Chapter Four
Lula’s invitation came at noon the next day, delivered with a basket over one arm and the air of a woman who had already decided the matter for everyone involved.
Ella had been standing at Maggie’s table with the ledger open before her, checking soap, salt, flour, and promises made too quickly by people who meant well. Lula came in without knocking, because Lula had never found much use for knocking when she already knew she would be welcomed.
“You and David are coming to supper tonight,” Lula said.
Ella looked up from the numbers. “Tonight?”
“That is generally when supper happens. Will you come?” Lula set the basket on the table and began taking things from it as if Maggie’s cabin were hers as much as Sebastian’s, which was a habit she had carried from Beckham and improved upon in Alaska.
“Sebastian caught more fish than two people need, and I refuse to spend an evening this early in my marriage listening only to him praise his own skill with a line.”
Maggie smiled without lifting her pencil. “That does sound dangerous.”
Ella lowered her eyes to the ledger again.
Supper with Lula was one thing. Lula belonged to the older, safer part of Ella’s life, the part where silence had already been explained before anyone could misread it.
Supper with Sebastian was something else.
Supper with Sebastian and David together was harder to place.
Four people meant questions could move in any direction.
Four people meant laughter might come suddenly.
Four people meant there would be no wall close enough to stand near without seeming rude.
“David will come if I ask him,” Ella said, because that was the safest answer and not because she knew what she wanted.
Lula’s expression softened in the way Ella both loved and feared. “I did not ask whether David would come. I asked whether you would.”
That was more difficult. Ella could have refused. Lula would fuss and ask why, but she would not be cruel. David would accept the answer without making her defend it. No one in Yeti had yet required Ella to become someone else simply because a thing seemed easy to them.
Still, she remembered Lula’s room at the hotel in Beckham, noisy with neighbors and friends.
She remembered sitting in a corner with her hands folded while Lula carried conversation like a pail of water, spilling only enough to keep everyone amused.
She had never enjoyed those evenings, exactly, but she had survived them because Lula had always known when to pull attention away.
“Only supper?” Ella asked.
Lula’s eyes brightened. “And perhaps cards.”
“Lula.”
“Only if you wish. But Sebastian says he plays a fine hand of Euchre, which means he ought to be taught humility by someone other than me.”
Ella had played Euchre. Her mother had allowed cards on winter evenings when the shop was closed and the accounts balanced.
Not for gambling. Never for gambling. But for something to do with hands that had already worked too long.
Ella had learned the game by watching first, as she learned most things.
She knew how the bowers moved, how suits changed shape when trump was named, how a person could smile with confidence and still have nothing worth playing.
“I know the rules,” she said.
Lula put a hand to her heart. “Ella Mae Whitcomb Sanders, you have been keeping treasures from me.”
“Cards are not treasures.”
“They are if Sebastian loses.”
By the time Ella told David of the invitation that evening, she had nearly convinced herself it would not happen.
Perhaps the weather would turn. Perhaps Sebastian would be called away.
Perhaps David would be too tired from the mill and would say they should stay home by the stove with stew and silence.
David only looked up from mending a split in his glove. “Do you want to go?”
Ella was standing near the stove, where she had been stirring beans that did not require stirring. “Lula asked.”
“That is not the same answer.”
No, it was not. Ella watched the surface of the beans darken where a bubble rose and broke. She did not know if she wanted to go. Wanting a thing did not make it comfortable. Not wanting a thing did not always make it wrong.
“I think I might,” she said finally. “If we do not stay too late.”
David nodded once. “Then we won’t.”
It was such a simple thing to say. Ella had expected perhaps a reassurance that it would be enjoyable or a promise that she ought not be nervous. David offered neither. He did not try to tell her how she should feel before she had arrived. He only made the evening smaller, which made it possible.
Lula and Sebastian’s cabin was warmer than Ella expected and louder before they were fully inside.
Not unpleasantly loud. Sebastian’s laugh was large, but it had open spaces in it.
Lula’s voice moved over and around his as if she had been born knowing exactly where to place a word so it would land where she intended.
