A shadow darkened the door. “What are you talkin’ about?”
Alma and Allegra jumped. Alma covered her heart with her hand. “Jude! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“The sun’s goin’ down,” he replied. “You can’t see it from in here, but the day’s almost gone.”
“We were just talking about Allegra’s wedding,” Alma told him. “Do you know she plans to run off and meet her groom alone before she marries him and brings him home?”
Jude McCann stepped into the room and cocked his head to one side. “Does she, now? Well, I guess everyone’s entitled to do things their own way.”
“You would say that,” Alma shot back. “You ran off and didn’t even tell your own parents you were getting married. I should have known better than to expect any sympathy from you.”
“I can’t say I blame her for wanting to do things differently,” Jude continued. “You and Amelia did things almost the same in every detail. Now she wants to do things differently. So let her.”
Alma went back to her work. “You wouldn’t dare to run off alone if Papa was here. If he was alive, he wouldn’t let you set foot in Eagle Pass without him to witness your wedding.”
Allegra shrugged. “You’re right. I probably never would have considered getting married alone if Papa was alive. But he isn’t. He’s dead, and I can do what I please. I might offend you, Alma, but I don’t think I’ll offend either Jude or Bruce. And Amelia’s too sick to travel to my wedding anyway, so she won’t be offended, either.”
“That’s certainly true,” Alma admitted. “And since Amelia wouldn’t be going, Bruce wouldn’t go, either. He doesn’t even like going out to work when she’s this sick. It’s only because he knows everything’s normal with the baby that he forces himself to go out to work each morning. If he thought for a second anything was wrong, he would never leave her bedside.”
Allegra smiled at Alma. “Isn’t he sweet? He’s a true gentleman.”
“It really makes you wonder what your Carl will be like,” Alma agreed. “Marrying a mail-order husband is a tricky business. That’s for sure. You never really know what you’re going to get.”
“Do you have any regrets?” Allegra didn’t dare mention the trouble Jude gave them with him standing right there in the doorway.
Alma shot him a sidelong glance, but he was busy getting a drink of water from the bucket and didn’t hear their conversation. “None at all. None whatsoever.”
Another, bigger shadow darkened the doorway, this time blocking out all light. An enormous hulk of a man ducked under the lintel of the door into the room. The light of day followed him in.
“How are you, Bruce?” Allegra called.
Bruce nodded to her and Alma. “Couldn’t be better. Thanks for askin’.” Then he walked straight across the room and sat down on the edge of Amelia’s bed and paid no more attention to anyone else in the room.
Jude sat down at the table next to Allegra. The baby Flora climbed from Allegra’s hands into her father’s lap and Jude started playing pony rides with her on the end of his knee. Before long, the child’s laugh filled the room.
Allegra watched them for a minute or two. Then she went outside.
As Jude mentioned, the sun dipped low behind the western hills, painting the sky and the landscape blood red. The frilly edges of the clouds blazed bright orange and golden yellow. Allegra paused outside the house, glancing around at the scenery, before she walked away toward the barn.
She didn’t know where she was walking, but she just kept going until she reached the mouth of the gulley leading down to the river. She acknowledged the urge to follow it, but instead, she struck out up the side of the embankment, scrambling through the powdery soil until she reached the top.
From there, she could see down over the site where Jude and Bruce were building the new house. Except for its size, it resembled their current home in nearly every detail. The four plain adobe walls stood complete without a single window. Only the door made a hole in one wall with a wooden beam above it and two wooden posts on either side. Peeled wooden poles lined the open top of the building, waiting for the rest of the roof.
After weeks of curiosity to see the progress of the construction, the sight of it now disgusted Allegra. She turned her back on the house and hurried along the ridge to another rise along another stretch of the river. She saw the flat spot under the willow trees where Bruce intended to build a house for himself, Amelia, and their child.
For some reason, the cleared area where the house would eventually stand didn’t disturb her as much as the almost completed dwelling of Jude, Alma, and Flora. She listened to the swish of the river through its bed and the sigh of the trees in the evening breeze. She waited until the clouds changed color to iron grey and the red of the landscape deepened to twilight before she headed back to the house.
No doubt they would be talking about her in there. They would debate whether she should get married at all, or whether she ought to spend the rest of her life alone. Someone would suggest she dedicate all her life’s work to making the ranch a better place for them to raise their families. Someone else would argue that she had as much right to a happy home as the next person.
Allegra ran her fingers through her hair. It sure felt different after she grew it out. Even after a year and a half, she hadn’t gotten used to the strange feeling. She couldn’t forget how her hair felt when she wore it short.
Jude still looked at her in a strange way. He didn’t quite recognize her as the same boyish desert rat he met in front of the church when he married Alma. He could understand her better the way she was before. He didn’t know how to deal with a woman with long, flowing black hair who wanted to ride the range and herd cattle for the rest of her life.
Allegra stopped in the yard outside the house. She would almost certainly interrupt them if she went in.
Hunger finally made up her mind. They would be eating supper, and they wouldn’t leave her any if she wasn’t there. She had to get her share. That was the unwritten, unspoken law of their supper table. If you weren’t there, you didn’t eat.