Grace looked up when the outside door burst open, bringing with it a swirl of snow and Quinn. Wind gusted through the room, and she spread her hands out on the papers she was working on to keep them in place. Quinn didn’t greet her, shutting the door swiftly behind him and making sure the heavy drapes they had hung to keep out cold and keep in light settled properly in place. Grace frowned, watching him move swiftly around the room to snap all the drapes shut tight.
“What’s wrong?”
Quinn stepped to the table and blew out the hurricane lamp she’d been using to augment the weak, grey daylight coming in the windows. “I saw people. From up on the ridge. Two people in the neighborhood south of here, moving this way.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, but went to the sliding doors that partitioned the dining area from the parlors and hallway and cracked them open, slipping through.
Grace’s heart started to pound. She heaved out of the chair she’d been sitting in and had to wait for a minute, getting her balance before she lumbered after Quinn. He was standing at the bay window on the southeast corner of the house. This window was covered with horizontal blinds, and he’d lifted one of the slats to peer out intently. Grace started to do the same on the opposite side of the window, but her belly hit the wall first. She huffed in frustration, shifted to the side, then leaned to peek out at the gathering dusk and thickening snow. Her stomach nudged Quinn in the side, and his hand came up automatically to steady her, cupping her elbow and holding it firmly.
“What did they look like? Were they carrying guns? Did they move like they had military training? Are you sure there were just two of them?” Grace barked the questions out one right after another. Then, she closed her eyes and pressed her lips together, pulling a deep breath of air in through her nostrils. She winced at the sudden flurry of agitated kicks in her abdomen – it always happened when she got tense or upset – and looked back up at Quinn.
“I’m sorry. Just tell me what you saw.”
“I was too far away to get details, but it looked like one was carrying a rifle or shotgun, and the other one had a club of some kind, maybe a baseball bat. The dog pack was trailing them, but back a ways, like they had a reason to be wary.”
As he spoke, his palm came to rest on her stomach, right over the invisible, drumming feet. Immediately, the kicks eased in intensity, then stopped altogether. Grace felt a great roll and a shift, as if the burden she carried was snuggling into Quinn’s palm. Happened every time. She didn’t know whose distress Quinn was picking up on, and it didn’t really matter. She was just grateful he could make it stop.
“Those don’t sound like military-issue weapons. Chances are they’re not from the gang, then.” Grace squinted up at the sky. “The snow’s really starting to come down. Maybe they’ll head back to wherever they came from.”
“I just hope they’re not looking for someplace new,” Quinn said grimly. He let the blind drop back into place, and took her elbow once more, steering her back to the table. He shut the partition doors, then joined her. The only light in the room now glowed through the grill of the fireplace in the corner. They sat across from each other, on opposite sides of an old argument that rose between them more and more often these days.
Grace was always the first to start. “If we go right after the weather clears -”
Quinn cut her off with a groan and dropped his head back, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Please don’t start. Please. It’s not safe, especially not now.”
“It’s not safe to stay here. If you had listened to me last summer, we wouldn’t still be having this argument.”
“Graaace…” Face still buried in his hands, Quinn dragged her name out over three disgusted syllables. He dropped his hands to glare at her. “We said we would stop with the ‘I told you so’ stuff. We agreed. It doesn’t do any good.”
“I don’t know what else to say! We should have been out of here months ago! Now, here we are with armed men…”
Without warning, her world shrank to a pinpoint of light and her face was suddenly greasy with sweat. Through the heavy buzzing in her ears, she heard Quinn say, “Oh, Gracie.”
Then, nothing.
She blinked her eyes open, and had just enough time to recognize the familiar ceiling of the bedroom before she rolled over to vomit her lunch into the bowl Quinn had waiting. When she was finished, she rolled back and draped her arm over her eyes, taking deep breaths to bring the remaining nausea under control. Quinn left her to take care of the bowl, returning a moment later with a warm, damp washcloth. He wiped her palms and dried them – for some reason, the sweaty palms bothered her more than anything else – then lifted her arm away from her face and smoothed the washcloth over her forehead and across her mouth.
Grace opened her eyes. He was sitting on the floor beside the bed, just gazing at her patiently. They’d been through this too many times to count. “Don’t say it. Please don’t say it.”
He leaned forward, suddenly intense, until his nose was about three inches away from hers. “I. Told. You. So.”
