Chapter 14 After
The reverend stayed for lunch and left by two, reasoning that he wanted to be back in Pinecrest before dark, and that his wife Margaret expected this, and that one did not tell Margaret one would be back by dark and then not be back by dark.
He shook Elias's hand again, kissed Clara on the cheek with the warmth of a man who had known Elias for twenty years and was glad for him, and rode away down the south road.
Clem disappeared shortly after — in the direction of the fence line that did not, as far as Clara could determine, actually need attention on this particular afternoon. She appreciated this about Clem. He understood, without being told, when a house needed to be smaller.
Nora lasted until three o'clock, at which point the accumulated excitement of the day caught up with her and she fell asleep on the settee with her wooden horse under her chin.
Elias carried her to her room without waking her.
Clara stood in the hallway and watched him do it — the careful, practiced ease of a man who had done this ten thousand times, the way his large hands steadied her, the way he looked at her sleeping face as he laid her down.
He tucked the quilt around her. He stood for a moment.
Then he came back out and they stood in the hallway together, a foot apart, in the quiet house.
"She'll sleep until supper," he said.
"She's had a full week," Clara said.
"So have you," he said.
"So have you," she said.
They looked at each other in the hallway. It was the first time they had been alone in the house since the ceremony. The first time as — the word still had a slightly unreal quality — husband and wife.
"Shall I make tea?" she offered.
"I'll make it," he said. "Sit down."
She looked at him.
"You've been managing this house for ten days," he said. "Sit down."
She sat.
* * *
He made the tea in the methodical way he did everything — the kettle, the pot warming, the leaves measured.
She watched him from the table and thought about Clem's words: the most present person I have met in two years.
She thought about the ring, warm on her finger, settled there as though it had always intended to be.
He brought the tea and sat across from her and poured for both of them with a precision that was the same precision he brought to everything — no waste, no drama.
"Tell me what you're thinking," he said.
She raised her eyebrows. "That's a change."
"I'm making an effort," he said.
She looked at her cup. "I'm thinking about how I imagined this day would look. Before I came. I had a picture of it. A church, probably. More people."
"Are you disappointed?" The question was direct and without defensiveness.
"No," she said. "I'm thinking about how the picture I had was wrong and the day itself was right. The actual thing was right."
He looked at her steadily. "Good."
"I'm also thinking," she said, "about what comes next. Practically. I'd like to start teaching Nora properly — she's ready for more than the primer. And in the spring, if the school in Pinecrest needs a teacher, I'd like to be considered. I was a good teacher. I'd like to keep being one."
"All right," he said.
"You don't object?"
"Why would I object?"
"Some men would," she said. "A wife teaching in the town school."
"I'm not some men," he said. Not boasting. Stating.
"No," she agreed. "You're not."
The tea cooled between their hands. The afternoon light came through the kitchen window at its low December angle, turning everything amber.
Outside, a crow landed on the fence post and turned its black eye toward the window with the critical assessment of a bird that has retained opinions about everything it has seen.
"Can I ask you something?" Elias said.
"You don't have to ask. Just ask."
Something at the corner of his mouth moved. "Can I ask you something," he said, with slight emphasis.
"Yes."
"When did you decide?" he said. "Actually decide. Not that you were willing — I know you were willing from the first letter. But when did you — decide on me. Specifically."
She turned her teacup in her hands. The question deserved an honest answer.
"The barn," she said. "The first day. When you showed me Jupiter and you said: horses don't care if you're frightened, they care if your mind is somewhere else.
" She looked at him. "Your mind is never somewhere else.
You are entirely present with every living thing in your care — the horses, Nora, Clem.
And I thought: this man has never been careless with anyone who depended on him.
Not once." She paused. "And then you looked at me like I was someone worth the same attention. And that was when."
He held her gaze.
"The bucket," he said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"For me," he said. "The bucket. When you fell off the stage and I caught you and you straightened your coat and said your dignity had been injured before and you were quite accustomed to it.
" He looked at the table. "I thought — she isn't going to pretend.
Whatever else happens, she isn't going to pretend anything she doesn't mean. And I thought — " He stopped.
"What?" she said, quietly.
"I thought: I have been pretending for two years," he said. "Pretending to be all right, pretending the house was fine, pretending Nora was fine, pretending I didn't want more than I had." He said the last part quietly. "Pretending I didn't want more than I had."
The kitchen was very quiet. The crow on the fence post considered them through the window and then lifted away. The mountains stood in the distance, turning rose in the late afternoon light.
Clara reached across the table and put her hand over his.
He looked at her hand. Then at her.
"You don't have to pretend anymore," she said.
He turned his hand over and held hers. Not tightly — deliberately. The way he did everything: with intention, without excess.
They sat at the kitchen table as the light changed and the mountains went rose and violet and the house was quiet around them and the fire burned, and outside the world was white and cold and enormous, and inside there was tea going cold in two cups and a man's hand around a woman's and the kind of silence that had been earned.
In her room, Nora slept with her wooden horse.
In the barn, Jupiter leaned his great head over his stall door and watched the light change.
In the kitchen, Elias Caldwell held his wife's hand across the table and did not pretend anything at all.
And Clara Holt — Clara Caldwell — sat in the mountain light and thought: there it is. There it is. There is the life I came for.
She thought it was going to be more than enough.