Every part of Talula Goodman’s body ached as she walked slowly toward town. Every part she could feel at least, her feet had gone numb sometime during the last hour before dawn and the only evidence they were still there was her continued upright posture. Her thrice-damned horse had run off during the attack and in a very distant part of her mind she wished it a slow, horrible death. Coyotes, maybe. Or a skin-walker. Coyote skin-walker.
The night was still mostly a blur. She thought she had been safe enough, she’d taken all her usual precautions. No fire, nothing to eat but hardtack and jerky washed down with her last two swallows of Old Orchard. She’d lost consciousness – she never slept anymore, sleep was something other folks could indulge – under cover of a creosote bush a hundred yards off the road. She’d left the miserable swayback nag another fifty yards past that, hitched to a Ponderosa pine with enough forage around to keep it happy and quiet for the night.
Then, sometime in the small hours, she’d resurfaced from the tender oblivion that took her each night. If she hadn’t spent most her life a heartbeat away from danger or worse she might’ve ended her days in that cold, October pre-dawn. But the world had hardened Talula – honed her to a razor’s edge – and before she was fully awake she was in motion; rolling away from the threat.
Men of course. Two of them. Maybe they’d followed her all the way from Thornbrook, maybe they’d caught sight of her somewhere after that. It didn’t matter, they both giggled and growled by turns in a way that told Talula all she needed to know. They didn’t want money, they didn’t want her gun and they weren’t planning to barter for anything they did want.
Pity for them they’d expected her to be asleep or passed out, they didn’t care, and they planned to slake their thirst before she’d even come around. Instead, as the first one was unbuckling his belt and lowering his filthy trousers, her body was already responding in the way she’d practised so well. It didn’t even require thought anymore, this was as natural as drawing breath.
There was a deafening crack, a barely-human howl and the man with his pants open fell backward, gibbering and clutching his crotch as the dust between the two of them grew dark. Somewhere, very far away, Talula felt a slicing pain in her left hand from where she had torn it open as she fanned the hammer of her Shopkeeper but that might as well be a letter from New York City for all it mattered to her.
“Wait!” the second one blurted out stupidly as Talula turned her attention to him. His hands were out in a placating gesture like he could somehow explain away what he and his friend were doing here, what they had planned on doing, all while his friend was sobbing and bleeding out in the dust. Talula didn’t give him time to work up a story, she fanned the hammer again and sent him to meet his maker.
Of course they’d unhitched her horse before they closed in on her. They’d probably given it a good slap to send it on its way so there’d be no running if she did wake up partway through. The sobbing wails from the man who wasn’t quite dead yet drifted toward her. She still had at least twenty miles to reach No Regrets and they were further than that from any other settlement by her reckoning. That left her to consider what would be more satisfying: venting her anger and using one of her remaining bullets on him or leaving him to the fates. Would the reaper come for him before the scavengers did?
Talula decided that was a question worth answering.
When she finally staggered, wraith-like, into town Talula considered the possibility that some tenderfoot deputy might mistake her for a cabrón but she only hesitated at the sign for a moment. Having it all end like that, shot down by some tin star still wet behind the ears, that might be the best she could hope for on returning to No Regrets. As she shuffled down the middle of the town’s main street she grew more confident that wasn’t in the cards for her today. At least not yet.
She didn’t know the time but the sun had been up for hours now. She thought it must be well past noon, but it was hard to tell since she couldn’t force her eyes to focus on anything and measuring her shadow was well beyond her now. There were people out on the main street, on the boardwalk and down on the dirt with her, and Talula imagined how she must look to them.
She was short, even with her boots on, and thin, mostly due to living on the trail, but even when she was living easy she never seemed to be able to get the curves she’d need to be considered properly pretty. Her firey red hair was bound in a tight plait that reached down her back just below her shoulders. Her complexion was pale but only relative to other wanderers, her skin had been sunburned again and again until now it more-or-less gave up, finally darkening to a faint tan. Her face, despite being shaded by the wide brim of her John B., was covered in freckles so thick she’d never felt really clean as a little girl. Her lips would have been plump and heart-shaped but the last few days had robbed her of so much they were cracked and raw.