Tears flooded her eyes, which made her angrier still. She had no control over anything – her body, her emotions, nothing. “Just go away,” she choked. She sounded like a grumpy toddler, but recognizing that didn’t help her get herself under control. She heaved over onto her side, pressing her face into the pillows, curling up as much as her huge belly would allow. “Just leave me alone.”
He didn’t listen. He never did. Instead, he covered her with the soft afghan from the foot of the bed and sat beside her, rubbing her back until the nausea receded and she drifted on the edge of sleep, aware only of the patient circling of his hand on her aching back. She must have slept, then, because when she next opened her eyes it was full dark and she was alone.
She sat up cautiously. A dim light from the kitchen and the muted clanking of the stove told her where Quinn was. She sat for a few moments, listening to the wind wail around the house. After a few days of warm sunshine, winter was back with a vengeance, and she knew the worst snows were likely ahead of them. By their count, it was mid-February, though they were not sure of the exact day, and Colorado’s snowiest month was March. It had been a fairly mild winter so far, but that could change in a hurry on the front range of the Rockies.
Grace stood, waited a minute or two to be sure she wouldn’t pass out again, then wrapped the afghan around her shoulders and shuffled towards the kitchen. Quinn looked up when she appeared in the doorway, his eyes probing her face. Whatever he saw satisfied him that she wasn’t about to do a header, and he turned back to the pot he was stirring.
“I left your papers on the table. If you want to put them away, we can eat.”
Grace shuffled back to the dining room and double-checked the curtains. Then she re-lit the hurricane lamp she’d been using earlier and started methodically stacking papers. She had a numbering system, but it was easier to just keep everything in order. Phrases she’d written jumped out at her as she cross-stacked in organized piles: “Haven’t seen a patrol leave Fort Carson for three days.” “Desperate people are disobedient.” “I recommend we look for another site, something with greater tactical advantage.”
She had been working on this project since the summer before, and she was nearly finished. Writing down everything she had heard while she’d been held captive, word for word, had been both horrific and cathartic. But if this information could be used against the gang of men who currently controlled most of the city, maybe she could find meaning in what she had endured. She needed to get it all down, all of it, so she could identify patterns, look for themes, analyze for weaknesses. She could sense all those things starting to coalesce, could catch glimpses of the big picture that was clicking together piece by piece in her mind, and in the process, she came as close to peace as she got these days.
Quinn would be relieved when she was finished; her project was one of the two major sources of disagreement between them. The other was Quinn’s refusal to leave their cozy little sanctuary at Rock Ledge Ranch.
Grace had continued to suffer frequent fainting spells throughout her pregnancy. Without much more than a few seconds of warning, she could be covered in sweat and headed for the floor, rousing a few minutes later only to vomit whatever she’d eaten last. In the early days, Quinn had gone on a rampage, looking for information on what was happening to her. He had walked all the way to the library branches in Old Colorado City and in the Rockrimmon neighborhood and had cleaned out the shelves on pregnancy-related topics, lugging home hundreds of pounds of books.
When Grace had refused to read them, he’d struggled through the books himself, finally coming up with a name, if not a treatment, for what was happening to her: Vasovagal syncope, which was just a fancy way of saying stress-related fainting, in Grace’s opinion. According to Quinn’s books, it wasn’t uncommon for this to happen during pregnancy, and it could be triggered by any number of things – an unpleasant smell, standing or sitting too long, lack of sleep, or any kind of stress. Hence Quinn’s disapproval of her writing project, and his refusal to leave the ranch. And since their arguments often led to Grace’s eyes rolling back into her skull, Quinn wouldn’t even discuss it anymore. He had put his foot down the previous fall.
“Grace, it is not going to happen and I’m done talking about it. I don’t care what you say, or how many ways you try to twist me up with your arguments. You can’t ride a horse out of here when you could pass out at any minute. Stop and think! If we got in trouble and had to ride hard, how is that going to work? You can’t stay conscious through a whole argument with me – how are you going to…”
And that had been all she’d heard. As soon as she got angry or upset, things started to go dim around the edges. Quinn was very good by now at reading the signs; sometimes, he could stop it before she lost consciousness by rubbing her back and murmuring to her, in the same way she’d heard him comfort fractious animals. Mostly, though, he just refused to engage in any kind of discussion that might upset her.