“There you are,” Lula said, coming to the door with a spoon in her hand. “I was about to send Sebastian after you, but he claims he is not yet trained well enough to retrieve quiet women from their own homes.”
Sebastian stood from the table with a grin. “I said I feared Mrs. Sanders would take one look at me coming up the path and bolt into the trees.”
Ella slipped out of her coat, careful to hang it straight on the peg David indicated. “I would not bolt.”
Three faces turned toward her. Ella felt the heat rise at once, but Sebastian’s grin only widened.
“No?” he asked.
“The trees are unfamiliar,” she said before caution could stop her. “I might choose poorly.”
For a heartbeat, the room went quiet. Then Lula laughed so hard she had to put a hand against the doorframe.
Sebastian laughed too, not at Ella, exactly, but with such surprised delight that she found she did not mind it as much as she expected.
David looked down at the floor, but she saw the corner of his mouth move beneath his beard.
It was not so terrible, then, to be amusing by accident if no one made her repeat herself.
Supper was fish fried crisp at the edges, potatoes browned in a skillet, and beans seasoned by Lula with more courage than sense.
Ella noticed the crooked shelf above the stove, the card box on the mantel, the stack of split wood too close to the ash bucket, and the way Sebastian watched Lula every time she reached for something high, as if marriage had given him both joy and constant opportunities to worry.
The talk at the table did not crowd her.
That surprised Ella most. Lula and Sebastian spoke enough for three people, perhaps four if one counted Sebastian twice, but their words moved around practical things.
The mill. The weather. Whether Lula’s first attempt at frying fish in Alaska should be called supper or evidence.
David answered when spoken to and let silence stand when no one needed filling.
Afterward, Lula cleared the plates with the speed of a woman determined to reach the part of the evening she had planned from the beginning. “Cards,” she said.
“I knew there was a purpose to this friendship,” Sebastian said.
“The purpose is to humble you,” Lula said, taking down the box. “Ella knows Euchre.”
Sebastian looked at Ella with new interest. “Does she?”
Ella wished Lula had not announced it as if she were a circus horse trained to count. “My mother taught me.”
“Then we shall see whether Mrs. Whitcomb was a good teacher.”
David pulled out the chair beside his own and set it so Ella could see the table, the door, and the stove without turning her back fully to any of them. He did it without asking. He did not announce that he had noticed where she preferred to sit. He only made the choice available.
Ella sat.
The first hand was awkward only because everyone expected it to be.
Lula dealt too fast, Sebastian spoke too much, and Ella studied the cards without lifting her eyes higher than necessary.
David sat as her partner, and when it came time to name trump, he did not lean over her shoulder or tap the table or tell her what she ought to do.
“Your call,” he said quietly.
It helped. Not because she needed his permission. Because he seemed to understand she did not need instruction in front of an audience.
Ella passed.
Sebastian ordered up hearts with a flourish and then proceeded to play as if the flourish had been the strongest card in his hand.
Lula took the first trick. David took the second.
Ella watched the left bower fall, then the ace, then the nine Sebastian tried to pretend he had meant to play all along.
On the fourth trick, David led low. Ella knew at once what he had left because of what he had not played earlier. She laid down the queen of trump and took the trick cleanly.
Sebastian stared at the card. “That was unexpected.”
“Only if you forgot the jack was gone,” Ella said.
Lula slapped the table. “I told you.”
Ella had not meant to sound sharp. She looked down immediately, but Sebastian was laughing.
“Mrs. Sanders,” he said, “you wound me.”
“Not fatally,” Ella said, and this time she knew she had done it.
David made a sound that was almost a cough and almost a laugh. Lula leaned back in her chair, triumphant as if Ella’s quiet remark had been a prize she had known existed all along.
The next hand went faster. Then the next.
Ella stopped thinking of the room and began thinking of cards.
She remembered every suit led, every trump spent, every hesitation at the edge of Sebastian’s fingers.
Lula played boldly, which meant she won beautifully when she was right and lost loudly when she was wrong.
Sebastian tried to bluff with his eyebrows.
