'Well, I don't know,' she began lamely. 'I can't stay here anymore,' he said, his sunken eyes avoiding her swollen ones. 'It wouldn't do. I've had several offers to stay with neighbors. I can take my pick, so I guess I'll take Dvorak up on it. They're about the closest ones I'd want to stay with.'
She hadn't thought she had much left in her for tears, but she was wrong. There were enough left to wet her eyes again, and they stung her swollen lids, already raw. 'Oh, Aaron, isn't it bad enough without you going, too?' 'I've got to go. You know that.'
She nodded dumbly but said, 'Sure, you've got to go again. I've got to push you out of your own house again. Why should you be the one who has to go?'
He leaned an elbow on the table, shutting his eyes and squeezing the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. 'Mary, let's make sense. You aren't making this too easy for me, okay?'
She squared her shoulders and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. 'Aunt Mabel told me I could go to her place. Why don't I go there?' she suggested as he released his squeezing fingers and faced her again. 'Now listen, that doesn't make any sense at all. They pack a baker's dozen into that house and this one should stand empty while you go to their place? It makes more sense for me to go.' 'But I…' 'Hey…I want you and Sarah here. You need the house worse than me. I mean, I won't see you crowded in where you're not needed.' 'If I say I'll stay here, then what?'
'Well, I'll write and say I'm not coming to that job I planned to take.' She was relieved that at least he wouldn't be pushed that far. 'I can come and work the place here days and sleep at Dvorak's nights.' 'You'd do that, Aaron? You'd keep the place going when it's not…' But she couldn't say it wasn't his. '…not mine?' he finished for her. 'The crops are more than half in. Who's going to take care of them if I don't?'
She just shrugged dismally. 'I didn't mean that like it sounded,' he consoled, seeing the shrug. 'I don't know anything but this farm, and anyway, I really didn't want to go to Douglas County to work. You knew that, didn't you?'
She looked at her lap and nodded, then, smoothing her skirt repeatedly over her knees said, 'I appreciate it, Aaron. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen here.' But then she became upset and waved a flat palm at the kitchen around them. 'Oh, it's all so mixed up. The land and the house-just everything.' 'It usually is when somebody dies,' he said, looking at her squarely. 'But we'll take it a day at a time, and for now I'll go to Dvorak's and see if I can't get the rest of the crops in and a new roof on the chicken coop. Okay?'
But she was silent. 'Mary?' he asked. 'Who gets the profits?' she challenged. 'The land is yours, Mary,' he said. 'The house is yours,' she said stubbornly, 'and so is the chicken coop, for that matter, the one with my hens in it. I'm not taking everything free, and I mean it.' 'Okay,' he agreed, 'okay. We can work that out later. There won't be any profits till fall, and by that time some decisions will be made. But for now I go, and that's final.' 'Okay. So you go for the time being, but if you handle the crops, you handle the money. What do I know about the price of seeds and…well, everything? Jonathan took care of all that. The land is worthless to me since I don't know how to run it.' 'It's not worthless. You can sell it.'
He was serious, and it nearly made her laugh. 'Sell it?' she asked, stupefied. 'Do you think I'd sell the farm right out from under you?' 'Well, it's yours,' he said, 'or it will be as soon as it's probated. Maybe then I could buy it…' But that sounded too ridiculous even to his own ears, and he finished, '…or something.' 'Aaron, can't we just keep on like we were for a while till I know what to do? I mean, do what you want, run the farm however you want, and keep what you need of the money or whatever. It'd be kind of like payment for me and Sarah living in the house.'
A muscle twitched in his jaw. 'I don't need payment for you and Sarah living in my house,' he said. 'Well, how're you supposed to live…on what?'
She had him there. 'People are so damn nosy around here. We just have to do our best to keep them from talk ing till we settle the…estate.' The word was so forbidding. 'Aaron, I can't think about this any more tonight. I'm just too…can't we decide tomorrow?'
