The eldest, Eleanor “Nell” Rusk, twenty years old, stood at the front with her chin lifted like she was holding up the entire ceiling. Her hands shook where they gripped the hem of her skirt, but she planted her feet as if the boards beneath her belonged to her. She’d been doing that since their father died, since their mother had followed him a year later, since Virgil had moved into their cabin with his cards and his bottle and his habit of turning grief into leverage.
Behind Nell stood June, seventeen, eyes sharp as broken glass. Rage lived in her like a second heartbeat, pounding hard enough you could almost hear it over the piano’s nervous tinkling.
Behind June was Beatrice, fourteen, cheeks wet, lips pressed together as if she could bite back the sound of sobbing. One hand clutched Nell’s sleeve. The other held tight to the smallest sister, Lottie, six years old, whose eyes were wide and searching, trying to make sense of a room that didn’t make sense at all.
The auctioneer, a slick man named Pender, lifted his gavel like it was a blessing he could grant or deny.
“Do I hear fifty dollars for the lot?”
Pender barked, and slammed the gavel down like he was tenderizing meat.
“Fifty!” shouted a toothless prospector near the front. “Need a cook and a warmer!”
The crowd erupted, the laughter sharp and hungry. Nell felt bile climb her throat. She did what she’d done all week: swallowed it, then swallowed the fear behind it, then stood taller anyway because Lottie was watching her, and Lottie believed her big sister could hold the world together by force of will alone.
Virgil didn’t look at them. He stared at the whiskey bottle on the bar like it was the only honest thing in the room.
“Seventy!” called out a man in a suit too clean for Montana, a brothel owner from farther north. His smile was expensive and empty. “Seventy for the lot.”
