“Get her packed,” said Victor.
“She won’t go with you, Victor,” said Henning. “And if you’ve killed her, understand you’ll now have to kill half the town, after the girl at the hotel finishes discussing our visit.”
“I want him dead.”
“He is dead. Go look in the greenhouse. We brought him back in his car. Get to the train with Carl, and Ansel will light the fire. We’ll follow in a few days.”
Victor crawled toward her; she felt his breath on her cheek. “Go,” said Henning.
And they were gone. Dulcy opened her eyes and watched a spider move across her ceiling. But there was Henning again, and for just a moment, before he smiled down at her, she wondered if he was there to kill her. He touched her stomach. “Did he know?”
She shook her head. “Good,” he said; he stroked her cheek. “I’ll have the little boy from the hotel bring a doctor. He liked you, for sure, not like that bitch of a girl. I want you to know, down there in the greenhouse, it’s not him. It’s not your person. All right?”
He held up his bloody hands. “All right,” said Dulcy, starting to love him again.
“It was my person, for my poor brother. And I want you to know that I knew you were alive, I heard from a banker in Butte but said nothing; I wanted you to have a chance. Even after he saw the stupid film, that waste of money, I didn’t think he would do such a thing as this. I will not let him again. What will your friend do?”
“I don’t know,” said Dulcy.
“You ask this man to let it go, to get well.” He bent down and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry about the fire. It won’t travel.”
And he was gone. She thought about how she would kill Victor when she could move again, just as he’d wanted to kill Walton, just as he would have killed Walton if Walton had only remembered where he’d hidden the money. She’d kill Victor just as soon as her vision cleared and she had her rage back.
She rolled on her side and watched Victor’s blood dry on her pretty white tile, all around the bits of the green book, the pages the river had rinsed and the gravel that had lodged in the spine. To live is to suffer, Martha would say. Have a piece of cake. Have that whiskey, just one glass.
The light in the room had gone orange, and for a moment, before she realized the greenhouse was burning, she thought she was dying. Above the wind she heard more glass break and a popping sound, a gun or the metal ribs snapping. She reached out and rolled a pebble from the green book’s binding in her fingers, held it up to the glow, reached for another. When Irving and Macalester ran through the door she had a handful, and they thought she’d been trying to clean the blood on the floor; she had to tuck the pebbles under the sink when they weren’t looking.
???
When Lewis arrived early the next morning, her face was a swollen, stitched mess; Macalester wouldn’t let her out of bed for the baby’s sake. Lewis moved around the room, putting fresh clothes in his valise. “Stay.”
“Of course I’ll stay.” But he lied. He meant the rest—that he felt this was his fault, that he should have known—but she could see his eyes planning on leaving even when he was an inch away from her, tears running down his face. He had a kind of a blank I’ll do what I fucking want to do look. The unthinking part of him would fade, she thought, before he had a chance to act.
When he left, Margaret came to stay, with Samuel coming in and out. Dulcy let the official story float up the stairwell, her friends’ overheard conversations with the people who stopped by: Gerald Fenoways, Dulcy’s deranged admirer, had discovered that she’d married Lewis Braudel, and beaten her, and made a pyre for himself in her greenhouse. Gerry had been dining at the Elite, wooing the hotel’s new owners, when he’d received a note and run out to his car. Fenoways’ body had only been half-burned, and he was still holding the gun he’d used to shoot himself in the head as the fire took hold.
On the second day, Margaret hid upstairs with her from a visiting Mrs. Whittlesby, and they listened to Samuel elaborate on this story. Beyond people like Mrs. Whittlesby, no one seemed surprised about the Lewis part of the story, though it gave people something happy to natter about. Of course they’d all guessed, and they were a little offended that the couple hadn’t simply told their friends, but who would have imagined Gerry was capable of any secrecy whatsoever, and what a horrible thing that he’d even dream she’d reciprocate.
Dulcy wondered about the note Henning had sent into the Elite, what the bait had been, how he’d made sure that Gerry was alone, what he’d said and done to Gerry before he killed him, what damage the fire had hidden. But some of the answer was obvious, the longer she heard Samuel’s calm voice rise up the stairwell: who on earth will mourn that man?
On the third day, she put on her clothes and walked downstairs. “Please get Lewis to come back.”
“He’s fine,” said Samuel, bland and cheery. “He had to meet a Century editor in Denver. He telegrammed to check on you this morning.”
Samuel had probably been half in love with Henning, too.
???
Lewis returned two days later, on the noon train. It was a pretty Indian summer day, and Mrs. Brach had taken to playing her piano, and Dulcy, who noticed she preferred Mozart to church hymns, was listening on the porch when he appeared. He put down his bag and kissed her. “Are you feeling better? Should you be up?”
“Macalester says I’ll be fine.” She watched his arm shake as he took a long sip from her water glass. “But should I ask James to come check on you?”
“Let me rest, let me sleep, and then let’s get out for a bit. I know we thought of staying here for another month or so, but I’d rather go sooner, tomorrow or even later today. Does that make sense?”
He watched her; she nodded. “I’ve been dreaming about the hammock for hours. It’s such a beautiful day.” He reached for the quilt she’d put on the swing and started down to the hammock he’d strung between the new wall and a cottonwood. He ignored the charred pile that had been the greenhouse. “Just an hour or so.”