Silas looked at her, really looked at her, and beneath his shock and fear and the weight of the town's judgment pressing down on his shoulders. He saw something that made him pause. She stood tall, yes, because there was no other way for her to stand. She was strong, undeniably, but in her eyes, behind the defensive hardness, he recognized the same thing he saw in his own mirror every morning. Loneliness that had worn grooves into the soul.
Hope that kept trying despite every reason not to, and a desperate wish to be seen as something other than a disappointment. "I don't know," he admitted finally, the first honest thing he'd said since she stepped off the train. "But you came all this way. Least I can do is not make you ride back on an empty stomach. Something shifted in her face.
Not quite relief, but the easing of some terrible tension. "That sounds like a start," she said. They climbed onto the wagon seat, Silas having to scramble up while Norah stepped up in one smooth motion. He took up the reins, clucked to the horse, and they rolled out of Great Falls with half the town watching, and the other half already spreading the story of the smallest cowboy and his giant mail order bride. The first hour passed in silence, so thick it felt like a living thing sitting between them.
The wagon wheels creaked, the horse's hooves. Meadowlarks called from fence posts. Silas kept his eyes on the road and tried not to think about the fact that the woman beside him took up more space on the wagon seat than he did. Her solid presence making him feel even smaller than usual. Norah sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching the landscape roll past.
Endless grassland punctuated by isolated stands of cottonwoods, mountains rising blue and distant in the west, sky so big it made the earth seem like an afterthought. After the crowded streets of St. Louis, this emptiness must have felt like exile. "It's beautiful," she said finally, breaking the silence. Your letters didn't do it justice.
Hard to describe in words, Silas replied. Sky's bigger here than anywhere else in the world. I believe it. She was quiet for another moment, then. In my letters, I wasn't lying about everything.
I do love to bake. I'm good at it, too. And I do like wildflowers. Spent hours as a girl, pressing them into books, learning all their names. I wasn't lying either.
Silas said, "Ranch is quiet. Life's simple. I do prefer solitude to crowds, but not entirely alone. No, he admitted, not entirely. She nodded as if this confirmed something.
I didn't lie about my dispossetion. I am gentle, mostly patient. I don't lose my temper easily, but I also didn't tell you. She gestured at herself with one large hand. Well, obviously.