Bridget kept her gaze on the ground. The dirt beneath her boots was safer than the eyes above it.
In Boston, she had been the one who rose first and slept last. She had tended her little brothers when their mother’s lungs failed. She’d learned to keep books because her father couldn’t count the way grief made him forget numbers. She had been dependable, and in a poor household, dependable meant “useful.”
Then her father remarried, and useful became “extra.”
“Too many mouths,” her stepmother had said softly one night, as if kindness could soften a knife. “And Bridget… you understand, don’t you? You’re not a little girl anymore. You can make your own way.”
A matrimonial agency in San Francisco had offered a solution wrapped in respectable ink. For a fee, for signatures, for a promise that sounded like prayer, Bridget could be sent west to become someone else’s responsibility.
She’d boarded the train with a small satchel of handsewn linens and a Bible that still smelled like her mother’s hands. She’d told herself there might be a man out there who could see past the shape of her body and into the shape of her heart.
Now the crowd in Silverpine told her what they saw.
The choosing began quickly.
A rancher with a red face pointed at a blonde girl and said, “That one.” He took her hand like he was buying a horse.
A merchant chose a slim brunette who looked like she might faint in a strong breeze. He smiled as if he’d won something.
