She ducks her head and shakes it. “Ah well, the sheriff, he took a liking to me back when I first got here. If you haven’t noticed, he’s kind of a sucker for a pretty face. Offered for me to work for the Duchess, instead of marching out among the dead.” She looks embarrassed, tugging at the low front of her dress, trying without success to pull it up. “It don’t matter much anyway now, but I was never any good at taking down shamblers. I always got stuck wondering who they’d been before. And after the last big massacre before the wall was finished, well, I didn’t have the stomach for it. I would’ve just gotten someone killed out on the line.” She goes quiet for a while, the sound of her breathing the only clue she’s still behind me. “Whoring ain’t so bad once you get used to it, just ask the other girls. Most of the men are okay . . . the sheriff’s boys can get rough, though.”
I nod, feeling like a lout for asking such a personal question. She offers me a hand mirror to check her work. I turn my head from side to side before pointing to my hair. “Thank you.”
She smiles wide, the shadows of shame fleeing her face. “Not a problem. Let me know if you’d like me to do it for you again. I’ll have the Duchess give you a discount. You got good hair, not as thick as some of these other girls.”
My lips quirk. Auntie Aggie used to always say that about my hair as well. It makes me homesick for Rose Hill, the ache so bad that I nearly cry.
Later I lie on my blankets, still damp from being laundered, and reread my letters from my momma for the millionth time. The night sky out here in Kansas is somehow plenty bright to read, and as always, a kind of pain blooms in my chest, part homesick and part grief. The last letter is from nearly a year ago, and in it Momma plaintively wonders why I haven’t written. I think of all my letters, all those memories and clever anecdotes, gone into the ether. I know Red Jack posted them for me. But if the postmaster never forwarded them, then they never went. What happened to those letters, anyway? Did Miss Anderson read them and laugh at my girlish sentiment? Or did she snatch them up and burn them? I imagine Miss Anderson tossing the letters into the fireplace, her hatchet face smiling evilly, and a white-hot rage seizes me so firmly that I’m half afraid I might murder someone just to watch them die.
I take deep breaths, pushing the rage aside, plotting instead of giving way. I’ve been in Summerland for a week, and I still got no idea how to get myself back east to Baltimore and Rose Hill. It seems like an overwhelming task, a mountain of adversity, separated from what few friends I have and a plain full of shamblers between me and where I want to be.
I doze in fits and starts, my near-empty belly and discontent stronger than my fatigue. Eventually I wake. I need to move, to go somewhere of my own free will, otherwise I’m going to explode in an ugly way. The feeling roiling around in my chest reminds me of the night the major tried to kill me, his hand tight around my throat, fear and hopelessness and rage warring deep within my being.
That was the third time a person tried to murder me.
It was the night before the major turned shambler. He’d come in to visit Momma. It was late, and his footfalls were heavy as he climbed the stairs in a whiskey-fueled haze. He slammed the door open loud enough that even the aunties sleeping in the kitchen had heard the crash.
Momma, for her part, was unperturbed. She was busy reciting a bit of Shakespeare, The Tempest to be exact, when he walked in. I hadn’t been able to figure out why she wanted to read at such a late hour, but one glance at the major’s bleary-eyed glare and I had an inkling.
“Pet and I are reading, Jonas.” Momma never called me Jane in front of the major. Her own grandmother’s name had been Jane, and perhaps she feared that the coincidence would be enough to make the major peer more closely at my features, to compare my stubborn chin and narrow nose to Momma’s own features.
“Yer my wife,” he slurred. “I demand you fulfill your duties.”
“Your belly is full, your estate is safe and prosperous, and you’re drunk on whiskey from my own still. I’d say I’ve done more than enough to fulfill my duties.”
For a moment the air was heavy with tension, and I huddled closer to Momma, fearful of what was about to happen.
The major laughed, a bitter sound, before crossing the room and snatching me up by the back of my head and dragging me across the bed so that he could grab me by the throat. He lifted me up effortlessly, his large fingers wrapped around my neck.
“I am the master here, you ungrateful bitch. I’ll tell you when enough is enough.”
He then squeezed, slowly choking me, pressing so hard that I saw spots. I clawed at his hand, but I was little, and nothing I did seemed to make much difference.
That was when Momma stood up and slammed the complete works of William Shakespeare into the side of the major’s head. His grip immediately went slack, and I crashed to the ground, sobbing as I was finally able to breathe again.
“Jane, go down to the kitchens and tell Auntie Aggie that you need to stay out of sight for a few days, okay?”
I’d nodded, hot tears running down my face, and I ran down the stairs as quickly
