Another silence.
Five-year-old Eli whispered, “A chicken?”
Peter elbowed him.
Lena nodded seriously.
“A chicken is respectable.”
Reid turned his head quickly.
But not before she caught the beginning of a smile.
Thomas noticed too.
His expression became harder.
He stepped aside from the doorway.
“Six days would still beat the housekeeper.”
Lena picked up her suitcase.
“Then I only need six to surprise you.”
She walked past him.
The house smelled like cold ashes, leather, damp wool, and boys.
Mostly boys.
Boots sat in every direction.
A broken saddle strap lay across one chair.
Two shirts hung from a nail beside the kitchen rather than wherever shirts were supposed to belong.
A stack of school slates leaned against a wall.
Somebody had left a half-carved whistle on the mantel.
The main room was large but neglected.
Not dirty exactly.
Tired.
The kind of tired that happened when a household kept functioning after the person who had once made it feel alive was gone.
Lena had known grief houses before.
Her older sister died when Lena was nineteen.
For nearly a year afterward, their mother kept setting out five dinner plates for a family of four.
Nobody spoke about it.
Everyone noticed.
Reid carried Lena’s trunk inside.
“You can have the bedroom at the back.”
She looked toward him.
“And you?”
“The small room off the barn.”
She frowned.
“You’re sleeping in the barn?”
“There’s a finished room.”
“Is it heated?”
He hesitated.
“That depends what you call heated.”
Lena put both hands on her hips.
“We are getting married tomorrow.”
“If you still intend to.”
“I traveled six hundred miles.”
“That is not the same thing as intending to stay.”
There it was.
The fear under all his careful letters.
Lena studied him.
His wife had died.
Housekeepers had left.
Neighbors had probably advised him that seven sons were too many for any sensible woman.
And now a stranger stood in his kitchen with a suitcase and promises.
She understood why he had not assumed permanence.
“I’m still here,” she said.
Reid nodded once.
“That you are.”