Mary Stevenson's hand shook as she lit the lantern on the table. The cold, dark room took on a slightly warmer glow as the small flame radiated across the floor. It had been several hours, and she hadn't heard a sound from her daughter's room. Cautiously she glanced over at the man in the chair, asleep from the drunken binge that had followed his assault on the two women. Shaking with the fear of what she would find, Mary picked up the lantern and quietly walked over to the closed door. She opened it and stepped in, softly closing the door behind her.
The silken glow of the lantern light spread across the room, but she didn't see her daughter, and panic seized her. She looked toward the bedroom window, but it was closed. As she examined the room, the evidence of a full-blown fight was witnessed in the destruction. There wasn't a book still intact; the chair and desk Cassie used for her studies were overturned; and the doll that was the only thing the girl had left of her father, shredded on the floor.
It was then that Mary heard the small whimpering coming from behind her in the corner. She turned around and had to slam a hand over her mouth to keep the wail building in her throat from sounding through the house and possibly waking her husband. Cassie's dress had been torn from her, and her face was black and blue from the beating. Blood had pooled on the floor where she was sitting, and had spread over her white petticoat.
And Mary Stevenson wanted to scream. She wanted to beat her fists into the man who had taken from her daughter what should only have been given to a special man of Cassie's choosing. She wanted to strike him down as he slept with the scythe from the barn and be finished with him; but the awful truth was plain. No matter what had been visited upon Mary and her daughter, they were women living in a society that viewed them as less than the men. Killing Dell Stevenson would only result in her own hanging, leaving Cassie completely alone.
Mary looked once again at the terror in her daughter's pale eyes and felt sick: would alone be worse than living under the grim shadow of the animal in the other room? She honestly didn't know. Mary set the lantern down and gently approached Cassie, taking the stricken girl in her arms, rocking her softly.
"It's going to be all right, Cassie. I know that it will." The young woman shook violently, and her mother pulled her closer. "I'll think of something to keep him off you, girl. Even if'n I have to kill him, I'll keep him off you."
Cassie buried her face into her mother's breast and cried. There would be no young men courting her now, no picnics by the river, walks through town or buggy rides in the country; even at seventeen, Cassie understood that she was damaged goods. And that was how every man in Dodge would see her. She swallowed down the cry that threatened to come, and vowed silently to herself that from that moment on, she would allow nothing to cause her grief or pain. There would be no moment or emotion that would penetrate the wall that she would build, and no man would ever be allowed to glimpse the anguish in her heart.
From this night forward, Cassie Stevenson would be as plain as a blade of grass, and as blank in temper as the most docile kitten. The world would cease to have color, melody, or passion - it was a slate wall with no meaning. And in that wall there would lie the comfort of omission.
And in omission there would be no regret.