CHAPTER 13
Rebuilding
The Cross Ranch
The weeks following the fire brought the whole of Goldpine's ranching community together in the particular practical, unsentimental fashion of a frontier town accustomed to disaster and equally accustomed to meeting it with collective, unhesitating labor rather than mere sympathy.
Jed Thorne arrived within two days of the fire with a wagon of spare lumber from the Ambrose's own stores, waving off Nathaniel's attempted repayment with the brisk observation that neighbors helped neighbors in this territory, and he'd expect the same consideration returned whenever misfortune came calling at his own door.
Amelia Thorne arrived alongside her husband, and struck up an immediate and genuine friendship with Callie over the practical business of feeding the considerable crew of volunteers who turned out over the following fortnight to help rebuild the damaged section of barn, the two women discovering, in the shared labor of cooking for two dozen hungry men, a kinship neither had quite expected to find so readily.
“I understand you arrived here in rather similar circumstances to my own,” Amelia observed, one afternoon, as the two of them worked together preparing the noon meal for the rebuilding crew, Nettie underfoot helping shell peas with the particular earnest concentration of an eight-year-old determined to prove her usefulness.
“Ruth mentioned, in passing, that you'd come a considerable distance to escape a difficult situation, though she didn't share the particulars, and I didn't ask.”
“I fled an arranged marriage,” Callie said, having decided, in the weeks since her confession to Nathaniel, that Amelia's evident kindness and her own similarly difficult history warranted the same honesty she'd extended his way.
“To a man considerably older than myself, and not at all kind, from every account I gathered.”
“I understand something of that particular flavor of difficulty myself, though my own circumstances were rather different in their specifics.
I was a widow, managed rather unkindly by my late husband's family, and answered a newspaper notice for a bride ministry out of desperation nearly as considerable as your own, I'd wager.” Amelia's smile carried a warmth that Callie found immediately, genuinely comforting.
“I'll tell you what I found, arriving here with rather more hope than practical skill — this territory has a way of rewarding genuine courage, whatever form it takes, and a way of gathering around a person in need considerably more readily than the more genteel circles we both apparently left behind us.”
“It has seemed that way, thus far,” Callie agreed, watching the considerable crew of volunteers working steadily on the barn's reconstruction, men who owed Nathaniel no particular obligation beyond the general fellowship of the territory and had turned out anyway, without hesitation, the moment word of the fire had spread.
“I confess I did not expect, fleeing Santa Fe, to find quite this degree of genuine community waiting on the far side of my flight.”
“Few of us expect it, I think, arriving here initially out of desperation rather than genuine choice.
But I've found, in my own year and more in this town, that desperation often leads a person to exactly the community they most needed, however unlikely the path that brought them to it.” Amelia glanced meaningfully toward the barn, where Nathaniel was working alongside Jed and several other men, his sleeves rolled up and his usual careful reserve considerably loosened by the shared physical labor.
“And I'll observe, since we're being honest with each other, that Mr. Cross has been watching you rather more attentively than strict employer-employee courtesy generally requires, these past several weeks.”
Callie felt her face warm despite her best efforts at composure.
“I'm not entirely certain what to make of that attention, Amelia, if I'm honest. I came here fleeing one man's inconvenient interest in my future.
I'm not certain I'm prepared to properly consider another man's interest, however different in character, quite so soon.”
“I'd not counsel you to rush into anything, dear, nor would I imagine Nathaniel Cross the sort of man to press for more than you're genuinely ready to give.
But I will say this, having walked a not dissimilar road myself — there's a considerable difference between a man who wants to manage your future according to his own convenience, and a man who simply finds himself, against his own careful caution, genuinely drawn to who you actually are.
I'd wager, watching him these past weeks, that Nathaniel Cross falls rather more into the second category than the first.”
Callie turned this observation over as she continued her work, watching Nathaniel across the yard directing the placement of a new support beam with the same careful, competent authority he brought to every aspect of running his ranch, and found, watching him, that some small, previously guarded part of her heart had already, without her quite noticing the moment it happened, begun considering the question Amelia had just raised with rather more seriousness than mere idle curiosity.
The barn's reconstruction was completed within the fortnight, considerably improved from its original state by the collective input of two dozen experienced ranch hands each contributing their own particular expertise, and the completion was marked, as was apparently the local custom, by a modest celebratory supper hosted at the Cross Ranch itself, attended by the whole considerable crew of volunteers and their families, filling the ranch yard with music and laughter and the particular warm, communal satisfaction of a hard job well done together.
Callie, watching the gathering from the porch with a plate of food she had scarcely touched, found Nathaniel settling beside her with two cups of Ruth's celebrated lemonade, offering her one with a small, genuine smile that had grown considerably more frequent, she realized, watching it, in the weeks since their honest conversation the night of the fire.
“Quite a gathering,” she observed. “I don't believe I've ever witnessed such generous community in Santa Fe, whatever else that city offered.”
“Goldpine takes care of its own,” Nathaniel said simply, “and I count myself fortunate, this past fortnight, to have discovered that includes me, whatever solitary habits these past two years might have suggested otherwise.” He was quiet a moment, watching the gathering with an expression Callie could not entirely read.
“I've been meaning to ask you something, Callie, and I confess I've been working up the nerve to ask it properly for some while now.”
“Oh?”
“The sewing room,” he said. “I opened it, three days back.
