Bootprints and Lace
I don’t belong out here.
That’s what they said when I left Ward’s Landing. Not to my face, but behind gloved hands and lowered voices. I was too soft. Too fine-boned. Too good for dirt and sweat and people who don’t know how to pronounce my last name with the right weight.
Now I stand on the front porch of Miss Della’s boarding house in a town with no paved streets and only one piano—out of tune, missing a leg, propped on a Bible—and all I can think is: Maybe they were right.
The air tastes like dust. Everything’s cracked wide open under the heat—ground, lips, patience. I’ve been here three weeks and I still don’t know where to look when the men on the street stare. Not friendly. Not cruel. Just hungry in a way I don’t yet know how to name.
Miss Della says I’m “real easy on the eyes.” Says it with a half-smile and a laugh too loud to be motherly. She puts me in a room upstairs, tells me to make myself useful at supper and not to get “carried away” if a man offers to walk me home. She winks when she says it. She winks a lot.
I wear lace on Sundays. It’s all I brought that fits decent. Cream with pearl buttons and a hem I’ve taken up three times. The boys at the livery stare like it’s silk from Paris. Maybe out here it is.
That’s when I see him.
Caleb Knox.
His boots hit the church steps like they’re part of the building. Uniform pressed, hat tucked under one arm, jaw so square it looks carved. He nods at the preacher, nods at the mayor’s wife, and then—he sees me.
Not just glances.
Sees.
I blink too long. My throat goes dry. I look away first.
After the sermon, he waits. Not in the pushy way some do. Just leans against the rail and tips his hat when I pass.
“Miss Ward,” he says.
I stop. Of course I do. No one’s said my name like that since I crossed the Mississippi.
“Captain,” I answer.
He smiles. Not wide. Just enough.
“You from Ohio?” he asks.
I nod.
“My mother was. Cincinnati.”
“But you’re from Wards Landing. Right? Dr. Amos Ward is your daddy?”
“You know him?”
“That’s what I thought,” he said.
He tells me about the time, before Daddy became the mayor, when he had stopped through during the war and got treated for a bayonet wound.
We talk some more.
That’s all. Just talk. But I feel it already—the itch behind my ribs. The way my breath won’t come even. He’s older. Polished. The kind of man women warn each other about in whispers they don’t admit to enjoying.
He doesn’t ask to walk me home. Just says, “Maybe I’ll see you next Sunday.”
And I say, “Maybe.”
But I know I will. I’ll be there early. In that same cream dress. Hair pinned tight. Pretending I don’t care if he’s looking.
Even though I already know he will be.
The letter comes two days later, folded crisp and clean, slipped under my door with a calling card tucked inside.
Captain Caleb Knox
Fourth U.S. Cavalry – Detached Service
Temporary Command – Calico Flats Outpost
The handwriting is angled and even, like someone who learned to write under pressure. It isn’t long. Just a few sentences inviting me to supper at the officer’s quarters on Friday evening. Nothing improper. A small group, he says. Polite company. He underlines that part, like he knows what the town would say.
I read it twice before folding it shut and pressing it to my lips.
Then I say yes.
Miss Della raises a brow when I ask for starch. She helps me anyway. Brings out a tin of rose-scented powder and a pair of pearl combs I’ve never seen her wear.
“He’s trouble,” she says, pinning my collar straight. “But at least he’s the kind that asks permission first.”
The supper is plain, but clean. Candles flickering in old whiskey bottles. Tin plates. Fresh bread. Chicken stew with real thyme in it. The other officers make conversation about train lines and cavalry skirmishes and how the local saloon isn’t as bad as it smells. I nod when expected. Laugh at the right spots.
But I only hear him.
The way he calls me Miss Ward like it tastes better than wine. The way his hand brushes mine when he offers a refill. The way his eyes stay on me just a breath too long after I’ve looked away.
After the meal, he offers to walk me home.
“It’s not necessary,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he replies. “But I’d like to.”
We walk slow. The sky is wide and sharp with stars. He asks about Ward’s Landing, about school, about how I came to Calico Flats. I lie a little. Say I wanted to help Miss Della. That I needed air and sun. That I like it here.
“I don’t,” he says.
I glance over.
“But I like you,” he adds.
It takes everything I have not to stop walking.
“I don’t know you,” I say.
“You will.”
I should be afraid of that. I’m not. Not yet.
At my steps, he doesn’t kiss me. Just takes my hand, lifts it, and presses his lips to my knuckles like he’s in a book and I’m the chapter worth reading twice.
“Good night, Tessa.”
