Part 5
Silas’s hands tightened around the reins. One horse felt it and tossed its head; he eased his grip at once.
“Then I’ll do it properly,” he said. “When I can put the words in order.”
“You needn’t hurry.” Lydia settled beside him. “Though I’ve been hoping since June.”
He looked at her then, and she laughed at the astonishment on his face.
The question came in November, with snow blowing against the cabin door.
Lydia heard his horse earlier than usual. When she opened the door, Silas stood on the step, still wearing his hat. He opened his mouth, shut it, and looked down as though the missing speech might be somewhere near his boots.
Eli appeared behind her.
“Are you sick, Mr. Mercer?”
“No. I had this prepared.”
“What?”
“A speech for your mother.”
Silas pulled off his hat. Snow spilled onto his boot, and for a moment all three of them watched it fall.
Then he looked at Lydia.
“I’m thirty-nine. I’ve built a house with ten rooms and found ways to avoid eight of them. Since May, I’ve spent most of my time wishing Thursday would come.”
Her hand rose to her mouth.
“You’ve never needed me to save you. I know that. I’m asking for a place beside you.” He swallowed. “Lydia, will you be my wife?”
Before she could answer, he turned toward Eli.
“Your mother knew I meant to ask. But this concerns you, too. If you have something to say, I want to hear it.”
The boy examined him with the seriousness he brought to anything involving Mallow.
“Would she have to stay here?”
Silas glanced toward the barn.
“Mallow,” Eli explained. “Could she come?”
Silas knelt on the snowy step.
“I’m asking all three of you, son.”
Eli flung himself into his arms. Silas caught him, one broad hand settling carefully against the back of his head.
Lydia went down beside them, heedless of the snow soaking her skirt. She touched Eli’s back, then Silas’s cheek.
“Yes,” she said. “All three.”
They married in December at the little church in Valdren. Amos’s wife had added white lace to Lydia’s blue dress. Eli, in a new suit, held the rings inside a clean handkerchief and checked them so often that Lydia finally whispered that they were unlikely to escape.
Fourteen ranch hands occupied three pews, their hair wet-combed and their shirts buttoned to the throat. During the vows, someone behind Silas drew a loud, suspicious breath.
“Amos?” he whispered without turning.
“Dry air,” came the reply.
At the back sat Everett Dace in a black coat. Lydia had paid him nine dollars on December first and received a receipt in a cramped, severe hand. She had not invited him. When their eyes met as she walked down the aisle, he rose with the others and gave her a small nod.
Outside, Eli had decorated Mallow with evergreen boughs. She stood near the hitching rail, enduring the ceremony’s aftermath with a mouthful of hay.
“Most important guest,” Eli announced.
Silas stroked her forehead. “We wouldn’t be standing here without her.”
Lydia took his arm.
“He asked whether she could ride to church in your wagon.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d consider it.”
“And?”
“By then he’d already arranged matters.”
Silas looked toward the wagon, where Eli was showing a ranch hand exactly how Mallow had boarded. “He has his mother’s business sense.”
Lydia’s first walk through the big house was harder than the wedding.
Her steps sounded too loud. There were doors she did not know whether to open, windows with more glass than the cabin possessed altogether, and space enough for her few belongings to look lost.
Silas stayed beside her. He did not hurry her from room to room.
“Eli might like this one,” he said, opening a door with a view of the barn. “You could sew here. The light’s good in the afternoon.”
She ran her fingers along a windowsill. Outside, Eli was crossing the yard with Amos, both of them discussing something with great concentration.
At the last small room, Silas’s voice grew careful.
“This might serve as a nursery.”
Lydia turned.
“Only if that’s what you’d want,” he added.
She walked inside. Someone had left a folded quilt on the sill. She smoothed one corner, then went back to take his hand.
The room remained empty through the winter and the spring.
Meanwhile, she insisted that the farm remain in her own name. Silas asked for no change. The Pell family moved into the cabin and tended the dairy cattle for wages under an agreement made in two copies.
Lydia took on new buyers in town. She saved for stonework, timber, and cooling shelves, putting each extra dollar back into the herd. Near the ranch creek, a proper springhouse began to rise, paid for from her earnings. She visited the work with her ledger tucked under her arm, checking each bill before it was settled.
Late the following summer, she stopped Silas outside the little unused room.
He had been talking about a loose shutter. Lydia waited until he noticed her silence, then took his hand and held it against her middle.
He looked at her, at the folded quilt, and back at her again.
“Lydia?”
She nodded.
He lowered himself to the floor before his knees could choose another direction.
Lydia sat beside him, her skirt spreading over his boots. For a while, he held her hand against his lips and said nothing at all…
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