Sat in there a good while, going through Mary's things, and found I could finally do it without the whole enterprise breaking me open entirely, the way I'd feared it would for two years running. I wanted you to know that, and I wanted to thank you, in whatever small way your kindness to Sam contributed to my finally finding the courage.”
Callie felt her throat tighten with an emotion considerably larger than the simple news seemed to warrant. “I'm glad, Nathaniel. Truly glad, for you and for the children both.”
Something in the easy familiarity with which his given name now passed between them, a habit settled comfortably in the weeks since the fire, seemed to carry its own quiet significance in this particular moment, and both of them, sitting together on the porch watching the celebratory gathering below, understood that something essential had shifted in the acknowledging of it.
“I find myself wanting to ask you something further, Callie, though I confess I'm not entirely certain the timing is proper, given how recently we've each shared confidences we'd not shared with anyone else in some while.”
“You may ask, Nathaniel. I've found, these past weeks, that your questions generally come from genuine care rather than mere curiosity, and I've grown rather glad of that particular quality in you.”
“Would you object,” he said carefully, “to my courting you properly, in time, once we've each had a chance to see whether what's growing between us is built on something sturdier than merely shared crisis and mutual gratitude?
I'd not wish to rush either of us into something neither is genuinely ready for, but I find I'd like permission to consider the possibility openly, rather than continuing to circle it in silence.”
Callie felt her heart lift with a hope she had not permitted herself to fully examine until this direct invitation. “I would not object at all, Nathaniel. I find I've been circling that same possibility myself, rather more than strict housekeeper's propriety generally allows.”
Amelia, catching Callie's eye across the yard some minutes later with an expression that suggested she had witnessed at least the tenor of this exchange from a discreet distance, made her way over with two fresh cups of lemonade and a smile that carried considerable private satisfaction.
“I don't mean to pry, dear, but I confess you've the particular glow about you of a woman who's just received rather welcome news.”
“I'm not entirely certain I'm ready to discuss the particulars, Amelia, though I'll own the observation isn't inaccurate.”
“Then I'll not press for particulars, only offer this much from my own experience: whatever's beginning between the two of you, take the time it needs to grow properly, rather than rushing toward premature certainty.
Jed and I had rather less time to build our own foundation before circumstance forced our hand, and while it worked out well enough for us in the end, I'd wager the slower path, when a person's fortunate enough to have it available, tends to build something considerably sturdier in the long run.”
“That's wise counsel, Amelia. I mean to heed it, whatever my own impatient heart might prefer.”
The two women sat together a while longer, watching the ranch yard's continued celebration, and Callie found, in Amelia's easy, genuine friendship, a comfort that reminded her, not unpleasantly, of the friendship she had left behind with Elena in Santa Fe — proof, if she'd needed further proof, that genuine connection could be rebuilt in an unfamiliar place, given sufficient time and the right kind of patient, generous companionship.
Jed himself sought Nathaniel out later that evening, the two men settling near the newly rebuilt barn with cups of Ruth's celebrated lemonade, their conversation drifting, as men's conversations at such gatherings often did, from practical ranch matters toward rather more personal territory.
“I'll tell you plain, Nathaniel, since we've known each other long enough for plain speaking,” Jed said, “I watched you and Miss Reyes together most of this evening, and I'd wager you're circling round the same reckoning I once circled round myself, before Amelia finally near left on that Boston coach and knocked some sense into my thick skull.”
“I'll own you're not wrong, Jed. Though I'd like to think I've learned something from watching your own considerable struggle, and mean to manage the circling with rather less nearly-catastrophic delay than you apparently required.”
“I'd wager you will, at that. You've always struck me as a more sensible man than I proved myself, that particular difficult week.
Though I'll say this much, having lived it myself — whatever fear you're carrying about honoring Mary's memory properly while opening yourself to something new, that fear generally proves considerably smaller once you've actually named it aloud to the woman herself, rather than carrying it silently and letting her wonder what your silence means.”
Nathaniel considered this counsel, recognizing in it an echo of both Otis's and Josiah's own wisdom, and found himself grateful for this whole community of men who had each, in their own way, weathered similar reckonings and emerged willing to share what they'd learned rather than leaving him to navigate the difficult terrain entirely alone.
The celebration continued long into the evening, the whole rebuilt barn strung with lanterns for the occasion, and Callie found herself, watching the assembled community dance and laugh together with the particular unrestrained joy of people who understood hardship intimately and therefore celebrated its absence with correspondingly fierce gratitude, feeling more thoroughly at home than she had felt anywhere in her whole adult life, Santa Fe's more genteel comforts included.
Ruth found her near the evening's end, both women slightly breathless from an energetic reel that Bess had insisted the whole gathering attempt together.
“I'd say this arrangement's proven itself considerably more than merely satisfactory, dear,” Ruth observed, watching Nathaniel across the yard laughing at something Otis had said.
“I don't believe I've seen that man laugh so freely in the whole two years since Mary's passing.”
“I hope I've had some hand in that, Ruth, though I credit this whole community equally for helping him find his way back to genuine joy.”
“You've had considerably more hand in it than mere community goodwill could accomplish alone, Callie, whatever modest credit you're inclined to claim for yourself.
I've watched a good many households mend themselves after loss, in my years here, and I'll tell you plain — the mending generally requires precisely what you've brought to this particular household: patience, genuine warmth, and the courage to love fully despite the risk of further loss.
That's a rarer gift than you're presently crediting yourself with possessing.”