Joe's Wife

Tye accepted the envelope with a frown. “Here, wait up.”

He found a nickel on the stand beside his bed and flipped it to the boy, ignoring the fact that he’d regret it later.

“Thanks, mister.”

Tye closed the door and tore open the envelope. Unfolding a piece of paper, he read the words scrawled in black ink.

Hatch, I need to see you. I’m at Rosa Casals’s s house.

Lottie

He had wondered if Lottie still lived in Aspen Grove. No one spoke of her, and since he hadn’t seen her in the time he’d been there, he’d assumed—or hoped, for her sake—that she had found a husband and settled down.

Rosa Casals and Lottie Prescott had both been saloon girls at the Pair-A-Dice before the war. He and Lottie had enjoyed a satisfactory relationship, nothing serious, but something that took the edge off the loneliness.

Tye shaved and dressed in his good clean shirt. He needed a haircut, but he was saving every penny. He’d discovered years ago that the custom of eating three times a day was merely a habit that could be modified, too.

Tye added his wide-brimmed hat to his ensemble. A morning exercise usually took the stiffness out of his leg, so he determinedly walked to the house on the edge of town where Rosa had grown up with an aging father.

Like most of the houses he’d seen on his travels home, the outside needed a coat of paint, a new fence and several boards replaced on the porch.

Tye rapped on the door and waited, hat in hand.

The door opened, and Rosa Casals smiled a familiar smile, one front tooth overlapping the other and giving her a girlish look, even though silver had appeared at her temples. “Hatch,” she greeted him. “Come in.”

He glanced at the street behind him. “You sure it’s all right?”

She grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward.

“It’s a little late to be concerned about my reputation,” she said teasingly, taking his hat and hanging it on a rack in the hallway. She waved him into a neat parlor that smelled sharply of lemon wax and candles.

Tye met her round, brown-eyed gaze and smiled. Rosa had always been fun-loving and impetuous. Working in the saloons hadn’t been conducive to finding a decent husband, however. “Are you still working somewhere?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Nah. Papa, the old coot, died three years back and left me enough to live comfortably. He was such a penny-pinching old miser. I never had a decent dress or a cent to spend on myself the whole time I was growing up. Then I find out the skinflint was hoarding it all those years.”

Tye glanced around. “I had a note from Lottie.”

Rosa’s face grew serious. “I know. I sent the boy for you.”

“She’s here?”

“Yes. She’s been with me for a little over a year now. She wants to see you, Hatch.”

“Okay.”

“She’s not well.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Consumption. Doc says he’s done all he can.”

And she wanted to see him? “Oh.”

“Ever since we heard that you were back in Aspen Grove, she’s been wanting you to visit. She has some good weeks and some bad weeks, and this is one of her better times, so we decided to send for you now.”

Tye stood waiting, uncomfortable, but unwilling to turn aside a friend’s request.

“Come with me,” she said. “I’ll take you to her room.”

He followed her down a hallway where several candles flickered, though the day was bright, and he soon realized they were meant to dispel the cloying smell of the sickroom.

Rosa swept into the room ahead of him. A frail, strawberry-haired woman rested against a bolster of pillows on a lofty four-poster bed. Tye had to step close before he recognized Lottie’s warm brown eyes. Their luster was gone, as was the shine of her unruly hair. Her pale skin seemed paper-thin and drawn too tightly over her fragile bones and pallid face.

“Hatch. Come sit by me. Let me see you,” she said, patting the spread. Only her voice was familiar.

She took his hand, and her skin felt powdery smooth against his palm, her fingers thin and bony. “God, you feel good. You look good. You look older. Not a bad look, mind you, just older.”

He perched on the edge of the bed. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while, Lottie.”

“Yes.” She looked deeply into his eyes. “We had some good times back then, didn’t we?”

They’d kept each other company for a while, was all. But he wouldn’t spoil her enhanced memories when she had so few and no time left to make more. So he nodded. “Yes.”

“Where were you?” she asked. “During the war. I mean.”

“I was with General Thomas.”

She frowned as if she were trying to remember. “Chattanooga?”

He nodded. “And Chickamaugua. We held off Braxton Bragg’s army.”

“I knew you’d be one of the strong ones who came home.”

“How did you know that?”

“I don’t know. I just did. You’re a survivor. Strong inside, where it counts.”

Lottie’d always seemed strong, too. Full of life and energy and big plans for the future. The antithesis of the ghostly pale woman in this bed before him. Life sure took some unfair twists. “I thought you’d have found a man by now. Be living in the city in that big house you wanted.”

“Yeah, well...” She gave him a sad-sweet smile. “I had hundreds of offers. Just that nobody ever measured up to you.”

She was teasing him. Theirs had never been a passionate relationship. She’d had plans for a rich man and a house in the city. He’d wanted a patch of ground and some livestock to call his own. He gave her a warm smile.

“I’m not here for much longer,” she said simply.

Tye didn’t know how to reply.

“I need you to do something for me,” she said tentatively.