This Is How I'd Love You by Hazel Woods Page B

not feel a sickness when she awakens and remembers that there is only one street in town; whose evenings are not filled with the noise of miners and misfits spilling out of the saloon onto that one dusty street, riding each other’s backs like schoolboys, crooning songs that betray their own yearning for more perfect lives.
    But writing false letters offers comfort to no one.
    Hensley crouches, jamming the back of her heel into the space between her legs. Instead of a letter to Mr. Reid, she begins addressing the baby.
    Dear Unfortunate,
    You have taken up residence in the wrong place. There will be no happy announcement of your birth, no fireside toasts, no sterling spoons. Most likely, in fact, you will be taken from me at the very moment I’ve decided to love you most. They will hold you close, those anonymous, well-meaning arms, but then they will give you to a dreary place full of unwanted creatures who rely on strangers for food, clothing, and comfort.
    She stops. Her knees throb and her head hurts. She stands up, certain of only one thing: she must tell her father. There is nobody else. There is no turning back. This is her life. It has left the realm of her own imagination and become something quite foreign and unfamiliar.
    The cats surrender to the heat, jumping down from their perches into the shade of the moving crates. Isaac meows at Hensley, soliciting affection. Hensley grabs at his tail, letting it slide through her hand. She opens her palm and watches his white hairs fall to the ground in slow motion. He rubs against her in thanks, then stretches out on the bricks, happy in his solitude. Newton begins fastidiously cleaning himself, his little gray head bobbing with purpose.
    Hensley imagines her father’s face—its piercing blue eyes and down-turned mouth. Whether or not he can ever forgive her or look at her again without feeling ashamed, she suddenly doesn’t care. She only wants company in this black hole in which she is living.
    Hensley looks again to the top of the hill. The horizon is empty and there is not a soul in sight. She lets the quiet settle into her. The sky’s blue seems to have been bleached by the sun into a joyless pastel, its deepest color but a memory of its own exuberant past.
     • • • 
    M r. Teagan is genius . That these words ever exited her mouth now seems nearly as incomprehensible as her present circumstances. That she spoke them to her brother is downright astonishing. She had simply hoped they would induce Harry to attend the show, but their effect was the opposite.
    “Mr. Lowell Teagan?” Her brother put his hands to his head. “Please tell me you haven’t fallen under his spell, Hen.” He smiled a maddening, patronizing grin. “Of course you haven’t. He is so transparent, we took to calling him Glass at Columbia.” He turned his eyes to Hensley’s and made his eyelids go soft, batting his eyelashes slowly. In a falsely deep voice, he mocked, “‘It is my lady, O, it is my love! / O, that she knew she were!’”
    Unable to stop herself, Hensley laughed at the imitation. She threw his own handkerchief back at his pining face. “Stop it. Just because you’re a brute. And a terrible actor.”
    Harold smiled, but then his face went dark. “Hennie. Really. He’s a cad and not to be trusted. You could line the block with all the broken hearts he’s collected.”
    She wanted to correct him then, to tell him that he’d got it wrong. That Lowell did, in fact, love her. That he’d told her he’d never, ever felt this way about anyone. But she could not speak. The doubts that she’d been swatting away like flies at a picnic were suddenly swarming her. Her stomach felt hollowed out and she forced herself to take a breath. The kitchen floor, littered with boxes of silver and plates wrapped in newspaper, seemed to dip beneath her feet. Her vision narrowed. She stared at her brother’s shoes, shiny and black.
    “What is it, Hen? Tell me it’s not what I