Chapter Fifteen
Mrs. Montgomery had lined up twenty-three jars of jam on her kitchen table, arranged in three neat rows with the labels facing forward, each one written in her careful, shaky hand. Chokecherry, huckleberry, wild plum.
The sight of them, all twenty-three sitting there in formation like a tiny army mustered for battle, made Evelyn's throat go tight in a way she chose to attribute to the cold walk over.
A week ago this woman had been crying at her kitchen table with a bank letter hidden behind her books.
Now she had twenty-three jars of ammunition lined up and ready for the fight.
People could surprise you, if you let them.
"I been at it since you left last time." Mrs. Montgomery stood beside the table, straightening jars that didn't need straightening, her hands busy the way a nervous woman's hands got busy when she cared about the verdict.
"Found them wild plums in the cellar after all, put by from last autumn.
I got maybe four, five more jars in me before fair day if the sugar holds out. "
Evelyn picked up a jar of the chokecherry and turned it in her hands.
The seal held tight, the wax clean around the rim.
Mrs. Krauss would have approved of the work.
Mrs. Krauss would have bought six jars on the spot and demanded the recipe, which Mrs. Montgomery would have given freely because Mrs. Montgomery gave everything freely.
That generosity had landed her in debt to a bank that charged twelve percent compounded quarterly, and that same generosity would help dig her out, if Evelyn had anything to say about it.
"These here are right fine, Mrs. Montgomery. Every last blessed one of 'em. They'll sell quicker'n greased lightning. I'd wager my last dollar on it."
"You reckon? You truly reckon folks'll take to 'em?"
"Ma'am, I done tasted your jam. Anybody who puts a spoonful of that chokecherry in their mouth and don't reach for their coin purse ain't got no business callin' themselves a person of sound judgment."
The old woman's face opened up the way it did when praise landed on her, a slow blooming that started at her mouth and worked its way into her eyes.
She'd been hungry for that, Evelyn realized.
Hungry for somebody to tell her the work of her hands held value, because fourteen years of living alone had starved her of the thing every person needed, whether they admitted it or not, which amounted to another person saying: you matter, what you do matters, the effort you put into this world leaves a mark worth noticing.
The orphanage had starved Evelyn of the same thing for eighteen years, so she recognized the hunger when she saw it.
"Fair's in two days." Mrs. Montgomery eased herself into the chair by the stove, favoring her hip the way she always did late in the day.
"Mr. Gunderson at the bakery told me they're expectin' folks from all over the valley this year.
Ranchers down from the north country, miners' families from up past the claims. Could be the biggest turnout they've had in a good long while, he reckons. "
"Then we'd best be ready for 'em. I got fourteen scarves finished, six pairs of gloves, four hats. Sam's been cuttin' fabric for me, Lord help us both, but he's gettin' straighter with each go. I reckon we'll have ourselves a right fine display come fair mornin'."
"That Sam Cooper of yours, he's a good man. Rough around the edges, mind you, rougher'n a cob in some regards, but good underneath it where it counts. I can tell by how he looks after you."
Evelyn busied herself with rearranging the jam jars, because the alternative required responding to the phrase "that Sam Cooper of yours," which contained assumptions she lacked the capacity to address at present.
Mrs. Montgomery went quiet for a spell, her hands settling in her lap.
"My Mary would've been about your age, I reckon. If she'd lived." The old woman twisted the edge of her shawl between her fingers. "She had your way about her. Your hands, too. Always busy, always makin' or mendin' or settin' herself to a task. She couldn't abide sittin' idle any more'n you can."
She looked up at Evelyn.
"You put me in mind of her somethin' powerful, Miss Granger. I know I done told you that already, but it bears repeatin', because havin' you come through that door these past days, it's been, well…" She swallowed. "It's been like havin' family again. I'd near forgot what that was like."
Evelyn set the jam jar down on the table because her hands had started doing a thing she couldn't control, a fine trembling in her fingers that would show if she kept holding the glass. She'd rather put it down than let Mrs. Montgomery see.
