She caught a glimpse of him once across the width of the fairgrounds speaking to a group of men near the main entrance. He was laughing at something one of them had said, his head tilted back easy and unguarded. She looked away and went back to work. But here was the thing about that night. The thing she turned over in her memory for weeks afterward.
Not the moment Victoria had grabbed her wrist, not even the moment Nathaniel had stepped forward. What she kept returning to was the porch and the silence and the strange uncomplicated quality of standing next to someone who had simply asked her a question and waited for the real answer. No one did that. In her experience, people ask questions to fill space or to establish something about themselves or as a preliminary to something they were actually building toward. She had learned to hear the shape beneath the question, the agenda, the angle, the point.
Nathaniel Carter had asked her if the place felt like home, and he'd listened to what she said, and he hadn't done anything with it at all except receive it. It was, she thought, one of the strangest and most unexpectedly generous things a person had ever done for her. And for the rest of the summer, she waited without admitting she was waiting to see if it had meant anything at all. She found out 3 days later on a Tuesday morning when she was in the kitchen at Caldwell's beating eggs for breakfast and Margaret came through the back door with her marketing basket and a particular expression on her face. Nathaniel Carter came by, Margaret said, setting the basket on the table.
Amelia kept beer room. No, he needed eggs. Said he was passing through town and realized he was short. Margaret began unpacking her basket with the efficient movements of a woman who had unpacked a thousand baskets and expected to unpack a thousand more. He also asked after you.
The fork slowed. Asked how long you'd been with me? Margaret continued, not looking up. Asked if you were reliable. I told him you were the most reliable person I'd employed in 20 years, which is true.
She paused. Then he bought his eggs and left. Amelia resumed beating. "Did he say anything else?" she asked with a carefulness she hoped sounded like simple curiosity. "He said to tell you good morning," Margaret said.
"Which I'm telling you now." Amelia looked at the eggs. "Good morning." He had come all the way to Caldwells, which was not in fact anywhere near the road that led from Carter Ranch to the main street of Red Willow Creek. She knew that perfectly well to buy eggs he probably didn't need to ask after a woman he'd spoken to once on a back porch and to send her a message that said good morning. She should have found this worrying. She was she reminded herself a practical woman.
She knew exactly what she was and what she wasn't and what the world generally did with the difference instead. She thought good morning and smiled at her eggs. He came back on Thursday. This time he didn't pretend he needed supplies. He came in through the front door of Caldwells at 9 when she was polishing the entry table and he took off his hat when he saw her and he said, "Miss Whitaker, I wondered if you might have a few minutes." She put down her cloth.
For what conversation, he said simply about what? I don't know yet, he said. That's rather the point. She stared at him. He stared back.