I know you don't mind, he said. That's not the point. He went to the washboard and picked up the next piece of laundry from the pile without particularly thinking about it, which turned out to be one of his own work shirts. And he started on it while Marin stood next to him and stared. "You don't have to," she started.
"I know," he said. "Neither do you." "Between the two of us, we'll have it done by 10:00, and you can do whatever you want with the rest of the day." Marin was quiet. They finished the laundry in 40 minutes.
Garrick hung the pieces on the kitchen line to dry in the heated air and then turned to find Marin still standing in the kitchen with her sleeves pushed down and her arms at her sides looking at him with an expression that was trying very hard to be nothing in particular. What do you usually do on Saturdays? He asked. When you have a Saturday, she thought about this for a long moment, as if the question required archaeology. I used to go to the Callaway place sometimes before before your mother died.
Yes, that's 3 years, he said, not accusing. Just stating it. Yes, Marin said. He nodded. Write them a letter.
Ask if they want company next week. Marin looked at him the way she'd looked at the blue ribbon with the weariness of someone who doesn't trust good things to stay good. But she wrote the letter, and the following Saturday she was at the Callaway place for 4 hours, and she came back with color in her face and a slightly unfocused quality, like someone who has been somewhere that reminded them they were allowed to be somewhere. She did not say thank you. But that evening, she brought Garrick his coffee without being asked, and when he looked up from the ledger, she had already gone back to her room, and that was Marin's version of the same thing.
The shift in his relationship with Odora was harder to name because neither of them was in the habit of naming things they weren't certain about. It happened in the texture of ordinary days. In the way he stopped excusing himself from the kitchen after meals and started staying, not talking much, but present occupying his end of the table while she worked at hers. In the way she stopped adjusting her movements to account for him, stopped stepping around him with the careful precision of someone who considers herself a guest in a space. She moved more freely.
He sat differently. Neither of them commented on it. They talked about the ranch cuz the ranch was always there to talk about. And because talking about the ranch was safe in the way that talking about the weather is safe, it implied nothing and required nothing and was always available. But occasionally they talked about other things.
One evening in the second week of January, when Bess and Tilda had gone to bed and Marin was in the front room reading by the lamp, Garrick sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and said, "Without particular buildup, "Do you miss Kansas City?" Odora was at the counter finishing the bread she would set out to rise overnight. She considered the question with the consideration she gave most things fully without hurrying. Parts of it, she said, "Which parts?" The dressmaker supply on Walnut Street.