But the appearance of strangers on their doorstep wasn’t something they could ignore in the hopes it would go away. Quinn set a bowl of steaming stew in front of her, then returned to the stove to pull a pan of fluffy biscuits out of the warming oven. It had taken months, but both of them had finally gotten the hang of cooking and baking with the wood-burning stove. Quinn juggled the hot biscuits to a plate, slid them enticingly close to Grace, then sat down with his own bowl of stew and a jar of honey. He didn’t take a bite until Grace was eating steadily.
“After you fell asleep, I went upstairs and watched for a while. I didn’t see any sign of those people, and the dog pack didn’t head over here to bother the stock. I think they must have headed back the way they came, for now.”
Grace nodded. “Makes sense, what with the storm.” She took another bite of stew, chewed, then went on. “But we’ve been lucky. Really lucky. We have to talk about what to do, Quinn. If the gang finds us, we’re dead.”
Quinn frowned. “I know. And I think I have an idea.”
Grace waited as he broke open a steaming biscuit, drizzled it with honey, then set it in front of her. Quinn would not be rushed when he had thoughts to share. Once again, he waited until she was chewing on her second bite of sweet, soft biscuit before he prepared one for himself. Finally, he started talking.
“You’re right – we have been lucky so far. We haven’t seen anyone nearby, not in all the time we’ve been here. After today, though, I don’t think we have a choice. We need to relocate.”
At last! Grace leaned forward, filled with equal parts relief and triumph. “I know it’ll be fine – maybe we can come up with some way to tie me to Kava – you know, like they do with disabled riders? Straps, or ropes, or something? She’s sure-footed, and she’s steady; I don’t think she’ll spook, even if I pass out. It’s not that far to Woodland Park, and when the weather breaks…”
She trailed off. Quinn was shaking his head. “No. That’s not what I meant.” He hesitated, clearly reluctant to upset her again. His eyes dropped to the enormous mound of her belly, then lifted back up to her face. “Grace, we don’t talk about it. We haven’t talked about it, not once this whole time. But have you done the math? Do you realize how close you are?”
Grace stared at him. Then, she dropped her eyes, staring without seeing at the wooden table-top. Just like that, she couldn’t breathe. Chills of panic started racing up and down her arms and legs, making them tremble randomly. This was a precipice she was not brave enough to look over. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not…I can’t…please, don’t. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I know you don’t.” Quinn’s voice was so tender. “But Gracie, we’re out of time. We have to talk about it.” He slid out of his chair to kneel beside her, lifting her chin with one hand, the other rubbing her arm and shoulder with long, firm, steadying strokes, just exactly like he calmed a spooked horse. “We have to talk about the baby.”
Grace flinched. She avoided reference to her pregnancy whenever possible, and never, not ever, thought of what was growing in her as “the baby.” It was a burden, a temporary problem. When she was free of it, when the fainting stopped, they could be on their way to safety, to Woodland Park, to her father and his family. Her step-mom and little baby half-brother. After this was over.
Quinn was gazing at her with sorrow and knowledge in his eyes. “You haven’t thought about the baby at all, have you.”
Grace stared back, and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. The stew she’d eaten rolled around in her stomach and she swallowed hard to keep it in place. Sweat sheened her forehead, and Quinn read the signs instantly. He tucked her suddenly numb face in the crook of his neck and rubbed her back, his voice a low murmur.
“Just keep breathing, Gracie. Just think about your heartbeat staying steady and even. Think about all your muscles relaxing…”
Grace closed her eyes and did as he instructed, breathing in the comfort of his scent. Quinn had never again spoken of his feelings for her, of wanting their relationship to be more, not since the day they discovered she was pregnant. But it was there, every single day, in the way he cared for her, in the tenderness of his touch and the thoughtfulness of his care. She knew what he hoped for, and knew with equal certainty that it could never be.
In spite of all they’d been through, in spite of the horrors she knew he had seen, there was something about Quinn that remained so pure, so innocent. To Grace, he was of the Earth, a part of nature, like the plants and animals he communed so effortlessly with. Strong and beautiful and natural. Clean. Next to him, she felt wrecked and dirtied. Like an oozing hulk, bloated with poison and anger, swollen to bursting with pain and plans for vengeance she would never allow him to be a part of.
Quinn shifted so he could look at her face, supporting her head in the crook of his elbow. For long moments, he just gazed at her, a troubled frown wrinkling his forehead. Then he heaved a hitching sigh. “I’d usually just stop talking about whatever upsets you, but we’ve done that too much.” He paused, and Grace could hear the determination in his tone when he continued. “We can’t do that this time. You’ve got maybe a couple weeks left. We need to go to ground and get ready for the birth.” He paused again, then said deliberately, “We need to get ready for the baby.”
