She had rebuilt herself from nothing, stitch by stitch, day by painful day. And now he was standing right there on the main street of Silver Creek, smiling like he hadn't shattered her into pieces and walked away without looking back. Ethan Mercer had come home, and he hadn't come alone. The woman on his arm wore silk in a town that wore dust. She laughed at something Ethan whispered, and Clara Holloway felt the sound land somewhere behind her ribs, like a blade finding an old scar.
Don't you dare fall apart. Not here, not in front of everyone, but her feet wouldn't move. The morning had started like every other morning in Silver Creek. Unremarkable, unhurried, smelling of sawdust and horse manure and the coffee that old Mabel Puit burned black every single day in the diner across from Clara's shop.
Clara had been up before the sun, same as always. She'd lit the single lamp above her worktable, threaded a needle without squinting, a small private victory she still took satisfaction in, and begun the careful work of hemming the dress that Josephine Aldridge needed for her daughter's engagement supper on Friday. The fabric was pale yellow with small white flowers printed across the bodice. It was delicate work, forgiving work in a way, the kind that required enough concentration to keep other thoughts from creeping in. She liked it that way.
The tailor shop on the corner of Third and Main had been her father's before it was hers. Harold Holloway had built the worktable himself from pine boards, and Clara had never replaced it, despite the warped leg that made it sit slightly uneven. She kept a folded piece of leather beneath that leg, which solved nothing perfectly, but solved it well enough. She thought sometimes that was the most honest description of her life she could offer, solved well enough. Harold had died 4 years ago in February, quietly in his sleep, which was the only quiet thing about the man.
He'd been loud and opinionated and deeply fond of arguing about nothing important, and Clara had loved him fiercely without ever quite saying so the way she should have. She said it now sometimes in the empty shop when nobody could hear. I love you, Papa. I'm keeping the table. She finished the hem on Josephine's dress by 8:00, and hung it carefully near the door.
Then she swept the floor, boiled water for tea she barely touched, and began cutting fabric for the Whitmore boy's church suit. Though from what she'd heard about young Thomas Whitmore's recent behavior behind the grain mill, a church suit seemed optimistic. At 9, she turned the handpainted sign in the window from closed to open and stepped outside to shake the dust from the mat. That was when she saw him. Ethan Mercer stood in the street in front of the feed store, and he looked, God, he looked exactly the same.
That was the cruelest part. Clara had imagined in her darker moments over the years that time would have done something to him, thickened his jaw, stooped his shoulders, put the shadow of consequence behind his eyes. Instead, he stood there straight and brown from the sun, his hat pushed back the way he always wore it, laughing at something the man beside him said. And then the woman stepped down from the wagon. She was perhaps 25, dark-haired with the kind of polished prettiness that required effort and resources.