The railroad station was depressing under the Sunday sun. The horses were standing in the brightness, but under the roof of the waiting platform it was chilly. Mary sat on a bench and shivered while she watched the mare flick her tail at some unseen pest. Aaron had saddled the mare and followed Mary and Jonathan to church. The horse now stood tied behind the team and buggy.
The sandwiches she had packed for Jonathan were on Mary's lap. He was inside, buying his ticket. Aaron paced back and forth across the north end of the platform, his shoes making dull echoes on the hollow wood floor. Every now and then he'd stop and glance northward up the tracks for the train, his thumbs caught up in his waistcoat pockets.
There was nobody else waiting to board the train, so the place was dully still. The screen door squeaked into the stillness as Jonathan came out of the building. Mary remained seated against the wall, but Aaron crossed the platform to where Jonathan stood. "I'll leave the mare at Anson's for you, Jona than," Aaron said. "That way you can ride her home anytime you get back in." It was essential that Jonathan know he could come home at any hour and find nothing amiss. "That'll be fine, Aaron. You tell Anson to give her an extra bag of oats in the evenings and I'll pay him good." "Right," Aaron agreed.
Mary heard the train far off, away up the tracks, and she got up and handed the packet of sandwiches to her husband. "You eat these while they're fresh, Jonathan," she said. "I will," he answered. "They'll be gone before we reach Sauk Center." They hovered in a tentative, last-minute void as the train sounds grew louder. "Have a half-cooked beefsteak for us, Jonathan. We'll be expecting to hear all about it when you get home."
Jonathan smiled at that as the train drew nearer. They felt the need to talk, to say the many unsaid things that should have been said during the past week. Instead, the three of them exchanged inanities, ill at ease together, yet dreading the parting.
The engine belched its way past them, and Mary stepped back as near as she could to the wall to protect her dress from the cinders it spit. Aaron shook Jonathan's hand, squeezing hard to assure him, "Don't worry about anything back here." And between the brothers there was a sudden ambiguity to what Aaron had just said. "No, I won't," Jonathan said. Then he turned to Mary where she stood near the benches, and took a halting step toward her. She moved to him and raised her cheek for the kiss he placed lightly on it. They seldom showed affection in daylight, rarely touched this way when others were near. Aaron picked up the black suitcase, turning away from them as they made their farewells. "Good-bye, Jonathan, take care," she said. "You, too."
As the suitcase exchanged hands, the two brothers ex- changed an unspoken good-bye, a glance.
Jonathan boarded the hissing train, and the two on the platform saw him through the windows as he walked toward the rear of the car. They stood there until he disappeared but made no move to follow him along the platform. They waited where they were until the cars began to move forward, then saw him pass before them, waving. They raised waves in return as the train took Jonathan away, out of their sight. "I'll be right back," Aaron said when the last car had clattered away down the track. He went through the squeaky screen door into the depot. In the stillness she could hear him asking the ticket agent what time the trains got in from Minneapolis each day. She couldn't hear the reply distinctly but made out Aaron's thank you before he headed back outside. "Ready?" he asked, then took her arm and turned her to- ward the platform steps. The horses were skittish after the train's commotion. Aaron began to hand her up into the rig but said, "I'd better take their heads. I wouldn't want them to bolt."
She climbed up by herself before he got up beside her, gentling the horses as he flicked the reins, "Ho, there. Easy."
They drove to the hostelry on a side street and had to roust Anson from his Sunday dinner in the adjacent house to make arrangements for boarding the mare. After they'd taken the horse inside, the two men returned to the street, where Mary waited in the rig behind the restive team.
Aaron said, "The horses seem a little jumpy since the train pulled through. Mind if I leave them here for an hour or so, Anson?" "Naw! Don't mind a bit, Aaron. Leave 'em here as long as you want." "Thanks, Anson." But the hostler was already heading back to his interrupted dinner.