Her unbleached linen shirt was soaked through with sweat and over it her light brown vest had darkened as well. Together they did considerable work to hide her natural figure, smoothing and shaping what modest curves she had, into angles that would never let her pass for a man but also didn’t announce to anyone she was of the fairer sex. Her plain brown trousers were cut for a man and were tight in places that she didn’t enjoy when she first put them on. That had been before Thornbrook – in Swiftchapel, she thought – and now they were so loose she regretted not buying the suspenders after all. Her once-brown shotgun boots were grey with dust all the way up and were marked with scuffs and gouges nearly all the way through. Before her worthless horse had run off and taken her coin with it she could’ve afforded better clothing but she projected the image she wanted: woman or not, it was best to say far away from this person.
“Hello, Lu,” Mary’s honeyed tone sent a chill up Talula’s back and a thrill down her belly. It made her furious.
“The Rose ain’t open yet,” she rasped in reply, staring intently down at her folded hands as she sat at the bar of The Velvet, the best and only brothel within 50 miles of No Regrets.
“No, I imagine they aren’t,” Mary said softly as her fingertips trailed over Talula’s shoulders. “Bert doesn’t often rise before eleven and they never open before Bert’s awake.”
Blinking slowly, Talula turned her head so she could look Mary Mawdsley in the eye, wincing slightly at a cramp in her neck. Somehow she was even more beautiful than Talula remembered. She towered at nearly six feet tall where Talula was short, not even five foot. Her face was warm and clear and her skin was a flawless caramel compared to Talula’s pale, freckled white. Her sable hair was shiny and done up in three large puffs atop her head, with flowers in the largest of the three, and a broad braid down the back of her neck that reached below her shoulders. Conversely, Talula’s hair was flat, dry and, when not tied in a plait, lifeless. Mary’s figure, accentuated by her dress and undergarments certainly, but nevertheless breathtaking, shamed Talula’s squarish, mannish build. Mary had curves and swells and fat everywhere men – and certain types of broken women – found irresistible. Talula had been mistaken for a man more times than she could count, and not always by ones that was already cockeyed.
She was suddenly seized by a memory of Mary as a girl, both of them just reaching their adult years. The two of them were sitting on the porch of Alvin Todd’s general store one summer evening after their chores. It was warm and bright on account of the full moon and it being mid-August and the two of them were looking up at the stars in the sky, trading ideas about what those lights might be and who might be livin’ on them. Talula had inched her hand closer and closer to Mary’s as they talked. She had no plan, she’d just hoped she might get to hold Mary’s hand in a way that was different than they did walking to school or to church on Sundays. But as her fingers finally reached the other girl her friend jumped and pulled her had away. Not far, but enough to convince Talula that she’d made a mistake.
Their friendship had never recovered.
“‘S not noon yet?” Talula asked quietly, hoping she was keeping the tremor out of her voice but too bone-weary to notice one way or the other. There was a pressure at the side of her skull that foretold the mother of all headaches not far off.
“How long you been on the road?” Mary asked kindly. Her voice, her tone, it was a warm bath, it was a soft bed after a a hard ride, it was everything she wanted out of life. Her deepest, fondest desire would be to hear Mary’s voice first every day and last every night, but she daren’t even linger on that thought. That was more dangerous than the bushwackers from last night.
“Left Thornbrook last Tuesday coming here. Lost my horse.” She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks and hated herself all the more for it. “’s … Monday now?”
“I know why you’re here,” Mary said gently, ignoring the question while her fingertips continued over the coarse fabric of Talula’s vest. The haggard woman couldn’t help but notice how Mary’s hand seemed to be moving lower with each light, circular stroke.
“Suppose you do,” she replied softly. “Why’n’t you point me at him an’ save me some time?” She didn’t mean to be curt, in her deep-down Talula wanted to draw out this moment as long as she could, but she didn’t have the luxury of giving in to ‘want’. Not yet. Maybe never.
“You missed him,” Mary murmured softly. She had brought her mouth so close to Talula’s ear she could feel the madam’s breath on her cheek. It was warm and smelled of cardamom and rose. It gave the gunslinger goosebumps.
“You’re lyin’,” though Talula sounded far less certain than she’d intended as she locked eyes with Mary.
“Not lying, Lu. He’s gone, didn’t say where to. He might be back, though. Why don’t you stay a bit? Let me help you. I’ll make sure you get a good rest while you’re waiting.” Talula hated herself for how eager she was to accept the offer.
