the sleeping girl indecisively. Then she wrote a quick note and pinned it to the cloth cover on the bedstand, where Sarah could not fail to see it if she awoke.
The wind had picked up, scouring a fine dust from the streets and driving it against the wooden facades of the buildings. Imogene let herself out the gate. To the right, Virginia Street petered out into scattered homes and disreputable-looking shops. To the left was the bulk of the town, with its stores and eating houses. Holding on to her hat, she turned resolutely left in search of Isabelle Anne and her husband.
It took an hour to canvass the post office, the courthouse, and finally the stationer’s where Isabelle Anne Close’s husband had worked. The Englewoods had moved to Sacramento.
Letting the wind snatch her hat awry and whip her hair from its pins, she trudged back to the hotel. Mount Rose threw its shadow across the wide valley floor, and without the sun, the wind lost every vestige of spring and blew bitterly cold. Exhaustion drew down Imogene’s cheeks and deepened the creases around her eyes and mouth; she looked like a woman in her forties.
Several people were gathered around the fireplace in the parlor: a man and his wife and an elderly woman with thinning white hair piled elaborately, if inexpertly, on top of her head. Avoiding their curious glances, Imogene went straight up to the room. There was no light showing under the door and she turned the knob slowly, careful not to make too much noise. The room was deep in dusk and shadow. “Sarah, are you asleep?” she whispered. There was no answering rustle. She closed the door quietly. Without lighting a lamp, Imogene unpinned her hat and sank into a chair, her shoulders stooped. She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “What to do, what to do,” she muttered to herself. Gray in the evening light, her face in the looking glass caught her attention and she stared at her reflection. Hair stuck out from her head like straw, one strand falling down over her eyes. “Double, double, toil and trouble,” she said wryly, and turned her back on herself, massaging her temples.
When Imogene’s eyes had adjusted to the half-light, she noticed that Sarah was not in the bed. “Sarah?” she called, and stood to walk around the footboard. A candle was extinguished on the floor, a scar burnt in the hardwood. Sarah was sprawled beside it, her petticoats tangled around her knees, her hand outstretched toward the candle. Imogene knelt and cradled her in her arms.
Sarah’s eyes fluttered open and she looked around her with the gaze of a stranger. “I fell,” she murmured. “I have to get Matthew inside before the storm hits; I can hear the wind.”
Imogene pressed her cheek against the girl’s burning forehead, rocking back and forth. “Oh dear God,” she whispered. “Oh dear God.”
18
SARAH THRASHED IN A PRIVATE NIGHTMARE, SOMETIMES RECOGNIZING Imogene but more often calling for people who were familiar to her childhood. Always she cried for her mother and David and begged for her son. Imogene stayed awake through the nights, watching the thin, tortured face by the light of a shielded lamp.
At dawn of the third day, Imogene sat near the window. The dark wool of her dress was rumpled; she had not taken it off in four days. The white hair at her temples showed stark in the blue light, and in her lap she twisted a handkerchief, grimy with use. Outside the window, the sun touched the peaks of the Sierra. The rosy hue spread down over the snow and turned at last to gold.
“Imogene.” Sarah’s voice, mostly air, sounded far away. The schoolteacher turned slowly, reluctant to leave the pearly glow of sunrise for the sickroom. Sarah’s face was still flushed with fever, but the delirium had lifted and Imogene saw recognition in her eyes.
“My dear,” Imogene whispered. “You are back with me.” She brought Sarah water from the nightstand and stayed, holding the hot, dry little hand, until the girl slept.
Imogene looked from the helpless white fingers to her own blunt, capable hands, and a heavy tiredness blanketed her features. Lying down on the cot by the far wall, she let herself sleep.
When she awoke, the afternoon sun was throwing the shadow of the hotel across the backyard. Sarah was still sleeping. Imogene levered herself stiffly out of her cot and sat down near the window to write Margaret Tolstonadge a brief account of their journey and Sarah’s illness, ending with:
Having posted the letter, Imogene walked slowly up the boardwalk, her heels making a hollow sound on the wood. The sun shone under the wide overhang of the wooden awning, and Imogene tilted her face back to catch the light. Brown-and-white sparrows perched in the rain gutters, and the bright yellow-orange breast of a Western oriole flashed over V. Milatovich’s grocery store.
Outside Willamette ’s Dry Goods and Feed, two men lounged in a warm square of sunlight, their shoulders braced against the building. One was young, around thirty, with thick brown hair that curled boyishly over his ears. Large features crowded his face, and one side of his mouth drooped a little, giving him a puckish look. The other, gnarled and grizzled and in his fifties, was not over five feet seven inches tall, even in his thick-heeled boots. A sharp beak of a nose dominated his face, and bright blue eyes twinkled deep on either side of it. As Imogene drew near, the older man pushed himself out from the wall and tugged at the brim of a battered old hat. His right hand was missing all but the middle finger and thumb.
“Afternoon to you, ma’am.”
“Good afternoon.” Imogene nodded, giving them both a cursory glance.
“You be the lady come in with the little sick miss the other day?”
Imogene stopped. “Yes, I am.” She waited. The man had his hat off and was standing respectfully enough. He had to look up to talk with her. His companion had relinquished the support of the wall at Imogene’s approach and pushed his hat back in deference to her sex.
“If you’re a spinster lady or a widow, I’d like to suggest we get hitched.” The man rubbed his grizzled head with the stumps of his fingers in an overabundance of humility. Imogene stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I’m proposing matrimony,” he explained.
Imogene touched her drawn cheeks, her hair; then, with an obvious effort at self-control, she dropped her hands to her sides. Blood rose in her face to the roots of her hair, only her lips and the edges of her nostrils retaining their former pallor. “Excuse me.” Holding her dress back so it wouldn’t brush against him, she stepped around the man as though he were a pile of manure.
Undaunted, he called after her, “You ever change your mind, name’s McMurphy. Willamette ’ll know where I can be found.”
The younger man laughed. “Now you’ve torn it, Mac. You’re too little. Gal like that throws the little ones back.”
Mac hit him with his hat. “Go on. Mouth off. You got yourself a woman.”
The younger man snorted derisively.
Sarah was asleep. Still warm with fever, she had thrown off her covers and her small feet showed pink beneath the hem of the nightdress.
Quietly, Imogene unpacked the rest of her bags and put her things away. She saved out ink and a dozen sheets of white paper. When the room had been tidied to her satisfaction, she sat down again at the window and carefully wrote in large letters across the top of each sheet: LAUNDRY AND MENDING. I. GRELZNIK-INQUIRE AT THE BROKEN PROMISE. She waited several moments for the ink to dry, then took them downstairs.
Lutie was busy in the kitchen. But for the parlor, the kitchen was the largest room in the hotel, with the stove and pantry at one end and a long plank table flanked by benches at the other. The hotel residents ate in the kitchen along with two railroad men who lived near the station and boarded with the Bones. Lutie was cutting potatoes into cubes with a meat cleaver when Imogene came in.
“Pardon me, Mrs. Bone.”
“Lutie. We’re not so formal as all that.” She waved the cleaver in the direction of the bench opposite. “Sit yourself down. How’s little Mrs. Ebbitt?”
“Still sleeping.” Imogene slid in between the table and the wall.
“That’ll do her more good than anything. What’ve you got there?”