Aaron checked the reins, making sure they were tied se- curely to the hitching post before coming around to help Mary down. "I think we'd better let these two settle down a bit," he said, indicating the horses. "It's past noon and I'm hungry." She jumped to the ground at his feet, his hands at her waist. "What do you say to a Sunday dinner cooked by someone else for a change?" He dropped his hands the instant she was safely on the ground. "By who?" she asked, squinting up at him against the noon sun. "Well, how about by Annie Halek?" he suggested. "At the restauraunt?" She seemed surprised. "Oh, Aaron-we shouldn't." But her undisguised delight belied her answer. "Why shouldn't we? We couldn't change that train schedule, could we? Besides, it'll be awfully late by the time we get back home. We'd be mighty hungry by then. And with the horses in such a state, I don't want to drive them till they settle down." "Well, if you say so, Aaron. I'm hungry, too."
They walked the short distance to Main Street and turned the corner toward the cafГ© in the middle of the block. It was dark inside the deep, narrow building after the brightness outside. The light from the front windows was partially ob- scured by potted plants, which decorated that area. He led the way to a high-backed booth near the front and handed her in, then seated himself across from her. The after-church business was ebbing, so there was no wait before a woman in a long cobbler's apron approached their booth. "Howdy, Aaron, Mary," she greeted them. "Hello, Annie. What have you got back there that smells so good?" "I got the best ham dinner in town," bragged Annie Halek with a throaty laugh. "At least that's what I've been telling myself all morning while I cooked it." "That sounds fine. Why don't you bring us two of them. Okay, Mary?" "That sounds good, Annie," Mary agreed. "You folks seein' Jonathan off on the train today?" Annie inquired. "I heard he's got some idea of buyin' himself a big, fancy bull to bring back." "Well, I don't know how big it'll be-it's just a calf he's after-but that's right. He's gone clear down to Minneapolis to see a thoroughbred Black Angus." "Old Man Michalek's kid was in here tellin' us about it the other day."
"News sure travels fast around here," Aaron noted, but Annie must have decided she'd wasted enough time on small talk, for she left abruptly then, saying, "Two ham dinners comin' up!"
When she was gone, Mary said, "After the dance Saturday night, everybody knows all about Jonathan's plans."
But once she said it there was a resurrection of other things Jonathan had planned, other things that had happened at the dance. Their thoughts ran parallel, flashing impressions between them of a yellow dress, a blistered palm, the lingering scent of lavender, the brushing of bodies. They both reached for water glasses across the table, tipped them up in unison, and caught each other in a glance over the glass rims. But that broke the spell, and Aaron knew how ridiculous they must look, acting like adolescents. "What do you suppose Jonathan would think if he knew we'd seen him off on his way to buy beef, then sat down to a dinner of pork?" he wondered aloud. "I suppose he'd be jealous, since he's probably choking down his dry sandwich right now." She pictured Jonathan on the train as they'd last seen him, waving. "Jonathan, jealous? That'll be the day. He's so filled with his own plans that he wouldn't know if he was eating roofing shingles spread with moss." "Oh, that's just his way, Aaron. He's not as hard as he seems." "I've lived with him longer than you have, and I know all about his 'ways,' as you call them,"
Aaron said, "and some of them I don't condone."
Annie approached, bringing bowls of steaming, rich soup to set before them. When she left, Mary put her spoon ab- sently into the broth, studying it as she said, "Some of them I don't condone, either."
Aaron leaned his forearms on the edge of the table, looking at her. "Mary, we're playing cat-and-mouse with each other, and it isn't necessary. Can't we just pretend we're the same Aaron and Mary we always were and forget Jonathan and all the rest?"
She was still toying with her soup, but flicked a glance up at his face, then quickly away again. "It's not easily forgotten."
And it wasn't.
The rest of the meal was eaten in silence, broken only by remarks on the tastiness of Annie's cooking. They truly had lost the old easiness between them.
Finally Aaron asked, "Mary, if we can't make it through a ham dinner together, how will we make it through two or three nights?"
She hadn't expected his candor, and it stopped her cold. Having her mouth full gave Mary time to think of an answer, but there was none. She didn't know how they'd do it. Swallowing the mouthful, eyes wide, she gulped. "I don't know, Aaron."