“Don’t call it a baby!” The words were out before she knew she was going to speak them. She pulled away and pushed at Quinn’s shoulder at the same time, suddenly unable to stand his closeness. “It’s just a…a thing! Just something I have to get over with – something I have to get out of me. I want it out, Quinn. I just want it out, so I can…” Her voice dropped to a miserable whisper. “So I can be me again. It’s like a tumor. Like a rotten growth that takes everything from me.”
Quinn’s frown deepened. “That’s not right. I know you know that. It’s a little boy or a little girl, and it’s not the baby’s fault– ”
“Don’t you dare!”
Grace breathed, breathed deep, willing her body to obey her for once. Quinn was right about one thing – they had let too many hard conversations go unfinished, cut short by the damn fainting spells. But she would make herself understood on this point, if she had to regain consciousness and come back to it a hundred times. She went on in a voice she had forced to be level and calm. “Don’t tell me how to feel about this, Quinn. It’s my body, and you’re not going to tell me what I should feel. I don’t want this thing, and I will never want it. Once it’s out of me, I’m not going to have anything to do with it.”
It took a moment for her words to sink in. When they did, Quinn stood suddenly, and took a step back. In the wake of his physical withdrawal, she felt his emotional distance, as a chill in her chest and stomach. She couldn’t stand the way he was staring at her, like she was a stranger. He started to say something, stopped, swallowed, then managed to get the words out. “What are you saying, Grace? What…what are you…planning?”
“I don’t know!” She yelled the words at him, what little control she had achieved gone. Then she looked down and repeated them in a halting whisper. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I…can’t. Maybe it…won’t survive. Please,” she whispered, not to him, but to God, the Universe, the Fates – whatever had set her on this path, “Let it not survive.”
Silence settled around them, absolute and cold. Quinn seemed frozen, and Grace did not have the courage to look at his face. She couldn’t bear to see what her honesty had wrought in him. Minutes passed, and finally, Quinn stirred.
He cleared away his dishes without saying a word, leaving her to stare at her congealing stew. Grace could hear him moving around in the kitchen, putting things away and washing dishes, and still she stared. She sensed his return to the doorway, his hesitation, then he cleared away her dishes as well. When he appeared in the doorway again, he spoke in a voice that was so stiff, he sounded like a stranger.
“I think we need to move, down to the little cabin. It’s a lot more hidden, and the trees will help break up the smoke from our chimney. We’re too exposed here, too easy to see, and the cabin is smaller. It’ll be easier to keep it heated.”
Grace blinked, then nodded slowly. The Galloway homestead cabin was just a few hundred yards to the north, but it was tucked in a copse of trees on the edge of the creek. If you didn’t know it was there, it was tough to find, and it wouldn’t be an obvious target for scavengers. It didn’t get them out of the gang’s range, but they’d be better concealed. She looked up at Quinn’s face, but he was avoiding her eyes. Her hand lifted in a fleeting, beseeching gesture, then fell back to her lap.
“Whatever you think, Quinn.”
Another long silence, interrupted only by the whistling rise and fall of the wind outside, fell between them. When Quinn finally moved, his burst of sudden, determined energy startled her.
“I’m going to start taking supplies down tonight. If the storm keeps up, it will cover my tracks. The less sign we leave that we’ve been here, the better.”
“Okay.” Grace heaved herself to her feet and lumbered towards the kitchen. “I’ll start packing up what we’ll need, then I can move stuff back where it belongs –”
“No!” Grace jumped at Quinn’s sudden bark, and he softened his tone, though he still hadn’t looked at her. “No. I can do it. You should rest.”
“But I can help, really –”
“I don’t want your help.” His soft words slid gently between her ribs and sliced at her heart. He was looking at her now, and the disappointment in his eyes opened another slicing cut. “I want to do it alone. I just…want some time alone.”
“All right. Okay.” She couldn’t seem to catch her breath. “I’ll just go on to bed then…”
But she was talking to thin air. Quinn was no longer standing in the doorway. Grace heard the outside door open, then close quietly. She stood by the table, lungs hitching as she tried to breathe around the hurt. Quinn had been upset with her before, he had been frustrated, angry, and irritated, but he had never looked at her like that. Like he didn’t know her, and didn’t want to. Like he wanted nothing more to do with her. A sob surprised her as it broke free. She had literally never considered, not once, what would happen if Quinn left her.
