door with the empty bowl. “I’ll be working with Frank Neilsen’s young colt at the near paddock this afternoon. He’s a little unbalanced and prefers the level ground. Anything you’re worried about, you just bang on that window. Okay?”
She didn’t speak.
“I’ll be right here, Alice.”
“Thank you,” she said.
* * *
• • •
She’s my wife. I got a right to talk to her.”
“You think I give a Sam Hill what you—”
Fred got to him first. She had been dozing in the chair—she felt exhausted to her bones—and woke to the sound of voices.
“It’s okay, Fred,” she called out. “Let him in.”
She drew back the bolt and opened the door a sliver.
“Well, then, I’m coming in, too.” Fred walked in behind Bennett so that the two men stood there for a moment, shaking snow from their boots and patting themselves down.
Bennett flinched when he saw her. She hadn’t dared look at her face, but his expression told her much of what she needed to know. He took a breath and rubbed his palm over the back of his head. “You need to come home, Alice,” he said, adding: “He won’t do it again.”
“Since when did you have any say over what your father does, Bennett?” she said.
“He’s promised. He didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”
“Just the little bit. Oh, that’s fine, then,” said Fred.
Bennett shot him a look. “Tempers were high. Pa just . . . Well, he’s not used to a woman sassing him.”
“So what’s he going to do next time Alice opens her mouth?”
Bennett turned and squared up to Fred. “Hey, Guisler, you want to butt out of this? Because, far as I can see, this ain’t no business of yours.”
“It’s my business when I see a defenseless woman get beat to a pulp.”
“And you’d be the expert on how to manage a wife, huh? Because we all know what happened to your wife—”
“That’s enough,” said Alice. She stood slowly—sudden movements made her head throb—and turned to Fred. “Can you leave us a moment, Fred? . . . Please?”
His gaze darted from her to Bennett and back again. “I’ll be right outside,” he muttered.
They stared at their feet until the door closed. She looked up first, at the man she had married just over a year ago, a man, she now realized, who had symbolized an escape route rather than any genuine meeting of minds or souls. What had they really known about each other, after all? They had been exotic to one another, a suggestion of a different world to two people who were each trapped, in their own way, by the expectations of those around them. And then, slowly, her difference had become repugnant to him.
“You coming on home, then?” he said.
Not I’m sorry. We can fix this, talk it out. I love you and I’ve spent the whole night worrying about you.
“Alice?”
Not We’ll go somewhere by ourselves. We’ll start again. I missed you, Alice.
“No, Bennett, I’m not coming back.”
It took him a moment to register what she had said. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not coming back.”
“Well . . . where will you go?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You—you can’t just leave. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Says who? Bennett—you don’t love me. And I can’t . . . I can’t be the wife you need me to be. We are making each other desperately unhappy and there’s nothing . . . nothing to suggest that is going to change. So, no. There’s no point in me coming back.”
“This is Margery O’Hare’s influence. Pa was right. That woman—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. I know my own mind.”
“But we’re married.”
She straightened up. “I’m not coming back to that house. And if you and your father drag me out of here a hundred times, I will just keep on leaving.”
Bennett rubbed the back of his neck. He shook his head and turned a quarter away from her. “You know he won’t accept this.”
“He won’t.”
She watched his face, across which several emotions seemed to be competing with each other, and felt briefly overwhelmed by the sadness of it all, at the admission that this really was it, the end. But there was something else in there: something she hoped he could detect too. Relief.
“Alice?” he said.
And there it was again, this bizarre hope, irrepressible as a spring bud, that even at this late hour he might take her in his arms, swear that he couldn’t live without her, that this was all a hideous mistake and that they would be together, like he had