Chapter Fourteen #2
Evelyn watched him from the sewing table. She'd been watching him all afternoon, her needle slowing whenever he passed through the room, her eyes tracking his movements. He could feel that steady attention pressing against him while he scraped a knife that didn't need scraping.
"Sam."
He kept the blade moving on the whetstone.
"Sam, what in tarnation's got into you?"
"Ain't nothin' got into me. I'm just seein' to things around the place."
"You been seein' to things all the livelong day. You done checked them windows three times in the last hour alone. You locked that door before sundown, which you ain't done once since I been here. You're totin' that rifle around like you're fixin' to fight off the whole blamed territory."
"I'm just bein' careful, is all. A man in my line of work, he gets careful now and again. Don't signify nothin'."
She set down her needle and the scarf together, then turned in her chair to face him full, which in Sam's experience meant the conversation had shifted from inquiry to interrogation and his chances of escaping had dropped to about zero.
"You're worryin' me somethin' fierce, Sam. I can see plain as day that things ain't right. Now are you gonna tell me what's goin' on, or are you gonna sit there scrapin' that knife till there ain't no blade left on it?"
"Ain't nothin' to tell you. I'm mindin' the property. That there's my job. That's what I'm put here for."
"That ain't what you're doin', and you know it as fine well as I do.
You're prowlin' this house, Sam Cooper. Prowlin' it.
I been watchin' you pace back and forth past them windows, checkin' the door, checkin' the latch, checkin' the tree line every blessed time you set foot outside.
You got the look of a man expectin' trouble, and I got a right to know what manner of trouble you're expectin' when I'm livin' under the same roof. "
He set the knife on the table beside the whetstone, lining them up parallel because his hands required a task and lining things up counted as one, barely.
"Evelyn. I'm askin' you right kindly to let this here be. Go on back to your sewin'. You got scarves to finish, you got the fair comin' up. Set your mind on that."
"Don't you go tellin' me to get back to my sewin'.
" She stood up from the table. "Don't you dare sit there and tell me to stitch scarves while you're stalkin' around this house armed to the teeth and refusin' to say why.
I ain't no child, Sam Cooper. I don't need to be shut out and kept in the dark about whatever's got you this riled. "
"I ain't riled."
"The devil you ain't! You're wound tighter'n a new watch spring and I can see it in you, plain as day. You're shuttin' me out, same as you always do, same as you done every single time I get within ten paces of whatever it is you're carryin' around in that hard head of yours."
She moved toward him and stopped on the other side of the table, pressing her hands flat against the wood. Her cheeks had flushed the way they did when her temper outran her judgment.
"You push folks away, Sam. You know that, don't you?
Every time somebody gets close, every time somebody tries to care about what's happenin' to you, you slam that door shut so hard the whole house shakes.
You're the most pig-headed, cantankerous, closed-off man I ever come across in my whole natural life, and I was raised in an orphanage full of difficult people, so you can reckon the standard I'm measurin' against."
He looked at her across the table, her hands pressing into the wood, her jaw clenched, her eyes burning. She had flour on her sleeve again, because of course she did.
"Maybe that's just my way." He stood up and slid the knife and whetstone onto the shelf.
"Maybe I don't hanker to have folks near me.
You ever give that a thought? Maybe a man who's spent his whole life on his own got his reasons for keepin' it that way, and maybe them reasons ain't none of your concern. "
He took the Winchester from beside the door, pulled on his coat, and set his hat on his head.
"I got rounds to make."
He went out the front door and pulled it shut behind him. The latch clicked.
He made his rounds. Checked the gates, the barn, the fence line. He stood at the eastern perimeter for a long time, studying the tracks that led into the timber, while the last light drained out of the valley.
The things she'd said turned over and over in him without settling.
Pig-headed. Cantankerous. Closed-off. She'd thrown those words at him across the kitchen table the way a person threw a rope to a drowning man, hard and fast and aimed right at the center of him, except the drowning man in this particular scenario had just told the person with the rope to mind their own business and walked out the door.
This either meant Sam Cooper was a fool or proved Evelyn's point about him pushing people away, and he suspected the answer covered both.
He'd told her he didn't hanker to have folks near him.
He'd said it straight, looked her in the eye, delivered it the way he delivered most hard truths, blunt and clean and without apology.
The problem, the real problem, the one he couldn't outrun by walking the fence line in the dark, was that it hadn't been true when he said it.
He wanted Evelyn Granger near him. He wanted her in the kitchen making pie, at the table correcting his fabric cuts, in the chair by the fire drinking tea.
He wanted her near him so badly that pushing her away had required more effort than any bounty he'd ever run, and he'd done it anyway, because keeping her close meant telling her about Wilkes, and telling her about Wilkes meant watching her face change, and he couldn't stomach that.
Behind him, the kitchen window glowed warm and yellow. He could see Evelyn's silhouette inside, moving past the glass, going back to her sewing table. He watched her shadow for longer than the patrol required, the Winchester heavy in his hands, the cold working into his coat and his bones.
Then he turned away and walked the perimeter again.