Chapter Fifteen #2
Evelyn's skin prickled from her scalp to the backs of her hands.
She'd dealt with plenty of strangers in Springfield, drifters passing through town, traveling salesmen, men looking for work, directions, or a meal.
This hadn't been that. This had been a man watching a house from the fence line at dusk, and when she'd spoken to him, he'd left, not toward the road or the trail but into the timber, which people on legitimate business did not generally do.
She walked the rest of the way back to the house at a pace at which her ankle protested, went through the front door, and shut it behind her.
Sam sat at the kitchen table loading cartridges into the Winchester's magazine, pressing each one in with his thumb. He looked up when she came through the door, then looked harder, because whatever showed on her face had grabbed his attention.
"What's the matter?"
"There's a man outside. Near the eastern fence. I come out of the pines, and he's just standin' there, watchin' the property. I called out to him, and he claimed he'd got hisself lost, then he up and lit out into the timber before I could get a proper look at his face."
Sam's hands stopped on the rifle while his whole body changed, a tightening through his shoulders and his jaw that rippled down through his arms into his fingers. He stood up from the table.
"What'd he look like?"
"Medium build. Dark coat, dark hat. I couldn't rightly make out his face on account of the light."
"Which direction'd he go?"
"East, straight into the pines. Sam, who—"
"Did he say anything else to you? Anything at all besides bein' lost?"
"He said he was passin' through and he'd be movin' along directly. That's the whole of it. Sam, who is that man?"
He moved past her to the window, leaning close to the glass, scanning the tree line. The rifle hung in his right hand while his left braced against the window frame, his knuckles going white against the wood.
"You ain't to go outside alone no more, you hear me? You don't go over to Mrs. Montgomery's, you don't go to the barn, you don't set one foot past that porch without me right alongside you. Not till I say it's all right."
"You ain't answered my question. Who is he, Sam?"
"That don't concern you none right now. What concerns you is mindin' what I say and keepin' yourself inside this house."
"The hell it don't concern me! I'm the one what just come face to face with him out there in the near-dark, Sam Cooper, and you're gonna stand there and tell me it don't concern me none?"
He turned from the window, and his face had gone hard in a way she'd seen once before, the night he'd pulled the Colt on her in this very room. That locked-down expression that shut every door behind his eyes and left nothing on the surface but stone.
"Evelyn, I am tellin' you to stay in this house. That there's all you need to know right about now."
"That ain't nowhere near all I need to know! I got a right to know what's happenin' on this here property, who that man is, why you been prowlin' this house for days armed like you're expectin' a war. I got a right, Sam!"
"You got no right to my life!" The words came out loud, louder than anything he'd aimed at her since the night they'd met, and they filled the kitchen and blotted out everything else.
"You're here for two weeks, Evelyn. Two weeks!
You're leavin' come week's end, or did you forget?
You'll be on a train back to Springfield and all this, every bit of it, it ain't gonna be your concern no more.
So don't you stand there and tell me you got a right to know what I'm carryin', because you don't. You ain't earned that. Nobody earns that."
The words hit her the way the ice had hit her on the porch step, sudden and hard and from a direction she hadn't braced for.
Her throat clenched around the breath she'd been drawing, and for about three seconds she stood in the kitchen looking at Sam Cooper, at this man she'd cooked for, sewed beside, laughed with.
This man she'd come dangerously close to.
He looked back at her with that stone face and those shuttered eyes and told her she hadn't earned the right to know him.
"You're afraid." Her voice came out quieter than she'd intended.
Steadier, too. "You ain't angry, Sam. You're scared plumb to death.
And instead of lettin' somebody stand with you, instead of lettin' one single solitary soul on this earth help you carry whatever it is you're totin' around, you'd rather drive 'em off.
You'd rather hurt 'em till they leave so you can go on bein' alone, because alone is the only thing you trust."
She took a step toward him.
"You're a coward, Sam Cooper. The bravest man I ever met in my life, and a coward right down to the bone."
His jaw locked. The muscle in his cheek jumped once. His eyes held hers for a beat, two beats, three, and then the stone cracked just enough to show what lived behind it, just for a fraction of a second before he sealed it back up.
"I don't owe you a blessed thing, Miss Granger."
Miss Granger. Not Evelyn. He'd put the distance back between them with two words, rebuilt the wall she'd spent two weeks taking down, one brick at a time, through pie and stew and sewing lessons and hands touching over teacups by the fire. Two words and it all went back up.
He turned for the door, took the Winchester, yanked it open, went through, and pulled it shut behind him so hard the jam jars on the shelf rattled in their places.
Evelyn stood alone in the kitchen. The lamp burned on the table where Sam had been loading cartridges thirty seconds ago, the box of 44-40 rounds still sitting open beside the cleaning cloth. His coffee cup sat on the counter, steam still curling up from it.
She lowered herself into the chair because her legs had decided they'd held her up long enough, and she stared at the open box of cartridges, at the steam from his abandoned coffee, at the door he'd slammed behind him.
Miss Granger.
She pressed her hands flat on the table, the same table where they'd made stew together, where he'd cut fabric while she sewed scarves, where she'd spread her hand over his and called him Sam for the first time.
She pressed her hands flat, and she sat there, and whatever fought to get out through her eyes she pushed back down because Evelyn Granger did not cry where people could count her tears. The fact that nobody stood in this kitchen to count them didn't change the rule.
The rule had kept her upright for twenty-three years. She'd keep it a while longer.