Franny sat next to him, rigid as the wagon buckboard supporting the two of them, as far away from him as she could get without falling into the wheels. She also hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t even fidgeting.
She certainly was angry with him.
He deserved it, leaving her alone like that.
Felipe had almost visited the day after he’d told her he wouldn’t. He’d had the team hitched up, his stomach feeling as if he’d eaten a bowl of rocks for breakfast.
As he’d climbed into the wagon seat, he’d caught sight of the pepper tree and the graves behind it. All he could see after was her lying so still, skin clammy, hair lank, and a line of scarlet seeping through her nightgown.
The line of red that had marked the spot of the rupture.
She’d been cut open and stitched back, like an old dress refashioned for something else. Yet she claimed she remembered none of it.
Well, he remembered. And it killed him.
His kisses, his pleasure, had purchased every minute of her pain.
Never again.
Someday, she’ll lie beneath that pepper tree. He couldn’t catch her then.
Shaking, he’d unhitched the team and gone back into the house to sit in his rocker, kicking back and forth, back and forth for hours. The dogs watched from the corner as he’d rocked until the shadows melted into evening, his feet pushing him ceaselessly.
He’d spent the next two weeks in a haze of work and insomnia, wearing himself out by day on the ranch and by night in the rocker. And still the madness wouldn’t leave him.
The black shroud of it just hung heavier and heavier.
By not dying, she’d reminded him that someday, she would. No matter what she’d promised. And he was a fool to think otherwise.
But she was alive now, looking more like herself, if a little thinner and more sullen than usual. She’d answered his inquiries about her health with nothing more than a grunt, so he stopped asking.
He glanced over at her, looking as prickly as a Joshua tree, and sighed. Couldn’t she see that he was only trying to keep her safe? That was all he had ever wanted. “Is the wagon jostling you too much?” he asked.
Her jaw tightened as she tilted her face away from him, her hat hiding everything of her except her defiant little chin and the piquant tip of her nose. She gave one short shake of her head, then wrapped an arm around her waist, the other still bracing her against the seat.
His ribs shrank at the sight of her cradling her injury. “It does hurt,” he snapped. “Can’t you just once admit that, instead of being so damn brave all the time?”
She slowly turned to face him, her gaze sharp. “I said it doesn’t hurt.”
Her expression was so fierce, he could almost forget she was too thin, too pale, and that her belly had been ripped open by a doctor and part of her permanently removed.
For half a heartbeat she was Diana again, looking on some poor mortal and deciding his fate.
The wagon jounced over a rut and the moment dissolved as she curled over herself in pain. He reined in the team, his arms straining with it and the horses tossing their heads at his rough treatment.
He set a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right? Do you want to lie down in the back?” He’d set the mattress in the wagon bed for her, but she’d given it a look of such rage, he hadn’t suggested she ride there.
Her shoulder rose and fell beneath his palm as she took several deep breaths. When her breathing settled, she shrugged off his hand, a gentle roll of her shoulders that hit him harder than a hoof to the chest.
He set his hand back on the reins. Might as well do something useful with it.
“We’ll be home soon enough,” he said to the road ahead. “You can lie down then.”
“And never get up,” she muttered.
He ignored her. She would get used to being a housewife after a time. If he could learn to look at her and never touch, then she could learn to keep house.
Your mother kept house. It didn’t save her.
They were Franny’s words, but his voice speaking them, sounding throughout him. He pushed the guilt from that down hard, down to where it couldn’t plague him.
He turned the horses into the drive, the leather of the reins biting deep into his palms. She swayed a little next to him, dancing almost as gracefully as the pepper tree branches in the wind.
But the headstones beyond the tree didn’t move at all. They sat silent and still among the weeds that had sprung up, fed by the dampness of spring. Without Franny to care for them, they looked neglected.
He sighed as they drove by. He ought to have attended to them while she’d been gone. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would clean them. He needed to get her settled into the house first, put up the team, and see to the stock and all the other chores he’d have to handle on his own from now on.
After all, the graves weren’t going anywhere.
Franny was damned tired of sitting in bed.
She stared at the ceiling of her original room, following the patterns in the wood grain. The swirls danced and turned, falling into each other before rising again.
And all without ever moving.
She wondered if she would ever be allowed to move from this bed. Apparently, Felipe had been dead serious when he said marital relations between them would cease, since she was banished from his room.
He’d shouted with bad dreams throughout the night. Her heart had strained at each and every cry as it came down the hall, but she’d kept to her own bed. He’d been red-eyed with exhaustion when he’d brought her breakfast in the morning.
She didn’t voice her concerns, since he obviously knew best. Or at least he thought he did.
It was only noon and she was ready to climb out of her skin. Even gaping at the purple pucker running across her abdomen had gone from fascinating to familiar. She’d cleaned the plate Gracie had brought for dinner and had nothing to look forward to until supper. Which should only be in about…six hours or so.
She raised her arms, let them flop back to the bed. And did it again.
She was going to die of boredom. She’d survived a surgery and now she was going to die of boredom.
She rolled to her side, stared at the window. She ought to climb out. Go find Felipe.
He’d be furious. But perhaps she could convince him to let her watch him work? Anything to be out of doors. Franny wasn’t fashioned to be inside, no matter what her husband might say. And once he’d seen she could sit outside and nothing awful would happen, then he would have to change his mind on this maddening banishment.
Perhaps she could even be riding again by the end of the week.
A knock on her door startled her out of her reveries on escape and freedom. Trixie jumped up and started to bark, helpfully informing Franny that yes, there was someone at the door.