“Can’t afford an Arbuckle’s, everythin’ was in the saddle-bags,” she said simply. Had she told Mary she’d lost her horse? Talula couldn’t remember. Her eyes darted from the angel in a crushed velvet bodice to the far side of the game room.
There was a long table set against the wall laden with food. Cold cuts, rye bread, salted herring, even some vegetables, celery mostly but some carrots too. Just thinking about it made Talula’s mouth water, looking at it was almost too much to bear. She could go help herself, nobody would protest or try to stop her, but even Talula wasn’t so hard up yet – at least she didn’t think so – that she would break that rule. Not even the lowliest deadbeat would eat without buying at least two drinks. Nowhere in the territory.
Mary smiled in a way that make Talula’s painfully empty stomach churn. “You don’t gotta pay here, girl, we’re family.”
“We ain’t family,” Talula responded flatly, harsher than she’d planned but feeling like she needed to go on the attack now. She did want to hurt Mary. They’d schooled together, they’d been the best of friends when they were girls, but events conspired and now Mary Mawdsley was the head of her house and Talula has nothing but a revolver, six loaded chambers and one bullet besides and a hate that kept her warm when the weather turned cold and the fire burned low.
“Might as well be,” Mary’s retort was light, breezy and, Talula thought, more than a little flirty. Well, it’s what she does. “Come on,” the madame instructed Talula, gently but firmly directing her toward the stairs with both hands. “I’m not hearin’ any more arguments outta you, Lu Goodman,” Talula had time to notice the look that passed between Mary and the bespectacled man working behind the bar. He nodded almost imperceptibly and had disappeared into the kitchen behind him by the time the two women had reached the second floor.
Torn between looking tired and sullen, Talula simply stood inside the door of Mary’s personal suite. It was beautiful, just like the occupant. The floor had been recently waxed and even though Talula knew it wasn’t her eyes told her it was still wet. The shiplap walls were immaculate, gleaming white and the sitting room had huge windows facing south and a door that opened onto a balcony overlooking the main street. There was a white painted table with two chairs in one part of the room, a couch by a wood stove in another and a writing desk in another part. Off to the right there was a closed door that Talula was sure led to Mary’s private bedroom.
“Would you please, Lu?” Mary asked gently as she sat down at the table, gesturing to the chair opposite. “Elbert’s fetchin’ us something to eat, we can talk while we wait.”
Talula opened her mouth and tried to draw forth harsh bravado, she wanted to say something sharp and biting that would snuff out the look in Mary’s eyes. The look of kind welcome, gentle affection, a look she probably practised in the mirror every morning. She wanted to put an end to this here and now. Mary would throw her out and she could sit outside the Cactus Rose until Bert finally woke and opened the door for her. She wanted that but her body and her brain both rebelled. “Thank you,” she said simply and shuffled over to take the free seat at the table.
“You been gone a long time,” Mary said after an uncomfortably long pause. “I know you ain’t here to put your guns down.” Did Talula hear a hint of hope in Mary’s voice? “Least not yet.”
“Gun. Lost the other one in Grand River,” Talula said evenly as she tried to read Mary’s expression.
“Grand River?” Mary asked, her brow furrowing in concentration. “Where’s that? I don’t think I ever heard tell of it.”
Talula shrugged slightly as her attention fixed on Mary’s mouth. “Can’t get there from here,” she murmured cryptically, repeating the words the guide had said to her when he’d told her that the man she was seeking was out of reach.
Mary frowned and for a second Talula’s stomach did a flip-flop as she realised she may yet succeed in having the madam throw her out on the street. A grim light came over Mary’s face and she sat silent for another uncomfortably long moment before opening her mouth to speak once again. Before she could, though, there was a knock at the door, “Ms. Mawdsley? L-lunch?”
Talula turned toward the door to see it open less than an inch. Enough to speak through but nothing more. She thought for a moment on how the door was behind her and how she hadn’t even heard it open. Of course, she would never have sat with her back to a door anyway had it not been Mary directing her to the seat, but it was also a sign her exhaustion. Talula wondered if she was too tired to even eat.
“Thank you, Elbert,” Mary called out in her professional, solicitous tone. “In my sitting room, if you’d be so kind.” Talula turned again in her seat to look back at Mary but seemed to forget how to stop. She felt herself continuing to turn, faster now, and something was wrong with her vision. She —
— found herself lying in the softest bed she’d ever known. She was floating on a lavender-scented cloud. She drew a deep breath through her nose, held it until her lungs burned, then slowly breathed back out again.
