervous glance at Laurel, who’d perked up like a bloodhound on the scent.
“I thought she’d gone to bed,” Laurel said.
They might as well lock Betsy up alongside Mr. Sanders, because they were carrying on like she was guilty of a high crime. Hadn’t they figured out already she wasn’t going to get into any trouble with a man?
Mrs. Sanders patted Uncle Fred on the arm, and as she passed through the cabin, she couldn’t help but advise Sissy on the knitting that hung on the arm of her rocking chair. “You’re making it too loose,” she said. “Wasting wool.” She sniffed and covered her face with her handkerchief before stepping into the office.
“Stay in here, Betsy,” Uncle Fred said.
“If you don’t mind,” Joel said, “I need her.”
Betsy’s heart went kerplunk. She often felt in the way, underfoot, but Joel needed her.
Before Uncle Fred could comment, she wrapped a comforting arm around Mrs. Sanders, led her to her cot, and took a seat next to her. Only over her flower beds was Mrs. Sanders’s back ever bent, and even sobbing into her drenched handkerchief, her posture remained rigid.
As soon as Uncle Fred closed the door, Joel pulled a chair up and leaned forward. “What can I do for you?” he asked when there was a break between her strange hiccupped sobs.
“It’s about Mr. Sanders. I didn’t want to say anything . . . didn’t know what you’d say . . . but I can’t live with this secret any longer.”
Betsy angled herself so she could better see Mrs. Sanders’s face. Always a capable, strong woman, she’d aged in the time since Mr. Sanders’s return. Further proof of his guilt. But now she was arranging her features for war, lining up courage in every trench of her brow.
“I knew he was alive. After the war I applied for widow benefits, and the War Department wrote back to say he hadn’t died. They’d been sending his pension to California.” She twisted her handkerchief with hands whose knuckles were just beginning to swell, red and angry. “I wrote him, but he didn’t answer. I thought about going out to see him, but how could I? And what if he didn’t want me?” Her hands tightened, the veins sitting atop sinews. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just let on that he’d passed. As time went on, people started calling me Widow Sanders, and I felt like I was. Anything was better than saying that he ran off on me.”
Betsy had been too young to remember the specifics. By the time she’d moved to town to help Uncle Fred, Widow Sanders was all anyone called her. For a widow, she’d been on the youngish side and tough to boot. No one wondered at a dead husband. It was common enough.
“So when he came back . . .” Mrs. Sanders drew a deep, shaky breath. She gave Betsy a half-apologetic smile. “When he came back, I wasn’t too all-fired excited to see him. Where had he been? Who had he been with?”
Joel nodded. “Those are fair questions. How did he answer them?”
“He had all kinds of stories, and most of them didn’t put no shine on him. But I stopped listening. All I could think of was how everyone was going to talk. How everyone would wonder. And how he had me in such a spot. What could I do but take him back? But I wasn’t happy about doing it.”
“When you told Mr. Sanders how you felt, is that when he turned violent?” Joel asked.
She rubbed her knuckles. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He didn’t turn violent. I did.”
Joel straightened in his chair. He tucked his hands beneath his arms. “Go on.”
“I lost my head, screamed, threw stuff at him. I’ll be lucky if I still have a pair of matching dishes left in the kitchen. And he just took it. Told me how sorry he was for the years he wasted. Told me how he couldn’t live with the guilt any longer and had to come back and take his medicine.” She thumped herself on the chest. “Me. I’m the bitter medicine he has to take, I suppose?”
Joel twisted his head. “Are you telling me that he never lifted his hand to you?”
She ducked her chin. “Never, and I let him have it. Anyone who complained about a ruckus was only hearing me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this when you came to get him. I thought he’d set you straight, but you probably didn’t believe him.”
“He didn’t say a word.” Joel scuffed his foot across the floorboards. “I asked him, but he didn’t say a word.”
“Not agin me?” She shook her head. “He even went to Walters’s to buy me new dishes.” Her tears started afresh. “Why’d he have to come back acting so nice?”