Chapter Seventeen
The Kitchen, Collins Ranch
The mail had come up the creek path at half past four with the rider from Bozeman.
Zoe had been at the chicken yard. By the time she came back in through the screen door with the basket of eggs on her hip, the lamp had been lit at the pine table and Wade was at the long bench with the letters.
There were three. The cattle buyer. The land office. The third lay face down on the pine.
He looked up at the creak of the screen door.
“Zoe,” he said, his voice carrying the trouble in it before he had said anything else.
She set the basket on the sideboard.
“Wade?” Her free hand came up briefly to the cuff of her shawl at her elbow.
“There’s a letter,” he answered, low.
“There are, by the look of it, three of them,” she returned.
“This one.” His thumb tapped once at the pine. He turned the third letter over on the wood and slid it across the table to her, face up. The seal had been broken. The folded sheet sat unfolded beside the envelope. The slanting hand of her sister-in-law lay exposed under the brass lamp.
Zoe stayed at the sideboard.
Her hand held at the rim of the egg basket. The other came down off her shawl and stopped at the wood beside the basket.
“Wade,” her voice came up level and very low. “Did you open that letter?”
“Yes, I opened it,” he answered.
“Did you read it?”
“I read the first three lines.” His hands stayed flat on the pine in front of him, open.
“I saw the writing was a woman’s, and the Dear Zoe at the top was a Dear Zoe, and by the time I had read the third line I had a fair idea of what the next twenty were going to say.
I stopped. I set the page down face up so you would see what I had done before I had to say it. ”
A long beat held in the kitchen.
Job lifted his head from the rug, looked from one of them to the other, and laid his chin back on his paws.
Zoe was looking at the page.
Her right hand left the rim of the basket and came down hard against the side of the sideboard. The basket rocked. An egg moved against the willow weave and settled.
“You opened a letter with my name on it,” she said, and the words came out flatter and harder than her throat had pitched them. “You broke the seal and unfolded the page. You read three lines of it under my brass lamp at this kitchen table while I was at the chicken yard with the eggs.”
“That is correct,” he answered, low.
She drew a breath in through her nose that came up uneven at the back of her throat.
Wade rose from the bench at a slow pace.
He came around the end of the pine table and stopped six feet from her.
“I am not asking you to come to me, Zoe,” he said. “I am asking you for the use of the air in this kitchen for the next minute. May I?”
She held her silence for the count of four. Then her chin came down a fraction.
He closed half the distance between them. He stopped three feet from her.
“I opened a letter with your name on the front of it,” he said, low.
“I had no business doing it. I have been telling myself that I opened it because I had a guess at what was inside and I wanted to know the shape of what was coming at you before it landed. I should have left it sealed for you on the pine and waited. I did not. I am sorry, Zoe. The sorrow is not a small one.”
She looked at him a long count. Her hand at her side worked open and closed once.
“Sit down, Wade,” she said at last, low and uneven.
He sat down on the bench at the long side of the table.
Zoe came across the kitchen at last in the unhurried pace she had been keeping at the sideboard.
She passed the chair across from him. She came around the end of the pine and lowered herself onto the bench at his right elbow instead, with her shoulder a careful half inch from his.
The letter sat between them on the pine.
She drew the page toward her.
She read it.
The slanting, careful hand of her sister-in-law at twenty-one years of age laid itself open under the lamp.
Dear Zoe at the top. A household to manage halfway down.
The closing paragraph informed her that Brody had agreed she might send the trunk of the books their mother had left behind, but that Zoe was on no account to expect a visit, as we have decided that the connection has, on the whole, been an unfortunate one and we are arranging our lives accordingly.
The letter was signed Yours in good will, B. Preston.
Zoe folded the page back into thirds along the creases Bonnie had set. She pressed the side of her hand once along the fold.
The wetness at her lashes came down. It moved along the side of her nose and stopped at the corner of her mouth.
Wade was already turning toward her on the bench.
His hand came up, slow and clumsy at the unfamiliar work, and the side of his knuckle drew the wet line off the side of her nose at the curve of her cheek. His thumb came up at the same time and brushed her temple. He had little skill at this kind of work. He did the work anyway.
