Walk on Earth a Stranger

“Leah?”

I sigh. “Here’s where you and I are different. I love my mama and daddy. I can’t leave them. And yes, it’s my claim as much as anyone’s. I’m proud of it. I can’t leave it neither.”

He releases my hands. Together, we look out over the snow-dusted yard to find the others staring at us. They saw us holding hands, for sure and certain. But we ignore them. We’re used to ignoring them.

“You might not have a choice,” he says. “If your daddy wants to go to California—”

That stab of hope again. “Mama will convince him not to. He’s too sick.”

“But if you go—”

The school bell peals, calling us inside.

“We’ll talk later,” I say, more than a little glad to let the subject go. I’ve lots of thinking to do. In fact, I do so much thinking during the next hours that I’m useless for helping the little ones with their sums, and when Mr. Anders calls on me to recite the presidents, I mix up Madison and Monroe.

I drive home as soon as school lets out, not bothering to say bye to Jefferson, though I wave from a distance. I need to get away, and fast, find some open air for laying out all my thoughts about California and gold and going west, not to mention the stunning and undeniable fact that Jefferson just asked me to marry him.

As offers go, it’s not the kind a girl dreams about while fingering the linens from her hope chest. I’m not even sure he meant it, the way he stumbled over it so badly.

I’ve thought about marriage—of course I have—but no one seems to have taken a shine to me. It’s no secret I spend my days squatting in the creek bed or hefting a pickax or mucking the barn, that I have an eagle eye and a steady shot that brings in more game than Daddy ever did, even during his good spells. I might be forgiven my wild ways if I was handsome, but I’m not. My eyes are nice enough, as much gold as brown, just like Mama’s. But I have a way of looking at people that makes them prickly, or so Jefferson says, and he always says it with a grin, like it’s a compliment.

One time only did I mourn to Daddy about my lack of prospects. He just shrugged and said, “Strong chin, strong heart.” Then he kissed me quick on the forehead. I never complained again. My daddy knows my worth.

I suppose Jefferson does too, and my heart hurts to think of him leaving and me staying. But the truth is I’ve never thought of him in a marrying kind of way. And with an awful proposal like that, I don’t know that Jefferson’s too keen on the idea either.

A gunshot cracks through the hills, tiny and miles distant. A minute later, it’s followed by a second shot. Someone must be out hunting. I wish them luck.

By the time my wagon comes in view of the icy creek and the faint track that winds through the bare oaks toward home, I decide there’s no help for it but to talk everything out with Mama and Daddy. The three of us have some shared secrets among ourselves, sure, but we have none from one another.

Peony tosses her head, as if sensing my thoughts. No, it’s the surrounding woods that have put a twitch in her. They are too silent, too still.

“Everything’s fine, girl,” I say, and my voice echoes back hollowly.

As the leafless trees open up to reveal our sprawling homestead, right when I yell “Haw!” to round Peony toward the barn, something catches my eye.

A man’s boot. Worn and wrinkled and all alone, toppled into a snowbank against the porch.

“Daddy?” I whisper, frozen for the space of two heartbeats.

I leap from the bench, and my skirt catches on the wheel spoke, but I rip right through and sprint toward the house. I don’t get far before I fall to my knees, bent over and gasping.

Because Daddy lies on his back across the porch steps, legs spread-eagled, bootless. Crimson pools beneath his head and drips down the steps—tiny rapids of blood. His eyes are wide to the sky, and just above them, like a third eye in a brow paler than snow, is a dark bullet hole.

“Mama!” I yell, and then I yell it again. I can’t take my eyes off Daddy’s face. He seems so surprised. So alive, except for that unblinking stare.

What should I do? Drag him away before he ruins the porch, maybe. Or put his boots back on. Why did Daddy go outside without his boots?

My hands shake with the need to do something. To fix something. My eyes search the steps, the porch, the wide-open doorway, but I can only find the one boot, shoved into the snowbank. “Mama? Where are Daddy’s boots?” My voice is shrill in the winter air, almost a scream.

I use the porch railing to pull myself to my feet. If I can just find that blasted boot, everything will be fine. Why isn’t Mama answering?

The world shifts, and I stumble hard against the railing.

Two gunshots. I heard two. “Mama,” I whisper.

I start running. Through the drawing room, the bedroom, the kitchen still messy from supper. Upstairs to the dormer room where I sleep, then back down again. Sunshine has broken through the clouds, streaming light through our windows. Mama’s touches of love are everywhere—the blue calico curtains of my bedroom, the pine boughs winding our otherwise plain banister, and poking from the vase on our mantel, flowers made from wrapping paper and stained yellow with wild mustard. Yesterday’s venison stew, still warm on the box stove.

But Mama is nowhere to be found, and the place feels so bare it’s like an ache in my soul.

Still calling for her, I race outside and bang on the outhouse. I search the barn. I splash through our tiny stream and sprint into the peach orchard.

Under the trees, I stop short. The world is so empty and quiet. Too quiet, as if even the trees need to be hushed and sad for a spell. Which is just as well; I must stop panicking and start thinking. You’re a smart girl, Lee, Daddy always says, especially when I struggle with algebra. You can figure this.

Winter chill works its way through my boots, which aren’t quite dry from yesterday’s hunt, and I wrap my arms around myself against the cold and the dread. In the distance, Peony snorts at something. I left the poor girl hitched to the wagon. She’ll have to keep.

I close my eyes and concentrate, turning in place like a compass.

Gold sings to me from north of the orchard, from the vein that Daddy and I started working before the snow hit. Fainter, as if very small or from very far away, comes the one I’m looking for: a hymn of purity, a lump of sweetness in my throat. A nugget, maybe, but I’m hoping it’s Mama’s locket.