The Marriage Knot. Mary McBride
“Dum shame,” Seth Moran called down from the wagon seat as he passed.
“Yep.”
There wasn’t anything more to say, so Delaney veered left, out of the cloud of dust the undertaker kicked up. Once inside his office, he aimed his hat at the hook on the wall and propped his shotgun against the desk before he settled in his chair. It felt like noon, but it was barely nine o’clock. Death did that, he mused. Made time feel different. Slowed it down. Speeded it up. He wasn’t sure which.
In the war, some battles seemed as if they were going on for several days when in fact they only lasted from dawn until dusk. Others, when they were over and the casualties counted, seemed to have taken place in the blink of an eye.
Hell, it seemed like months ago that Ezra Dancer had dropped by the jailhouse, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat just to chew the fat with Delaney, to ask him how he liked Newton after his six-month stint as sheriff, if he meant to stay or if he thought he’d be pulling up stakes once his year’s contract ran out. But that visit had taken place a mere two or three weeks ago. And Ezra hadn’t even struck him as all that thin or ill.
Now the man was dead by his own hand. Delaney closed his eyes a minute, refusing to entertain any thought of what he might have missed in the man’s conversation or an expression of hopelessness he might have failed to recognize on the older man’s face.
The truth was that Ezra had seemed just fine to him. He wasn’t a damned mind reader, after all, and he’d been directly responsible for enough deaths himself over the years to know that in this case he wasn’t to blame at all, either for what he did or failed to do.
Sick or not, Ezra Dancer struck Delaney as nothing but a damn fool to leave a woman like Hannah a minute, a single second, a mere blink, before he absolutely had to.
Chapter Two
Hannah wasn’t sure if she was alive or dead. Sometimes it felt as if she were deep underwater, struggling against strong currents, not drowning so much as already drowned, breathing water now rather than air. Then sometimes it felt as if she were soaring, lighter than air itself, invisible as wind.
Sometimes she thought that she was in her bed because she recognized the smell of sunshine in the linen sheets and felt the familiar caress of her favorite pillow, the way it tucked so perfectly between her shoulder and her chin.
Her bed, perhaps, yet every time she attempted to open her eyes, her room seemed different. It kept changing. Once the curtains were open and there was sunlight on the elm outside her window. Then it turned somehow to moonlight. And then the curtains were drawn tight, and the only light was the pale flicker from the lamp on the nightstand.
There was always someone in the rocking chair across the room. Once it was Miss Green. Hannah saw her clearly. Once it was Abel Fairfax. For a moment it seemed to be Ezra.
Ezra. Something about Ezra.
Then she envisioned Delaney, tall and somber at the foot of the stairs. His arms were going around her and she could feel the rough touch of his wool vest and all the warmth beneath it. There was the sudden scrape of his cheek against hers.
Hannah tried to speak, but she was under water again and the current was stronger than before, pulling her down relentlessly.
“There,” whispered Miss Green. “There, there. Just sleep now, you poor dear. You’ll feel ever so much better in the morning.”
Two days later, sitting beside Ezra’s casket in the darkly draped front parlor of the Moran Brothers’ Funerary Establishment, Hannah had to remind herself once again that Ezra was no longer in pain. She’d watched the cancer eating away at him, dulling the light in his eyes, creasing his forehead, and weighing down the corners of his mouth, especially when he thought she wasn’t looking.
But now he had freed himself of all that agony, hadn’t he? Rather than allow his illness to waste him away over the course of the next few months, Ezra had mastered his own fate. He had mastered his own death. Above all else, he had vanquished the terrible pain. That alone should have given her great consolation.
Hannah edged a hand beneath the folds of her black veil to wipe away one more tear.
How like Ezra to take fate in hand. His suicide shouldn’t have surprised her. She should have been prepared. She should have read it on his face the night before he shot himself or tasted goodbye on his lips when he kissed her good-night.
Or perhaps somewhere deep inside she had suspected Ezra’s intentions, yet had chosen to deny if not completely ignore her knowledge. Life without Ezra, after all, was unthinkable. They’d been together fourteen years, half of Hannah’s life.
“Mrs. Dancer, please accept my deepest sympathies on your loss: If there’s anything I can do for you—anything at all—you only have to say so.”
Through her veil, Hannah recognized the brown checkered suit and polished brogans of Henry Allen, the young banker who’d been boarding at her house for the past year. She hadn’t seen Henry since Ezra’s death, having kept to her room until the house was quiet and all the boarders were asleep. Now the young man stood gazing at her with his brown puppy eyes. If he’d had a tail, Hannah thought, he’d be wagging it. Instead he was dragging the brim of his bowler hat through his fingers while he rocked back and forth in his glossy shoes.
“Thank you, Henry. It was kind of you to come. Ezra would be very glad and grateful.”
His puppy eyes grew darker, more glossy. His voice lowered to the intimacy of a whisper. “Shall I wait and see you safely home?”
The boy’s sweet on you, Hannah. Suddenly she heard Ezra’s voice as clearly as if he were standing right behind her, chuckling as he always did whenever Henry Allen said something particularly syrupy, or something punctuated by undisguised sighs.
Can’t say I blame him, either. You’re a fine-looking woman, Hannah Dancer. You don’t see it in yourself, honey, but others surely do.
A chill edged along her spine, and Hannah sat up a little straighter. “Thank you, Henry. I expect to be here quite a while until everyone’s paid their respects.” She looked across the parlor where her other boarder, Florence Green, sat with a teacup and saucer balanced on her knee. “Miss Green’s been here a long time. She looks a bit tired to me. You might offer to see her home, Henry. I’d consider it a favor.”
He sighed a rather boyish, recalcitrant sigh.
“I’d appreciate it enormously,” Hannah urged. “Oh, and you might leave a light burning in the vestibule for me, too. I believe I forgot to do that earlier.”
“Are you quite sure I can’t...?”
“No, thank you, Henry.”
Hannah let out a small sigh of her own when he walked away, and was heartened, even relieved, when the young man approached Miss Green and apparently offered to escort her home. The plump schoolteacher put aside her teacup, then rose and took Henry’s arm quite somberly. Then, after a last lingering glance toward Hannah, the young man escorted his companion out the door.
People came and went during the next few hours. People who were sorry, shocked, saddened, oh so sad. By ten o’clock Hannah was nearly numb and thankful, not only that her veil hid her reddened eyes, but that it disguised an inappropriate yawn or two. She hadn’t had a good sleep since she woke from her laudanum-induced stupor two days ago. When the final mourner shook her hand and murmured his sympathies, Hannah was eager to get home, to take off her black bonnet, her black dress and stockings and shoes, and to fall into a deep and unworried sleep.
“Looks like that’s it, Miz Dancer.” One of the Moran brothers—Hannah wasn’t sure if it was Seth or Samuel—plucked his watch from his pocket and clicked it open. “Ten o’clock. Pretty late. Your husband had a lot of friends.”
“Yes,