A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(77)

Finally, we took off. The whole thing had taken maybe ten minutes, but it felt like a lot longer.

I kept driving until we had to stop for gas.

No one else came after us. Or if they did, they didn’t catch us.

We didn’t see Felix—or anyone else we knew—and we joined back up with the highway about thirty miles later. It was easier and faster driving, but it was also the road anyone searching for us would take.

We ate quickly in a diner in Texoma. Chicken-fried steak and the last of the summer squash and biscuits. I felt real glad to be in my territory. We were low on money, and that worried me along with about ten other things.

I began driving for Segundo Mexia. Eli didn’t say a word, yes or no. He slept a lot of the time. When he was awake, we didn’t do a lot of talking. But I was thinking as I drove, and the first night we turned to each other in bed—he mostly had to let me take the reins because he was so fragile—I had some questions afterward.

“Did you know Felix was going to do all that with the bones?” I still felt kind of hurt when I thought of it. I had believed the bones were alive, that Moses the Black was with us, and I was not much of a believer in anything. I hated Felix for doing his sorcery well enough to make me wonder, and I also thought the better of him for trying to do such a bold thing. And he had done it so well. I would sure like to punch him in the nose, though. Now that I’d brought him back to life.

Eli ran his hand across my stomach, up and down it, rubbing it and patting it. He really liked my stomach. He said, “What would you do if you thought I was running after someone else?”

That was a shocker of a subject change.

I started to give a teasing answer. Like, I’d shoot you first and her next. But I thought again. Eli had sounded serious.

“I would walk the other way,” I said. “I am too proud to try to hold on to a man who would treat me that way. I would tell you I wished you well, but for a while that would not be true. I would hate you. But in time, weeks or months, I guess… I would get over the worst of the pain. And I would hope someone new, someone better, would cross my path.”

“You would not hope that I would come back?”

That surprised me. “I would not take you back.” That was all there was to it.

“Why not?” He was dead serious.

Seemed so plain to me. “You did it once, you might do it again. I try to learn from my mistakes.”

“That seems almost… manlike.”

“Don’t you ever think women are always the ones who ruin relationships. If you stray, you deserve the backfire. I’ll tell you something. Dan Brick isn’t any more than a friend to me. But I know he would never do me that way if I took him on.”

Eli was silent after that, and I was glad. I had said my say, and I meant every word. I knew Eli must have some princess or a fancy rich woman to go back to. How could he not? And I knew when this little jaunt was over, he’d go back to the HRE. He’d probably get some title or medal for helping the black people of Dixie get some rights, since of course they’d want to join the church that had taken off their chains, namely the Russian Orthodox Church. And if all the blacks in Dixie joined the Russian Orthodox Church, and they began voting, they might think it was a good idea to be allied with the HRE. And if that alliance didn’t work, it had only cost the tsar some money and some expendable gunnies and grigoris. I knew the grigoris I’d killed had another point of view, but I could not imagine what that was.

We reached Segundo Mexia after three more days of hard driving. We arrived after dark and helped each other up the hill to my cabin, leaving the car parked outside of John Seahorse’s combination stable and garage. I’d left a note on it that said, $75 and it’s yours to turn into what you want, if you do it quick. Lots of people in Segundo Mexia could use car parts, no matter where they’d come from. It would be like holding bait over a hungry fishpond.

I unlocked my cabin door and turned on the lights. Someone had been in it while I was gone. There were flowers in a jar on the table. Nothing else was changed.

“Your admirer has been here,” Eli said, caution in his voice.

“Me and him’s going to have a talk real soon,” I said.

“I believe you,” Eli said. “But right now, even if I didn’t, I’d say I did, because I have to lie down on something that’s not moving.”

I figured out after a second that he meant the bed, not me. I’d been thinking, I move plenty when the occasion calls for it. “Okay, let’s go to bed,” I said.

We both used my bathroom (consistent running water courtesy of Eli) and washed our faces and necks, and I pulled on an old nightgown, and Eli pulled on nothing, and I got him to climb in first against the wall. We were in my place and it was my job to defend him. It felt so strange to be sleeping with him in my home.

It felt good.

Early next morning, I walked down to my mother’s and Jackson’s house. I hadn’t wanted to leave Eli, but I had to. Mother hadn’t left for work, and Jackson was reading his morning paper. My mom hugged me and didn’t cry, which was the best I could hope for, but Jackson gave my battered self a steady look.

“I’m back, but I don’t know how much peace I’ll have,” I said. “I got Eli with me, and he needs some days to get better. Then I’ll try to get him on the train for the Holy Russian Empire.”