David played steady, giving her room without abandoning her to it.
When Ella ordered up spades on a thin hand, Sebastian looked at David. “Did you teach her that?”
David shook his head. “I am learning along with you.”
Ella’s fingers tightened around her cards. Praise was still uncomfortable, but this was not exactly praise. It was recognition. David had seen what she was doing and had not taken credit for it, nor had he explained it away. He had simply left it beside her where it belonged.
She took three tricks that hand because Sebastian had held the king too long and Lula had spent her ace too early. When the point was counted, Lula pointed at Sebastian with one sharp finger.
“Humility,” she said.
Sebastian gathered the cards with wounded dignity. “I invited guests into my home and have been betrayed.”
“You invited us to supper,” Ella said. “The cards were Lula’s doing.”
“Hear that?” Lula said. “She remembers who is guilty too.”
Ella looked at her cards to hide the small smile that came despite her.
The cabin was still warm. The table was still crowded.
Sebastian was still too loud and Lula still too bright.
But the evening had begun to arrange itself into something she could understand.
Four chairs. One deck. Rules that did not change without warning. A partner who let her think.
David watched her only once when she laughed softly at something Lula said about Sebastian’s eyebrows giving away his entire hand.
He looked away quickly after, as if he had caught himself staring.
But Ella had seen his expression first. It was not surprise exactly. It was wonder kept carefully quiet.
The game ended with Ella and David ahead by enough that Sebastian declared the score suspicious and Lula declared it justice. Ella helped gather the cards, aligning the corners before placing them back in the box. Her hands were tired, but not trembling. That seemed worth noticing.
They did not stay too late. David stood before anyone could suggest another hand, and Ella knew he had remembered. Lula hugged her at the door with one arm and whispered, “You are coming again.”
Ella did not answer, which Lula accepted as neither agreement nor refusal but a beginning.
Outside, the night had gone hard and clear.
The stars seemed closer in Alaska than they ever had in Beckham, not friendlier, only nearer.
Snow crusted beneath their boots as they walked the path toward home.
David carried the lantern low enough that the light fell on the ground before them rather than in Ella’s eyes.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The quiet after laughter had a different shape than the quiet before it. It did not press against her. It settled.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” David asked at last.
Ella watched the lantern light move over the path. The truthful answer startled her because it was not complicated.
“I did,” she said.
David’s steps did not change, but she felt his attention turn gently toward her. “I’m glad.”
She waited for him to say more. Men often did when pleased. They filled the space with teasing or praise until the thing that had felt small and safe became large enough to frighten her. David let the answer remain the size she had made it.
They had nearly reached their cabin when he said, “Someday, if you wanted, we might invite them to our place.”
Ella stopped so quickly that the hem of her skirt brushed his boot.
“Not tomorrow,” David said at once.
She looked at him.
“Not soon,” he added. “Only someday. If you wanted.”
The thought of it opened in her chest like a trapdoor.
People in their cabin. Chairs moved from their places.
Dishes to prepare and too few plates. Lula laughing near the stove.
Sebastian filling the room with his shoulders and his voice.
David watching her to see whether she was managing, which was kind but also meant there would be managing to do.
“Our cabin is small,” she said.
“It is.”
“We have only two chairs.”
“Sebastian can sit on the wood box. It might improve him.”
The corner of Ella’s mouth moved before she could prevent it.
David saw but did not point it out. “We would do it your way,” he said. “If we ever did.”
Her way.
Ella had not considered that hosting could have a way that belonged to her.
In Beckham, gatherings belonged to the loudest woman in the room or the oldest one, sometimes both.
In Yeti, Lula had made supper into a game and Sebastian had made losing into a performance.
Ella had assumed inviting people meant opening the door and surrendering the house to whatever came through it.
But perhaps there could be only four people.
Perhaps supper could be simple and served in bowls so plates did not matter.
Perhaps cards could be set out before anyone arrived, the chairs placed where she wanted them, the kettle already filled, the extra wood stacked outside so no one went rummaging.
Perhaps people could come into a room without taking it from her.