Chapter Twenty-Three
They talked until past midnight, sitting cross-legged on Sarah's bed in Sam's room.
He had given up the room for his sister and taken the kitchen floor, which meant the two of them had a door to close, a lamp to burn low, and no bounty hunter pretending not to listen from the other side of the wall.
Sarah wanted to know about Springfield. About Mr. Ridley and the sewing shop.
About the broken engagement, which Sarah had received in a letter but wanted the full version of; the version Evelyn had edited for the page because writing the unedited version would have required admitting how badly David Morrow had broken her.
Evelyn's letters to Sarah had always maintained a careful ratio of honesty to pride that leaned about sixty-forty in pride's favor.
She told Sarah the full version now. The Sunday social.
David's announcement. Clara Pennfield's face when she realized she'd won a contest Evelyn hadn't known she'd entered.
The weeks after—the whispers, Mrs. Calloway pulling her business, and Mr. Ridley suggesting she take herself some time.
All of it came out while Sarah sat across from her on the quilt.
Sarah listened the way she listened in letters—completely, without interruption, and absorbing every word before responding.
"I'm right glad you come out here, Evelyn.
I don't care what brang you. That town didn't deserve you, and David Morrow sure as the devil didn't deserve you.
And, if gettin' your heart trampled on is what it took to get you to Montana, then I reckon the Lord works in ways that ain't so much mysterious as just plain rude. "
Evelyn laughed. She laughed because Sarah Cooper said out loud the things Evelyn only allowed herself to think. Twelve years of letters had taught Evelyn exactly who this woman was that sat across from her. Meeting her in person only confirmed every word.
They talked about the orphanage. About Reverend Callahan's correspondence program, the penny stamps and lined paper every first Sunday.
About how Sarah's first letter had arrived in Evelyn's dormitory on a Thursday afternoon in March, written in looping script on paper so thin you could see the ink bleed through.
About a girl in Montana Territory who'd lost her parents, lived with her brother, and wanted a friend because friends turned out to be hard to come by when you lived six miles from the nearest town.
Evelyn had written back that same night, sitting on her narrow orphanage bed with the letter propped against her knees, writing by candlelight because the matron had called lights out, and candles after hours counted as a violation of dormitory policy.
She'd broken a rule to write to Sarah Cooper.
She'd broken that same rule every Thursday night for twelve years because Sarah's letters deserved answers written the day they arrived, not the following Sunday when Reverend Callahan handed out the stamps.
"You remember that letter where you told me about the time Sam tried to cook a chicken and set the whole blessed stove afire?
" Evelyn pulled the quilt over her lap because the room had cooled.
"I read that letter to the girls in my dormitory.
They laughed so hard the matron come in and confiscated it. "
"She confiscated my letter?"
"She confiscated everything worth havin'. I stole it back the next mornin' right out of her desk drawer."
"Evelyn Granger. You little thief!"
"She had no right to it. That letter belonged to me."
Sarah grinned at her across the bed while Evelyn's chest did the thing it kept doing around people in this territory, the thing where a wall she'd spent years building shifted a few inches to let a person through.
Sarah had been through that wall for twelve years already, but meeting her in person widened the gap until Evelyn could see clearly through to the other side.
What lived on the other side looked a lot like family.
The evening ended with Sarah yawning mid-sentence, and they said goodnight the way they ended letters, with "yours always" and "till next time." Except this time the next time would come at breakfast instead of in two weeks through the mail.
***
Morning came bright while Sarah made biscuits because Sarah made biscuits the way other people breathed, automatically and without discussion.
Sam sat at the table with his coffee, the Winchester leaned against the wall, the Colt on his hip.
He'd already done his perimeter check, already fed the chickens, and already tended the cow.
The man moved through his morning routine with the focused efficiency of a person who'd spent the night on a hard floor thinking about things he refused to talk about.
Evelyn came down the loft stairs and took her place at the table—at the chair that had become her chair through the simple act of sitting in it every morning while Sam drank coffee and ignored her until the second cup had taken effect.
Sarah set the biscuit plate on the table between them. Evelyn reached for one at the same time Sam did.
