The flour was heavy. He said it like that was an entirely sufficient explanation. They turned the corner onto Main Street and Clara saw Ethan before Ethan saw them. I was standing outside the feed store with his wife, Margaret, and two other men she didn't recognize. All of them deep in some conversation.
Margaret was holding a wrapped package and looking at something down the street. And she was the one who saw Clara first. Something moved in her expression. Awareness, the kind that meant she'd been told about Clara, had formed some picture of her in her mind, and was now adjusting it. Then Ethan looked up.
Clara was aware of Ryder's arm at the edge of her vision, slightly ahead of her, shoulder straight, pace unchanged. She matched his pace. She kept her eyes on a point slightly past Ethan's left shoulder. Clara, Ethan said. Ethan.
Margaret. She said the name deliberately, clearly. I know your name. I am not afraid of your name. Morning.
Morning. Margaret's voice was pleasant and careful. She had good eyes, Clara noted. Observant, intelligent, not hostile, curious. She was looking at Ryder the way someone looks at a variable they haven't fully calculated yet.
Ryder, Ethan said. His voice had a flatness in it that hadn't been there in her shop yesterday. Mercer. Ryder's reply was a single word and somehow managed to be neither warm nor rude. Just, I know who you are.
We're moving on. They moved on. Clara waited until they turned off Main Street before she exhaled fully. "That was—" she started. "Handled," Ryder said.
"You knew his name," Ryder said. Everyone knows everyone around here. He looked at you like she stopped herself like he didn't like what he saw. Ryder said, "Yeah, I noticed. " She looked at him sideways. He was looking ahead.