They sat there looking at each other and wondering togeth- er what the answer was. "Do you want some dessert, Mary?" "No, thank you. I think we'd better leave now."
"Give me a minute to pay for this and I'll be right with you," he said, going to find Annie and pay the bill.
Annie Halek was like the town tap: turn her on and she ran off at the mouth until she either ran dry or was turned off. Aaron worried now that she might have read something into his and Mary's attitudes, something to pass on to other customers. If so, there was little he could do about it. He buttered her up a little, anyway, saying, "That dinner was the best in town, Annie." "Well, now, I might get swellheaded at that if mine wasn't the only restaurant in Browerville," the big woman said, laughing. But she had seen nothing around the highbacked booth, and even if she had, Annie Halek would consider it a compliment to her cooking that folks could be so engrossed in eating they hardly spoke a word through an entire meal.
The luxury of a meal in a cafГ© was an unaccustomed treat for Mary, and in spite of the uneasiness between herself and Aaron, there was a relaxed air of freedom about the day. As they came out of the dim cafГ© into the dazzling sunlight, the day enhanced the feeling. No field work, no cooking, no re- sponsibilities awaited them until evening. They turned to walk the short distance to the end of the boardwalk, but their steps were slow. At the end, when they reached the street corner, he took her arm as she stepped down. He released her elbow then as they walked the block to Anson's place, but once again at the buggy he took her arm to hand her up. His courtesies filled her with a warm, protected feeling. Once again seated in the buggy, Aaron asked, "Would you like the bonnet up before we start?" "Heavens no, Aaron. I love the sun on my face." "That's good. So do I."
And heading out of town she reveled in the magic of the golden Minnesota day. When viewed from the height of the buggy seat, it was like gliding along on a low-flying cloud, passing the smells and sights and sounds of the countryside as an angel might ride on her way through heaven. The first wild roses had been too impatient to wait for June. They threw their fragrance from ditches and meadows in tantalizing appeal, competing with wild plum, apple, and lilac. They winked pinkly at the passing rig while great whorls of white blossoms hung half-concealed where copses bordered the road. Katydids played their high-pitched wings in duet with the frogs that thrummed hoarse voices from patches of marshland where red-winged blackbirds bobbed and swayed atop last year's exploding cattails. Crows teased the horses, hesitating at the edge of the road ahead until the last possible moment before rising in awkward fashion, flapping unwieldy wings that somehow drew them aloft. Meadowlarks fluted their elusive clarion call, unaware that it checked human breath until it was repeated. The rig rocked along, accompan- ied by bugs, blossoms, and birds, and the magic of the day healed something between the two people. "Imagine living in the city all your life and missing this," Mary said. "One year in the city was enough for me," Aaron said, "let alone all my life."
"You don't know how lucky you were to grow up here and have all this around you. Sometimes, like on a day like this, I can hardly believe I wasn't born here, too. I feel like I was, like all this was born right into me." "Don't you ever miss Chicago?" "It's not the place a person misses, it's the people in it, and there are none of my people left there since Daddy died. Aunt Mabel and Uncle Garner are the only ones now-and they're here. But sometimes I can't help feeling guilty that I came to their house that summer. Like if I'd stayed in Chicago, Daddy might still be alive." "His death was an accident, and if you'd been there, it wouldn't have prevented it. Accidents happen in the factories like that all the time, but in the city nobody seems to care. That's the worst part about the city-nobody caring." He was pensive, recalling that lonely time on his own. But the day was too bright for sad recollections. "I'd just as soon not remember it, and I'm sure you wouldn't, either," Aaron said, shrugging off the memories.
But Aaron never talked much about city life, and she often wondered why. "Didn't you make any friends while you were there?" she asked. "Friends? Not exactly." "If not friends, then what?" "Just…acquaintances. Nobody it bothered me to leave when I came back here," Aaron answered, remembering hard women, hard bosses, hard faces in the streets. "Were any of them women?" She braved the question, suddenly wanting to know.
