CHAPTER 11
What Otis Overheard
The Cross Ranch barn
Otis Grimm had worked the Cross Ranch for the better part of a decade, first for Nathaniel's own father and then for Nathaniel himself, and had developed, over that considerable tenure, a fair instinct for the particular quality of silence that indicated a man wrestling with something he had not yet worked up the courage to name aloud.
It was this instinct that led him, some weeks into Callie's tenure at the ranch, to linger rather longer than strictly necessary near the barn one evening, having noticed Nathaniel retreat there after supper with the particular heavy tread of a man seeking solitude rather than actual barn business.
He found Nathaniel not at any actual task but simply sitting on an overturned feed bucket, staring at nothing in particular, in the manner of a man whose thoughts had traveled considerably further than the barn's four walls.
“You'll want to be careful, boss,” Otis said, without preamble, settling himself onto a nearby hay bale with the unhurried confidence of a man who had earned, through years of loyal service, the right to speak plainly where the situation called for it.
“of what, precisely, I couldn't rightly say, seeing as you've not told me anything worth being careful of.
But a man doesn't sit alone in a barn at dusk, wearing that particular expression, over nothing at all.”
“I'm only thinking, Otis.”
“So's every man who's ever sat alone in a barn at dusk wearing that expression, and every single one of them was thinking about the same general subject, which generally involves a woman.” Otis said this without any particular judgment, only the plain observational confidence of long experience.
“I'd wager, given the household's current arrangements, that the woman in question isn't Constance Whitfield, however hard that lady's been campaigning these past weeks.”
Nathaniel was quiet long enough that Otis began to suspect he'd overstepped, and had opened his mouth to withdraw the observation when Nathaniel finally spoke, his voice low and considerably more raw than his usual careful reserve.
“I don't know what to make of it, Otis, if I'm honest. It's been two years since Mary, and I told myself, the whole of that time, that whatever I'd had with her was the whole of what I'd get, one good marriage in a lifetime being considerably more than plenty men manage, and I'd made my peace with running this ranch and raising these children without expecting anything further for myself.
And then this woman arrives, running from something she's not yet told me the whole of, and somehow, without my properly noticing it happening, she's become someone I find myself thinking on considerably more than a housekeeper's employer rightly ought to think on his employee.”
“Is that so surprising, boss? She's kind to your children, capable despite her rough start, and by every account handles herself with more grace than most women twice her practical experience. Seems to me entirely reasonable a man might notice such qualities and find himself thinking on them.”
“It feels like a betrayal of Mary, somehow, thinking on another woman that way.”
Otis considered this carefully, choosing his words with rather more deliberation than his usual plain-spoken manner generally required.
“I knew your Mary a fair while, Nathaniel, going back to before you two ever married, and I'll tell you plain — that woman loved you something fierce, and loved those children fiercer still, and I don't believe for one solitary moment she'd want you spending the whole rest of your natural life alone in a barn at dusk, wearing that particular expression, out of some notion that loving again would somehow diminish what you'd had with her.
Seems to me love's not much like a fixed sum that gets smaller the more you spend of it.
Seems to me it's rather more like a well that fills back up, given proper time and patience, and there's no shame whatsoever in drawing from it again, once it has.”
“That's a fair piece of wisdom for a man who's never married himself, Otis.”
“I've watched a good many marriages up close, boss, mine own notwithstanding, and I've buried my share of friends and their wives both, and I'll tell you what I've learned from all that watching: the ones who manage to love again, after a genuine loss, aren't betraying anyone.
They're honoring the love they had by proving it taught them something true about the whole business of loving, rather than teaching them to fear it for good.”
Nathaniel sat with this a long while in the gathering dusk, the barn settling into its evening quiet around them, and found, turning Otis's words over alongside his own considerable uncertainty, that something in his chest had loosened fractionally, the particular loosening of a man given unexpected permission to consider a possibility he had not properly allowed himself to entertain.
“I don't even know the whole of what she's running from,” he said finally. “Can't rightly consider anything further until I understand that much, at least.”
“Then ask her, boss. Plainly, and with patience for whatever answer she's willing to give, and whatever answer she's not yet ready to give.
Seems to me that's rather the whole business of courting anyone properly — asking, and waiting, and trusting the answer will come in its own good time, provided you've earned the asking through genuine care rather than mere curiosity.”
Nathaniel said nothing further that evening, but he carried Otis's counsel with him through the following days, watching Callie with a new and rather more deliberate attention, weighing carefully how and when he might finally ask the questions he had, until this conversation, been too careful of his own grief to properly voice.
He found himself, in the days that followed, noticing small things about her he had not previously permitted himself to notice — the particular careful grace with which she managed the children's competing demands, never favoring one over the other despite Lily's rather more insistent claims on her attention; the quiet, unhurried patience she brought to her own considerable domestic learning curve, laughing at her own failures rather than growing discouraged by them; the way her accent grew slightly more pronounced when she was tired, a small vulnerability that struck him, observing it, as rather more endearing than any calculated charm could have managed.
