She looked him up and down in a way she’d never dare to back home. “No, sir. You don’t seem like you’d be a believer.”
“And you are?” He returned to work, but the question stalled her, held her oscillating in its grip. A few months ago, she’d have responded without hesitation. Just days ago, even, she’d been sure that out here was bad and in there was good and there was no in-between.
He must have sensed her uncertainty, because he stopped and said, “You are a believer.”
Yes, she tried to say.Yes, of course I believe.
She couldn’t.
“I was young when I got here,” she finally managed. It sounded like an excuse. “At first, I thought this place was the bees’ knees. ’Course you’d have to see where I came from to understand why.”
“Bees’ knees?”
She swallowed past the lump lodged in her throat. “Never heard that one?”
“I haven’t.”
“Means it’s the best. So good you can’t believe it.”
Snip, snip, snipping in something that wasn’t quite silence, they continued down the line.
After a bit, he surprised her again. “You never said what your days are like.”
“Yonder?”
That made him smile. “Yes.”
“Pretty normal, I suppose. Everyone’s up at daybreak. Guess you could say we’re like any farm. Some folks work with the animals, milking and gathering eggs and so on. Most women work in the big kitchen, baking for the market.”
“I’ve seen you there.”
“Me?”
“Not you. But your people. At the market, selling things with your…” He motioned toward his head.
“Our what?”
“Those hats.” He stopped pruning to look at her. “Why do you not wear one?”
One guilty hand flew to the top of her head, where her bonnet should be. Her gaze slid to the sliced-up fence, beside which it currently sat. “Oh. I…” She swallowed, hating the truth but unwilling to lie for something so silly. “I don’t like how the covering looks. How I look with it on. I leave it up there.”So you won’t see me in it.
One side of his mouth curled up before he reached for his vine in that affectionate way of his, taking whatever secret satisfaction he’d gleaned with him. “So, you work at the market?”
“Not anymore.”
“No?”
“Banned from market duty,” she said dramatically to cover up how much that had hurt.
“Why?”
“Too friendly with the customers.”
“That seems…counterproductive. One hopes for friendly salespeople.” He paused. “Especially in America, where the smile is king.”
“People don’t smile in…”
“France,” he said, with that low, rolling sound that made her feel…warm. Curious. Itchy in places. “No. People don’t smile.”
