Tommy brought the window three days later with the frame already cut to her specification and the glass wrapped in burlap and tied to his saddle with a care that told her he understood what he was carrying. He also brought without mentioning it a small sack of ground coffee which she found when she unwrapped the burlap. She held the sack and looked at it. He thought you might want that. Tommy said carefully from across the room in the tone of a man preemptively disclaiming responsibility.
Did he? He said, "You'd probably give it back." Tommy said this with the expression of someone who has been given a line to deliver and is delivering it without much confidence in its reception. She was quiet for a moment. Then she put the coffee in the corner where she kept her food supplies, and Tommy visibly relaxed by about 30%. The window installation took most of a morning.
The glass fit the frame cleanly, and the frame fit the rough opening with only minor adjustment. Tommy had measured before he came, which she appreciated and said so, and he accepted the appreciation with a professional nod that did not entirely conceal the fact that he was pleased. When it was done and sealed, and she stood inside, looking through actual glass at the clearing and the treeine beyond it, she understood that she had underestimated what this would do to the room. The light was different. The room was different.
It felt inhabited in a way it had not before. Not just occupied, but lived in. A space with a view that implied permanence. That implied a person who intended to keep looking at that particular view for a long time. She stood there long enough that Tommy, who had been respectfully studying the opposite wall, said, "It looks good." "Yes," she said.
"It does." "You know," he said, then stopped. "What?" "Nothing." He picked up his tools. Tommy. He stopped. He looked at the window and then at her with the expression of someone who has decided to say a thing and is redeciding in real time.
He rides this way every few days, he said finally. Since you got here, I don't know how often he used to come this direction, but it's more now. A lot more. She looked at him steadily. Tommy, I'm just saying.
I know what you're saying. She said. And you should probably stop saying it. Yes, ma'am. He said with the efficiency of someone who has learned when a conversation is over.
He left and she stood in the changed light coming through the glass and did not think about what he had said. She tried not to think about it, which was she was discovering a different thing entirely. The week before the birth, she made herself finish the furniture. It was partly practical. She could not give birth on a packed earth floor with no surface to set things on, no chair between the cot and the fire.