Zoe closed her eyes.
She kept his hand at her cheek.
“She has been wanting to write that letter for some time,” she said at last, her voice coming up uneven at the back of her tongue. “It appears the wedding ring has unlocked the inkwell.”
“It is no joke, Zoe,” he answered, low, his thumb stilling at her temple.
“It wasn’t intended as one,” she returned, the small ghost of a smile pulling once at the corner of her mouth and giving up.
“You may set it down, if it suits you,” he went on, his hand staying where it was. “You may also weep on my shirt.”
His pale blue eyes were three inches from hers.
She leaned forward the three inches and set her forehead against his collar bone.
His hand came up to the back of her neck.
The other came off the pine and settled at her shoulder.
Zoe wept against his shirt with the discipline her mother had drilled into her at twelve, neatly and very quietly, for two minutes.
Wade’s hand at the back of her neck stayed where it was.
The thumb at her shoulder worked once, slow, and stayed.
She drew back at last.
She put the side of her own hand to her nose. Wade was already at the breast pocket of his shirt. He drew out a folded square of clean linen and pressed it against her palm with the side of his thumb.
“Thank you, Wade,” she answered, her voice gone small.
She held the linen briefly between her palms before she pressed it to her nose.
“I am going to write to my brother,” she said into the linen.
“You will,” he agreed, his hand still at the back of her neck.
“With small expectation that he will see the letter. She will burn it before it reaches him, or read it first and tell him what is in it.” She drew the linen away and folded it once into her lap.
“I will write it all the same! She may have my brother. She may have the household. The last word she shall not have.”
The corner of his mouth pulled.
“That is the most warlike sentence I have heard you say,” he answered.
“I am a warlike woman,” she said. “I have been hiding it under aprons and pie crust.”
“It’s a good place to hide it,” he agreed, his thumb moving once again at the loose strand of dark hair at her temple. “It has the element of surprise.”
A small laugh came up at the back of her throat against her own will. Wade let her hair go. He laid his hand on the pine beside hers in the warm gold light. She set the linen down on the pine.
“Read the rest of it, Wade. After supper,” she said.
“I will read it once more in the morning, and then I will answer it. Before I do, I should like one other person in this valley to know the whole shape of what she has written. I will be answering her with a witness at the bench, and not into the dark of my own head. The dark of my own head is a room she has had altogether too much furniture in for altogether too long.”
He held her eyes a long moment. Then, he set his open hand on the pine beside hers, palm up.
She laid her hand into his without speaking.
***
Wade read the letter after supper.
Zoe was at the back of the stove with her own cup in her hand. She had turned her shoulder a quarter inch away from the lamp light, staying out of his eyeline while he read the worst of what was said of her.
The heat came up at the back of his neck above his collar at the third line. It deepened at the sixth. The line of his jaw set at the corner at the eighth, in the same shape it had carried at the south fence on the afternoon of the cut wire.
He finished the page. He drew a slow breath in through his nose and let it out at the same pace.
Lord, he said inside himself. The woman at the back of the stove has been written about in a slanting, careful hand by a sister who had small business writing about her at all.
She is going to be at the back of the stove in this kitchen at the end of the month, and at the end of the year, and at the end of the decade, if I have any say in the matter.
I am asking You to steady me. I have little ability to do it on the strength of my own hands.
He folded the page back into thirds along the original folds.
He set it down beside the cattle buyer’s letter and the land office notice, in the order Zoe would expect to find them in the morning. He laid his open hand flat on the wood beside the stack.
He turned his face an inch toward the stove.
Zoe set her own cup down on the warming shelf.
She came back to the bench at the unhurried pace she had been keeping all evening. She sat down at his right elbow. She laid her hand into his open palm without a word. His fingers closed around hers, warm and steady. Her thumb moved once against the side of his and stayed.
“She is wrong about you, Zoe. On every count,” he said at last, low. “I would be willing to set my own hand to the bottom of your reply if it would help.”
“It will help, Wade,” she answered, her thumb closing once against the side of his.