“I was worried ‘bout you, Lu.” The room was dimly lit and Talula guessed she had been asleep most of the day. The sun had moved on and must surely be close to the horizon. She turned her head slowly toward the voice and, forgetting herself for a moment, broke into a broad smile at the sight of Mary sitting at the side of the bed, a book folded in her lap. She had her hair free now and it hung long and wavy, reaching several inches past her shoulders and framing her face wonderfully. “Don’t you be dyin’ in my house,” she chided gently.
“Thank you,” Talula croaked, her throat was raw and her lips, so dry this morning as she reached town, had now split in at least one place. She took a quick personal inventory. She’d been stripped of her belt and her boots, she’d had no socks since Swiftchapel, but she was otherwise still fully dressed and, she now realised, lying on top of the covers. “Sorry ‘bout your coverlet, Mar.”
Instantly Talula’s cheeks grew hot as she caught herself, too late, calling this woman by the name she’d had as a child. She opened her mouth to try to un-say the name somehow but stopped when she saw the warm smile pass over Mary’s lips. “Now don’t you worry about that, Lu. You could’ve come here directly from cleaning the stables and I’d still be happy as can be.” She leaned forward on the chair perhaps halving the distance between them, “I truly am happy you’re back, you know.”
Mary had changed her clothes, not just her hair since the two of them had sat opposite each other at the table. She was wearing a plain, one-piece dress of unbleached cotton, thin and billowy. It was a style that would’ve been old-fashioned ten years ago, simple, practical with a hint of elegance. Mary hadn’t done the top up all the way so as she leaned forward it fell away from her neck, revealing her collar bones. Try as she might, Talula couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the newly exposed skin. She wanted to reply, needed to say something, but all of this, the warmth, the comfort, being cared for by Mary, it was too much. She didn’t trust her voice.
“Drew you a bath,” Mary said softly, a mysterious glow creeping into her cheeks. “I’m happy to see you, but you do need a bath.” Mary’s tone was a playful censure, the sort of intimate critique shared between the long bonded. She stood up slowly and set her book on the nightstand then offered both hands to her guest, her wayward friend. “Let me help. Please.”
Still not unable to trust her voice, Talula simply nodded and flushed with shame as her rough, dry hands with their dirty, ragged fingernails met Mary’s warm, soft skin. The madam’s nails were trimmed curiously short but were otherwise perfect and tinted a pale blue that put Talula in mind of a cold winter morning. Her whole body screamed in protest as Mary helped her out of bed but once she was on her feet the pain retreated to the edges of her mind. “Thank you,” Talula said softly, again. It seemed to her to be the only thing she could trust herself to say as she looked up into Mary’s eyes.
“Come,” Mary instructed gently as she led Talula out of the bedroom, through the sitting room, through the small receiving room they’d sat in this morning, and into a warm room filled with candles and oils, a shelf with linen and a rack bearing robes. In the middle, the focal point of the room, was a claw-foot bathtub filled with steaming water. On a side table there were various bottles, mostly dark brown glass but a few clear, and what Talula thought was a brand-new cake of soap and a stack of the whitest, thickest towels she’d ever laid eyes on.
So taken by the sheer opulence of this room was she that Talula didn’t even notice when Mary began to undress her. By the time she was aware Mary had the front of Talula’s pants open, her shirt pulled out of them and had nearly reached the button above Talula’s navel. “Wait,” she said quickly, her voice infuriatingly high, almost girlish.
Mary did as she was bade, though she bore a look of faint disappointment in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Lu,” she stammered and the uncharacteristic uncertainty made Talula’s knees weak.
Talula worried her bleeding lip for a moment then relaxed. “’s alright, I was surprised, is all,” and she started removing her clothing on her own. “Where should I … put these?” she looked around helplessly, still holding her shirt closed though now all the buttons were undone and her pants were creeping down over her hips of their own accord. Her clothing felt too dirty to leave on Mary’s unblemished floor.
Mary smiled again and held out her hands, “Give them here. I’ll get Lizzie to take ’em to the laundry.” Talula teetered on a knife-edge of indecision then nodded and shrugged off her shirt, handing it to Mary like it might bite, or burn. Talula paused for another moment, considering as a blush crept from her cheeks, down her neck, reaching all the way to the top of her modest chest. She took a deep, steadying breath and hooked her thumbs inside the waist of her slacks, giving them the last little nudge they needed to clear her hips and gather in a pool around her bare feet.
