He said, “Really.” He sat down on the porch swing beside her, at a little distance from her. He said, “Is that a fact.” Then he said, “This is not at all how I thought this day would end.”
She had not looked at his face yet. She was watching the wind move the trees. It was a soft evening wind, and the trees were darkening, filling with shadows. It would be time to stop working, not soon but sometime. A wind like that used to mean the day isn’t endless, sometime there’ll be supper and talk and sleep. So many things they knew together and never spoke about at all.
He said, “So, then, you’ve decided to stay.”
“I never did plan on leaving.” For a town it wasn’t such a bad place. The trees were big enough that it was almost like living in the woods. There was no reason not to make another garden. She could plant some flowers.
After a minute he said, “When you go off like that, you might leave a note. I don’t always know what to think. You left your wedding ring.”
“I just forget to put it on sometimes.”
“Yes. I guess I knew that.”
“I’m always wearing that locket you give me.”
It seemed strange to her to wear a ring. It was a gold ring. She might harm it in some way. It might slip off her finger and be lost.
“Lila,” he said, “I’m glad to know you aren’t planning to leave. But if you ever change your mind, I want you to leave by daylight. I want you to have a train ticket in your hand that will take you right where you want to go, and I want you to take your ring and anything else I have given you. You might want to sell it. That would be all right. It’s yours, not mine. It doesn’t belong here — I mean it wouldn’t—” He cleared his throat. “You’re my wife,” he said. “I want to take care of you, even if that means someday seeing you to the train.” He leaned forward and looked into her face, almost sternly, so she would know he meant what he said.
She thought, We would be safe here. He would be good to a child. But if he was going to put her on the train, where would the child be then? Would he expect her to leave it behind when she left? Or did he think there wasn’t going to be any child? Well, sometimes you expect you’re going to have a baby, then nothing comes of it. You can’t set your heart on it.
“I can’t yet know for sure,” she said. “Whether there’s going to be a baby.”
“I understand that.”
“You might think it’s a story I made up to smooth things over. If it don’t turn out to be true.” She didn’t want to have to worry about what he might think if a day came when he stopped trusting her. When that day came. She was sure it would.
He said, very gently, “I would never suspect you of such a thing,” as if a lie like that would be too low for her even to think about.
She thought, If it was a lie, and if it had come to mind, I just might have told it. It surely did smooth things over. She said, “I ain’t what you seem to think I am. I done some things in my life. Like I told you.” The time would come when he would understand that, too. Better that he shouldn’t be too surprised. She knew he wouldn’t ask for more particulars, not now.
He was quiet, and then he said, “You are the only person in this world I want to have sitting here beside me. That isn’t what I think, it’s what I know. I guess it doesn’t explain anything. Have you had supper?”
“Some bread and jam.”
He patted her knee. “I wouldn’t call that supper. We have to take care of you.” The kitchen was empty, so he went to the neighbors and came back with a bottle of milk and a can of baked beans. He laughed. “We’ll do better tomorrow.” She knew about that other wife and that other baby. If she had given herself some time to think, she’d have realized they would be on his mind.
* * *
She was there in Gilead in the first place because once when she was walking along the road, probably hoping to get to Sioux City, tired of walking, tired of carrying her suitcase and her bedroll, she had noticed a little house sitting a way off by a cluster of cottonwood trees, a sort of cabin someone had built and abandoned along with the fields around it. So she thought she’d take a look. Then she knew for sure it was abandoned because people had camped there and left clutter behind, and broken up the stoop for firewood, and no one had ever fixed any of it or cleared it away. The people who left the mess might come back and tell her it was their place — just look at the beer cans and the snoose tins, who you think put them there? She had seen that happen before. You seen them spent cartridges out by the trees? You think it
