"You can breathe, Nathan."
"I'm trying."
She looked up.
His ears were red.
Not from the cold.
Emily laughed before she could stop herself.
Nathan looked down at her for a second.
She worried she had embarrassed him.
Then his mouth moved.
A small smile.
"There."
"You breathed."
"Wasn't aware this required instruction."
She measured his arms next.
"39 in."
"That bad?"
"Your coat sleeves are short by nearly four."
Nathan looked at his exposed wrists.
"Huh?"
"You never noticed?"
"Noticed? Didn't see much point thinking about it."
Emily lowered the tape.
That answer stayed with her.
She knew something about clothes that pinched, chairs built too narrowly, and rooms that made a person aware of every inch they occupied.
But Nathan's problem was different.
The world saw his size and stepped back.
So somewhere along the way, he had learned not to ask the world to make room.
"Take the coat off," she said.
He obeyed.
Over the next week, Emily worked whenever ranch chores left the house quiet.
She found heavy brown wool stored in a cedar chest, then salvaged good canvas from an old wagon cover for reinforcement.
The lining came from two worn blankets Nathan had marked for stable use.
Nothing matched perfectly.
Emily didn't care.
She cut every piece for Nathan.
Not for an ordinary man enlarged at the seams.
For him.
Wide through the shoulders, long through the arms, room enough across the chest to work from horseback without pulling.
Nathan occasionally appeared in the doorway.
Each time Emily covered the pieces with cloth.
"What are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"That's my canvas."
"Was your canvas."
Nathan learned to stop asking.
Six days later, she found him in the barn repairing a bridle.
"Come inside."
"Why?"
"Because I'm your wife and I've decided to become unreasonable."
Nathan set down his awl.
"That sounds expensive."
"It already was."
Lucy was waiting in the kitchen.
Emily held up the finished coat.
Nathan stopped.
The brown wool was plain, sturdy, and reinforced where ranch work would wear it hardest.
"For me?"
"No, Nathan. For Lucy."
Lucy burst out laughing.
Emily held it open.
"Put it on."
Nathan slipped one arm inside, then the other.
He rolled his shoulders.
Nothing pulled.
He stretched both arms forward.
The cuffs remained at his wrists.
He looked down, then tried the movement again.
Emily watched his face change.
Not dramatically.
Nathan Reed rarely did anything dramatically.
He simply became very still.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"No."
He opened and closed his hands.
"Sleeves reach."
"I noticed."
He turned slightly, examining the fit.
"Shoulders don't bind."
"That was also intentional."
Nathan ran his fingers over the reinforced cuff.
"Nobody ever made me a coat."
Emily leaned against the table.
"Somebody made your old one."
"Not for me."
The room quieted.
Lucy suddenly became interested in putting away her thread.
Nathan looked at Emily.
"You spent a week on this."
"You spend every morning making sure there's wood beside my stove."
"That's different."
"Why?"
Nathan had no answer.
He removed the coat carefully.
Instead of dropping it over the nearest chair, he carried it to the peg beside the door and hung it straight.
Emily pretended not to notice.
That night, she worked on ranch receipts at the small table in her room.
After an hour, her back began aching. The table was too low, forcing her to bend forward whenever she wrote or sewed.
She finally gave up, rubbed the base of her neck, and went downstairs for water.
The house was dark.
Nathan's boots were missing from beside the door.
She heard hammering somewhere near the barn.
Three slow blows, a pause, then more.
Emily looked toward the window.
She considered investigating.
Instead, she went back upstairs.
Nathan was entitled to his secrets.
The next morning, she opened her bedroom door and stopped.
A new sewing table stood beneath the hall window.
Solid pine, wide top, heavy legs, higher than the little table in her room.
Emily approached it.
The wood still smelled freshly cut.
One edge had been sanded smooth.
A shallow drawer sat beneath the top, fitted with a simple wooden pull.
She opened it.
Inside lay a new spool of waxed thread.
Nothing else.
Nathan came upstairs carrying an armload of folded laundry Helen had left behind.
Emily looked at him.
He stopped.
She rested one hand on the table.
"You built this."
Nathan glanced at it as though he'd never seen the thing before.
"Could have been Henry."
"Henry can't cut a straight board."
"Samuel, then."
"Samuel has three fingers bandaged from sharpening an axe."
Nathan considered his remaining options.
"Robert."
Emily smiled.
Nathan surrendered.
"Your other table was too low. You noticed."
"You rub your back every time you stand up from it."
Emily's smile disappeared.
She hadn't known he watched that closely.
Nathan shifted the laundry.
"I figured this height would suit you better."
Emily ran her palm over the tabletop.