I don’t sleep much. I lie in bed and watch the window, and every time the breeze moves the curtain I pretend it’s him, standing there. Wanting me. Reaching.
I know how stories like this end.
But I’ve never been in one before.
Word travels fast in Calico Flats.
By Sunday, I feel it in the way Mrs. Elkins from the post office tightens her mouth when I pass, or how the preacher’s wife suddenly remembers she’s busy when I ask if she needs help with the hymnals. Even Miss Della gives me that look over her spectacles—not judgment, not kindness. Just warning.
“He’s not the marrying kind,” she says that evening, slicing bread with more force than needed. “Military men leave. That’s what they do. They leave, and girls like you don’t get asked to follow.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I say.
She snorts. “That’s never stopped a rumor.”
I try not to let it touch me. I try to keep my head high and my steps even and my skirts clean. But the looks keep coming, and so do the whispers. And I’m not made of stone.
Caleb doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he does and doesn’t care.
We meet behind the old church sometimes, or at the creek when the moon’s high. He brings wine in a canvas sack and pours it into tin cups like it’s fine crystal. We sit with our backs against a fallen tree, boots almost touching, knees just brushing.
He talks about cities I’ve never seen. Places with lamps that burn all night and restaurants with menus written in French. He asks what I dream about.
I don’t know how to answer that. Not really. No one’s ever asked before.
“I used to think I’d be a teacher,” I say finally.
“And now?”
“Now I think I might be someone’s something. That doesn’t sound like much, but it feels big.”
He looks at me then, long and quiet.
“You already are,” he says.
And just like that, I believe him.
I don’t see the cracks. Not yet. Not when he makes me feel like the only girl left standing in a town full of dust and men with hungry eyes.
But Sonya does.
She corners me behind the boarding house one afternoon, hands full of laundry, voice low and sharp.
“You think you’re different?” she asks.
I blink. “What do you mean?”
“He said the same things to Ellie before she ran off. Promises. Letters. Walks. Now she’s in Wichita working above a saloon.”
“I’m not Ellie.”
“No,” she says, eyes hard. “You’re softer.”
She leaves before I can say another word.
I stand there holding a wet sheet and feeling like I’ve just been slapped without a hand.
That night, Caleb kisses me like he’s claiming something.
And I let him. And then we do—more.
Because I still think he sees me. Because I need that to be true.
Because some part of me already knows I’m slipping, and I can’t bear to stop.
I imagine what it will be like to be called “Mrs. Caleb Knox.”
It starts with a letter.
Not one he gives me—but one I find, by accident.
I’m at his quarters on the edge of town, standing barefoot in the morning light, wrapped in the same blanket we tangled ourselves in hours earlier. He’s gone out to fetch coffee, said he’d be a few minutes. I was looking for a shawl. Something to keep the chill off. That’s all.
The letter’s on the desk, sealed but unaddressed. I shouldn’t open it. I do.
Captain Knox,
Your reassignment to Fort Laramie is confirmed, effective next month. Cavalry escort will accompany. You are to report with discretion.
I read it twice. Maybe three times.
He never told me.
Not that he’s leaving. Not that it’s so soon.
I’m still holding the paper when he walks back in.
He stops in the doorway, boots dusty, jaw tightening just enough for me to see it.
“You went through my things.”
“I was cold,” I say.
He sets the tin cups down slow, measured. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
He doesn’t answer.
“How long have you known?”
He closes the door with a soft click. “Long enough.”
I set the letter down like it’s something dirty.
“I guess that makes it easier,” I say. “No hard goodbyes. Just orders.”
“Tessa—”
“Were you ever planning to say it? Or were you just going to ride out before breakfast one morning and let me find out through town gossip?”
His voice drops. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it?”
He walks closer, but I step back.
“You said I was already someone’s something,” I whisper. “Was that just talk? Or am I still your something now that you’ve got a post waiting and a uniform to shine?”
His jaw works like he’s biting back something cruel. Or true.
“I never made promises.”
That hits like a boot to the chest.
“No,” I say. “Just suggestions. Just hands on my waist and lips on my skin and pretty lines whispered in the dark.”
He looks away.
I grab my boots and walk out barefoot. Dust clings to my feet, but I don’t care. I don’t even cry. Not yet.
By nightfall, the whole town knows.
I don’t know if it was him or someone who saw me leaving, hair undone, shirt half-buttoned.
But I see it in the stares. In the way Sonya won’t meet my eye. In the way Miss Della doesn’t ask me to help with supper.
No one says it, but I’ve gone from being the doctor’s daughter to something else entirely.
Something common.
Something easy.
And the worst part is—I still want him to stop me.
To say it mattered.