Family. The word landed in a place Evelyn had boarded up years ago, back when the orphanage had taught her that family meant either the dead people who'd left you or the living people who wouldn't claim you.
She'd stopped wanting a family by age twelve, or told herself she had, because wanting a thing you couldn't have just wore a hole in you that never filled.
Sarah had come closest. Sarah's letters had been the closest thing to family Evelyn had permitted herself in twenty-three years, and even that she'd kept at a distance, kept on paper, kept safe inside envelopes where it couldn't get too close and turn into a thing that might be taken away.
But Mrs. Montgomery, sitting in her chair by the stove with her shawl twisted in her fingers, calling Evelyn family. That went past the boards. That got in.
"I didn't have a mother growin' up."
The words came out before Evelyn had decided to let them, which tended to happen around Mrs. Montgomery because the woman had a way of making the air in her cabin safe enough to say things Evelyn normally kept locked down tight.
"She died when I was six. My father too.
Fever took 'em both. The orphanage raised me after that, if you can call it raisin'.
They kept me fed and clothed and taught me to sew.
But nobody, they didn't—" She stopped. Straightened a jam jar that didn't need straightening.
"Nobody ever called me family, Mrs. Montgomery.
Not in all my born days. Not till just now. "
The old woman reached across the table and took Evelyn's hand, wrapping both of hers around it, pressing those swollen knuckles warm against Evelyn's skin.
"Well, I'm callin' you family now, child. You can take that with you when you go, wherever you go. It's yours to keep."
Evelyn squeezed back. She didn't trust herself to speak, so she just held on.
***
The walk back to the Cooper homestead took longer than usual because Evelyn's feet dragged. Not from tiredness. From the weight of all the thinking she couldn't stop doing.
The trail through the pines had become so familiar she could walk it with her eyes closed, every root and rock and bend logged in her body the way the creaking third step at the Cooper house had logged itself the first night she'd arrived.
That first night. The skillet. Sam's bare chest in the lamplight. Two weeks ago, barely.
Fourteen days since she'd stepped off a rented buckboard and unlocked a stranger's front door with a borrowed key.
Now she had a kitchen she worked in every morning, a sewing table covered in fabric and thread, a cow she talked to while milking, eight chickens who rushed the coop gate when they spotted her coming.
She had Mrs. Montgomery calling her family.
She had Sam Cooper cutting fabric at her kitchen table, bringing her tea without being asked, carrying her up the stairs with hands that turned gentle without warning.
She had a life here. Not a permanent one, or one she'd been offered or had any right to claim, but a life all the same. Real and solid and made of daily things that added up to belonging.
The word sat strange in her head because she'd spent twenty-three years without a claim on it.
Springfield had never belonged to her. The orphanage certainly hadn't.
Her rented rooms above Guthrie's hardware store, with the wobbling table and the cracked plaster, those had been a place she occupied, not a place that occupied her.
The difference mattered. She hadn't understood how much until now.
Leaving would hurt. She could admit that much to herself, here, alone on the trail where nobody could see her face or ask her what she meant by it.
Leaving this valley, this house, these people, would hurt in a way that leaving Springfield hadn't, because Springfield had wanted her gone and this place, God help her, had made room for her.
She came out of the tree line and started across the open ground toward the porch.
A man stood near the eastern fence line.
Evelyn stopped walking. He stood about fifty yards off, close to the timber, facing the property. Medium build, dark coat, hat pulled low enough to shade his face. He held his position the way a person held a position when they'd been holding it for a while, settled into it, comfortable with it.
"Can I help you, mister? You needin' somethin' out this way?"
The man turned toward her voice. She couldn't make out his features in the fading light, just the shape of him against the darker timber behind, but his posture shifted when he spotted her, a stiffening through the shoulders that reminded her of Sam.
Sam stiffened the same way when he registered a threat.
She'd watched him do it enough times to recognize the motion in another body.
"Just passin' through, ma'am. Got myself turned around on the trail, is all. I'll be movin' along directly."
His voice carried flat across the cold air, clipped, giving away as little as the words themselves. He turned before she could say another word, stepping back into the tree line, and within about ten seconds the timber had swallowed him whole. Gone.