The ground was still iron hard in the early hours, and the light came later than you wanted it to, and the wind off the open land had that particular quality of something that had been traveling a long time, and had not gotten gentler for it. Evelyn noticed the season the way she noticed most things now, through the work it created. The kitchen garden needed preparing for the first planting. The ranch accounts wanted reconciling for the quarter.
Caleb, who was 13 months old and walking with the chaotic determination of someone who had only recently discovered the option and could not understand why anyone would choose not to, had developed a strong interest in the kitchen door and what was on the other side of it, which meant that a significant portion of her day involved the management of a small person with no sense of danger and very clear opinions about his own agenda. She didn't mind. She'd learned that minding the difficulty of something and minding the thing itself were two different calculations, and Caleb was worth every version of the calculation. What she minded in the march that followed the February of the Harro's visit and the withdrawal of the petition, and Nathan saying the thing he'd said at the kitchen table was something she hadn't anticipated.
She minded the space that opened up when the immediate crisis closed. When there was a threat to fight, the fighting organized everything. Time and energy and attention all had somewhere to go. When the threat receded, you were left standing in the quiet with yourself, and the quiet asked questions that the fighting had been helpfully drowning out.
The question the quiet asked her that March was one she'd been carrying since September without fully looking at it. What did she actually want this life to be now that she was allowed to have it? Not what was necessary, not what the situation required, what she wanted. It was a harder question than it sounded.
She'd spent a long time being practical about want, compressing it down into what was achievable, what was reasonable given the circumstances, what a woman in her position could expect. That compression had become habit, and habits didn't dissolve just because the circumstances changed. She was thinking about this on a Tuesday morning when Nathan came in from the pasture earlier than she'd expected with a look on his face that she'd learned in 4 months was his I need to talk to you look as distinct from his I have a problem with the ranch look which were close cousins but not identical. He sat down at the table.
She poured coffee and sat across from him. Calhoun's leaving. He said she hadn't seen that coming. When he told me this morning.
His brother's got land in Montana. Needs help working it. He's been thinking about it since fall. Nathan wrapped both hands around the cup.
He wasn't going to go while things here were uncertain. He said that that he wanted to see things settled first. She thought about Calhoun standing in the kitchen the morning after the Hargrove's first visit, telling her in his indirect way that some of the men could see what she was doing, telling her about Harlon Hargrove's visit to the bunk house, that quiet, steady presence that had been the first thing that shifted in her direction and had stayed shifted. "He's a good man," she said.
"He is. I'm going to lose a lot of knowledge when he goes." Nathan drank the coffee. He's offered to help me find a replacement.
He knows men. Take him up on it. I will. He set the cup down.