“Come in,” she called.
Her heart lightened when her papa came in. Her cheeks hurt, her smile was so wide, but she couldn’t help it. Finally, some company—and her father was always her favorite kind of company.
“Papa,” she said, “you’re here!” Which was silly, because of course he was—he was right in front of her, but the occasion seemed to call for some kind of exclamation.
Her father looked better than he had at the sanatorium, although anything would be better than the wordless weeping that had seized him there. Why, her father had taken this entire thing almost as hard as Felipe had.
“How are you?” he asked, stopping halfway across the room, his shoulders hunched and his eyes never quite meeting hers.
“Oh, I feel so much better. You have no notion. I could get out of this bed right now.” She pushed herself up, her incision giving a keen objection at the movement. She ignored it.
His face went white. “Are you certain? You’ve only just got home.”
She halted halfway out of bed. “Of course, I’m certain. I think I know myself.”
I thought you trusted my judgment.
“Francisca, you gave us all quite a scare. Go slow for a bit,” he urged.
She jerked back. Her father had never before told her to go slow. As fast as she wanted to go, that was how fast he’d let her.
She swallowed hard, her ears popping. “I won’t do anything foolish. I only want to leave my bed for a bit.”
Her papa looked uncertain. “What does Felipe say?”
What did Felipe say? She almost wailed. Her papa had always said she could do whatever she put her mind to, had always given her the space to do as she pleased, and now? Now he asked what her husband said? As if she needed his permission?
“But I want to get up.” She couldn’t understand this. She was his pet.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. You were so ill.” His voice caught. “You almost died.”
So it had happened. Her poor papa had been struck with the same fear that paralyzed Felipe.
A fear that made them want to lock her in the house in some queer notion of safety.
“But I didn’t die,” she said. Felipe’s mule-headedness she could somewhat understand… but her father’s? “I’m here and I’m alive. And I want to go outside.” Petulant, yes, but she didn’t care if it was childish.
“I know that,” her father said soothingly, still halfway across the room, as if afraid to come too close and break her.
“Then why can’t I get up? I know how I feel. This is my body, and I feel fine.” She felt as if she were pleading with some terrible judge for her freedom.
Perhaps she was.
Her father sighed. “What does Felipe say?” he repeated.
“He wants me to stay inside,” she admitted in a small voice.
Her father’s smile was sloppy with relief. “It is best you do as your husband wants. You should rest.”
Rest? She was tired of resting. She wanted to live again.
But it didn’t matter to him what she wanted or how she felt. For the first time in her life, Franny felt silenced. Voiceless.
And by the very man who’d always allowed her to shout as loudly as she could.
Her mother had been nothing but calm, supportive.
Her father told her to obey her husband.
This was not how things should be.
“You’re right,” she said slowly, “I should rest.” If only to give her time to ponder this new upside-down world.
“Good, good. You’ll see, my daughter, how much better you’ll feel after.”
She’d feel exactly as she did now—ready to climb the walls with boredom. But she kept that to herself.
He finally crossed the room to pat at her hand. So, she wasn’t to be rewarded until she did as she was told, hmm? She’d broken enough horses to recognize that trick.
“Ah, Francisca, when I saw you in that bed, so close to…” His mouth pursed, and for moment she feared he might weep again. “It was a sight to stop a father’s heart.”
Her own heart ached. Everyone had been frightened—terrified, really—but couldn’t they see she was perfectly fine now? That thanks to the operation there was no chance of it happening again?
Her mother had seen.
But her father and Felipe were acting as if the operation had changed her inner essence. As if the doctor had cut out her uniqueness, then stitched her back into a more feminine—more perfect—wife.
But he hadn’t. She was still herself, still Franny.
Nothing had changed.
And she’d prove it to all of them.
“I am sorry I worried you,” she said meekly. And she was sorry. But not sorry enough to remain indoors forever.
He patted her hand again, no doubt pleased by her docility. “Well, you’re recovering, and with God’s grace, something like this won’t happen again.”
“Papa, I’m still very tired. Perhaps I should rest.” She wasn’t, but she was tired of this argument.
Another pat on her hand. “Of course, my daughter. You rest now like a good girl.”
She had never been a good girl.
He stepped back from the bed. “Rest really is best for you.”
She didn’t agree, only bid him farewell.
She listened to him tramp down the hall, open and shut the front door, and bang down the porch steps. She very carefully counted to one hundred—not once, not twice, but five times—to make certain he was gone. Then she tossed aside the blankets and jumped out of bed.
The muscles in her belly protested, but she ignored them. Trixie leapt up with her and went to the window, scratching and whining at the frame, her entire body vibrating with eagerness.
Franny was just as eager, shucking off her nightgown and leaving it in a heap at her feet. She tugged on her work shirt and split skirt, tucking the waistband so it didn’t rub against her wound.
She went to the window, shoved it open, and stuck her head out.
The scent of the blooms was strong enough to be almost a smack against her nose, the sunlight heavy with heat against her skin. Filling her lungs with that good, fresh air, she tilted her face toward the sun in welcome, her fingers curling into the smooth window frame.
There was nothing finer than a spring day, and she thanked God she’d been spared to enjoy more of them.
Trixie scrambled up the ledge, her claws scraping as they dug in. And quick as could be, she had hopped out and was racing away.
Franny laughed, then looked for Felipe. Only pines, redshank, and the solitary pepper tree were in view. Nothing of her husband.
She hoisted her legs over the sill, ignoring the pain, and followed Trixie out to the other side.