“You can’t just carry me around forever, you know,” she winks. “Eventually I have to walk on my own two feet, Jake!”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I grumble, deeply disappointed to hear this news. “Why don’t you come over here and have some breakfast, then? Liam made you an omelet.”
“Oh, yum!” she exclaims. Limping adorably, she hobbles to the chair and falls into it without any assistance at all.
I watch her eat for a few moments, somehow taking a lot of pleasure out of seeing her cheeks move. It’s like when I had a kitten when I was young, just an orange and white striped thing that I found in the estate. I didn’t tell anybody about him, just took him up to my room and kept him in a box. He had been abandoned, and I fed him sweetened milk from a spoon until he got better. Every time he took a small tongue full of milk, I felt such a sense of pride and accomplishment. For some reason, this sort of reminds me of that.
“So listen,” I finally say, clearing my throat, “Timothy said you had a discussion with your friend Nance.”
Her eyes go wide for just a moment. She swallows carefully.
“He told you about that, did he?”
“Of course he did. We’re not going to keep secrets from each other up here.”
She nods slowly. “Of course. That makes sense,” she agrees quietly.
“So all I really need to know is, have you changed your mind?”
She startles, staring at me. “Have I changed my mind about what?”
“Have you changed your mind about staying here?”
Her lips open, pink and pale. All at once, I almost wish I hadn’t asked her. She looks distraught.
“Of course I haven’t changed my mind,” she whispers hoarsely. “How can you ask me that? I’m doing this for us… for you. For all of you. To keep us safe.”
Slowly I nod, feeling relief fill me.
“I just had to ask,” I explain. “I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. You have to know that you can leave whenever you want. You’re not a prisoner to this, not like we are.”
“You don’t have to be prisoners either,” she whispers quickly. “You know, you could use this. I really could write about you. If everyone knew you were here…”
“That’s impossible, Lola,” I tell her firmly. “You know that it is.”
“Well, what if I just wrote about it fictionally, for instance? Or what if I just wrote about it so that you guys have it. I mean, Carty had that whole story about the silver mine and the gallows in Boston. This would just be another part of your story, don’t you think?”
I search her face, noting the excitement, the keen intellectual curiosity. She says that she wants to stay, but for how long? To do what, simply be a bedmate for five ravenous mountain men? Part of me knows that if I don’t agree to this, we will lose some essential part of her. It will either wither away, which would be a shame, or it will take her away from us anyway. In any case, it would be wrong to stop her from being what she is.
“I don’t know,” I confess. “Is that really what you want to do?”
Her face brightens. She can see that I’m giving in, yet again. It seems that there is nothing this woman could ask me that I wouldn’t gladly give her, just to see her happy.
“Yes, to both.”
“Both?” I repeat.
“Yes, I want to write,” she smiles, “and yes, I want to stay!”
“What are we talking about?” comes a voice at the door. Liam and Kill sashay in, trying to look nonchalant. The fact is, they never look nonchalant anymore. They always look like ravenous dogs, ready to take a bite out of our sweet Lola.
“Lola was just telling me that she really does want to stay.”
Liam quirks an eyebrow. “For real? Are we past the trial period?"
Kill pumps his fist in the air triumphantly. “Seriously? Should I get Carty and Tim?”
“Yes, I think that is a good idea,” I announce, standing up and unbuckling my trousers.