“I just … get on in?” she asked, feeling equal parts foolish, nervous and excited as she stood there in the warm room, wholly exposed before this friend from so long ago, the friend she’d always wanted in a different way. She was more boy than girl, she had often thought, with her narrow hips, wide shoulders, muscles hard from work and standing out all the more for her dehydration, her small, flat behind and her equally modest breasts. They were barely a handful, capped with crinkly pink areola almost the size of a Morgan dollar that puffed out above her bitties. Her sex was hidden beneath a thick tangle of brown and red hair that covered her entire mound and trailed in a thin track from the middle up toward her belly button. Her pale skin was crisscrossed the scars. Her legs, her arms, her chest, her back were all a map of pain and she could remember each one and how she’d come by it. It was these that she caught Mary staring at with a pained expression, but before Talula could say something Mary caught herself and managed an insincere smile.
“Yes, careful you don’t slip now. Let me help,” she again reached her hands out to Talula and this time the redhead wasn’t at all ashamed of her rough hands. She felt gooseflesh rise all over her body when Mary took one and gave it the faintest squeeze. She led Talula around the far side of the tub where a small step had been placed and when she stepped up on it she was almost level with Mary. She paused there, her lips parting slightly as she blinked and started to lose herself in Mary’s strangely green eyes. She wanted to kiss Mary so badly right then she began to feel light-headed once more. She might have tried had Mary not broken the spell. “Watch your step,” her voice sounded high and nervous, not at all like the woman Talula had been talking to since returning to town. Not the confident madam, nor the caring friend, this was new.
Talula carefully stepped into the steaming water and winced almost immediately at the heat and the tingling on her skin. “You’ll get used to it quick,” Mary reassured her and truly, by the time Talula was halfway in the tub she was already groaning as the hot water and whatever Mary had added to it tingled over her skin. It seemed to loosen her aching muscles almost immediately.
Mary disappeared behind the tub, out of Talula’s view, but she made a wordless sound of pleasure at her guest’s reaction. “It’s nice, isn’t it? I bring it in on the train from out east. The man who sells it to me says the Anishinaabe discovered it, they’ve been bathing in it since before Europeans ever came to this part of the world.”
Talula was only half listening, she was lying back in the tub and had submerged herself up to her neck. She felt herself start to float, her mind began to drift off in that pleasant muzziness that precedes true sleep but then Mary appeared at the edge of the tub and wakefulness returned to Talula with all the force of a rockslide.
She was nude now as well, Mary was. Her hair was back again but this time in a simple ponytail rather than the showy, elaborate display from when she was working. She was a vision. All smooth, flawless skin of varying caramel shades and the kind of curves one gets from living well but with care. Her cheeks were plump and dimpled when she smiled, as she was now, her lips were full and plump as well with just a bit of paint to make them more pink than what Talula knew to be their natural hue. Talula’s upper chest was a washboard of visible ribs just beneath hard muscle but Mary was soft and smooth in every way. Her breasts were large and full and so wonderfully round that Talula stopped breathing at the sight of them. They were heavy but didn’t truly sag and she had nipples and areola so dark brown they were almost black. Talula ached to touch them, to feel their weight and to let her fingers learn the geography of Mary’s body.
“Let me help,” Mary murmured as she knelt, naked, beside the tub. That phrase again, Mary had said it so many times that somewhere in the dark corners of Talula’s mind she wondered if it had a deeper, unknown meaning. No matter.
Talula thought Mary must be on the step, or have another step since she was on the wrong side, but that thought, too, came from a distant place. It was like seeing a lightning flash on the open plain. The thought was over there, irrelevant to anything here except as a curiosity.
“Okay,” Talula replied, dumbly, as Mary actually laughed and slowly sunk her hands beneath the water.
Mary was holding the bar of soap in one hand and beneath the water she began to slide it slowly over Talula’s taught belly. Her eyes were locked on the redhead’s now, looking for any sign that she should stop; pain, discomfort, unease, any of these might’ve had her retreat, but Talula showed nothing of the sort. She kept her eyes on Mary’s while Mary slicked up the firm muscles, then further out to the jutting hip-bones and finally creeping up toward the underslope of Talula’s breasts.
