Chapter Twenty-Six

The child was asleep, the room quiet, peaceful. Suzanne sat in a chair, her gaze fixed on the window, staring out into the night, the sky red now from the storm, the snow collected against the sills. The glass windowpane had patterns of frost on it.

John Henry Cole removed the heavy coat, thankful once more that it had saved his life, and dropped it on the floor over his bedroll. In spite of the cold air outside, his shirt was soaked from sweat. Suzanne watched him in silence.

He sat down, cross-legged, on the floor and pulled off first one boot, then the other. Still she watched him. His chest was bruised from the slug that had never made it through the curly coat. He winced when he touched the spot.

“Are you all right?” she said at last as he rested his back against the wall.

“I’ve been better,” he answered. He searched for his makings, but for some reason wasn’t able to do much because of the cold stiffness of his fingers.

She moved from the bed, knelt beside him, looked into his face. The light in the room was soft yellow. The shadows played against her face as she took the tobacco and paper from his hands and began to roll the cigarette for him.

“How bad are you hurt?” she asked.

“Not very.”

She wound the tobacco in the paper, licked the edges, sealing it, then twisted off the ends, and handed it to him. He struck a match off the floor and the flame from it danced in front of their eyes. She moved behind him, placed her hands on his shoulders, and began to knead the flesh there where his muscles were tight and aching. Her hands were cool, the fingers strong, knowing just where to squeeze. He closed his eyes and leaned into the pleasure of it.

“I worried about you today,” she said, as her hands continued working at the knots in his shoulders and neck.

“Suzanne, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Hush, don’t talk, just let me do this, let me take away your pain.”

The cigarette tasted good. He reached up with his right hand and placed it atop one of hers, stopping it for a moment

“Am I hurting you?” she asked

“Suzanne, Johnny’s dead.”

Something audible caught in her throat, but she didn’t say anything. Her other hand ceased its movement, its cool strength resting just at the back of his neck.

“He was killed earlier today,” Cole said.

She lay her head on his shoulder near the hand he was holding.

“Why?” she said. “Why was he killed?”

“It’s complicated,” he said. “Maybe we can talk about why in the morning. Right now, I just need to rest.”

For a long time she left her head on his shoulder, her breath warm and soft and sweet against the side of his face. A single teardrop fell onto the back of his hand. It was warm as rain in summer.

“I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you, Suzanne.”

She swallowed. “I didn’t love him any more,” she murmured. “But I feel badly for him, and I feel sorry for myself for feeling that way.”

He moved around, took her face in his hands. “Don’t be,” he said. “Don’t be sorry because you feel bad for him, Suzanne.”

“I’m sorry for Tessie,” she said. “She will never know her father now.”

“Only what you choose to tell her about him. Maybe she just needs to know the good parts, Suzanne.”

For a long moment, she didn’t speak except with her eyes, then she whispered: “Why do I feel so alone?”

“You’re not alone,” he said. “At least not tonight. Look at me, Suzanne. Tell me what you see.” At first she avoided his gaze, but when he held her that way, she finally looked. “What you see, Suzanne, is a man who has spent most of his life drifting. What you see is a man who lost the only woman he ever learned to love and who has never quite drifted far enough or long enough to get over it. You had a man who hurt you, Suzanne. Maybe you’ll be lucky and get over it. You deserve better.”

“You don’t know what I deserve,” she said, her voice breaking, her tears spilling onto his hands. She wiped at her eyes. “Tell me something,” she said, straightening, holding back her pain. “Are you afraid that you might meet someone that’s worth falling in love with again? Or is it that you’re afraid if you ever stop drifting, you’ll learn the truth about yourself, that you don’t deserve to be happy?”

“Maybe both, Suzanne. Maybe both.”

“Our loneliness comes from the same place, John Henry Cole,” she said. “Believe it or not.”

He lay awake a long time that night, thinking about what Suzanne had said, about the loneliness coming from the same place. He thought of Liddy, of the passion between them, and wondered what it would be like with Liddy and him, once the passion burned itself out. Liddy was like a prairie fire burning across his soul, burning up his logic and reason, burning up all the will he had to resist her. But when the fire finally burned out, would there be anything left, he wondered. Was that where his loneliness had led him, in the path of a wildfire? And what of Suzanne and Tessie? What was he supposed to do about them? His thoughts turned to another town and another woman. A woman he had killed a man over without meaning or intending to, a woman who in the end had seen him as just another sorrow for her to have to learn to live with—at least, until the next man in her life came along. Juanita Delgado—what had come of that? Lying there in the dark on the floor of a Deadwood hotel, Cole thought of how cruel life seemed to be sometimes, by giving us what we need, but seldom what we want.