One word.
No hesitation.
Amos blinked.
Elias continued.
“I expected her.”
The street remained quiet.
“I knew her age.”
“I knew she had been married.”
“I knew she weighed near six hundred forty pounds when she wrote the letter.”
Emma felt every eye return to her.
This time she did not shrink.
Elias’s voice became colder.
“I knew she kept accounts.”
“I knew she could mend tack.”
“I knew she hates fennel.”
Emma stared.
She had forgotten writing that.
“I knew she once broke a chair at a church supper and spent ten years thinking it was her fault instead of the carpenter’s.”
Emma’s breath caught.
She had written that too.
In the second page.
A foolish story.
Something she regretted the moment she mailed it.
Elias looked toward her.
“And I knew the only sentence in her letter she apologized for was the sentence describing her body.”
His jaw tightened.
“I didn’t write for a wife so Mercy Bend could decide whether she was shaped correctly.”
Nobody laughed now.
Emma could not look away from him.
Amos muttered, “You haven’t even had her one day.”
Emma’s whole body went rigid.
Elias’s voice became lethal.
“She is not something a man has.”
Amos looked away first.
Elias turned toward Emma.
“You still want to leave?”
The question surprised her.
He was not saying stay.
Not yet.
Emma looked toward the west end of town.
The next stage stop was fifteen miles.
She had twenty-six dollars.
A trunk at the depot.
No home to return to in Topeka unless she rented a room.
And beside her stood a man who had just defended her before a town without once asking her to be grateful.
That alone was not enough to marry him.
But maybe it was enough not to walk fifteen miles in the Kansas heat.
“I want somewhere to sit.”
Elias nodded.
“Mrs. Mercer runs the boardinghouse.”
Abigail called from across the street.
“And I have chairs built by a man who knew wood from kindling.”
Several people laughed.
Not at Emma.
With the tension.
Abigail looked at her.
“You can have the downstairs room.”
Emma nodded.
“Thank you.”
Elias reached toward her traveling bag.
Then stopped before touching it.
“May I?”
She handed it to him.
He did not pretend it was light.
He simply took it.
Emma almost smiled.
They crossed the street together.
Nobody called after her.
Not this time.
The boardinghouse smelled of bread, coffee, and lemon oil.
Abigail led Emma into a downstairs room with a wide iron bed, two sturdy chairs, and a washstand.
“I had a brother your size,” Abigail said matter-of-factly.
Emma froze.
Abigail noticed.
“That was not an invitation for embarrassment.”
“I didn’t—”
“My brother Silas weighed five hundred and twelve pounds when he died at sixty-three.”
“He also cheated at cards, sang terribly, and could repair any clock in Kansas.”
Abigail put clean towels on the bed.
“His size was one thing about him.”
“Not the plot.”
Emma stared at her.
Then smiled despite herself.
“Thank you.”
Abigail nodded.
“For the room?”
“For speaking plainly.”
“That becomes easier when you get old enough that people stop expecting charm.”
Emma laughed.
It felt strange after the street.
Almost disloyal to her own humiliation.
But good.
Abigail moved toward the door.
“Elias is waiting on the porch.”
Emma looked up.
“For what?”
“You.”
“He can go home.”
“I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Then he’d wait until you told him.”