awaken them.”
“I won’t stay long . . . I promise.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and she could see just
how terrible he looked, that there was something very
wrong with him; she thought he might collapse.
She stepped aside and held the door for him to enter.
He wore a dark coat that seemed weighted in
places. His steps were halting.
“May I sit down?”
She nodded. He eased himself into the chair she’d
been sitting in, the broken glass crunching under his
boots. He looked at it.
“I dropped a glass,” she explained. “You startled
me.”
“Sorry,” he said and bent to try and pick the bro-
ken shards but she could see the pain coming into his
face when he did. He looked at her foot.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” she said and went and washed the
blood away and tied a strip of cloth around it.
He watched her the entire time.
“What?” she said, after sweeping the shards into a
dustpan, noticing that he’d not taken his eyes from her.
“Funny, but I remember you not as a woman, but
just a girl.”
“It’s been over fifteen years,” she said. “People
grow up.”
He sighed. She saw him take the medicine bottle
from inside his jacket, uncork it, and take a swallow.
The swallowing looked painful.
“What is that?” she said.
“Laudanum.”
“What’s it for, I mean, why are you taking it?”
He waved a hand, corked the bottle, and put it
away again.
She emptied the dustpan, then stood looking at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked a second
time.
“I came to see you.”
“The question is, why?”
“It’s simple,” he said. “I’m dying.”
She wasn’t sure how to take the news, what she
was supposed to feel about it—sad or relieved? This,
the father she barely knew, and what she did know of
him, she’d mostly read in the newspapers or
a gunfighter. His infamy as a shootist was not a thing
she could relate to, nor a thing that did anything but
make her feel ashamed. She became known not as
who she was or wanted to be, but as the daughter of
William Sunday, the gun artist. Children would point
their fingers at her in the schoolyard and yell, “Bang!
Bang! We killed Bill Sunday’s kid!” And she was sure
that his choice of professions had in one way or an-
other contributed to her mother’s early death.
“I don’t want to know about this,” she said.
“It’s too late, you already know.”
“I mean I don’t want to be part of this.”
He nodded, said, “I didn’t imagine that you would.
You’re not the only one who wants nothing to do
with it. But you are my only kin, and you’ve no more
choice in the matter than I do. We can’t change cer-
tain facts even as much as we may want to.”
“Please,” she said. “I’ve enough problems.”
“I heard you married. Where is your husband?”
“It isn’t important. What is important is that I be
left alone to live my life and raise my children in
peace. Please, you have to leave now.”
He rose with great effort, his features knotted in
pain.
“I won’t trouble you further tonight if you promise
to meet with me tomorrow.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.”
“Why must I? You haven’t been a father to me in
years and now suddenly you want to change all that,
you want me just to forget about the fact you weren’t
in my life when I might have needed you; that you
took up the profession of killing men over that of be-
ing a husband and a father? I can’t forgive you these
things. You’re who you are and I am who I am. I’m
sorry that you’re dying, but there is nothing I can do
about it.”
Her words were as painful to him as if someone
had unloaded a revolver in his chest.
“I didn’t come to ask your forgiveness,” he said as
his hand gripped the door’s knob. “I did come to ask
something of you in exchange for something. But it
can wait until tomorrow.”
She watched him limp away down the darkened
street toward the heart of town, knowing that he was
probably going to stay at the hotel. She waited until
his shadow became lost in deeper shadows, then
closed the door.
At least, she told herself, it wasn’t Fallon who’d
found her. And for that she was grateful. A dying fa-
ther of whom she knew so little, she reckoned she
could deal with.
A stiff wind kicked down from the north, across the
