“I better get her home, Dennis. Don’t want to stay past staying time.”
“I suppose it is after staying time, isn’t it? Whatever time that is. Not that it’s a bother. The two of you can come in for a warm-up whenever you like.”
I stood, my head heavy, the taste of milk on my tongue. Carl carried the cups to the sink, the fit of his coat tight across his shoulders, and the pale hair at the back of his neck clean and soft — like it had always been.
“Remember your bag here, miss,” Dennis said. Carl picked it up himself.
In the cold, I pulled my scarf to my chin. Carl carried my bag over his shoulder. With a smile, he tugged at the sleeve of my coat. “A good friend,” he said. “Since the war, at least.”
“I never knew him. Not really.”
“You’ve grown up here same as me.”
“But I’m different.”
“What’s so different?” He opened his hand between us, as if together we might find an answer in his empty palm. I felt the warmth of that room still, and the words of a stranger easy in my presence. Not for years had I heard so many words at once from a person outside my own family, none that were kind. Now because of Carl, I had. There had always been a lightness to this man, no matter that pinned sleeve, as if nothing in the past mattered and never truly would. He stared down at his feet, the wind pulling at the hems of his coat. “You’ll be needing a ride then, won’t you?”
I kicked the toe of his boot.
The way home was slow and clear. We rode together in his wagon, not a word more. It felt fine sitting there on the steerage, the wagon rocking, and the wool of Carl’s trousers against my hip. The turn of our road appeared up ahead. Carl led the horses easily and I leaned into him around the bend. Soon the road straightened. Little changed, I thought, leaning away again. The lane stretched through the fields. The trees and hillocks were the same, every hill of grass so clearly set in my mind, every fence — and the sound of the river against the rocks, though we were some distance from the house. How could I ever imagine anything different?
“You can leave me here,” I said.
“Here?”
“Please.”
He stopped the horses short and I stepped out. The slope of our roof rose dully ahead, a run of smoke from the chimney. “I had been hoping to see you, Nan,” Carl called after me.
I turned.
“I’d been hoping for a while,” he said.
“So why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d changed your mind. About what I’d asked.”
“Mother died.”
“I know it.”
“I had to stay home for the girls.”
He sighed. “And do you have to stay home now?”
“Now?” My eyes teared. “I haven’t been much good, have I? My sisters must have hated me to do what they did.”
“You don’t know what they did, do you?”
I couldn’t answer that. Carl looked over the fields. There wasn’t anything to see on the horizon, not anything that might be called living, and the sound of the river was a maddening thing.
“If I made another visit to you,” he asked, “would that be all right?”
“I don’t think. ”
He snapped the reins.
“Yes,” I answered. “Yes, it would.”
He smiled and tipped his hat. “All right.” I waited until he was well out of sight, listening as the break of his wheels faded. At the bank, I watched the water and its muddy track. What trees there were had fallen, stripped of their bark. The ground underfoot was spongy and soft. The river cut the land in two, on one side our neighbors’ acres and on the other our own, stretching so far at either end I had never found its source. A run of blackened leaves and twigs clung to the surface. They would drown soon enough. The keys were still in my pocket. When I fished them out, they glinted in my palm. With a shout, I threw them into the river, where I hoped the water would take them, as it did everything else.
III
It snowed. At first only a fine powder, but by the beginning of December, we had two feet or more. The animals stayed in their stalls. At the troughs, the cows kept their heads to their chests. We should have known from the coats on our horses that winter would be a trial, how the ears hung from the corn even before harvest. Now the air had turned to ice. Our layers offered little to protect us. Soon the snow grew high as the windowsills. Farther off in the fields, the fence posts jutted from the drifts, the only sign of our summer work. We tied a rope from the front porch to our outbuildings in case of storm.
We had known difficult winters in years past. During the war, we couldn’t say they weren’t a relief. The road to town became no more than a track, our sleigh old, kept only for sickness or accidents, and the wagon near to worthless. We planned our food stores well enough to carry us for months. Otherwise, we stayed to ourselves, eager to imagine that the town and our neighbors had forgotten us. With the few hours of daylight, there were only the animals to look after and the work in the barn.
But now with Esther and Myrle gone, I let myself sleep late in the mornings and did my mending by the fire in the dark afternoons, Agnes and Patricia at my side. The parlor smelled of wool, the walls seeming to thicken. When the wind was up, we felt ourselves drifting. Two girls, I imagined, their dresses no match for such weather, their judgment even the worse. If not for some terrible company, they surely couldn’t make it through the winter alone.
“Nan, you’re doing it again.” Agnes sat in the corner with her book. “Stop picking.” I looked down at my fingers — the small bloody tears — and took up my stitching again.
“Those poor girls,” Patricia said. “What would their mother think?”
“You didn’t know our mother,” Agnes said.
“I heard about her plenty from Ray. Never seen a man so miss his mother.”
Agnes gave me a look. I shook my head to keep her quiet.
“Except that Carl McNulty,” Patricia went on. “The way his mother went, while he was over there fighting. Fancy seeing him again. So changed.”
“Patricia, can you please hush?” Agnes asked.
“He brought me home,” I said.
Patricia caught her breath. “When?”
“Just the other week.”
Agnes stared. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t think it worth telling.”
“My, my, isn’t life strange.” Patricia shifted in her chair, and the clock on the mantel skipped ahead. Agnes went back to her book, the skin of her throat flushed. Patricia hummed to herself. “That boy, out there all alone on his place. I sure do think he loved you, Nan. But I suppose a woman’s feelings change.”
My thread caught. “They didn’t change. Carl left for the war and I stayed where I was needed.”
“I suppose,” Patricia said.
Agnes rifled through her pages. Now and again I caught her stare, but I dropped my head.
“When I met Ray,” Patricia went on. “I thought I’d never seen a boy so handsome. Right out of the magazines. I’m sure I never told you.”
“Yes, you did,” Agnes said.
“A lonely boy. So much expected of him. He explained how your father counted on him and him alone. Of course, that’s why he never could marry, he said. Until your poor mother. ” She clicked her tongue. “Then it was a different story, wasn’t it? She was always one of my favorites, your mother. A terrible time.”
Agnes sighed. “How terrible was it, Patricia?”
“Oh, that war. If only she could have lasted until it was over.” She shook her head. “I’m just saying when a boy loses his mother, he needs a woman by him. Boys like that, they’re no good at doing for themselves. With Ray, I had to wait him out. Maybe if you gave your Carl another chance.”