She wanted to be a mother. She might not have wanted to do it now, but she did want to do it.
And she wanted to be in love. And the simple truth was, she couldn’t actually imagine being in love with anyone but Wolf. She didn’t love him right now.
That was... It would be silly to love him now. After the way he had hurt her. But... Well, that was the thing. She didn’t want a loveless marriage. And she couldn’t really imagine any outcome beyond marrying him.
Unless she lost the baby.
The idea made her feel devastated. Absolutely, completely devastated. She didn’t even want to entertain the idea. That would mean leaving here like they had never... Like he hadn’t changed who she was.
He didn’t change who you were. He just thrust you into the exact thing you’ve been protecting yourself from and made you start to face things.
“Are you ready to head back?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I am tired. It was really nice to meet you, Elsie,” she said.
“Yeah,” Elsie said, “surprisingly nice to meet you.”
Violet wrinkled her nose. “Surprisingly?”
“No offense. But you know, when it comes to women my brothers get tangled up with... Well, let’s just say they’re not my kind of person to hang out with. You seem okay.” Wolf scowled, and Violet couldn’t help herself. She laughed. As far as she could tell, Elsie just enjoyed harassing Wolf, and given that he was formidable, unknowable and all those other adjectives they had just spent the past fifteen minutes or so applying to him, it was genuinely amusing.
“You know how siblings are,” Wolf said as they got into the truck.
“Not really,” she said.
“Don’t you have any?”
“I do. I have two half brothers,” she said. “But they’re...you know, five and four. So I love them. To pieces. But they’re not like brothers. Not really. I mean, I tickle them, but I don’t give them a hard time. Not like that.”
“So you were basically an only child,” he said.
“Basically,” she said. “But it’s fun to see you with your siblings. But you know, they think you’re mysterious, too.”
She was pushing. But after the thoughts she’d been having...she figured why not?
“I don’t know. We’re not...a big family of sharers.”
“Yeah, Elsie said the same thing.” And yet he’d shared with her before.
“It’s hard to describe our dad,” Wolf said. “But the older I get, and especially as I’m thinking about actually having a kid, the angrier I get at him. You see, he didn’t leave. Not outright. So of course I was angriest at my mom for a long time. Because she was the one that abandoned me. But as you get older, and you get a little more perspective... She was just a person. It made the situation pretty difficult for her.”
He was continuing to share with her. Maybe it was his family. Maybe he couldn’t share with them.
Maybe she mattered more than...more than she’d realized.
“She went away from her family. Her culture. Everything, to come live with him. To try to figure out a life.”
“Her culture?”
“She grew up in Karuk Tribe Housing. Not a reservation really, but in designated housing. The community was tight. And very connected to their heritage. She lost all that when she left for my dad. And I just think she could never... She could never find her place.”
“She left you.”
“She didn’t have a choice.”
“And you grew up here.”
“Yeah. I don’t know that I could fit in my family if I wanted to. I mean, it’s not something I spent a lot of time thinking about. It’s not... My mother was young. Very young. Much more than my father. That’s one reason I... I don’t feel the best about all of this. I can see the similarities.”