“Free.”
“That explains why you bought it.”
“I did not buy it.”
He looked inside.
“Mostly dust.”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing with it?”
“Feeding the chickens.”
“You told Broome—”
“I told him he wouldn’t want it.”
Caleb stared.
Then grinned.
“You’re cruel.”
“I’m efficient.”
The market continued around them.
A horse squealed.
Children ran between carts.
Someone argued over the price of molasses.
Caleb tied the grain sack securely.
“You heading home now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk.”
“You have your own mule.”
“He knows the way.”
Clara looked toward a gray mule tied beneath a maple.
“He also bites.”
“Only people he dislikes.”
“He bit Reverend Hale.”
“Exactly.”
She laughed.
That was Caleb’s talent.
He could pull laughter out of her before she noticed he was trying.
They left Laurel Ridge together.
Clara’s cabin sat two miles south where the valley narrowed beside a creek.
Her late husband had built the place.
Benjamin Bennett had been dead five years.
Pneumonia.
Fast.
Four days from first cough to burial.
Clara had been twenty-four when she married him and twenty-eight when she buried him.
They had not had children.
That absence had hurt more after his death because there was no one left in the house who carried his eyes or his manner of whistling while cutting wood.
Five years later, Clara could think of Benjamin with tenderness instead of collapse.
But grief had changed the shape of her life.
She no longer believed marriage guaranteed safety.
Benjamin had been strong.
Young.
Kind.
Dead anyway.
When people hinted she should marry again, Clara smiled and changed the subject.
Caleb never hinted.
Perhaps that was one reason she allowed him close.
He did not stand outside her loneliness trying to force open the door.
He simply sat nearby.
They reached her cabin before sundown.
Caleb helped carry the chickens to a small enclosure beside the barn.
Clara had repaired the old henhouse earlier that week.
He noticed.
“You planned this.”
“I plan most things.”
“How long?”
“Since September.”
“What made you decide?”
“Feed prices dropped.”
“That’s your reason?”
“Part.”
She opened the crate.
The chickens stumbled out.
Caleb watched.
“What’s the other part?”
Clara scattered cracked grain.
The birds pecked weakly.
She said:
“Winter.”
He looked toward the ridge.
The sky was clear.
Maples burned orange and red.
“Everybody knows winter comes.”
“Knowing something comes and preparing for it are not the same.”
Caleb became serious.
“You expecting bad?”
Clara looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The squirrels.”
He waited.
“Meaning?”
“They buried early.”
“Could mean nothing.”
“The geese left ten days before usual.”