Chapter 5 – Learning Annie

“She argued with books,” Clara said.

“She argued with everything,” Thomas said politely. “But she always won.”

Clara read one of the margin notes, a single word, emphatic, beside a particularly florid passage. She laughed. Thomas looked at her laughing, and something shifted in his face.

“That’s the sound she made,” he said quietly, “when she found something she liked.”

Clara closed the book and held it for a moment. She thought about Annie Hail, who had been twenty-six years old, had argued with books, loved wildflowers, and had never trusted carnations. She thought about how Thomas had been carrying both her and James for three years on Friday afternoons up a hill in the rain, the snow, and the spring mud, and had never explained to anyone why. She handed the book back.

Thomas shook his head. “Keep it,” he said. “She’d want it read.”

The rain caught them again in November—a cold rain that made the hill road impractical. Thomas came to the shop at three, looked at the weather, and said, “We could go next week.”

“Or,” Clara said, “we could have coffee.”

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She had a small room behind the shop: a stove, a table, two chairs, and the smell of dried flowers settled into everything. She poured the coffee. He sat down and folded himself into the chair, which was not designed for a man who spent his days on a horse, and he did it with the discomfort of someone who was not going to complain.

“That chair,” Clara said, “has survived my father, three winters, and a delivery man from Denver.”