To say I mattered.
But the knock never comes.
The days stretch long and sharp.
I stay upstairs mostly, even when Miss Della calls for help. She doesn’t push. Just sighs loud enough for me to hear and lets the silence do the rest.
I hear Sonya moving through the house like a ghost—laundry, sweeping, dishwater sloshing. She doesn’t speak to me. I don’t blame her.
The girls whisper now. The ones who giggled with me over tea and scraps of ribbon. Now their voices drop to a hush when I pass. I feel them peel away from me like I’m stained.
I want to scream. To beg. To explain.
But what is there to say?
Yes, I let him kiss me. Yes, I spent the night. Yes, I believed him.
Yes, I was wrong.
At church that Sunday, I sit alone in the back. No one makes room. I fold my hands and keep my eyes low, like maybe if I pray hard enough I’ll vanish.
Caleb’s not there. Word is he rode out early to scout the rail path. Someone says he might not come back before his transfer.
Good.
Let him go.
Let him ride away like I was never more than a bed to warm and a name to forget.
That night, I take the lace dress—the cream one—and burn it behind the boarding house.
I thought I’d cry.
I don’t.
I watch it curl and blacken and fall apart, and all I feel is clean.
But the shame doesn’t burn with it. It stays. Sits in my mouth and behind my eyes and in the pit of my gut like something coiled and mean.
When I go down for supper the next evening, Sonya’s at the table already. She glances up, then back at her plate.
I sit across from her.
The silence is heavy. It stays that way through the stew and the biscuits and the awkward scrape of spoons.
Then she says, without looking at me, “You weren’t the first.”
I don’t speak. Can’t.
“He told me I was special, too.”
I stare at her. Her face is unreadable, her hands steady.
“Wasn’t him,” she says, “But this world is full of men like Caleb Knox. Different name. Same swagger. Same wolfish charm.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“I’m not mad at you,” she says. “Just tired of watching good girls think they’re different.”
I swallow the lump in my throat.
“I didn’t want to be different,” I say. “I just wanted to be enough.”
She finally looks at me. And in her eyes, I see something I didn’t expect.
Not pity.
Recognition.
“You still can be,” she says. “But not for him.”
And just like that, something breaks. Not loud. Not painful. Just… done.
I nod. Push my plate away. Stand up slow.
I don’t go back upstairs. Not yet.
I walk out into the cool night, bare-headed and quiet.
For the first time in weeks, I don’t look for him.
Two days later, Miss Della hands me a letter.
No envelope. Just a single sheet folded clean, edges sharp. Her face gives nothing away when she passes it over.
I take it upstairs, sit on the edge of the bed, and open it slow like it might bleed.
Miss Ward,
Forgive the boldness. I heard what’s been said. Thought maybe you’d like something else to hear for a change.
We’re short a pair of hands at the schoolhouse. Nothing grand—just sweeping, chalk dust, keeping the little ones from stabbing each other with slates. Pay’s low. Respect’s fair. Come by if you want to be useful.
—R. Leary
I stare at the name for a long time. I’ve seen her—Miss Leary—maybe twice. Tall, plain, steady voice. Doesn’t wear corsets, doesn’t smile unless it’s earned. She nodded to me once on the street before the rumors began.
She still sees me. Somehow.
The next morning I go.
She doesn’t greet me with fanfare. Just hands me a broom and points toward the back row.
“The little one’s prone to lying and the tall one likes to pinch,” she says. “You’ll learn the rest.”
By noon, I’ve broken up a scuffle over a paper frog and wiped more ink from desks than I knew could spill from one inkwell. My back aches, my fingers are stained, and I’m breathing hard through the dust.
But for the first time in weeks, I don’t feel like I’m shrinking.
I feel solid.
At recess, Miss Leary offers me coffee in a tin cup.
We sit on the steps, watching the children chase each other in the dirt.
“You were with him once, weren’t you?” she says, “You and he—,”
“It was a mistake,” I say, interrupting her. Somehow her voicing it will make it all too real again. She nods toward a boy she refers to as her “nephew” with too-long sleeves and fists balled tight who looks too much like Caleb not to be his son.
“Not your sister’s son?” I ask.
“I never had a sister,” she confides. I moved here to get away from all of it. Never expected him to come here. Not all the way from Texas.”
We are silent for a few minutes and then I speak again. Almost in a whisper.
“I thought it meant something.”
A single tear falls from my eye and trickles its way down my cheek. The only one I’ve cried. She doesn’t move to wipe it for me.
She sips. “Maybe it did. To you.”
I nod. “And now I’m what they think I am.”
“No,” she says. “You’re what you do next.”