He glanced at her askance, a partial smile teasing one corner of his mouth now. "What does it matter?" he asked.
She flipped her hands palm-up to signify it didn't matter at all. "Oh, no matter." Then with a sudden shift of her shoulders she adopted the air of a proper city lady, one palm resting on the handle of an imaginary parasol, the other lightly upon the arm of an imaginary escort. "I'll bet they were. And I'll bet they took your arm as you crossed the street and said, 'Why, Aaron Gray, wherever did you learn such fine chivalry?"
He raised an elbow up beneath her hand, becoming her escort. "Why, shucks, ma'am," he said in a drawling voice, "way up in Moran Township, but I didn't think you noticed." "Notice! Why I declare! A blind woman would notice!" "That's funny, ma'am," he bantered, "all you city girls gave me the idea that the last thing you wanted was chivalry." "Don't be foolish, Mr. Gray," she answered in her city-girl voice. "We're no different than those country girls back home. We love it."
They laughed then, passing a piece of woods where jays scattered their own raucous laughter back at them, but somehow, as their laughter trailed down, the game lost its lightness. She removed her hand from his arm.
He tended to his driving again but replied, "If you'll pardon my manners, ma'am, I must disagree. There's no comparing the city girls with the ones back home."
But he was dead serious now, and Mary, too, dropped the charade as she told him, "I never meant to compare the two." "Then you truly must pardon my manners," Aaron apolo- gized. "There's nothing wrong with your manners," she said. "They're all a girl could ask for."
He considered that for some time before asking pointedly, "Is that what you thought last Saturday night?"
At the mention of that Saturday night, Mary felt a panic begin to rise within her. "I wasn't talking about last Saturday night," she corrected. "I was talking about today. I just meant that it's nice to have a man take my arm again and hand me into the buggy or into a booth. Sometimes a husband forgets to do those things." "All right, so today I'm chivalrous. But what about last Saturday? Was I chivalrous then?"
Her heart beat an erratic tattoo. "I don't know what you mean, Aaron," she denied. "Yes, you do. I mean was I being chivalrous when I held the hand of my brother's wife in a manner unlike a brother- in-law?" "It was just the ointment, that's all." "Like hell it was, Mary." He said it very quietly, the very gentleness of his tone adding impetus to the words. "Was it the ointment at the dance, too? Where was my chivalry then?" "It wasn't your fault, Aaron. You were practically forced into dancing with me." "Quit trying to kid yourself, Mary. You know that I wanted you then, and we both know it was wrong. I was about as chivalrous as a fox paying a call on the hen house." "No, Aaron. It wasn't wrong. We didn't do anything. If you think you were to blame for something, then maybe so was I. I shouldn't have stayed with you through that second dance." It seemed an admission of her wanting him. "It's just that we feel guilty because of the thing Jonathan suggested, that's all." And even as she said it, the rocking motion of the rig brought Aaron's arm next to her own. She knew she must not think about his nearness. Oh, God, why had she let Jonathan go on the train? "We shouldn't have let Jonathan go on that train," Aaron said.
It was like trying to douse a fire with kerosene, his saying exactly what she'd been thinking. "I tried not to think about you after that night." "You ought not talk about it, Aaron," she warned. She willed him to stop now, before it was too late. "No, I ought not…" There he stopped and they rode in silence a while until he seemed to pick up the thread of thought and pull it toward himself. "But if I don't, it would be cheating you."
It did seem like cheating to hold back these feelings, much as he realized the real cheating would be to give them vent. He thought again of how little Jonathan had seemed to see in her that night. "Would it be all right if I just tell you how beautiful you were in your yellow dress that night?" he asked. But he kept his eyes on the road ahead, feeling her arm bump against his now and then, welcoming it. "Not if I just said thank you and we ended it right there," she told him. "I'll end it right there," he said, and tried to mean it.