“You’ll say if anything’s off?” Mary asked, still sounding not at all like the cool, confident Madam Talula had encountered at the bar. Talula couldn’t manage a sound but she nodded so quickly and so emphatically that she caused some water to splash over the side. Mary chuckled, “That’s why I took off my dress.” Then, giving Talula a coy but eager look, she moved her free hand down while her hand holding the soap moved up.
The slippery soft-firm cake slid between Talula’s breasts then around and under each, rubbing around and over her areola and teasing her nipples until her breasts looked almost like cones against her chest. The hand that moved down … Mary’s trembling fingers first combed gently through Talula’s dense curls then stopped their progress to hover over the gunslinger’s aching pearl.
“Mar…” Talula breathed softly, her voice heavy, lusty, and both of her hands seized Mary’s wrist. “Please?” she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken aloud but if she hadn’t Mary had understood regardless.
“Lu…” she replied, that single syllable full of so much longing, so much love denied, so much need that it sent a chill down Talula’s spine, and then Mary’s first two fingers were there. Pinching Talula’s clit between the first knuckle of each of Mary’s index and middle fingers as she stroked up and down, rubbing the sides firmly but gently, dipping down with each cycle to collect some of Talula’s own slick juices from her pale pink folds before retreating back up to send a thrill that made Talula’s tail-bone ache. What Mary found between Talula’s legs was thicker, denser than water and helped the sensation, but even if it hadn’t, both of Talula’s hands were locked around Mary’s wrist, she was not letting go until both women had seen this through.
The sounds grew louder, the splashing intensified, and Talula couldn’t help herself as she rocked and bucked her hips against Mary’s fingers. Mary leaned over the bath and her heavy tits sunk into the water, brushing against Talula’s chest as Mary’s mouth found hers. They kissed, hungry and desperate from the first. There was no flirting, shy hinting, Mary’s lips have scarcely touched Talula’s before her tongue was thrusting into the redhead’s mouth, desperately dancing with Talula’s own. One of them – Talula couldn’t be sure who – made a sound that was a low, animal growl dripping with pleasure. She clenched her fingers harder still around Mary’s wrist as she tried to steady herself with her feet against the edge of the tub, but only ended up slipping and splashing more. She rode Mary’s hand with a desperate enthusiasm that bordered on fanatical.
“Fuck, Mar! Fuck! Oh fuck, pleeeeease…” Though she couldn’t finish the request it seemed Mary already knew what Talula needed. She sped up the movement, pressing down more firmly, pinching Talula’s clit harder between her fingers and doing her best to keep the smaller woman’s nubbin slick with her own juices.
“I’m sorry I scared you off,” Mary blurted, suddenly, as Talula stared at her with wide, not-quite-vacant, bliss-shrouded eyes. “I love you, Lu. I was afraid,” she seemed to Talula to be confessing something deep, something dear, something very, very important, but she’d chosen to do it at a time when the drifter wasn’t truly able to think and so she just gave Mary a loving, pleading look and a warbling sound of agreement.
“Fuck ME!” Talula shouted as the perplexed, innocent look of combined love and confusion on Mary’s face pushed her over her peak. She remembered kicking in the tub, sending violent waves jumping out over all sides of the tub and flooding the floor. She even remembered seeing one splash hitting Mary right across the bridge of her nose and cumming even harder when Mary responded with a half-scowl / half-grin. She remembered having one leg fully out of the tub and her hairy sex fully exposed. The room was warm but very cold compared to the water. Talula must have had her head under the surface of the water at that point, but she didn’t remember that, she just remembered still holding Mary’s wrist with a death-grip and promising herself she would never let go.
When she finally returned to her own mind, the tub had so little water in it that even lying on the bottom, perfectly still, her breasts, her abdomen and her hairy mound were all completely exposed to the cool, evening air. She blinked slowly, drunk on her own orgasm and looked up at Mary with a of mix of emotions she couldn’t ever name. Lust and hope and love and fear and shame and the underlying desperate, unyielding need for revenge. She hoped with what little remained of her heart that when it was all over there would be enough of her soul left to dedicate to Mary Mawdsley
If there was a God in Heaven and He loved all His children, no matter how broken they were, He would surely leave enough Talula to give Mary the life she deserved.
And if He chose otherwise … Talula would take back what she was owed. Amen.