He’d just explained that David had been sent to Clinton for reinforcements when gunfire erupted out on the highway towards the East. Sean had quickly dispatched a squad to investigate, of which Jennifer insisted on being a part, and they hurried down the highway to find David and some men from Clinton carrying the bodies of two men in fatigues who had fled. Jennifer was so overcome with emotion when she saw David that she had to be helped back to town.
The rest of the day was spent recovering from the assault. Deer Creek had lost four men: Luther at the bridge, Anderson West at the East berm, and two men in the militia house, cut down by the machine gun when the walls of the house had proved to be inadequate protection against the heavy weapon.
None of the group that had attacked the town appeared to survive. A total of twenty-two bodies, all of them men ranging in ages from early twenties to late forties, had been buried in a mass grave on the north side of the river. Sean had reported at Friday’s militia meeting that more than two dozen weapons, forty-one thousand rounds of ammunition, a moderate amount of food, silver, gold, fuel, and an assortment of crowbars, sledge hammers and other tools had been recovered. There were no plates on the bus or dump truck, but a registration document in the bus indicated an Oregon origin.
None of the men had identification, at least beyond a variety of tattoos and scars, and Jennifer’s heart broke a little for the mothers and wives who would never know what happened to their loved ones, even though she was glad the men were dead.
She had just drifted off to sleep when a knock sounded at the front door. Jennifer sat up and looked out the window, rubbing her eyes. A man and a woman stood on the porch, with a pair of horses out by the street. She got up from the couch and opened the door as Emma came upstairs with Madison, who had just woken.
The man turned as she opened the door, and she recognized him from the community. “Hi, Tom. Can I help you?”
He smiled. “Hi Jennifer. This lady here, Rose, is looking for your husband. I told her he was gone, but she wanted to talk to you.”
Jennifer looked closely at the woman, but didn’t recognize her. “Hi,” she said. “You’re looking for Kyle?”
The woman smiled and nodded. Her face was weathered, but pretty, her teeth white and straight. She was tall and thin, with sandy blonde hair that spilled out from under a water-stained cowboy hat. “Yes. He’s a friend. I needed some help, so I came here.”
It was chilly out, and Jennifer could see that the woman was tired and cold, so she invited her in, then went to the kitchen and filled a cup with warm water. After sending Emma downstairs with the baby, she handed the cup to Rose, who had perched on the edge of the couch. “Here. We don’t have coffee or tea, but the water is safe and warm. Tom said your name was Rose?”
“Yes. Rose Duncan. You’re Jennifer, right?”
“I am. I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you at all. Should I know you?”
The woman shook her head. “No, we’ve never met, but I know a lot about you, though Kyle didn’t tell me you were expecting. I only knew about your older children.”
“The baby’s not mine,” Jennifer explained. “Her mother died, and I guess I’ve kind of adopted her. How do you know us so well?” She looked at Rose warily, not comfortable with her level of familiarity.
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you about me. I helped him in Wyoming when we had a big snowstorm back in October. He stayed with me for several days, before the roads cleared and he got back on his way. You don’t know how glad I am to find out that he made it safely. I’ve worried about him for the past four months.”
Jennifer’s mind raced back over the details Kyle had told her about his journey home. She thought she knew about most things, but Rose Duncan’s name was unfamiliar.
“Maybe he didn’t tell you about me. I’m sure there were a thousand other things that happened along the way. It’s nice to meet the woman a man would walk two thousand miles for. You’re just like Kyle described.”
Jennifer let out a puff of air. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I’ve let you down. Do you have family in the area? You’ve come an awful long way. There must something else that brought you this direction.”
Rose shook her head. “No. Just Kyle.”
Jennifer’s mind was racing, trying to recall what Kyle had said about the storm. She thought back to the meeting where Kyle had spoken to the community and remembered someone asking about it. If she remembered correctly, Kyle had said that he’d been saved by an older woman, but…
“He showed up in my yard in the middle of that terrible blizzard. Would have frozen to death if my dog hadn’t alerted me…”
This woman wasn’t older, maybe a few years, but not what you think of when you say older. Why hadn’t Kyle said anything about Rose?
“He stayed for four days, so we really got to know each other. He told me all about your family. Then when my homestead was attacked and my dog killed, well, it sounds strange, but Kyle was the only person I could think of to go to, after what I had done for him and all the time we’d spent together. I know it sounds silly, but here I am.”
Jennifer felt herself go cold inside, like someone had pulled a plug in her heel and let all of the life in her just drain out. “So, you’re saying you spent four days with my husband, then decided to follow him halfway across the country?”
Rose nodded. “I guess so. It sounds kind of creepy when you say it that way, but I guess that’s what it boils down to.”
“Can you excuse me for a minute?”
Rose nodded, smiling politely. “Do you have a bathroom I can use? After so long on the road, it would be nice to use an actual bathroom again.”
Jennifer indicated down the hallway. “There’s a bucket of water in the bathtub; use that to flush.”
She hurried downstairs to where her kids were playing a game of Risk. “Emma, I’m going out for a minute; take care of the baby. David, you help her.”
“You okay, mom?” David asked as he rolled the dice. “You don’t look very good.”
“I’m fine.” Jennifer went back upstairs, grabbed her coat off of the arm of the couch, and let herself out. She walked, trancelike, down the street, her mind churning over her conversation with Rose. Why would a woman, she wondered, follow a man five hundred miles across two states, on horseback, under such trying circumstances? The question repeated itself over and over in her mind, and none of the answers she came up with were good.
She thought back to when she was a young girl, and her mother had learned about her father’s indiscretions and the things he did while he was on the road. At the time, she couldn’t understand why it was so devastating for her mom, why she cried alone in her bedroom at night, even weeks after the revelation.
At that age, when boys weren’t that important, she had just thought it was because her mother was too fragile to handle rejection or disappointment, and that her mother was too dependent on her father. But after she married Kyle, Jennifer knew what it meant to give yourself to someone else. It was more than just sharing a last name and an address. It was letting them into your heart. It was putting all your weaknesses and vulnerabilities on the table and trusting them to still love you. Marriage was not being able to see a future without your partner in it, knowing that someone loved you, in spite of your silly mess-ups or odd little personality quirks. It was being the only one that belonged in that particular place in their heart, forever, no matter what happened.
It wasn’t finding out that you were just there for when they needed something, at their convenience, to be used interchangeably with whoever else might come along. She had never fully understood what her mother had experienced, until now. The wound was bitter, and painful, and devastating.