I don’t answer. Just wrap my fingers around the warm metal of the cup and feel it settle in my chest.
After school, I walk home past the church and the outpost and the saloon, and I keep my eyes up the whole time.
That night, I don’t dream about Caleb. I don’t beat myself up. I don’t wonder where I went wrong. I don’t think about him at all.
I just sleep.
And in the morning, I put on my boots, tie my apron, and walk back to the schoolhouse without waiting for permission.
The days fall into a rhythm that doesn’t ache.
I sweep floors. Fold lesson plans. Chase down stolen pencils and mediate over who took whose button. The children don’t care what I’ve done. They care if I remember their names, if I listen when they cry, if I know how to draw a horse that actually looks like one.
I do. Sort of.
Miss Leary doesn’t ask questions. She nods when I arrive, nods when I leave. Offers no advice, no gossip, no past. Just room to breathe. And somehow, that’s more than I thought I’d get.
At first, I flinch when I hear footsteps behind me on the street. Expect a stare. A whisper. A voice like Caleb’s.
But the days stretch, and he doesn’t come back.
The outpost clears out. New soldiers come in. Strangers who don’t know what I was or what I became. I stop listening for his name.
One afternoon, Sonya meets me on the boardwalk outside the general store. She hands me a tin of hair oil I didn’t ask for.
“Your ends are split,” she says.
I nod.
She doesn’t mention the past. Neither do I. It doesn’t matter.
That night, I sit on the back steps of the boarding house and braid my hair slow, the way my mother used to do. There’s no mirror. I don’t need one.
I don’t wear lace anymore. Haven’t since I burned that old one. I wear calico now, sturdy and plain. It doesn’t feel like shame. It feels like truth.
Miss Della asks if I want to take in some sewing for coin. I tell her maybe. I don’t rush to say yes.
Sometimes, I miss the way he made me feel. The way my skin warmed under his hand. The way his voice wrapped around my name like it meant something special.
But I don’t miss the ache that came after.
I don’t miss being something to survive.
In the quiet, I start to hum again.
In the mornings, I laugh. Not loud, not all the way, but real.
And sometimes I catch my own reflection in the glass of the schoolhouse window and don’t look away.
I’m not new. I’m not whole.
But I’m here.
And that’s something.
Spring comes late to Calico Flats. The wind still bites in the mornings, but the dirt’s softening, and the first buds have pushed through behind the schoolhouse. The children argue about what they are—wildflowers, clover, maybe weeds—but I let them be whatever they want.
Miss Leary’s taken on more hours at the town hall, so the younger ones fall to me now. I lead the morning bell. I write the alphabet on the board. I learn to carry my voice with calm and steel. Some days it works.
On Fridays, I stay late to clean. I hum while I work, songs from back home—soft, aimless melodies. I don’t sing for anyone else. Just me.
That’s where I am when the door creaks open.
Boots. Slow. Measured.
I know the sound before I even look up.
He’s leaner. Dustier. There’s a new line in his jaw and a faint scar beneath his left eye. But it’s Caleb. Standing in the doorway like time owes him something.
I straighten. Say nothing.
He takes off his hat, runs a hand through his hair like it’s a nervous tic.
“I came back sooner,” he says. “But they told me—”
“I’m not interested,” I cut in.
His eyes flicker. He steps forward, careful, like I might spook.
“I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m on my feet,” I say. “I work. I sleep well. I don’t look for you anymore.”
He swallows that like a stone.
“I made a mistake,” he says.
“No,” I reply, soft and clear. “You made a choice.”
We stand in it a moment. The boards creak. A pencil rolls across the back desk.
He nods. Slow.
“Would you ever—” he starts.
“No,” I say.
His shoulders drop. Not in defeat. In understanding.
I walk to the door and hold it open.
“I’ve got sweeping left to do.”
He steps past me. Pauses in the threshold. But still annoyingly inside.
“You’re still the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen.” He flashes me his trademark grin and takes a step back toward me.
I’m already over it. It just annoys me. I release my breath exasperated. “And you’re the most unremarkable I’ve ever seen.” I shove him back toward the door. “You’re gonna make me have to sweep this floor again and you ain’t hardly worth it.”
“You loved me once,” he says, stepping back—finally outside.
I don’t answer. Just close the door behind him. I shut the bolt. I don’t feel the need to tell him about the fanciful fits of previously unharmed girls.
The room feels warmer after. Lighter.
I finish sweeping. Straighten the benches. Set the chalk for Monday.
As I step out into the dusk, the air smells like rain and something just barely blooming. My boots leave prints in the soft earth, but they don’t sink.
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