Two Brothers by Linda Lael Miller

away, then?” She held her breath, waiting for the answer.
    Eugenie got a mug and poured some cold coffee, left over from the supper trade. “I don’t turn my girls out into the street,” she said, in her own good time, after several unself-conscious slurps. She was looking out the window over the cast-iron sink, and that was a mercy from Aislinn’s standpoint, because she needed some time to recover her composure.
    Aislinn closed her eyes as relief swept through her. She’d taken a big enough risk, helping Liza Sue to escape the Yellow Garter Saloon. Letting Shay McQuillan kiss her in front of God and everybody had been downright reckless, given Eugenie’s strict standards. “I—I don’t know what came over me,” she said, and she was telling the absolute truth. “I’ve always been so—so sensible.”
    Eugenie ignored that. “How’s that little Liza Sue gal fittin’ in?”
    Aislinn stiffened. “Fine,” she said, in a thin voice. She hated lying, especially to Eugenie, who’d been so unfailingly kind, but she’d been left with little choice in the matter. Liza Sue had nowhere to go but back to the Yellow Garter, if things didn’t work out there at the hotel.
    At last, Eugenie turned, still holding the cup. “I reckon she’s glad to get away from Jake and that bunch over in that hellhole saloon.”
    “J-Jake?” Aislinn’s heart was beating fast, and the music in the small ballroom seemed farther away than before.
    “That’s a mighty hard life,” Eugenie said sadly. “There ain’t anybody bad enough to deserve that kind of sufferin’.”
    Misery threatened to swamp Aislinn: the thing she had most feared had come upon her; she’d been found out. Eugenie was sure to change her mind about sending her packing, and she’d have no choice but to move on, leaving the homestead behind, for someone else to purchase. Thomas and Mark, counting the days until they could leave their school and board a westbound train, would be bitterly disappointed, and her own dreams, so close as to be almost within her grasp only the day before, seemed hopelessly out of reach. She started to speak, swallowed, and fell into a wretched silence.
    Eugenie approached, sat down beside her at the table. “Thought you had me fooled, did you?”
    Aislinn imagined herself writing to her brothers, telling them they couldn’t come to California after all. Imagined herself leaving Prominence. “I was hoping so,” she admitted. “But plainly I was wrong. How did you know?”
    Eugenie smiled and patted Aislinn’s cold hand. “Well, for one thing, the girl didn’t have no belongin’s with her. For another, you don’t get bruises like that fallin’ down steps. Them sort of marks, they almost always come from a man’s fist, and even when they fade away, you can still see the shadows of ’em in a woman’s eyes. And you ain’t got so many dresses that I don’t know ’em all as well as my own.”
    “Are you going to send her away?” Her own situation was serious enough, but Liza Sue’s was dire. With no roof over her head, and no money to buy stagecoach passage out of Prominence, the other girl would surely end up back in the saloon, worse off than ever.
    Eugenie sighed heavily. She sounded exhausted, like someone who’s just come to the end of a long and difficult journey. “That’s what you’re afraid of? That I won’t let that little gal stay here?”
    Aislinn nodded. “That man who beat Liza Sue—she says he’ll kill her next time, and I believe her.”
    “That’s most likely so,” Eugenie agreed, and she seemed to be staring through the kitchen wall, through the night itself, toward something far off in the distance. “She’s not goin’ anyplace, Aislinn, and neither are you. Not tonight, anyhow. You just get on up to bed. I expect a good day’s work out of you tomorrow.”
    Tears sprang to Aislinn’s eyes, and she blinked them back, rising from the bench. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank