"And you?" she asked.
"I will sit in the back if I am in the territory," he said, echoing her earlier terms. "I will not sit in the front and pretend I hold a claim on the outcome."
They parted to their work. The street kept its golden habit of making hard things look softer than they were. Nora no longer trusted the light to tell the truth. She trusted copies, neighbors, and the stubborn refusal to be livestock—hers, Ada's, Bess's, and, in his uneven way, Drake's refusal to treat them as such.
In the final days before the hearing, small human things continued.
June Pike taught Bess a ledger column trick. Otis Bray gave Ada a raise of twenty-five cents a week and pretended it was about inventory accuracy. Sheriff Yates began writing his reports on time, as if competence could be a penance for arriving late to a crate. Ruth Haver posted a notice that any woman fearing a debt attachment could leave a sealed letter with her for the examiner's next pass. Two letters appeared in a week. Progress, Nora thought, looked like paper used rightly for once.
Drake repaired a fence at Jonah's cabin without being asked, then listed the hours so Nora could refuse them if she wanted. She did not refuse the fence. She refused the idea that the fence meant ownership. He agreed aloud. The brown horse cropped weeds and flicked its white blaze as if bored of human treaties.
The night before the hearing, they ate at June's table—stew, bread, a pie Inez Soto brought without being invited and without staying to be thanked. Conversation stayed on who would sit where, who would hold the Bible, who would watch Crowe's face when the tax numbers were read. No one drank. No one danced. When Drake walked Nora, Ada, and Bess back toward the boardinghouse rotation, the stars were clean and indifferent.
At Mrs. Colm's door, Nora paused. "Whatever happens tomorrow, we do not owe the town a pretty ending. We owe each other the next true step."
"Beside," Ada said, borrowing the word and making it theirs.
"Beside," Bess agreed.