The flapjacks were the best thing he'd tasted in 6 years. When he said so, Norah flushed with obvious pleasure. Food tastes better when it's for someone, she said quietly. After dinner, they negotiated sleeping arrangements with excruciating awkwardness. Norah insisted she could sleep in the barn.
I've slept in worse. But Silas's mother hadn't raised him to put women in barns, mail order or otherwise. Finally, they agreed that she'd take the bed and he'd sleep on bed rolls by the stove. It was temporary, they assured each other, until they figured things out. As darkness fell and they lay on oppossete sides of the small cabin, Norah spoke into the shadows.
"Mr. Boon. Silas, he said. If we're going to try this, you should call me Silas. All right, Silas, do you think we made a mistake? He thought about the question, about her laughter when she hit her head, about the flapjacks, about the way she'd lifted those trunks while grown men struggled, about the loneliness that had driven them both to lie to strangers in matrimonial columns.
I think, he said slowly, we made the same mistake everyone makes. We thought we could become something we're not. But maybe the real mistake would be giving up before we figure out what we actually are. And what are we, do you think? Two people who don't fit, Silas said, trying to figure out if there's a place where not fitting might be exactly right.
Norah was quiet for so long he thought she'd fallen asleep. Then so softly he almost missed it. I'd like to try to find that place. "Me, too," Silas whispered into the darkness. Outside, the Montana night settled in with its symphony of distant coyotes and wind through grass.
Inside the cabin, two people who'd never expected to find each other lay awake, separated by 12 ft of rough pine floor and a lifetime of disappointments, wondering if maybe, just maybe, they'd been wrong about what they needed all along. Morning came with the particular golden clarity that only exists in the high country. Light spilling through the single window like liquid hope. Silas woke to the sound of someone moving around the cabin. Nora already up trying to be quiet and failing because she was simply too large for quiet movements in a space designed for someone half her size.
He watched her through half-closed eyes as she tried to navigate making coffee without hitting her head again, bending and adjusting, and finally just kneeling by the stove because it was easier than constant ducking. There was something both heartbreaking and deeply practical about the way she'd already learned to accommodate the space rather than expecting it to accommodate her. "I'm awake," he said finally. "You don't have to whisper." She looked over her shoulder and he was struck again by how beautiful she was when she smiled.
"Old habit. My father always said I moved like a bull in a tea shop. Learned early to try for quiet." "This is a ranch," Silas said, sitting up. "Bulls are welcome here."
"It was meant as a joke, but Norah's expression shifted into something complicated. Well see how welcome I am when your neighbors get a look at me. How long before they start asking what possessed you to marry a woman who could probably pick you up and carry you around like a sack of flour? Could you? What?