I'll not go back to the alternative to satisfy Ununice Barrows notion of decency. Reverend Holly's, unused to being spoken to with such heat by a man he'd expected to find contrite, opened his mouth and closed it again, and Norah stood very still in the yard, her heart pounding, watching a man find his voice at last over exactly the wrong moment and exactly the right cause. Ben did not sleep well that night, turning the reverend's visit over and over, and by morning he had arrived at a decision that felt less like a choice than like something that had already been true for weeks, waiting only for him to notice it. He walked the two miles to town before the frost had fully lifted, past the fence where Norah had once stood four months watching his house in silent anguish. Past the schoolhouse where his children now went each day with clean faces and full stomachs.
And he did not stop walking until he reached the small house behind the church where Reverend Holly's lived. "I want you to marry us," Ben said before the reverend had even finished opening the door. Nora and me this Sunday in the church in front of the whole congregation in front of Ununice Barrow especially if she cares to come so she can watch it done proper and decent and have nothing left to whisper about Reverend Holly's blinked. Mr. Toliver this is rather sudden. It's not sudden at all, Ben said.
And for the first time in longer than he could remember, his voice carried something like certainty, something like the man he'd been before Mary died, restored not to what he was, but to something new built out of the wreckage. It's been building since a woman climbed my fence with a bar of soap, and decided my children were worth saving, whether I'd asked her to or not. I've been slow to see it, Reverend, on account of the grief, but I'm not blind anymore, and I'll not wait one day longer than I have to just to satisfy a settlement's notion of proper timing." He asked her that afternoon in his own kitchen, with the children pretending very badly not to listen from the stairs, and Norah said yes before he'd even finished the question, laughing through sudden tears in a way that surprised them both.
They were married that Sunday in the church with the whole settlement watching, including Ununice Barrow, who came predictably, and found nothing whatsoever to whisper about beyond how well the toll of her children looked, scrubbed and smiling in the front pew, hair combed, shoes new, faces turned up bright toward their father and the woman standing beside him. Afterward, walking home together as a family for the first time, Small Ned tugged at Norah's skirt until she looked down at him. "Will you keep washing us?" He asked with the grave seriousness only a 4year-old could bring to such a question now that you're staying for good and all."
Norah crouched down to his level right there in the road, and took his small, clean face in her two hands. "Forever," she said. I intend to keep washing you, Ned told of her, for as long as you'll let me, and probably a good while after you'd rather I stopped. Ned considered this with great semnity, then grinned and ran ahead to catch up with Sam and Ruth, and Ben took Norah's hand as they walked, the whole family moving together toward a house that, for the first time in a year, was simply, quietly, entirely full of life.