“You're staring again, boss,” Otis observed one evening, catching Nathaniel watching Callie across the yard as she helped Lily gather eggs, the two of them laughing at some private joke he hadn't been party to.
“I'd wager you've got your answer already, regarding whether you mean to ask her those questions or not.”
“I've not asked her anything yet, Otis.”
“No, but you've decided you mean to, which is generally the harder half of the whole business. The asking itself tends to come considerably easier once a man's properly settled his own mind on the matter.”
Nathaniel found he had no ready argument against this observation, and returned to his own work with a renewed sense of purpose that Otis, watching him go, noted with the particular satisfaction of a man who considered his own matchmaking counsel at least partially responsible for the shift.
That same week, Nathaniel found occasion to visit Josiah Larson at the church, ostensibly regarding a matter of ranch business the two men occasionally consulted on together, though the conversation drifted, before long, toward rather more personal territory, Josiah possessing the particular pastoral gift of drawing out confidences a man might not otherwise have volunteered.
“You've the look of a man wrestling something considerable, Nathaniel,” Josiah observed, settling into his study chair with the unhurried patience of a man who had conducted a great many such conversations over his years of ministry.
“I'd wager, given the particular quality of your distraction these past weeks, that the wrestling concerns your new housekeeper rather more than any ranch matter.”
“Am I so transparent, Josiah?”
“To a man who's watched half this territory's courtships unfold from close pastoral proximity, yes, rather transparent.
I'll not press you for particulars you're not ready to share, only offer this much counsel, having watched Jed Thorne wrestle a rather similar reckoning not so very long ago: grief and new love aren't opposing forces, Nathaniel, however much they might feel that way from the inside of the wrestling.
A man can honor one while opening himself to the other, provided he's patient enough to let both find their proper place alongside each other, rather than forcing either to yield entirely to the other's demands.”
“That's rather similar counsel to what Otis offered me, out at the barn some weeks back.”
“Then perhaps it's counsel worth heeding, coming as it does from two men who've watched your particular grief unfold these two years past, and who'd both, I think, be genuinely glad to see you find your way toward whatever new happiness the Lord's seen fit to place in your path.”
Nathaniel left the church that afternoon with a good deal to consider, Josiah's careful counsel settling alongside Otis's own plain wisdom in a manner that left him feeling, for the first time in some while, genuinely ready to consider the question of Callie Reyes with rather less guarded caution than his grief had previously permitted.
He found himself, riding back toward the ranch, reflecting on the particular quality of both men's counsel, understanding that whatever wisdom they'd each offered had been earned through their own considerable experience watching grief and love intersect in the lives of people they genuinely cared about.
Otis had buried a young wife himself, decades past, before eventually remarrying and building the steady, contented life he now shared with Bess, and Josiah had walked alongside half this territory's grieving families through his years of ministry, accumulating a considerable store of hard-won pastoral wisdom regarding exactly this kind of difficult transition.
“I'm not asking you to stop loving Mary,” Otis had told him, some weeks back, in words Nathaniel found himself returning to now with fresh clarity.
“I'm asking you to consider that loving Mary well might actually mean living the fullest life you're capable of living, rather than treating her memory like a wall you build round your heart to keep everything else out.
She'd want you living fully, Nathaniel, same as any woman who truly loved her family would want for the ones left behind.”
This particular formulation, that honoring Mary's memory might actually require him to remain open to new love rather than close himself off from it, struck Nathaniel with fresh force as he rode the familiar trail home, and he found himself arriving at the ranch with a clarity of purpose he had not properly possessed when he'd set out that morning — the settled understanding that whatever careful courtship might eventually develop with Callie, he need not carry it forward burdened by guilt regarding Mary's memory, but rather could build it as a genuine continuation of the capacity for love she had first helped him discover in himself, all those years ago.
He found Callie in the garden when he arrived, tending the small vegetable plot that had, under her careful management, begun producing considerably more abundantly than it had in the two years since Mary's death had left it largely neglected, and paused a moment simply watching her work before announcing his presence, struck by the particular quiet contentment she seemed to bring to even the most mundane domestic tasks.
“You've quite transformed this garden,” he observed, finally making his presence known. “I'll confess it had gone rather wild these past two years, none of us having the time or inclination to properly tend it.”
“Gardens have a way of teaching patience, I've found, and rewarding it generously when properly extended. I've rather enjoyed the work, if I'm honest, finding something meditative in it that the more urgent household tasks don't generally permit.”
“Then I'm glad you've found that particular peace here, Callie, whatever else this position has demanded of you these past weeks.”
Something in his tone carried more weight than the simple observation strictly required, and Callie looked up from her work to find him watching her with an expression she was beginning to recognize as increasingly, unmistakably fond, and felt her own heart quicken in response, understanding that whatever careful reckoning he had apparently undertaken that afternoon had settled something significant in his own guarded heart.