He did not raise his voice. He did not step back. He said, "I'd hate for the Harvest Festival to get a reputation for reviewing the paperwork of some entrance and not others. That would be a thing people remembered." Fitch opened his mouth.
He closed it. He looked at Clara Hutchkins, who was looking at something other than Nathan's face. And then he looked at the two other men who were both finding reasons to examine the middle distance. And then he said stiffly, "I'm sure the entry is in order." "I'm sure it is," Nathan said.
He stepped aside. He did not make a production of it. Margaret had stopped walking. She was standing seven feet away, and she had heard all of it, every word. and she was looking at Nathan and he turned and saw her looking at him and his face was exactly what it always was, careful and direct and giving nothing away that it hadn't decided to give. And he said, "Your entries at stand 14.
You've got a couple hours until judging." She said, "Nathan." He looked at her and waited. She didn't have the words. She had 30 years of learning to do without people standing in front of things for her.
And she didn't have the right words for what it felt like to have someone do it. So she said the small true thing she did have. Thank you. He nodded. The nod that meant something.
And then he walked back toward where his daughters were waiting. And Margaret stood there for a moment and rebuilt herself from the inside out. The way you did when something had shaken loose. things you'd spent a long time holding in place. And then she walked to the water pump on the side of the grounds and put her hands under the cold water and held them there until they steadied. 2:00 came.
The competition tent filled up with more people than Margaret had expected. The harvest festival competition was the biggest social event of the autumn, and the whole county treated it that way. Ranchers and merchants and farm families and towns people, everyone dressed in their better clothes. Everyone with opinions they were willing to voice. Margaret stood near stand 14 and looked at the other entries.
The Garfield woman's lemon chess was stand three. The Morrison Girls Pastry entry, something layered and sophisticated that Margaret couldn't name, was stand. There were 22 entries total, and they represented the full range of what a county of serious bakers could put forward when they had 3 weeks to prepare. Margaret looked at her sweet potato pie. She had made it four times.