“I do.”
He sighed and looked up at her. “He said, ‘Anywhere but here.’”
“He said that?”
“If it helps, he pret’ near looked ready to cry.”
The man pulled out a crumpled, stained envelope and pushed it through the iron bars of the ticket window. “He said to give you this.”
“He knew I’d come?”
“Wives always do.”
She drew in a steadying breath. “So, if he had no money, maybe—”
“He done what they all do.”
“All?”
“Men all over the county been leavin’ their families. Families been abandonin’ their kids and kin. I never seen nothing like it. A man over in Cimarron County kilt his whole family ’fore he left.”
“Where do they go with no money?”
“West, ma’am. Most of ’em. They jump on the first train that comes through town.”
“Maybe he’ll come back.”
The man sighed. “I ain’t seen one of ’em come back yet.”
* * *
ELSA STOOD IN FRONT of the depot. Slowly, as if it were combustible, she opened Rafe’s letter. The paper was wrinkled and dusty and appeared blotched by moisture. His tears?
Elsa,
I’m sorry. I know the words don’t matter, may be worse than nothing.
I’m dying here, that’s all I know. One more day on this farm and I might put a gun to my head. I’m weak. You are strong. You love this land and this life in a way I never could.
Tell my parents and my children I love them. You are all better off without me. Please, don’t look for me. I don’t want to be found. I don’t know where I’m going anyway.
R
Elsa couldn’t even cry.
Heartache had been a part of her life so long it had become as familiar as the color of her hair or the slight curve in her spine. Sometimes it was the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn’t see. But it was always there. She knew it was her own fault, somehow, her doing, even though in all her desperate musings for the foundation of it, she’d never been able to see the flaw in herself that had proven to be so defining. Her parents had seen it. Her father, certainly. And her younger, more beautiful sisters, too. They had all sensed the lack in Elsa. Loreda certainly saw it.
Everyone—including Elsa—had assumed she would live an apologetic life, hidden among the needs of other, more vibrant people. The caretaker, the tender, the woman left behind to keep the home fires burning.
And then she had met Rafe.
Her handsome, charming, moody husband.
“Hold your head up,” she said out loud.
She had children to think about. Two small people who needed to be comforted in the wake of their father’s betrayal.
Children who would grow up knowing that their father had abandoned them at this tender time.