Their fingers brushed over the plate, but just barely.
It was the lightest contact; her knuckles grazing his.
Both of them pulled back at the same time, Sam studying his coffee while Evelyn studied the table.
The biscuit sat between them unclaimed, which made it possibly the most consequential biscuit in the history of Montana Territory.
Sarah stood at the stove with the skillet in her hand, watching the two of them with the expression she wore when she'd noticed a thing and planned to say a thing about the thing, but intended to choose her moment with strategic patience.
"Biscuit, Evelyn?" Sarah picked up the disputed biscuit herself and placed it on Evelyn's plate. "Sam, there's plenty more. You ain't gonna starve."
Sam took a different biscuit and buttered it without looking up. Evelyn buttered hers without looking up. Sarah looked at both of them and went back to the stove with the particular satisfaction of a woman compiling evidence.
***
They left for Mrs. Montgomery's after breakfast, the two of them walking the pine trail together while Sam stayed behind to patrol the fence line. He’d insisted on this because Sam insisted on everything that involved weapons and perimeters.
Sarah walked beside her, matching her pace, their shoulders close enough to bump on the narrow trail.
"So." Sarah bumped her shoulder, casual. "Sam told me about what happened between y'all."
Evelyn's boots stopped on the trail. Her whole body stopped, every part going rigid while her brain scrambled through every possible interpretation of that sentence and landed on the worst one.
"He—he told you? Sarah, I'm so sorry, I should've—I didn't know how to tell you, on account of… he's your brother… and I didn't aim to—I didn't plan for any of it to happen, it just—we were at the fair and he—I swear I didn't—"
Sarah burst out laughing. Full, open, head-back laughing that scared a bird out of the pine tree above them. She grabbed Evelyn's arm to steady herself while the laughter worked through her.
"Lord, have mercy, Evelyn, he didn't tell me a blessed thing! I just wanted to see what you'd do if I said he did!"
Evelyn's mouth opened, closed, then opened again. "You—that's—Sarah Cooper, that is the lowest, most underhanded, most conniving—"
"And you just told me every last thing I needed to know, so I reckon it worked out right fine.
" Sarah wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
She was still grinning. "Somethin' happened at that fair.
I can see it plain on both y'all's faces.
I been watchin' the two of you dance around each other since I walked through that door yesterday, and that little business with the biscuit plate this mornin' just about set the seal on it.
You can't even reach for the same piece of bread without actin' like you touched a hot stove. "
"That ain't—there ain't nothin'—Sarah, I'm leavin' come tomorrow mornin'. Whatever you reckon you're seein', it don't signify. I'm gettin' on that stage at seven and takin' the train back to Springfield and that'll be the end of it."
"Will it, now?"
"It will."
"You sure about that? Because the Evelyn Granger I been writin' to for twelve years ain't the kind of woman what walks away from a thing she cares about just because the timin' ain't to her likin'."
"The timin' ain't just inconvenient, Sarah. It's plumb impossible. Your brother's got a man fixin' to kill him. I got a life in Springfield, such as it is. I got a job to get back to, assumin' Mr. Ridley'll still have me—"
"You got excuses, is what you got." Sarah linked her arm through Evelyn's and started walking again, pulling Evelyn along because apparently the Cooper family approach to reluctant companions involved physical locomotion.
"You don't have to leave tomorrow, Evelyn.
You know that, don't you? You could stay.
There ain't nothin' waitin' for you in Springfield that's worth more'n what's right here. "
Evelyn kept walking because Sarah's arm through hers left no alternative.
She didn't answer, because answering would require saying one of two things and she couldn't afford either one.
Saying she could stay meant admitting that two weeks in Montana had dismantled twenty-three years of self-sufficiency and turned a temporary arrangement into a life she wanted.
It was admitting that it had made her love a place and its people and one particular person with a ferocity that terrified her.
Saying she had to go meant lying to Sarah's face.
Evelyn Granger did a lot of things, but she did not lie to Sarah Cooper.
So she walked. She let the question go unanswered.
***
Mrs. Montgomery opened the door before they reached the porch, because Mrs. Montgomery always opened the door before they reached the porch.