OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 57: Should I Stay or Should I Go--d'd'd'd'd'd'd' dum (Lillabit)

So fine. I'd married in haste and might be repenting at leisure. And it was completely my doing, because I'd known I was a time-traveler and he'd never wholly believed it. He'd never asked me to love him, nor claimed to love me.

"But what do I do about it?" I asked my cow.

She slanted her big, long-lashed eyes in my direction, but went on grazing.

If I lived in my own time--where my Castaway friends had urged me to return--Garrison and I could take a time-out. A trial separation. Marriage counseling.

None of that would work here. Here, my options consisted of a) stay, or b) go.

Stay his wife and make the best of it, or....

Go where?

The idea of going home no longer terrified me the way it had when I thought any nap might sweep me away from my cowboy hero to a world of air traffic and smart phones. And I could still try for it, start meditating, visualize myself being in Chicago, repeat a mantra to that affect. But that would mean not just making the conscious decision to leave with his baby, but taking the risk that I wouldn't succeed. The rest of my life, I might resent the failure that had trapped me here.

With the Castaways' wealth, I could probably strike out on my own in 1878, too. Get a nice home in old-timey Chicago, where I could live among other Yankees and make all the decisions about myself and my child. But I had no grounds to legally divorce Garrison. I wouldn't even have custody, unless he granted it. Also....

Whether he was the man I'd thought or not, I didn't want to hurt him. Even if Garrison didn't actually love me, he was proud enough that deserting him would hurt him a great deal.

That brought me back to the first option. Stay.

Stay and try to change him? Problematic, and possibly not fair.

Stay and resign myself to his world? No way in hell. Not if that meant accepting and, through my silence, supporting men like Shorty and Lee... and Clayton.

Stay, and... get to know him better? Make sure he got to know me, better? Yeah, good luck with that.

But unless Slade Callahan rode into camp and announced that he had a surefire method for slipping back to the 21st century?

To use an old-westy figure of speech, it was the best of a bad hand.

After an awkward supper, in which the absence of Amos and Ropes colored everything else, I asked my husband to come chat with me.

He looked immediately wary. Then he glanced toward the herd.

"They'll be fine without you for a half hour," I insisted. "Unless you're willing to let me ride night guard with you."

That wasn't happening. So he gave me his arm and walked me a little ways downwind from the chuck wagon, for privacy. Then he waited, still and observant.

His sleeve felt gritty with dirt under my hand. That wasn't his fault either.

"Why did you join the war?" I asked.

Garrison flashed a disgusted look at me and turned back toward camp.

I grabbed his hand. "Wait! This is important to me."

At least he didn't keep walking. Instead he looked over his shoulder at me, at where I'd caught his hand between both of mine, and he demanded, "Why?"

"Because you sided with men who meant to lynch one of my best friends."

"I did not."

They were the ones who still had jobs. "You sent Amos away."

"What's done is done."