December 15, 1871
I locked the little room before breakfast.
The key scraped twice before it caught. I had to lift the door by its handle, as I have done since summer, and this ordinary difficulty steadied me. Whatever had settled into the pillow yesterday had not troubled itself to mend the hinge.
I put the key in my pocket. I did not go in.
By afternoon I had changed into the burgundy dress and fastened my brooch high at the throat. Ma said I might save my good things until there was somebody to see them. I told her the front windows faced the road.
She had no answer worth waiting for.
A man stopped for coffee while the light was still on the bare orchard. He had a torn glove and a sound horse. There was mud above the hem of his coat, but his watch came out bright when he checked the time.
I gave him the cup without a crack.
He asked how far to the creek crossing. His brother had a place beyond it, he said, and had promised to look for him if he failed to arrive by supper.
“Then you must be expected.”
“Expected and scolded, likely.”
I smiled as though I knew the comfort of that.
He told me more than I had asked. His brother kept two dogs. The older one would know his horse. He had written ahead, and there would be a pie if his sister-in-law had remembered what he liked.
I poured a little more coffee. There was no profit in hurrying a man who was explaining exactly how he would be missed.
Pa came to the kitchen doorway. He looked at the watch chain before he looked at me.
The traveler rubbed his knee and asked whether we had a bed, if the road proved worse than he hoped.
“Spoken for,” I said.
Pa remained in the doorway.
I told the man the going would be easier before dark, and offered to wrap a heel of bread for him. He called me thoughtful. I let him carry that away with the bread.
From the porch I watched him find his stirrup. He turned once to lift his hat. I raised my hand, keeping the cuff down over the linen at my wrist.
Pa wanted to know who had taken our room.
“His brother would have come looking.”
“He had money.”
“And somebody to count it after him.”
Pa rubbed his thumb along the doorpost. I could see him considering whether the foolishness was mine or his. I left him to it.
I would have kept the traveler if no one had been waiting. There is no use putting a prettier reason here. I liked his watch, and I liked how readily he believed a woman who handed him bread.
But when I said the room was spoken for, I had glanced at the ceiling. That troubled me more than Pa's temper.
At dusk I took a candle upstairs. The passage smelled of tallow and the lavender I had shaken from the linen. At the last door I set the candlestick on the narrow shelf and took out the key.
I meant to open it. To strip the bed, if necessary, and bring every scrap of linen down to the fire. I had begun to dislike the care with which I passed that door.
The iron lay across my palm.
Before I could put it in the lock, I heard a key turn on the other side.