He tipped his hat and walked away. He asked about her before lunchtime. He asked Jacob Mercer, who ran the hardware store and knew everything worth knowing about everyone in town with the particular gift for gossip that men developed when they spent their days behind a counter listening to other men complain. Clara Whitfield, Jacob said, leaning on the counter with the expression of a man delighted to have something interesting to talk about. "Seamstress.
She's been in Willow Creek about two years now. Came from a farming family over in Holt County. Father died. Some business about debts and a disputed land claim. Real mess.
The family lost everything. Brother went north to find work. Mother passed not long after. Clara came here with a sewing kit and about $14 to her name. Ethan listened without comment.
"She's good at the work," Jacob continued. Better than good, actually, but she doesn't exactly make friends easy. Got what some folks call a proud streak. Doesn't take charity. Doesn't accept help from people who make her feel small.
He paused. Makes it hard for her around here. Some people see a woman standing up for herself and they call it arrogance. Especially when the woman in question doesn't have money to back it up with. "Mrs.
Aldridge paid her half what she was owed," Ethan said. Jacob sighed. That sounds about right. Margaret Aldridge does that. Pick someone she thinks won't fight back and tests how much she can take.
Clara usually fights back. "Good," Ethan said. Jacob looked at him with mild curiosity. "You thinking about something, Ethan? " "Just listening," Ethan said. And paid for the horseshoe nails he'd come in for.
The festival continued through the afternoon. Clara sold three spools of ribbon, took measurements for two new dresses, and repaired a child's torn shirt sleeve on the spot for a woman who couldn't afford to pay, and to whom Clara did not mention that fact. She worked through heat without complaint, without sitting down, and without once glancing in the direction of the dancing that had started up near the town hall, where all the eligible young women were performing their most charming versions of themselves for the benefit of the men who mattered. At 3:00, Ruth Callaway, who ran the boarding house where Clara rented a small room, appeared at the edge of the stall, looking flushed and excited. Clara," she said under her breath.
"Ethan Callahan has been asking about you. " Clara didn't look up from the button hole she was stitching. "Has he? " Jacob told him about your family. And Clara, do you understand what I'm telling you? Ethan Callahan, the Callahan ranch. He was asking about you specifically.
"I heard you, Ruth. " "You don't seem appropriately alarmed. " "Why would I be alarmed? " Ruth made the sound of someone trying very hard to be patient because men like Ethan Callahan do not ask about women like she stopped reconsidered. I only mean that it's unusual. He doesn't typically show interest in that is he is very selective about women like me. Clara said I didn't say that you were going to. Clara finally looked up and there was no bitterness in her face, just a flat matter-of-factness that was somehow harder to argue with than anger would have been.
Ruth, I appreciate the information. I genuinely do. But whatever Ethan Callahan's reasons are for asking about me, I can tell you right now it isn't anything I want to be involved in. Men with that much money and that much land don't develop curiosity about seamstresses out of the goodness of their hearts. They develop it because they think we'll be grateful for the attention.
Ruth opened her mouth, closed it. "What if you're wrong? " "I'm not," Clara said, and went back to her button hole. She was, of course, being unfair. Clara Whitfield knew this. She had known it for years, knew that she painted with a brush too wide, that she assigned guilt to people who hadn't yet earned it, that her history had made her something harder than she might have been if things had gone differently.
Her father had been a good man and still a powerful merchant in Holt County had taken his land through a contract he hadn't understood, and a judge that merchant had in his pocket. Her mother had been kind and trusting, and still the women of their community had turned away when the family fell because poverty was a contagious thing people preferred not to stand near. She had arrived in Willow Creek with $14, and the knowledge settled deep in her bones that the world had a particular way of treating women who needed things from it. She had decided very early on that she would not need anything from it. It was a lonely way to live.
She was aware of that. But loneliness was something she could control, and control was the only kind of safety she'd ever been able to afford. She was still thinking about this without quite admitting to herself that she was thinking about it when a shadow fell across her table at 4 and she looked up to find Ethan Callahan standing there again. He wasn't doing anything theatrical. He wasn't performing charm.
He wasn't leaning in with the particular deliberate casualness that men used when they were trying to appear less intentional than they were. He was just standing there with his hat in his hand and an expression on his face that she couldn't immediately categorize. "You again," she said. "Yes, ma'am. " "I told you I didn't need help. " "You did," he agreed. "I was wondering if you'd take a question anyway. " Clara looked at him for a long moment.
Long enough that a woman with less composure might have looked away first. Ethan Callahan did not look away. "What's the question? " she said. "Why didn't you fight back with Mrs. Aldridge? " Something shifted in Clara's expression, not softening exactly, but adjusting.
"I did fight back. " "You let her walk away with half your money. " "I let her walk away," Clara said carefully. Because fighting with a woman like Margaret Aldridge in the middle of a street full of people costs more than it wins. She wants me angry. She wants a scene. A scene gives her a story.
And a story gives her power over me the next time. I'll keep my money and my dignity, "Mr. Callahan," she said. "Ethan," he corrected. She looked at him with new awareness.
"Not the calculating kind," he noted. "Just the plain kind, the kind that was recalibrating information. " "I know who you are," she said. "I figured you didn't. " "I was pretending I didn't," she said with an honesty that surprised them both slightly. It seemed like the most efficient way to end the conversation. He almost smiled again.