If I Can Feed You, Let Me Stay, The Pregnant Woman Said—The Rancher Looked at Her Before He Spoke

Chapter 8

Spring came back to the orchard slowly. First in the ground softening under the morning frost. Then in the color at the ends of the branches — green so pale it almost looked imagined, until suddenly it was everywhere. Then one morning the bees came back to the near trees, and the sound of them drifted through the open kitchen window while Nora stood with the baby against her shoulder and listened without moving.

The baby was six weeks old. She had been small at the start. She was still small now, but steadier. She slept longer between feedings. Her hands uncurled sometimes in her sleep. When she was awake, she watched everything with serious dark eyes — the stove, the shelves, the movement of hands across the kitchen.

She slept in the wooden box near the stove at night. During the day, she rode against her mother’s chest in a length of cloth tied across her back and shoulders, while bread rose and fruit simmered and floors were swept. Sometimes she slept there too, her cheek turned against the worn fabric of Nora’s dress.

The orchard was producing again. The buyers had returned earlier than usual that spring. Contracts were signed before the thaw had fully left the ground. Men who had not stopped at the Hargrove orchard in nearly a year rode through the valley again, and they lingered over the jars in the storage room and asked about the woman with the steady hands who had written the labels.

One morning, Nora found a folded paper in the kitchen drawer while looking for twine. Planting notes — his mother’s handwriting, ink faded but certain. What to place in the east row. Which soil held water longer after rain. Which trees always bloomed early. Evelyn Hargrove had written them years ago, in a hand that expected to be there to use them again.

Nora left the paper beside his coffee cup without mentioning it.

From the kitchen window, she watched him stand in the yard, reading it in the cold morning light. He read it for a long time. Then he folded it carefully and put it into his coat pocket. That afternoon, he planted the east row.

Fletcher came three days a week now instead of two. Nobody discussed the change. He simply began arriving on Thursdays as well, and Nora started setting a third plate on the table without asking if he would stay to eat. That was how things became settled there — quietly, without announcement, the way the seasons settled. Sometimes during supper, Fletcher would mention a broken fence near the creek or whether the deer were moving at dusk. Declan would answer. Nora would pass the bread.

The baby watched all of them from her blanket near the stove. One morning, Fletcher stopped beside the wooden box before going out to the orchard. The baby blinked up at him solemnly. Fletcher studied her for a moment.

“Got good eyes,” he said. Then he pulled on his gloves and went outside.

Vane came one last time when the first blossoms opened.

Declan saw him from the far trees and was already at the gate by the time the horse reached the road. Vane did not bring papers this time. He sat on the horse, looking past the gate toward the orchard, toward the smoke rising from the chimney, toward the open storage shed where empty shelves waited for the next season, toward the house.

Declan said nothing. Neither did Vane.

After a while, Vane gathered the reins and turned the horse back toward town.

Declan stood at the gate until the sound of the hooves disappeared. Then he went back to work.

Nora heard the horse leave. From the kitchen window, she watched Declan crossing back through the orchard between the rows of trees, his head down, his hands in his pockets. She stood there for a moment with the dish towel still in her hands.

Then she went to her room.

The bag was on the top shelf of the wardrobe, where she had put it the night the debt was settled. She lifted it down, carried it to the bed, and set it on the mattress. For a long moment, she only looked at it.

Then she opened it.

The baby clothes came out first — the small shirt she had sewn by lamplight at a boarding house in a town she no longer thought of as hers, the blankets, the tiny socks. She carried them to the drawer across the room and placed them inside one piece at a time, smoothing each thing flat before reaching for the next. When she closed the drawer, the sound seemed louder than it should have.

She went back to the bed. Her dresses came next. She hung them on the hooks beside the door — where his coat already hung. For a moment, her hand rested against the fabric of one sleeve before she let it go.

She placed the small photograph of her mother on the shelf beside the window, where the afternoon light reached it. She set her grandmother’s Bible on the bedside table.

Then there was nothing left in the bag.

She looked down into it. Empty. The first empty thing she had owned in a very long time. Slowly she folded the bag flat, opened the wardrobe, and placed it on the top shelf behind the spare blanket. Not beside the door. Not beside the bed. Away.

She closed the wardrobe door. Then she stood very still in the middle of the room — the dresses beside his coat, the drawer closed, the photograph in the light.

She had spent months telling herself she would leave before she became foolish enough to believe she belonged anywhere again. But the bag was in the wardrobe now, and she had put it there herself.

She did not hear him come to the doorway. When she turned, he was standing there with one hand against the frame. His eyes moved once across the room — the hooks beside the door, the photograph, the closed drawer, the wardrobe. Then he looked at her.

She felt suddenly as though he had seen something private she had not meant to show anyone.

“I was only putting things away,” she said.

He looked at the dresses beside his coat. At the photograph on the shelf. At the closed drawer. Then he looked at her again, and there was something in his face she had never seen there before — something that had been waiting a long time to be allowed out.

“Should I clear more space?” he said.

She looked at him standing in the doorway of a room that had been empty for eight months. Outside, the orchard had started to bloom. The baby was asleep in the kitchen. The stove crackled softly through the wall between them.

“Yes,” she said. “Please.”

And this time, neither of them looked away.

Outside the window, the blossom-heavy branches moved in the wind, white petals drifting down onto the newly green ground — and somewhere in the house, a door that had been closed for a very long time stood open, letting in all the light of spring.

The End