I panicked. She waited. That conversation, he said, in the shop after Decker and then the morning after walking with you and I've been in a lot of places, Clara, I've done a lot of moving. It was easier before and then I was here and every morning was He stopped, started again. I've spent a long time making sure I didn't need anything I couldn't carry alone.
And then somewhere in the middle of all of this, I couldn't do that anymore, and that scared me more than anything Decker did. She looked at him. The lamp on the worktable was the only light, and it threw his face in warm and shadow, and he looked tired and real and bruised in more ways than one. "So you ran," she said. "I rode out to the North Ridge and sat there for 3 days being an idiot," he said.
"Yes, an idiot," she repeated. "Comprehensive," he agreed. She was quiet for a moment. And then what? And then I thought about what you said.
That you were scared. That you'd spent 3 years learning not to need anything. He looked at his hat, then back at her. And I thought about how you said it, and how you still said it anyway, and I realized I was letting a woman with considerably more courage than me do all the work. A pause.
I came back. Clara held his gaze for a long moment. She thought about 3 years of mournings alone and one letter that burned clean in a stove and 10,000 straight stitches made through an act of will. She thought about what it had cost her to learn to be sufficient on her own and what it was costing her now to admit she didn't want to be. If you leave again, she said, "Don't come back. " "Understood," he said immediately.
No hesitation. "I mean it. I know you do. " He took a step further into the shop. I'm not going anywhere, Clara. I don't want to go anywhere.
That's what 3 days on a ridge taught me. I had nowhere I wanted to be except here. He stopped at the near side of the worktable. I know I don't have anything figured out. I've got a job that'll last through fall and some money saved and a general idea about some land east of here that Miller mentioned months back.
That's all I've got. It's not I'm not Ethan Mercer with a fortune and a plan. I'm a horse trainer with one good suit and opinions about fence construction. Clara felt something loosen in her chest. Not dramatically, not all at once, but the way a knot loosens when you find the right thread to pull.