He stopped speaking. She wondered if he’d meant his last words. She’d considered his death before, even hoped for it. She imagined she might feel relief. Or she might feel oppressive guilt. Either would be bearable; both together would not.
“You didn’t wait long enough. I was still too young.”
“If I had waited, would things be different?”
She pitied him for the hope in his voice, as though the past could be altered. “Yes, but I don’t know if they’d be better.”
He turned onto his side, facing her. “You were the one who pushed to go to bed. You didn’t think you were too young.”
“I don’t mean when we went to bed. I mean when you sent Trout and the plane. I was too young to understand the bargain.”
She thought he might be angry, but under the covers he took her hand. “I didn’t mean it as a bargain. I meant it as a gift.”
She wove her fingers through his. “No, you didn’t.”
“You don’t think things might still change? With a baby?”
“Not the way you want them to.”
“You didn’t really need me. You could have run away and found some other way to fly, if you’d really wanted to.”
“Would you have let me go?”
A knock at the door. Mother Macqueen came in with a teapot in a knitted cozy and one cup and saucer on a tray. She set the tray on Barclay’s nightstand, bent to pour.
They sat up against the pillows. Ignoring Marian, Mother handed Barclay the cup of tea. She rested her hand on the hummock of his legs, said, “Don’t give yourself to the devil.”
“There’s no devil, Ma,” Barclay said. His voice was tender. “Why haven’t you figured out those nuns were full of shit?”
“I thought she would help you.” Mother nodded toward Marian. “No. She pretends she’s the one who suffers, but she brings the suffering.”
“Ma. Leave it alone. I won’t drink anymore. I promise.”
“The devil makes you lie.”
“I need to rest, Ma. And, when you go, will you take the devil with you?”
“Only you can make him go,” she said, but she went, closing the door.
Barclay poured more tea and handed the cup to Marian, who said, “What did she mean?”
“Drink turns man to sin. She thinks I’m playing into the hands of bootleggers, who are agents of the devil.”
“She doesn’t know you are one?” The tea was too sweet. Mother had put sugar in the pot.
“Of course not.”
It was true his mother was cloistered on the ranch except for Sundays, when Sadler and Kate took her to church. If Barclay wished her fellow congregants to keep their mouths shut, Sadler’s presence was enough to ensure they did, and, anyway, what would they dare say to her face? But still Mother Macqueen must have noticed the signs. She knew, Marian decided, but she was pretending not to. They, the three women—herself, Kate, and Mother—were living in one house with three different men, all of whom happened to be Barclay Macqueen.
“But what did she mean about me?”
“Oh.” He pursed his lips, making a show of appearing reluctant to explain. “She thought a good woman would be what stopped me from drinking. Since you haven’t, and since you aren’t pregnant, she thinks you must not be a good woman after all. There are some holes in her logic—she could never stop my father from drinking. I’m not like him. I don’t do it often.” This somewhat plaintively. “But now you’ve dashed her hopes.”
“She really thinks you’re a cattle rancher?”
“But I am a cattle rancher,” said Barclay. “And you are the barren wife who has driven me to drink.”
Montana
Winter–Spring 1932
A week after he’d gone drinking, as though it were a perfectly ordinary request, Barclay told Marian he needed her to go pick up some cargo across the line.
Sadler drove her to Missoula to get the Stearman. From the backseat, she asked, “Has anyone else been flying my plane?”
He looked at her in the mirror. “You mean my plane?”
“Has anyone been flying your plane, then?”
“Not that I know of.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him, or if the truth mattered. She picked over the Stearman jealously, examining it for traces of another pilot. Once alone in the sky, though, she no longer cared. She turned a loop, tossing the mountains up over her head.
She made a few more trips over the line in the next week and then, when she entreated, was granted an afternoon flight with no stated purpose or destination. Barclay made her promise to be back in three hours, and she was, having flown a northeasterly route, though she told him she’d gone west, toward Coeur d’Alene. The lie warmed her like an ember.