Page 8 of Mail Order Moose

She told him some of it. The three piles. Katie’s account. Lula laughing at Belle. She did not mean to mention the mistake, but the words came while she was cutting potatoes smaller than usual so they would seem like more.

“One tag came loose,” she said. “The wrong bundle nearly went to us.”

David looked over from the table. “But it didn’t.”

“No.” She kept her eyes on the knife. “I fixed it.”

He was quiet long enough that she glanced up despite herself. He was not frowning. He was watching her with the same expression he had worn that first day in the mercantile, patient and steady, only now there was something warmer beneath it.

“You saved them trouble,” he said.

“It was only a tag.”

“It was supper for a house that needed it,” David said. “And winter stores not being counted twice. And Katie not selling what belonged to someone else. Small things get big here when the weather turns.”

Ella swallowed. The knife was still in her hand, the potato half cut beneath it. She set both down because she did not trust her fingers.

“I only saw what was wrong,” she said.

David leaned back in his chair. “Some folks look straight at what is wrong and never see it.”

She looked at him then. There was no teasing in his face. No attempt to make her answer in a way that would satisfy him. Only admiration, plain and quiet, sitting between them like another lamp.

Ella did not know what to do with admiration. She knew how to mend cuffs, stretch stew, sort meat, and organize a shelf. She knew how to count supplies before they became shortages. She knew how to stand quietly while others filled a room with words. She did not know how to be seen by a man and not feel the need to disappear.

“The potatoes will boil over,” she said.

David’s mouth twitched, but he did not laugh at her. “Then we’d best save them too.”

He rose and moved to the stove, taking up the spoon before the pot could sputter over. Ella stood beside him, close enough to feel the warmth from his sleeve but not touching it. The stew thickened, the ledger lay closed on the table, and the small bundle of meat that was theirs became enough because it had to be.

Ella reached for the potatoes again. Her hands were steadier now.

Chapter Four

Lula’s invitation came at noon the next day, delivered with a basket over one arm and the air of a woman who had already decided the matter for everyone involved.

Ella had been standing at Maggie’s table with the ledger open before her, checking soap, salt, flour, and promises made too quickly by people who meant well. Lula came in without knocking, because Lula had never found much use for knocking when she already knew she would be welcomed.

“You and David are coming to supper tonight,” Lula said.

Ella looked up from the numbers. “Tonight?”

“That is generally when supper happens. Will you come?” Lula set the basket on the table and began taking things from it as if Maggie’s cabin were hers as much as Sebastian’s, which was a habit she had carried from Beckham and improved upon in Alaska. “Sebastian caught more fish than two people need, and I refuse to spend an evening this early in my marriage listening only to him praise his own skill with a line.”

Maggie smiled without lifting her pencil. “That does sound dangerous.”

Ella lowered her eyes to the ledger again. Supper with Lula was one thing. Lula belonged to the older, safer part of Ella’s life, the part where silence had already been explained before anyone could misread it. Supper with Sebastian was something else. Supper with Sebastian and David together was harder to place. Four people meant questions could move in any direction. Four people meant laughter might come suddenly. Four people meant there would be no wall close enough to stand near without seeming rude.

“David will come if I ask him,” Ella said, because that was the safest answer and not because she knew what she wanted.

Lula’s expression softened in the way Ella both loved and feared. “I did not ask whether David would come. I asked whether you would.”

That was more difficult. Ella could have refused. Lula would fuss and ask why, but she would not be cruel. David would accept the answer without making her defend it. No one in Yeti had yet required Ella to become someone else simply because a thing seemed easy to them.

Still, she remembered Lula’s room at the hotel in Beckham, noisy with neighbors and friends. She remembered sitting in a corner with her hands folded while Lula carried conversation like a pail of water, spilling only enough to keep everyone amused. She had never enjoyed those evenings, exactly, but she had survived them because Lula had always known when to pull attention away.

“Only supper?” Ella asked.