Once again the motion of the buggy worked its magic and calmed them as it undulated, seeming to sway in rhythm with the trees bordering Turtle Creek. The horses had slowed, sensing their driver's lack of haste. The warm sun, the spring breeze, and the slow pace hypnotized the two riders. But slipping along through a world of bursting blossoms and nectar smells with their arms touching, there began the halting transition from friendship to fervor, for they were lulled out of their common good sense when some magical force, some unseen hand smoothed their brows, cupped their jaws, and turned their faces toward one another. They did not remember doing so on their own. Hadn't they been studying the road, the passing fields, just a minute ago?
But here was Mary, her face upturned toward his. Aaron gazed down at her then, and she back at him. And the goodness of it flooded them both after the days of effort to avoid even the slightest contact. The horses carried them along up the road, and the rocking rig beneath them swayed their bodies in unison as sun-drenched eyes held, brown meeting blue, unsmiling, yet so penetrating.
After they'd had an introduction into one another's eyes, they explored farther. He raised his gaze to her hair and saw the sun radiate off its lustrous richness, and he wondered how it felt when its heavy weight was released into a man's hand. He saw the sun on her forehead, glinting off tiny drops of moisture, and he thought he'd like to touch them with his tongue and know the taste of her. Following the line of her fine, high cheeks he came to her mouth. It hadn't learned to smile at him, but he knew somehow that it would.
She looked at him as if for the first time. With all the glory of the day before her, she saw what she'd never seen before, the sun sending prisms of light from the hairs of his eye- brows, which at last had relaxed from their frown, down the fine, clean line of his nose and the shadow it made on his lip below. His beautiful, wide mouth was relaxed. His breathing was deep. She remembered the strawberry and bay rum smell of him, his breath on her from that other time, and wished for the taste of it now. She studied his skin and saw that the whiskers grew in a pattern that swept toward his jaws. She wished to stroke it in the direction they grew. She thought momentarily of Jonathan's face, wondered if she knew it as intimately as she suddenly did Aaron's, but she could not conjure up his image, couldn't ever remember studying his whiskers, his eyebrows, or his mouth.
Then they became Mary and Aaron again, separate, studying the road, the fields, studying them as foreigners, for it seemed they'd never seen them before.
The horses pulled the rig into the yard and stopped under the elms from long practice.
Strangely enough, Aaron did not help Mary alight. They each jumped down from their own side, and Mary went to the house while Aaron led the horses down toward the lean-to to remove their harnesses and set them out to graze.
It was a time without hurry. Aaron's thoughts took their time, as he did, finding small things to do, filling the hours until supper. He found seed corn in the granary and hoisted the sacks onto his shoulder and carried them to the lean-to to wait until morning. Her eyes seemed to be following him as he went, yet she was nowhere to be seen. He went to check the marker, a flat bed of equally spaced two-by-fours used to drag the soil, leaving behind it four clearly marked, evenly spaced checkrows to lay the seeds in. He found it needed tightening after the warping winter, got hammer and nails, and fixed it for morning. And all the while, the color of her honey hair remained in his eyes, nearly blinding him.
Mary had changed her dress for a simple work frock and went to check the goose eggs. They were still brooding under cluck hens, and each day she walked to the well in the yard and pumped a can full of water for them as she did now. She saw Aaron's Sunday suit coat hanging on a fence post down past the granary and wondered what he was busy at. His face came back to her, watching her as she went. Taking the water to the hen house, she turned each goose egg and sprinkled it. She filled the waterers and feeders and looked in each cubicle for chicken eggs, but found only a few, scarce at this time of year. Leaving the hen house, she saw Aaron's coat was gone from the fence post. He'd gone to the house to put dungarees on, and she met him coming out as she went in.
He stepped onto the porch, holding the screen door open for her to pass into the kitchen. On the threshold above him she turned, saying, "Aaron, I'll help you with the milking or anything you want."
He stood a step lower than she, but his brown eyes were nearly on a level with hers. She couldn't see them as clearly as earlier, standing as they were in the shade of the porch. But what details she couldn't make out, she remembered.
