She was going to need to keep being that woman even when it was easier to fold into the easier, softer shape of someone else's life. She knew herself well enough to know the temptation would exist. And she intended to resist it, not because she didn't want the life she was choosing, but because the life she was choosing would only be worth having if she was fully in it. She talked to Nathaniel about this on a Sunday in December, sitting in the study at the ranch while the winter light came through the window, and Walter was somewhere else in the house doing something that produced occasional sounds of productive industry. "I want to keep working," she said.
He looked up from the ledger he'd been reviewing. Of course, not as a maid or not. Only I want she paused, organizing the thought. There are ranches in this county that have the same problem yours did. Two systems that won't reconcile.
Years of records that don't add up. Money disappearing between the gaps. I could fix those. I could charge for it. I could.
She stopped again. I could be useful in a way that's mine. He set the ledger down. Amelia, he said. Did you think I was going to argue with that?
She looked at him. I thought you might think it was unnecessary that once we were married, the finances of the ranch would be you are not going to become an extension of my finances. He said, "You're going to be my wife, which is a separate thing entirely." He paused. I have watched you over the past four months take a set of problems that had been defeating everyone around me for years and solve them with a clarity that I find he stopped finding the word. I find humbling actually and I am not a man who is easily humbled.
He looked at her steadily. I want you to build what you want to build. I want to watch you do it. That is not a small thing I'm offering. I'm telling you that your ambitions are not in conflict with this marriage.
They are part of what I'm marrying. She looked at him for a long moment. You're going to make this very difficult, she said. Make what difficult. Maintaining any reasonable level of emotional self-containment, she said.
He smiled. Good. He said, "You've been self-contained long enough." She married him on a Saturday in January in the church that doubled as a schoolhouse with Walter Carter in the front pew looking like a man who had decided to feel something and was managing the experience with his characteristic compressed intensity and Edith Marsh beside him because she had somehow become part of the fabric of things over the previous months and Amelia had wanted her there. Margaret Caldwell sat in the third row in her good dress with her hands folded and her expression set to something that was as close to maternal pride as she had in her repertoire which was closer than Amelia would have predicted 6 years ago and no less genuine for being understated. Hector sat in the back and cried quietly which surprised everyone including Hector.