1
CAROLINE
The little snooze I took between August Point and Lewistown had been an act. Everything for me was an act. So much so that I was afraid I was losing myself. Perhaps I'd already done so, accepting a marriage of convenience as I had. The journey from Minneapolis to the Montana Territory had been interminable, rocking to and fro on a train, then cramped in a stage with two other women who were as nervous, as wary about their fates, as I. Eleanor and Emily, who were also mail order brides, had met their husbands at the appropriate stops, leaving me alone with my thoughts as I journeyed to my final destination. Apex. At long last.
I'd never had close friends; my miserable family life had not condoned, nor made those types of alliances, amenable. A friend from school would stop by