He smiled then, not with his mouth but with his eyes. "I don't need any help, but I'd enjoy your company in the barn." "I'll be there," she promised.
She had enough wood in the box for a new fire, so she laid and lit one in the cold stove, then took the empty pails from the buttery, heading for the barn. They met by the well and walked down together. The cows had accommodated them by hovering around the barn tonight, and when the big east door opened, it took little encouragement to get them inside. The sound of their hooves on the cement floor filled the space as much as the huge bulks did. The barn al- ways seemed so vast when it was empty and so small when the cows came in.
Aaron took a milk stool and pail and evaded a switching tail as he settled in a squat beside the first cow. Mary, too, took a spot beside a cow. When he heard the first ring of the milk in her pail, he said, "There's no need for you to help, Mary."
"Don't be silly, Aaron," she said. "I'm not so helpless I can't give you a hand." But his rhythm was nearly double that of hers, and he'd already moved on to the second cow while she was still struggling with her first. Her unaccus- tomed hands needed frequent rests. When she'd resumed her stroking, the muscles of her forearms grew hot and tight. She lay her forehead against the warm, wide belly of the cow while she waited for her muscles to relax.
He came around the cow and saw her like that. "Here, let me finish her."
Mary turned her face toward him, her forehead still resting on the cow, and said, "Fine help I am, huh?" "I told you your company was all I needed. You'd better get out of there before that old gal decides she's all done giving out and heads for the door."
She did as she was told, and while she waited for him to finish the job, found the empty tins and brought them near so Aaron could squirt them full for the eager cats. Standing beside him, she looked down over his bent head as he filled the tins. She came near to putting her hand down onto his heavy russet curls, but he finished and handed her the tins and her hands were saved from folly. She stayed away from him then until he finished, and spent her time trying to coax the unfriendly cats toward her. Freedom had made them skeptics, and they came near enough only to cadge their warm drink before scampering away. "You go on up to the house. It's getting cool out here, and I'll be up in a minute," he said.
"Okay, but I thought I'd help you carry the milk up," she said. "I'll bring it when I come. Just go on in and tend to sup- per."
While she began cooking supper, he came in with the milk pails. Before she could turn from the stove to fetch fresh dish towels to cover the pails, he was there at the breakfront, taking them from the drawer, something he'd never done before. He acted different, with Jonathan gone, almost as if he were playing the master of the house. When he turned to the pump to wet the towels, he found her watching his movements, her back to the stove. She thoroughly enjoyed his doing for her the small task that had always been her duty. "What are you cooking?" he asked, and she started a bit, as if caught doing something indecent by watching him. But she smiled and turned back to the stove. "Eggs," she said. "There were five tonight."
He smiled. At this time of year, when the hens were molting, eggs were scarce. The precious few they had were usually saved for other cooking purposes. To fry them and eat them so was as close to lavish as their eating habits came. He figured, and rightly so, it was her way of gifting him, for he loved fried eggs.
When he had covered the pails in the buttery, he went outside, down by the well in the yard, and took off his shirt. Pumping with one hand, he leaned toward the running water and splashed his arms. He had to keep starting and stopping the pumping action several times be fore he had splashed all of his face, neck, and chest. The water was like ice. It raised goosebumps on his arms. It caused him to suck in his belly with a heaving gulp before he backed off and shook his entire torso like a nickering horse.
He had forgotten a towel, so he came running up the porch steps and burst through the kitchen door like a shivering pup, cold drops of water spraying from his lips as he ex- claimed, "Brrr!"
Mary turned from the range, grabbed a towel from the stand at the sink. "You could have washed in here with warm water," she said when she brought it to him, wishing she could rub him warm and dry with it. But the eggs were del- icately done and they needed taking up right now, so she threw the towel at him, returning to the stove. "I thought it might make you uncomfortable," Aaron said, watching for her reaction from the corner of his eye, rubbing himself. She kept her back to him.
