“What does it mean?”
“It’s part of the formula to measure the refraction and curvature of the earth.”
“Huh.”
“I need a lot of precise measurements to know where I can recommend that Northeast Rail lay down new track.”
“Huh.”
“You know the earth is round, right?”
Clay’s lip curled. “’Course I know.”
“Good. And because there’s a curve, a straight line isn’t exactly straight, and air refracts light that further distorts the line, so what you see isn’t as precise as my equipment and calculations can be.”
Clay returned the pad to Roen and pointed to the upper-right-hand corner of the page, the only part that made perfect sense to him. “You drew the landscape over yonder, and that double line winding through it, those are tracks, aren’t they? You reckon that’s a place to put down rail?”
“It might be.”
“Huh. That’s Double H land. Hard to imagine Ol’ HarrisonHardy will sell to the railroad. He’s cussed cranky even when his lumbago isn’t bothering him.”
“Good to know, but that’s a problem for another day. Right now I need to pack up and get back to town before dark.”
Clay looked at the sky. “Dark’s coming on fast, but I’ll help you, and I know the way back day or night.”
Chapter Two
Lily Salt did not raise her voice when her older boy attempted to make a stealthy entrance into the kitchen. Neither did she turn around from the stove, where she was stirring a pot of chili. “Clay Bryant Salt.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m going to oil that hinge first thing tomorrow.”
“Won’t help you. I suppose I know when my son’s been wandering and when he’s home.”
“Chili smells good.” He sidled up to the stove and bumped her affectionately. “Better than good, I’m thinking. Might be excellent.”
“I am not mollified. Not even a little.” But she bumped him back while she continued to stir. “Go tell your sister it’s time to set the table and then you wash your hands. Help Ham and Lizzie, too.”
When Clay took a step sideways but didn’t leave the kitchen, Lily was immediately suspicious. She swiveled her head in his direction. He was tall now, as tall as she was, and she hadn’t quite gotten used to it. It pained her some to look him in the eye. He had his father’s eyes and coloring, though in every other way he was nothing at all like his father. Still, the eyes. “What is it?” she asked.
Clay pointed to the kitchen door, where Roen Shepard stood framed in the opening.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Salt,” Roen said, removing his hat and holding it in front of him like a penitent. “I wanted to see your son home safely. I’m Roen Shepard, the engineering surveyor employed by Northeast Rail.”
Lily indicated that Clay should take the long-handledwooden spoon. “Stir,” she said. She thought he was glad to have the spoon in his hand and not hers, though she had never once raised it against him. There were memories of his father not easily erased. “I know who you are, Mr. Shepard.” She crossed a few feet to the table and rested one hand on the back of a chair. She did not close the distance between them.
Roen did not inch into the room, nor did he back away. Lily Salt was regarding him warily, with the innate stillness of a rabbit in the wild sensing something feral in her midst. In deference to what he perceived as distress, he remained rooted where he stood.
It was in the back pew of the Presbyterian Church that Clay’s mother had made her first impression on Roen Shepard. He’d been sitting five pews ahead on the aisle when a cloth ball rolled between his feet. He picked it up, looked around for the owner, and passed it back to a harried mother with a child set to squall on her lap. The squalling was averted, and he was grateful for that, but more grateful that his backward search had afforded him a glimpse of the woman who later became known to him as Lily Salt.
She looked to him as composed and serene as any Madonna rendered in oils by the great artists of the Renaissance. That she was flanked by two boys and two girls, who could only be her children, made her calm seem preternatural. She had the smile of theMona Lisa, which was to say it was more a smile of imagination than it was of reality, but when he turned away, that perception of her smile lingered.
She wore a wide-brimmed straw sailor hat trimmed with a black ribbon and tilted forward as was the fashion. Her hair, what he could see of it then, was rust red, but her older daughter had hair like a flame and made him suspect that this was Lily’s color in her youth.
When he caught sight of her escaping the church with her children in tow, Roen knew himself to be mildly intrigued. He was saved from expressing any measure of curiosity by Mrs. Springer’s account of the congregation, their lineage, their talents, and their foibles. Amanda Springer was a wellspring of information, most of which he later learned from the minister could be taken as gospel.
So here he was facing Lily Salt, age thirty-four, a widow whose husband had perished in a fire almost two years earlier, mother of four children, seamstress employed in the dress shop owned by Mrs. Fish, and doing well enough on her own that she had no interest in inviting a man into her life, though according to Mrs. Springer, a number of men had tried.
This last was rather more than Roen had expected or even wanted to hear, since he had no interest in such an invitation, but Amanda Springer, once sprung, said what was on her mind. All of it. Her husband, an affable man who tended bar at the Songbird Saloon, seized on the opportunity to disengage her at the first sign she was winding down. Later, Roen rewarded Jim Springer’s strategy by buying him a drink at the saloon, though he never explained the reason for his generosity.
