She shouldn’t go. That much was obvious. The bruise on her jaw had healed, but the mark of it remained beneath the surface. Good women did not do the thing Rafe had asked of her.
She heard her parents come home, climb the stairs, open and close their bedroom door down the hall.
The bedside clock read 9:40.
Elsa lay there, breathing shallowly, as the house quieted.
Waiting.
She shouldn’t go.
It didn’t matter how frequently she said it in her head, because not once, not for one moment, had she considered following her own advice.
At eleven-thirty, she got out of bed. The room was still stiflingly hot, but her window looked out on the Great Plains night sky. Her childhood portal to adventure. How often had she stood at this window and sent her dreams into those unknown universes?
She opened the window and climbed out onto the metal flower trellis. It seemed as if she were crawling into the starlit sky itself.
When she dropped onto the thick grass, she paused, waited nervously to be detected, but no lights came on inside. She crept over to the side of the house and retrieved one of her sisters’ old bicycles. Climbing aboard, she pedaled out to the road and down Main Street and out of town.
The world at night was big and lonesome in a way that locals had become used to, illuminated only by starlight, pinpricks of white in a dark world. There were no homes out here, nothing but darkness for miles.
She pulled up to the old barn and dismounted, setting her bicycle in the blanket of buffalo grass beside the road.
He wouldn’t show up.
Of course he wouldn’t.
She could remember every word he’d said to her, few as they were, and every nuance of expression on his face as he spoke. The way his smile started on one side and kind of slid slowly into place. The pale comma of a scar along his jaw, the way one incisor poked out just a little.
I dreamed of you.
Meet me tonight.
Had she answered him? Or had she just stood there, mute? She couldn’t remember.
But here she was, standing all alone in front of an abandoned barn.
Fool that she was.
There would be hell to pay if she got caught.
She stepped forward, her brown oxford heels crunching on tiny stones on the road. The barn loomed up before her, the peak of the roof seeming to get caught on the fishhook moon. Slats were missing; fallen boards lay scattered.
Elsa hugged herself as if she were cold, but in truth she was uncomfortably warm.
How long did she stand there? Long enough to begin to feel sick to her stomach. She was about to give up when she heard a car engine. She turned, saw a pair of headlights coming down the road.
Elsa was so shocked she couldn’t move.
He was driving too fast, being reckless. Gravel spit out from the tires. His horn blared: ah ooh gah.
He must have jumped on the brake, because the truck fishtailed to a stop. Dust rose up around him.
Rafe jumped out of the car in a hurry. “Els,” he said, grinning, producing a bouquet of purple and pink flowers.
“Y-you brought me flowers?”
He reached into the cab and produced a bottle. “And some gin!”
Elsa had no idea how to respond to either.
He handed her the flowers. She looked into his eyes, and she thought, This. She would pay any price for it.
“I want you, Els,” he whispered.
She followed him into the back of the truck.
The quilts were already spread out. Elsa smoothed them a little and lay down. Only a thin thread of light came from the scythed moon.
Rafe lay down beside her.
She felt his body along hers, heard his breathing.
“Did you think about me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Me, too. About you, I mean. About this.” He began unbuttoning her bodice.
Fire where he touched her. An unraveling. She couldn’t still herself, couldn’t hide it.
He pushed her dress up and pulled her bloomers down and she felt the night air on her skin. All of it aroused her, the air on her skin, her own nakedness, the way he was breathing.
She longed to touch him, taste him, tell him where she wanted—needed—to be touched, but fear of humiliation kept her silent. Anything she said was bound to be wrong, unladylike, and she wanted so much to make him happy.
Before she was ready, he was inside of her, thrusting hard, groaning. Seconds later, he collapsed on top of her, shuddering, breathing quickly.
He whispered something unintelligible into her ear. She hoped it was romantic.
Elsa touched the stubble of beard along his jaw. Her touch was so soft and tenuous that she didn’t think he felt it.
“I will miss you, Els,” he said.
Elsa brought her hand back quickly. “Where are you going?”
He opened the bottle of gin and took a long drink, then handed it to her. “My folks are making me go to college.” He rolled onto his side and rested his head on one hand and stared at her as she took a stinging, fiery drink and clamped a hand over her mouth.
He took another drink. “My mom wants me to graduate from college so I’ll be a real American. Or something like that.”
“College,” she said wistfully.
“Yeah. Stupid, huh? I don’t need book learning. I want to see Times Square and the Brooklyn Bridge and Hollywood. Learn by doing. See the world.” He took another drink. “What do you dream of, Els?”
She was so surprised to be asked, it took her a moment to answer. “Having a child, I guess. Maybe a home of my own.”
He grinned. “Heck, that don’t count. A woman wanting a baby is like a seed wanting to grow. What else?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I want to be brave,” she said, almost too softly to be heard.
“What scares you?”
“Everything,” she said. “My grandfather was a Texas Ranger. He used to tell me to stand up and fight. But for what? I don’t know. It sounds silly when I say it out loud . . .”
She felt his gaze on her and hoped the night was kind to her face.
“You ain’t like any other girl I know,” he said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
“When do you leave?”
“August. That gives us some time. If you’ll meet me again.”
Elsa smiled. “Yes.”
She would take whatever she could get from Rafe and pay whatever price there was for it. Even going to hell. He’d made her feel more beautiful in one minute than the rest of the world had in twenty-five years.
FOUR
By mid-August, the flowers in the few hanging planters and window boxes in downtown Dalhart were scorched and leggy. Fewer merchants could find the energy to prune and water in this heat, and the flowers wouldn’t last much longer either way. Mr. Hurst waved listlessly as Elsa passed him on her way home from the library.
As Elsa opened the gate, the cloying, sickeningly sweet scent of the garden overpowered her. She clamped a hand over her mouth but there was no way to hold back her sickness. She vomited on her mother’s favorite American Beauty roses.
Elsa kept dry-heaving long after there was nothing left in her stomach. Finally, she wiped her mouth and straightened, feeling shaky.
She heard a rustling beside her.
Mama was kneeling in the garden, wearing a woven sun hat and an apron over her cotton day dress. She set down her clippers and got to her feet. The pockets of her gardening apron bulged with cuttings. How was it that the thorns didn’t bother her?