After Caleb was down, Nathan came back to the kitchen and they sat at the table the way they'd been sitting at that table since September. And the fire was low and the lamp was lit and the kitchen had the smell of food and warmth that it had in the evenings. Now the smell she'd been creating since the first week without knowing exactly that she was creating something, just doing the work that needed doing. I want to tell you something, Nathan said.
She waited. When Margaret died, he stopped. Not the way he used to stop when the subject came up with that full closure, like a door pulled shut. He stopped like someone gathering the right words.
When she died, I thought I genuinely believed that what I had left was the ranch and Caleb, and that was what my life was going to be. The ranch and Caleb and managing, getting through each year. He looked at the table. I wasn't unhappy about it exactly.
I just thought that was the shape of things now. She didn't say anything. I don't think that anymore, he said. I haven't thought it since sometime in October.
He looked up. I'm not good at this at saying it. You're doing fine. I want you to know that I He stopped again, tried a different way in that morning.
You arrived. You walked past Briggs and you knocked on my door and you walked in and you just dealt with what was in front of you. You didn't ask me to manage my grief in a way that made you more comfortable. You didn't pretend the hard things were simpler than they were.
You just did what needed doing. That's just work, she said. No, he said it isn't. She held his gaze.
I love you, he said. He said it the way he said things that mattered. Simply without decoration, directly, like he was stating a fact that had been true for a while, and he was just now getting around to saying it out loud. I'm not sure when it started, probably earlier than I'd like to admit, but I do.
The kitchen was very quiet. She thought about Columbus and the lawyer who had told her she was too much. She thought about the stage to Cheyenne and the two years of piecework and the folded notice in her coat pocket. She thought about walking past Briggs in the morning light with her bag in her hand and something in her chest that had been, if she was honest, less certainty and more refusal.
The refusal to let one more door close her out. I'm not easy, she said. We've covered that. I'm saying it again because I need you to understand what you're signing up for beyond the immediate problem.