“One day he’ll tire of pretending.”
The insult was familiar.
Designed perfectly.
Years earlier, it would have destroyed her.
Josephine looked down at herself.
Her broad hips beneath a dark green dress.
Her heavy arms.
Her round stomach.
Large hands.
Thick legs.
A body approaching two hundred kilograms and taking up exactly as much space as it required.
Then she looked at Harlan.
He was furious.
But beneath the fury was something else.
Not pity.
Desire.
Respect.
Love.
Josephine turned back.
“If that day comes, then I will still own my land.”
Edwin’s face changed.
“I will still know how to run my accounts.”
She stepped down from the porch.
“I will still have my mind.”
Another step.
“I will still have my body.”
She stood directly before him.
“And I will still belong to myself.”
Edwin had nothing for that.
He left.
Josephine watched until he disappeared.
Then her shoulders shook.
Harlan came closer.
“May I?”
She nodded.
His arms surrounded her.
Josephine cried against his chest.
Not because she regretted refusing the money.
Because freedom sometimes required mourning the person you kept hoping someone would become.
Edwin never did.
Preacher Pike pleaded guilty to fraud and falsification of documents.
He served eighteen months.
The church removed him permanently.
Josephine attended sentencing.
Not because she wanted revenge.
Because she wanted to hear someone in authority say what happened had been wrong.
The judge did.
That mattered.
Aunt Miriam came to the ranch during summer.
Josephine almost refused to see her.
Curiosity won.
Miriam stepped from a wagon wearing an immaculate gray traveling dress and immediately looked Josephine up and down.
Josephine was wearing a deep blue cotton dress.
No corset.
Miriam looked scandalized.
“You’ve let yourself go.”
Josephine burst out laughing.
Her aunt frowned.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“That dress has no structure.”
“It has buttons.”
“Your waist—”
“Breathes.”
Miriam looked toward Harlan, who was splitting wood nearby.
“Does your husband approve?”
Josephine glanced at him.
Harlan heard.
He wisely kept chopping.
Josephine smiled.
“He approves of surviving conversations with me.”
Miriam lowered her voice.
“A wife should want to please her husband.”
Josephine considered.
“I do.”
Her aunt’s expression suggested victory.
Josephine continued.
“And he wants to please me.”
Miriam blinked.
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Miriam stayed two days.
By the end of the visit, something strange happened.
Josephine realized her aunt was not powerful.
She was frightened.
Frightened of aging.
Of judgment.
Of men.
Of poverty.
Of being undesirable.
Miriam had spent her whole life obeying rules she hated, then resented Josephine whenever Josephine broke them.
On the second evening, they sat alone.
Miriam stared at the fire.
“Your mother was difficult too.”
Josephine looked over.
“How?”
“She refused things.”
“That is difficult?”
“For women then?”
Miriam smiled sadly.
“Yes.”
Josephine waited.