"I suppose they're not." The grazing committee met on a Thursday morning 2 weeks after the founders celebration. Amelia was not there. She had no standing to be there and had not asked to be. She was at Caldwells turning down rooms, working through the morning the way she always worked through mornings. Each task completed in sequence, her mind making a separate and private calculation in the background that she was doing her best to keep from showing on her face.
Margaret knew. She always knew. "Stop counting," Margaret said at half 10, coming through through the kitchen with a basket of mending. Amelia looked up from the room she was making up. "I'm not counting." "You're counting and you've been counting since breakfast," Margaret said.
"The committee meets at 9:00. If it's going to take more than 2 hours, something's gone badly wrong. So, stop counting and finish that room." Amelia finished the room. She was downstairs at the front desk when she heard the horse and she did not let herself look up from the ledger she was updating until the sound of boots on the front steps reached her and then the door opened. She looked up.
Nathaniel's face told her everything before he said a word. He looked like a man who had braced himself for a fight and discovered the fight wasn't coming, not relieved exactly, but reccalibrated. The particular expression of someone reset into a world that had turned out to be slightly more reasonable than they had prepared for. She set down her pen. Tilden Sandstöm Marsh, she said.
Tilden Sandstrom Mart, he confirmed. And Pete Callaway, who apparently decided on his own. I didn't even know Callaway was in play. He told me about your father, she said at the celebration. He has a great deal of respect for Walter Carter.
That may be the most unexpected sentence I've heard all month. Nathaniel said, "Your father is a man worth respecting." She said, "People know that." He crossed the room and stopped in front of the desk. His hat was in his hands. His expression had settled into something quieter than she'd seen this morning, something that had moved past the outcome of the vote, and was looking at something further. My father would like you to come to dinner, he said.
She blinked. Walter Carter is inviting me to dinner. He came to find me after the meeting. Nathaniel said, he said, and I'm giving you this word for word because I want you to have it. Exactly.
He said that young woman worked for something that was worth working for. Bring her to dinner. Your mother would have liked her. He paused. Then he walked away before I could say anything because he's constitutionally incapable of letting a sentiment exist in a room without immediately vacating.