She stood up. She put on her coat even though it was August and warm as though putting on the coat was part of the leaving and she had done it so many times that her hands moved without asking. Lucille said, "Are you coming back?" Ruth Ames said, "I am not scheduled to come back. The visits are complete.
Lucille said, "You could come back anyway." Ruth Ames looked at the girl and then at Caleb and then at the kitchen with its flower on the shelf and its two chairs and its window facing west and the quilt drying on the line outside and she said, "I could." Caleb walked her to the buggy. The sun was going down behind the wheat, and the sky was the color of iron cooling after the forge, and they stood by the fence the way they had stood there in June, except this time neither of them said anything for a long while. Ruth Ames said, "I am reassigned to the Topeka office in September."
Caleb said, "Topa is not far." She said, "It is not." He said, "Lucille would like it if you visit it." Ruth Ames looked at him. She said, "Lucille?"
He said, "Nothing." She said, "Just Lucille." He looked at the wheat and then at the house where the lamp was lit in the kitchen window and Lucille was standing on her stool washing the plates and Bess was sitting at the table with her cup and he said, "No, not just Lucille." Ruth Ames did not smile. She looked at him with the same expression she had worn on the platform in April.
The one that said she had done this before and expected nothing from the people she met at the end of it. Except that now the expression had something else in it. Something behind the efficiency and the ledger and the dark traveling dress. Something that looked like the beginning of a different expectation entirely. She said I will come in October.
He said October. She said, "I will bring news about Thomas." He said, "Bring it to supper." She climbed into the buggy and drove north, and he watched her go. And this time, when she turned on to the main road, she looked back once before the buggy disappeared behind the treeine.