Chapter 11
Florence came down the train steps with the canvas bag in one hand and her travel case in the other, and the man on the platform took his hat off and didn't move.
He was a tall man, broader through the shoulders than his handwriting had suggested, with brown hair he had cut himself or had cut for him by a person who was not a barber, and a face the sun had been at. Somehow it only made him more handsome.
The face was a quiet one. It didn't smile. It didn't frown. He stood with his hat against his chest and watched her approach, and his stillness had no patience in it. When she reached the bottom step, his eyes came to her face. One second, no more. Then his gaze dropped away.
Today she read it as a man who was not sure he was glad to see her. Does my appearance displease him?
She shook away the thought.
Beside him stood a girl in a blue dress, with one uneven braid down her back, and the girl's face had no such reserve in it at all.
"You're Florence," the girl said, before Florence had reached them. "You're here."
"I am."
"I'm Lydia. I'm twelve. I made bread. There's bread."
Florence laughed. The sound of it surprised her because it came out a little broken, but it was a laugh, and the girl took it as a gift and stepped forward and threw her arms around Florence's waist with the careless force of a child who had never been told that grown people sometimes needed a little care taken with their frames.
Florence almost dropped the bag. She didn’t mind the hug. She liked it. But anybody, adult or child, stepping too close made warning bells clang.
She closed her hand on it again, harder. The girl let her go and stepped back. Behind the girl, the tall man inclined his head once, and said, in a voice quieter than she had been ready for, "Miss Mills."
"Mr. Ferris."
"You had a long ride. I'm grateful you came."
"Thank you."
It was a poor exchange. She had thought about this exchange for two months.
She had rewritten his half of it in her head a dozen ways, and her own half as many.
None of the ways she had imagined had been quite like this, with him standing with his hat against his chest and his eyes resting on her without quite meeting hers, and a kind of held breath in him that didn't let go.
"Let me take your bags," he said.
He stepped forward and reached for the canvas bag in her right hand. She drew it back.
"This one I'll keep."
He stopped. He looked at the bag, and then at her, and there was a small line between his brows that she could not read…
it was the line of a man working something over without speaking.
He did not press. He took the travel case from her left hand instead.
He managed it easily, as though it weighed nothing, which it nearly did. He gave a slight nod.
"This way."
He turned. Lydia took Florence's free hand without asking. The hand was small and dry and a little hot. Florence let herself be led off the platform, down two wooden steps, into the dust of the street.
"Pa drove the wagon in," Lydia said. "We've got a bay called Susan. She unties knots with her teeth."
"Goodness."
"Pa says she's a pest. I say she's clever."
“They could both be true."
“It’s true, isn't it?" Lydia squeezed her hand. "I think we're going to be friends."
Beau reached the wagon and set the travel case in the bed.
He turned, hat still in hand, and offered his palm.
Florence stepped up onto the wheel hub and took his hand for balance.
His palm was warm and dry and broad. He let her go as soon as she was up.
Lydia scrambled up after her on her own.
He climbed onto the seat last, took up the reins, and clicked his tongue. The bay moved off.
"How far?" Florence asked.
"Twenty minutes," he said.
"Twenty minutes," Lydia said. "Less if Susan doesn't see the goat at Mrs. Halloran's. She doesn't like the goat."
"The goat doesn't like her either," Beau said. “But, they don’t need to be friends."
He didn't look at Florence as he said it. He looked at the road, a pale band running west out of town between low fences and a few cottonwoods that had been planted in a line by somebody who’d had hopes.
The sky was tremendous. It went on and on.
Florence kept the bag tight against her hip on the seat, with her right arm hooked through the handle so that even if she let go with her hand she would not drop it.
"The cottage," Beau said, after some time, "is small. It was the foreman's place when we ran more head. It has its own roof and its own stove. I thought you might like a few days of your own before we settled the rest."
"That's kind."
"It's clean."
"Thank you."
"Mrs. Letts has put sheets on the bed."
"Mrs. Letts is the housekeeper," Lydia said. "She's fierce. You'll like her."
"I'm sure I will."
"Pa runs cattle and a few horses," Lydia said. "He'll show you. There's a creek. There's a hill. There's a — Pa, what's the word for that big tree?"
"Oak."
"Oak. There's an oak. You can see Prosperity from under it."
Florence smiled. She made herself smile. Her face did the work because the girl was looking at her, and the girl was a bright clean thing, and Florence didn't have it in her to disappoint a bright clean thing on the first hour of meeting it.
She looked across past Lydia at the man on the other side of the bench.
His hat was back on. His profile was set, the line of his jaw locked, his hands easy on the reins but his shoulders not easy.
He didn't look at her. He looked at the road.
He had not looked at her once since they had left the platform.
His words echoed. But, they don’t need to be friends.
It felt like he was talking about her.
She had hoped, on the journey, that he would look at her and what she saw would tell her something. She had hoped more than that. She had hoped to see, under the public man on the platform, the private man who had written the letter she had folded under her pillow in Worcester.
She had not come three thousand miles to be unseen.