Grace picked up the hurricane lamp and headed for the bedroom before she could take another step down that mental path. It didn’t bear contemplating. By the time she finished hauling Quinn’s pallet out from under the bed and straightening the covers, she was gasping for air. She paused, pressing down on the tight upper curve of her belly, so high under her ribs they ached constantly. An answering thump on her palm made her yank her hand away.
With the wind pressing and rattling around the corner of the house, the room was rapidly growing bitter with cold. Grace set the lamp on the table beside the bed, but rather than undressing, she layered on another big sweatshirt and pulled a stocking cap onto her head. Her shoes came off and she awkwardly wrestled a pair of wool socks over the ones she already wore.
This had become a task Quinn helped her with every night, just as he always stoked the warming stove in the corner of the bedroom with a pan of coals. Tears flooded her eyes again, and she gave herself up to them, sobbing without restraint. She wasn’t crying about Quinn, and on some level, she knew it. But it wasn’t safe to open that deeper well, the well with no bottom. So she cried out her hurt over Quinn, cried because of the way he’d looked at her, cried because the stove in the corner was cold and her socks were on crooked, cried until the sobs subsided into halting breaths and some of the terrible pressure inside her had eased. She swiped at her face with her sleeve, blew out the lamp and slid between the icy sheets, moving her arms and legs around to break up the chill before she curled up on her side.
In the dark, in the stillness, she missed the familiar sound of Quinn’s breathing so deeply it made her bones ache. She bit her lip, holding back fresh sobs. He would never leave her. She knew him, better than she knew herself these days, and he would die before he would leave her. He would do the right thing, no matter his feelings. It was the most miserable realization she’d ever come to. Being a burden was awful enough. She could not bear becoming a duty to him. She simply could not live with it.
She drifted in and out of fitful sleep as the night wore on, sometimes hearing Quinn moving around in the kitchen or dining area, waking fully when he settled on the pallet beside the bed in what had to be the wee hours of the morning. Words crowded into her throat, words she wanted to say to him in the safe darkness: I’m sorry. Thank you. You’re a jerk. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry. She swallowed them all back down, because she didn’t understand any of it. Instead, she listened to his breathing and finally fell fully, deeply asleep.
When she opened her eyes, bright white light was leaking around the edges of the heavy curtains, and Quinn was gone again. Grace slid reluctantly from her warm cocoon of blankets, driven first to use the bucket Quinn had rigged up as a mini port-a-john, complete with a toilet seat and a curtain for privacy. During the warmer months, they had used the outhouse in the yard, but colder weather and Grace’s advancing pregnancy had necessitated the change. She’d been humiliated at first, sharing such private bodily functions with him. She remembered plugging her ears, cheeks roasting with embarrassed heat, the first time Quinn had used the bucket. Now, it was just a part of daily life.
Sometimes, she wondered if they would ever again enjoy luxuries like warm, clean bathrooms and flushing toilets, but she didn’t allow herself to dwell on such thoughts for long. Thinking about how things used to be, worrying about what the future held – she couldn’t do either. There was just today, with its tasks and problems to solve. It was the only way she knew how to keep going. She just kept taking the next step.
When she was finished dressing, Grace moved to the window and peered out. Snow was still coming down in huge, fluffy flakes, so thick she couldn’t even see the barn. Faintly, she could see where Quinn had been trekking back and forth, either between the house and the barn, or between the house and the cabin, but the trail was filling in even as she watched. Moving during the storm was a good idea, and today, he was going to get her help whether he wanted it or not.
She started by gathering and folding all their clothes and stacking them on the bed. With that finished, she scooted outside to empty the port-a-john, leaving the bucket by the door so it could be moved to the cabin. She paused then to eat some cold stew and drink some water. It still shocked her, how fast hunger could sneak up and debilitate her, and she was determined to be useful today, determined to pull her weight. Quinn still hadn’t returned by the time she finished, so she shuffled awkwardly up the steep stairs that led from the kitchen to the storage space above.
Before the weather had turned cold, they had both continued to use the upstairs bedroom, Quinn on his pallet, Grace in the bed. Views of the surrounding area were better, and there was often a cool breeze to lift the curtains in the north windows. The colder months, though, had driven them into the downstairs bedroom. They used the partition doors to close the parlors and upstairs off, living in the kitchen, dining area and downstairs bedroom to conserve heat. Quinn had moved all of their supplies into the storage area above the kitchen as well, in case they needed to get out in a hurry. Grace nudged at the piles, wondering what they might need and what should just be left here.
