Chapter Five #2
The biscuits were in the oven, the salt pork was in the skillet, and Zoe was at the stove with her sleeves pushed to her elbows when she stopped, briefly, with the wooden spoon in her hand.
A man of very few words and very large actions.
A chair outside a small girl’s door.
Three years of carrying a house alone.
She set the spoon down. She crossed to the shelf beside the stove and lifted down the biscuit board.
It was a heavy maple piece, worn smooth at the edges. She turned it over the way her mother had always turned every kitchen board, to check it was flat. There, pressed into the corner of the underside, small and precise: M.C.
Mary Collins.
Zoe stood with the board in her hands for a moment.
“Auntie Zoe,” Sadie said, climbing back onto her stool, “we will get no biscuits from looking at the board.”
Zoe set the board down and smiled, with feeling.
“You are right, sweet girl. What do we do first?”
“Flour it,” Sadie answered firmly.
“Then flour it,” Zoe agreed.
Sadie flourished the flour tin with great ceremony.
***
At supper, the war began with the salt.
Wade came in from the south pasture at six.
He hung his hat on the peg, washed at the kitchen pump, and sat at the head of the table.
George followed, lighter in step, and dropped into his chair with the easy good humor of a man who had spent the afternoon arguing fence lines and had enjoyed himself doing it.
Sadie said Grace. Her Grace was long and specific and included Henrietta’s continued good health, the biscuits, Lazarus, Auntie Zoe’s arrival, and a measured petition for better weather on Thursday.
Wade unfolded his napkin.
He lifted his spoon. He took a careful taste of the soup.
His expression did not change.
“Zoe,” he said evenly. “This is over-salted.”
Zoe set her spoon down.
“You think so, Wade?” she replied warmly.
“Salt pork is already salted. You should have tasted it before adding more.”
“I tasted it, Wade. It needed more salt.”
“Salt pork releases more salt as it cooks. You should have accounted for that.”
“I did account for that,” Zoe answered pleasantly.
“It is still over-salted.”
The kitchen went very still.
Zoe set her own spoon carefully on the rim of her bowl. She lifted her chin.
“Wade Collins,” she said sweetly.
“Yes.”
“Is the soup edible?”
A pause.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Are you going to eat it?”
A longer pause.
“Yes,” he said again.
“Then let us,” she replied, “consider the matter settled.”
She did not look away from him.
She reached across the table; slowly, deliberately, with the casual confidence of a woman who had decided five minutes ago that this man deserved a small lesson, and dipped her spoon into his bowl. She lifted it to her own mouth and tasted it, watching him over the rim of the spoon.
Sadie looked from Zoe to Wade and back again with the unconcealed wonder of someone watching very high-quality theater.
George Collins, who had been holding his spoon at half-mast through this entire exchange, set it carefully into his bowl and gave the soup his full attention.
Wade ate his soup in silence, eyes on the bowl. When his bowl was empty he reached for the ladle and served himself a second helping.
Zoe, with great care, kept her smile to herself.
The biscuits were praised by everyone. Sadie talked steadily about Henrietta and the rag rug and the sampler and the biscuit-cutting and a theological position she had developed on the nature of the Lazarus miracle as it applied to sourdough starters.
Zoe watched Wade across the table.
He had refused to lift his eyes from his bowl since the second helping had been served.
The line of his beard caught the lamplight along his jaw.
His hands rested loose on either side of his bowl, and there was a small white scar at the edge of his beard she remembered noticing yesterday, and which she now had the leisure to acknowledge she had begun to find interesting.
He looked up. His pale eyes touched hers.
She kept her face calm. He kept his. Neither of them looked away for the count of three.
Then, Sadie reached for the last biscuit and knocked over her cup.
The water spread across the table in a fast, cold fan. Sadie froze.
“Sadie,” Wade said low and even, “go to your room.”
“Wade, it was an accident,” Zoe said quickly.
“She knows better, Zoe,” he replied with iron in his voice.
“She is eight.”
“She is old enough to know table manners.”
“She is old enough,” Zoe agreed steadily, “and she spilled water, not gravy, and she did not do it on purpose, and sending her from the table for an accident will teach her only to be afraid of accidents.”
Sadie’s eyes filled.
The bright animation went out of her face. Her small shoulders drew up, and she sat very still in her chair with her hands knotted in her lap, staring at the spreading water as though it had personally betrayed her.
“I want my mama,” Sadie whispered.
The kitchen stopped.
George Collins set his spoon down very, very carefully.
Wade’s jaw worked. Once. Twice. He had gone the color of pine ash under his beard. His hand on the table closed slowly into a fist and opened again, and in that moment his voice had failed him entirely.
Zoe stood.
She crossed to Sadie’s chair, knelt beside it, and set her hand gently on the small fierce shoulder.
“Sweet girl,” Zoe said softly, “I know.”
Sadie turned her face into Zoe’s apron.
For a long moment, the kitchen contained only the small wet sound of an eight-year-old crying, and the long, dry breath of a man at the head of the table who had been holding himself together for many years and was, just now, learning that the holding had cost his niece more than he had understood.
Wade rose. The chair scraped back.
“Sadie,” he said hoarsely.
The child kept her face hidden.
“Sadie,” he tried again. “I am sorry. Look up, please.”
She refused to look up.
Wade stood at the head of the table with his big hands at his sides and the look of a man who had just discovered the size of his own mistake. He drew one long breath. He let it out.
“All right,” he said quietly. “All right.”
He sat back down carefully, as though the chair required management.
Zoe lifted Sadie gently and settled her in her own lap, apron and all, and rocked her, very small, the way she had rocked Brody the year he was eight and Mama had been gone three weeks.
“Eat your supper, gentlemen,” Zoe said softly. “We will manage.”