Chapter 20 The New Year
Holly had said: when the time is right. The time was right in February, because by February they had been partners in the professional sense for six weeks and had been in the personal arrangement for five weeks and had been in the high pasture twice and had had the conversation about Catherine's grave on the eastern Colorado farm — a conversation Holly had asked for and James had given with the honesty she had come to expect from him — and had been to Sunday services together four times and had attended the January quilting circle together, which had produced in Helen Granger the expression of a woman who has been right about something and is refraining from saying I told you so with considerable effort.
She had also, in January, received a letter from a firm in Longmont offering her a two-day-a-week account position, which she had accepted not because she needed it now — the partnership arrangement was sound and the wage was in the plan — but because the work was the thing she was good at beyond the land work and the land work was not yet something she could do with the confidence of sufficiency.
"You're going to do both," James said, when she told him.
"The land needs more experience and the accounts are what I know," she said. "The two days fund the gap years while I'm getting the experience. By the third year they won't be necessary."
"I know," he said. "I was observing, not objecting."
"Good," she said. "I'm keeping both."
The ceremony was in the parlor of Mrs. Connelly's boarding house, which had become, over the course of two months, one of the significant rooms of Holly's Pinecrest life — the room where she had first arrived and first eaten supper and first understood that this community was going to absorb her.
It seemed right that it should be the room where the most significant next thing happened.
Hobart performed the ceremony. Clara and Elias were witnesses.
Nora stood next to Clara with the expression of a person confirming the completion of a project that had been in progress since October, which was when she had started her notebook on the subject.
Clem stood at the back with the patient satisfaction of a man for whom this kind of outcome was both expected and welcome.
Mrs. Connelly stood near the door with a bottle she had been keeping for an occasion that warranted it, which was the same bottle she had had for Mercy and Nathaniel's wedding and had replaced since then in anticipation of the next.
James wore the gloves.
Holly saw them when he arrived — on his hands, the good leather, the apple tree on the inside of the right cuff hidden but present, the marking of the thing only he could see.
She thought: this is right. Every part of this is right.
Hobart said the words. They said the words back.
When Hobart said: do you take this woman, James looked at Holly with the full-eyes expression that she had been cataloguing since the twenty-third day and that she now understood completely — the expression of a man who was entirely present for what he was in the middle of and was not managing his face about it.
"I do," he said. "And I want you to know that I have known you for two months and it has been the most specifically instructive two months of my adult life, and I intend to go on learning."
Hobart looked faintly delighted by this addition.
"Holly Vance," Hobart said, "do you take this man?"
She looked at James. She looked at the man who had come to her house every morning for a month and given her the whole of what he knew about the land she had inherited, and who had then proposed a partnership that was fair, and who had asked to court her properly with her knowledge and consent, and who had told her about Catherine with the honesty of a man who did not hide the important things, and who had made pie crust from memory and gone still when he got it right.
"I do," she said. "And I want you to know that I came here with eleven weeks of savings and a feeling under an apple tree and no plan beyond something I hadn't thought of yet, and the something I hadn't thought of turned out to be you, which is the best something I've ever not thought of."
Nora, beside Clara, produced a sound that was suppressed with considerable effort.
James breathed.
"By the authority vested in me," Hobart said, with the warmth of a man who has been performing these ceremonies for twenty years and never found them tedious, "and in the sight of God and these witnesses, I now pronounce you husband and wife."
He kissed her. Not tentative — he was not a tentative man. The real thing, the thing that said: this is decided and I mean it and the meaning is permanent.
When they stepped apart, Nora said, with the serene certainty of a completed prediction: "Good."
The room, in the way of rooms at these moments, became entirely warm.
* * *
In the evening, after the small celebration that Mrs. Connelly had organized with characteristic efficiency, they rode back to the Vance place — it was still called the Vance place by the community and would probably be called the Vance place for years, which Holly had decided she did not mind, because Harold had earned the name and she had inherited it and the name was continuity.
The night was clear. The mountains were there in the dark, the way the mountains were always there.
"James," she said, in the wagon.
"Yes."
"Thank you for asking to court me properly," she said. "With my knowledge and consent."
He looked at her. "How else would you do it?" he said.
"Many ways," she said. "None of them right. Yours was right."
He drove. She sat beside him. The December stars were doing their Colorado thing.
"Holly," he said.
"Yes."
"Thank you for staying," he said. "Under the apple tree."
"I didn't know I was deciding anything important," she said.
"I know," he said. "That's how it usually works."
She thought about that. About how the important decisions often didn't announce themselves as important decisions.
The letter that arrived when the savings were at eleven weeks.
The stage to Pinecrest. The walk to the apple tree.
The feeling, which was specific. All of it a series of small things that were the whole of the thing in retrospect.
"The apple tree will bloom in April," she said.
"Yes," he said. "It will."
"I want to be there for it," she said.
"You'll be here," he said.
She leaned against his shoulder, which was warm through the coat. He did not shift or adjust. He simply continued driving, the way he continued everything — steadily, with the even quality of a man who did what needed doing and meant it to be permanent.
The ranch — the Vance place, the Breck-Vance place, whatever it would be called — appeared ahead through the dark with the lamp in the window that she had left burning. A light in a window. Her window. Their window.
She thought: home.
She thought: the right place.
She thought: I am going to be here when the apple tree blooms and I am going to be here when it fruits and I am going to be here for the long run of it, the ten-year plan and beyond, and the mountains are going to watch and the creek is going to run and the gingerbread is going to be made every December and the partnership is going to grow both operations and the account books are going to tell the truth and all of it is exactly right.
"We're home," she said.
"Yes," he said. "We are."