The saddlebags – they should keep those at the ready. She picked them up, eyed the steep stairs, then tossed them down. She misjudged the drop, though, and one of them caught the stairs, bumping and tumbling through the air to land right against the stove. Grace huffed in annoyance, and started shuffling back down. The last thing they needed was a fire. She was halfway down the stairs when the outside door was snatched open and Quinn’s frantic face appeared.
His gaze flew back and forth between the saddlebags and her face, his forehead creased with confusion and…was it fear? His chest was heaving, and to Grace’s consternation, his eyes filled with tears. What in the world?
She made it to the bottom of the stairs, pulled the saddlebag to safety, then laid a hand on his forearm. “Sorry about that – it seemed safer to drop them than to carry them down. Did you think I fell?”
He stepped back and swiped at his face. “No, I thought… I was on the porch, and I heard this thump… I didn’t know… I didn’t know what you’d done.”
Grace frowned. “Didn’t know what I’d done?” Click, click, click – like puzzle pieces, she understood. “You thought I threw myself down the stairs. On purpose. To hurt this.” She pointed at her stomach.
He just swallowed and stared at the floor. After a moment, he bent and gathered up the saddlebags. “I’ll take these down to the cabin.”
“Quinn.” She followed him towards the door, but he didn’t turn. “Quinn! Please look at me.”
He turned, but his eyes still wouldn’t rise. “I don’t want to talk,” he mumbled. “Just forget it. The storm’s starting to ease up, and I want to make these last trips before –”
“I would never do that. Hurt myself, I mean.” She ducked down, trying to get him to look into her eyes, to see her truth, feeling more desperate by the minute. “Don’t you know that about me by now? Don’t you know me?”
He did look up then, and one of these days, she would learn: When Quinn was avoiding eye contact, it was because he didn’t want to hurt her. “I don’t know you, Gracie. And I don’t know how to help you. The way you’re thinking… I’m in over my head. I don’t know how you or anyone else could blame an innocent baby for what those men did to you. I can’t get my head around it. So, no, I don’t trust you not to try to hurt yourself or the baby.”
He turned to gaze out the window at the falling snow. “I don’t want to talk. I’m afraid of what you’ll say. I’m afraid of what you feel. Most of all, I’m afraid of what will happen after the baby comes.”
Those eyes, sad and honest, swung to touch hers again, and she flinched. She opened her mouth to answer, to reassure, to defend herself, but not a word rose. Anything she could think to say, anything he would want to hear, would be a lie. And it was as if he read her mind. His eyes dropped again, but she saw the shine of fresh tears first. Without a word, he opened the door and stepped out into the storm, saddlebags thrown over both shoulders.
Anger came first. How dare he? How could he? On that surge of energy, Grace moved from room to room, thoughts boiling as she straightened and gathered, returning things to rights. He saw! He saw everything that had been done to her! And he presumed to judge?
Her rage dissipated as quickly as it had come. In its wake, she felt weak and nauseated, sick with misery. She sank down to rest on the bed, and focused on keeping her breath steady, her muscles relaxed. Enough with the fainting. She could do this, at least – learn to stop the spells when they started, without relying on Quinn to do it. She relied on him for far too much.
She wasn’t sure when the balance had shifted, but at some time in the past months, Quinn had become the strong one. He made decisions. He kept them safe. He took care of her when she couldn’t care for herself. He was as trapped by her helplessness as she was, but the time for that to end was rapidly approaching.
Grace looked down at her belly, really looked, for the very first time. As if in response to her gaze, the thing inside her rolled, shifted, pressed. Grace watched the bizarre contortions, felt the alien movement, and knew she could never do what Quinn wanted her to do. She could not feel love for this…being. It had taken over her body, endangered her and Quinn, and would never stop reminding her of what she had suffered.
But Quinn would never forgive her if she tried to harm it. All life was precious to him. She couldn’t change that about him, and wouldn’t, even if she was able. It was what made Quinn, Quinn. Life seemed to surge around and through him, a force she could almost see, especially when he was in his garden or working with the animals. Living things leaned into him, pressed close, in a give and take of energy that was as natural as sun and rain. This being she carried would be no different. He would care for it, nurture it, because he couldn’t do otherwise.
