Chapter Twenty-Three #2
"Miss Granger! And—oh my! Sarah Cooper! I gave up on expectin’ you ’round here." The old woman pressed both hands against her cheeks. "Come in, come in! I got the kettle on already. I had me a feelin' somebody'd come callin' today!"
Sarah took to Mrs. Montgomery the way a spark took to dry kindling.
It was instant and completely mutual. Within five minutes, the two of them occupied opposite sides of the kitchen table and were talking over each other about jam recipes while Evelyn sat between them wondering whether she'd accidentally created a friendship or summoned a force of nature.
They counted the money. Evelyn pulled the tin box from her coat and emptied the coins onto Mrs. Montgomery's kitchen table while Sarah added the bills from the property sale.
Mrs. Montgomery watched the pile grow with her hands pressed together in her lap, her eyes tracking each coin the way a person watched rain after a drought.
"Twenty-four dollars and seventy cents from the fair." Evelyn sorted the coins into stacks while Sarah counted the bills. "Your jam brang in near eleven of that, Mrs. Montgomery. Every jar sold. Every last blessed one."
"Every jar?" The old woman's voice wobbled. "Every blessed one?"
"Every blessed one. The chokecherry went first. Folks near about fought over the huckleberry. I had three people ask me could they buy a whole case, which I told 'em I'd take up with you."
Sarah laid the bills out beside the coin stacks. "I got sixty-five dollars from the property sale. That puts us at eighty-nine dollars and seventy cents all told."
Eighty-nine seventy. The debt totaled a hundred and twenty-seven fifty. That left thirty-seven eighty unaccounted for, a gap wide enough to matter but narrow enough to see across. They'd raised two-thirds of the money in a week, from jam and scarves and a stall at a town fair.
Mrs. Montgomery looked at the money on her table while her chin trembled. She pressed her fingers against her mouth.
"I don't—I can't rightly—that's more money than I've—"
"We ain't done yet, Mrs. Montgomery." Sarah reached across the table and covered the old woman's hand. "I got a little more set aside from last season's egg money. I been savin' it for seed stock come spring, but seed stock can wait. How much are we short?"
"Thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents."
"I can cover it."
Mrs. Montgomery stared at Sarah while her eyes filled. Sarah held her gaze with the particular steadiness of a Cooper; that quality Sam carried in his jaw and Sarah carried in her eyes. It was a quality that meant a decision had been made, and the universe could accommodate itself accordingly.
"I can't take your money, Miss Cooper. I just can't. You don't even know me, child. You walked through my door not an hour ago and here you're offerin' to—"
"Ma'am, I know you plenty well enough. I know you from what Evelyn's told me, and Evelyn don't love folks lightly.
If she says you're worth fightin' for, then you're worth fightin' for, and I ain't in the habit of arguin' with Evelyn Granger about a blessed thing.
I been losin' that argument for twelve years and I don't reckon I'll start winnin' it now. "
Evelyn's throat tightened. She busied herself restacking the coins because the alternative required looking at Sarah, and looking at Sarah right now would crack her open in front of Mrs. Montgomery.
Mrs. Montgomery started crying. The good kind, the relieved kind.
Sarah moved around the table and put her arms around the old woman.
Then Evelyn moved to the other side and did the same.
The three of them stood in Mrs. Montgomery's kitchen holding onto each other while the kettle hissed on the stove.
"You saved my home." Mrs. Montgomery spoke into Sarah's shoulder. "You girls saved my home."
"We ain't done yet, ma'am. We still got to take this here money to the bank and tell that Pruitt fella precisely where he can stick his foreclosure notice."
"Sarah Cooper! Your mama would've washed your mouth out with lye soap for talkin' like that."
"My mama would've said worse, ma'am. You can take my word on that account."
They stayed for tea and jam on cornbread. Mrs. Montgomery insisted, because feeding people covered her primary response to every emotion. They talked about the fair, about the stall, and about the woman who'd ordered four scarves for her daughters.
The visit ended at the door with hugs that lasted too long, promises to come back soon, and the old woman standing in her doorway watching them walk down the trail until the pines swallowed them whole.
Sarah walked beside Evelyn in silence for about a hundred yards. Then she bumped her shoulder again.
"You're leavin' tomorrow, you said?"
"I said."
"Seems a shame. Seems a right considerable shame, if you're askin' me."
"I ain't askin' you."
"I know it. But I'm tellin' you all the same." Sarah squeezed her arm once, then let go. "Whatever you decide, Evelyn, you got a home here. This place made room for you. It ain't gonna unmake that room just because you go."
Evelyn walked the rest of the trail in silence, the carved horse in one pocket, the blue silk ribbon in the other, and Mrs. Montgomery's tears still damp on her shoulder.
Sarah's words were now sitting on her chest alongside everything else she'd collected in two weeks of Montana living.
She'd have to figure out how to carry it all back to Springfield on a train that left at seven in the morning.
If she got on the train.
She didn't finish the thought.