He threw his shirt back on haphazardly, leaving it un- buttoned, and sat down at his place. Coming to her chair she saw how the white shirt clung to the skin of the chest where he'd not quite dried it. They began their meal without words. Sometimes they would look at one another, but it seemed as if they had reached the saturation point. Any more gazes would burst an invisible bubble.
She ate one of the two eggs on her plate, then said, "I'm full, Aaron." He half-smiled, covering her hair, eyes, neck, face with one glance, answering, "So am I." But he took the other egg from her plate and finished it before sitting back.
She poured his tea, using a small strainer to catch the leaves. "Why did you make tea tonight?" he asked. He knew why, but he wanted to hear her say it. "Because you like it best," she answered, knowing he knew why.
Aaron lit the lamp, shut the back door to keep the chill out, and returned to his tea and her. "You know a lot about me, don't you?" he questioned over his raised cup. "Like what?" "Oh, like…that I like tea better than coffee…that I like fried eggs, things like that."
She shrugged her shoulders, as if suddenly bashful. "We've lived here in the same house for most of seven years. Of course I know a lot about you." "Yes. But it seems you learned more about me than I did about you. You have a way of knowing a man's needs." "It's a woman's job to know a man's needs. Besides, all they are is food, clothing, and shelter. It doesn't take much knowing to see how to fill those." "Is that why you came here-to tend to our food and clothing and shelter? Jonathan's and mine?"
She folded her hands in her lap, hunching her shoulders up and catching the hands between her knees. "I came here because…because from the first minute I saw this place I loved it and I wanted to build a life here…with Jonathan." Here she glanced all around the comfortable kitchen, be- decked in blue-and-white gingham checks, touched by the hominess she'd created,
the plants growing at the windowsill, the crisp curtains at the windows and around the counter that held the sink. "The two of you seemed to rattle around in this house, and I guess it's true that I enjoyed the idea of having it to tend to. And the two of you need a woman to do for you." Here she hes- itated again. "But I came here ever so proud to be Jonathan's wife."
Aaron gazed steadily at her. "A marriage should be built on more than pride," he said. "Food, clothing, and shelter aren't enough either. What about love?"
He was leaning back, his chair angled away from the table, an ankle crossed over a knee as he raised the cup to his lips, studying her. "We have that, too," she said, "it's just…"
He waited for her to continue, but when she didn't, he said, "You're very different, you and Jonathan. It strikes me that if either of you were to choose a friend, you would not choose each other, yet you chose to marry." "You don't have to be friends and playmates to fall in love," she stated, her hands still clasped between her knees. "No, but sometimes it makes it more fun." "Fun? I didn't need fun. I needed security. When Daddy died…well, I couldn't live at Aunt Mabel's forever. And Jonathan needed someone here. Maybe those don't seem reasons enough to marry, but they were at the time, and love came afterward. I didn't think of a husband as a playmate or a friend, and I still don't." "No, because you've always had me for that," Aaron said.
Their eyes caught and held, and she resisted owning up to the truth of that, lowering her eyes then from his direct gaze. But the lack of anger in his flat statement made it hit home. "Yes, I guess I have," she admitted quietly. "But Jonathan has put an end to that, too, hasn't he?" Aaron asked, still in his relaxed pose, one elbow resting on the table edge. "Oh, I hope not," Mary said, looking him directly in the eye, feeling again how she had missed his friendship these last weeks. His brown eyes darkened, brows drawing together as he met her gaze and held it. Then he sighed. "Mary girl," he said and, leaning forward, reached toward her hand, which now lay on the tabletop next to her cup and saucer. Touching only her little finger ever so lightly, he confessed, "I find it harder and harder to be only your friend."
She looked at their hands, her heart hammering formidably as his finger slid from hers. He stood up, taking his cup and saucer. "Let's do the dishes," he said, "I'll help."
She got up and gathered dishes in front of her. He did the same, and they went to the stove together to wash them. She filled the dishpan with water from the reservoir and pumped cold water to add to it. She kept the dishpan on the rear of the stove where the water would stay warm while she worked. For the second time tonight, he took a dish towel from the breakfront drawer, and they worked side by side until the kitchen was clean.