She looked whipped now, and of all the times he'd had to turn away from her, tonight would be the hardest. 'Mary, you don't seem to understand. I can't stay here tonight. With Aunt Mabel gone, I'll have to go to Dvorak's tonight. That's what I came up to tell you.' 'Tonight?' She swallowed. It was so quiet in the kitchen. He nodded silently. 'Will…will you wait till after supper?' she asked. He sighed and leaned back on his chair, running a hand through his hair. 'I've got to get some clothes together to take with me. You can get supper while I do that, okay?'
She agreed by nodding again, and the force of old habit made her want to please, so she asked, 'What would you like? There's all kinds of stuff people brought. There's ham and hot dishes and…' But she stopped, the question sound- ing so silly now. 'Anything,' he said gently. 'I'm not too hungry, Mary.' And she knew he'd probably rather not be faced with food at all, that he was doing it because she'd be lonely when he went.
She fixed some food while he went upstairs, and his foot- steps sounded menacing above her, only because she knew they soon wouldn't be there anymore. The sound of his heels back and forth on his bedroom floor marked off the minutes that were flying too fast, and soon he came back down, gathered a few items from underneath the sink, his comb from the comb holder on the wall.
She struggled with tears all through supper and finally said in a shaky voice, 'Aaron, you come home for your meals. There's no sense in putting the Dvoraks out any more than necessary.' 'I…' He wanted to say he'd eat only noon dinner with her, but she looked so forlorn, was having such a hard time keeping the tears in check. 'Please, Aaron,' she begged, 'what will I do here alone?' 'Okay,' he agreed, and she seemed to deflate, releasing the breath she'd held while waiting for his answer.
He was all finished eating, and she asked over-anxiously, 'Why don't you have a piece of marble cake? Agnes brought it.'
He just shook his head no, but she got up anyway to get it from the pantry. He stopped her with a hand on her arm. 'Tomorrow will be easier. It's just this first night alone, but don't worry.' He got up and went over to the door and said, 'I'll put this key up above the outside sill, and you lock up from the inside with this one. But you don't have to be scared of anything here, Mary.'
It wasn't fear she dreaded, just loneliness-so much more final than when they'd gone off to Dakota and left her alone.
He gathered up his things from the seat of the extra kitchen chair, and she said, 'Wait, I'll put them in something for you,' and went to get brown paper to wrap them in. But then she couldn't think of any more excuses to keep him there. 'I gotta go now, Mary girl, okay?' he asked at the door, and his lips were quivering. 'Hey, it's okay,' he added, as much for himself as for her. 'Now lock the door, and I'll see you in the morning.'
She breathed only half-breaths, fearing that if she relaxed any more than that, her whole chest would collapse and she'd burst into tears again.
He squeezed her forearm, then turned at a run and was gone down to the lean-to to saddle the mare. When he gal- loped out she was in the doorway, and he raised a hand but never slowed. She watched the road long after she knew she wouldn't see him on it again. Then she went into Aaron's house, where everything reminded her of Jonathan. She went over to the comb holder and stared at his comb, then walked to the living room where his coffin had been, but the furniture was all back in its usual order. Just when she thought she'd surely break, Sarah started crying upstairs and she ran up gratefully to her.
But later, lighting the lantern, she couldn't make herself go up to the bedroom, hers and Jonathan's. She sat holding Sarah long after the baby should have been put in her cradle. Finally, when her head lolled where she sat, she gave up and went upstairs, but at the door of the first bedroom she found she couldn't go in. Taking Sarah, she hurried on down the hall to Aaron's room and climbed into his bed, putting Sarah beside her for the night.
Just for tonight, she thought, just till I get used to the quiet. Aaron's pillow smelled of bay rum, but she lay stiff and lonely on it, thinking of the empty room down the hall.
There were too many things to confront: the cold, quiet stove in the mornings that Jonathan had always had hot and snapping when she came down. The silence, when the house used to ring with stove lids. His clean, folded clothes in the dresser drawers beside hers and, worse, his few dirty ones she found the first time she did the laundry. His old jacket on the hook behind the door. The coffee grinder he'd fixed after she dropped it. She never used it now. His chair stared at her across the table.