Grace made herself think it through, bent her logical mind to the task she had avoided all these long, waiting months. She couldn’t relieve him of this burden. If it survived, he would lift it to his strong shoulders, without hesitation or regret. If she survived, he would continue to carry her as well.
Therein lay the only thing she still had the power of choice over.
By the time Quinn returned, Grace was ready to go, bundled in a scavenged winter coat that still smelled faintly of a dead woman’s perfume. The fires were out, the house restored as much as possible to the condition they’d found it in. Grace had collected a small bag of things she wanted: her writing project, the book they’d been reading together, a few items that brought her comfort or had meaning to her. When Quinn reached to take it from her, she calmly, gently refused. Step one to reclaiming her strength and independence: Help herself, whenever possible.
She took her walking stick from its place by the door and stepped out onto the porch. Then, in spite of it all, in spite of the fear and anger, the bitter heartache, the distance from Quinn that made her feel breathless and lost, she smiled. Fluffy snow covered the small valley like winter fairy dust, transforming the world into a clean, bright, pure place. Around the now-frozen pond, a small herd of mule deer foraged under the towering evergreens and bare-branched trees, where the snow wasn’t so deep. She loved their elegant silence, their grace. It took her outside herself, for just a heartbeat, and the tiny respite strengthened her further.
Quinn stepped out beside her and shut the door, and still without speaking, took her arm. Grace allowed him to steady her as she crept down the icy walkway, then gently pulled her arm away and headed towards the cabin, Quinn trailing a step or two behind. They trudged past the barn, then past the open paddock, which didn’t see much use anymore. Late the previous fall, a pack of dogs had started to bother the animals, eventually killing one of their goats. The dogs had probably all been pets at one time – some still wore collars – but even Quinn wouldn’t try to approach them. They made him sad, he said. He wasn’t as in-tune with dogs as he was with horses, but he said most of them were disconnected from humans now, their minds focused on the pack, the hunt. Neither he nor Grace went outside these days without stout walking sticks, and Quinn always had some rocks for throwing in his pocket.
They walked along the trail that curved around the north end of the paddock, the only sounds the soft shuffle of their boots in the snow and the increasing huff of Grace’s breath. She stopped to rest where the trail swung back to the north, and turned to look up at the soaring red rocks of Garden of the Gods, the top of Kissing Camels just visible over the ridge. Once, millions of people had come from all over the world to visit this park, these towering, timeless monoliths. Before that, the Ute Indians had wintered here. Now, it felt as if she and Quinn were the only ones left alive who remembered its existence.
These rocks had stood for millennia and would stand long after she and Quinn were gone, whether there were tourists to admire them or not. Grace turned and started walking again, trying not to feel small and meaningless. They entered the clearing where the old Galloway cabin stood, and Quinn hurried ahead of her, stomping his boots on the spot he’d cleared in front of the door before he opened it for her. Grace stepped inside, and when he pulled the door shut behind them, the darkness was almost total.
The tiny log cabin had been built in the late 1800’s, according to information they’d found in the Chambers house. Two tiny windows were currently covered by wooden shutters, and the only light glowed from the coals Quinn had left banked in the fireplace. A tiny, rickety table and some chairs with seats of woven rags were situated near the hearth, and Grace could see where he had made an effort to clear away some of the unnecessary historical artifacts, which were stacked in the corner farthest from the warmth of the fireplace. Quinn lit a hurricane lamp that was sitting on the table before he bent to stoke the fire into life. When he was finished, he stood.
“I know it’s dark, but it’s snug and it’ll be easier to keep warm.” In his gestures, Grace could see his uncertainty. “There’s water here by the fireplace in this bucket, and I set the port-a-john up in the corner over there. At night, I figure we can just move the table out of the way and drag our pallets in front of the fire.” He paused. “Is it okay? Are you all right with this?”
Grace made a show of looking around so he wouldn’t see the sudden tears in her eyes. It was a hovel. A dark, dirty little shack. No antiques with fine lines here; everything was hand-made and crude. What had Quinn said? They needed to go to ground, to prepare for the birth? Well, it certainly seemed they’d done just that. The cabin felt like a den for animals.
Grace lifted her spine into straight strength and set aside her longing for the bright, drafty, old-fashioned charm of the Chambers house. If he knew how she felt, Quinn would move them back again before the day was out. She met his eyes, smiling through the first of many lies she needed to start telling him.
“It’s just fine.”