The unmarried sister everyone called plain was bent over the kitchen garden, tying up tomato vines, when the new cowboy stopped at the gate, held his hat in front of him, and asked if she would come to supper. Lenora Barrow straightened with twine still looped around her fingers. She looked past him toward the porch for a moment, waiting for the question to find its proper woman. But Alma was not there. Lottie was not there. Only Lenora stood in the garden row with dust on her hem and tomato leaves brushing her sleeve.

"To supper?"

Orson Keen kept his hat in both hands. "Yes, ma'am. With me. Tonight, if you're willing."

Behind her, through the kitchen window, her mother's voice rose and fell, praising Alma's new bonnet to a neighbor. Nobody looked out to see who stood at the gate. Lenora looked down at her hands, rough with twine and soil. "I'm not dressed for company."

His hands tightened once on the brim. "I didn't ask your dress. I asked you."

A tired laugh nearly escaped her, the kind that comes when a joke has gone on too long. "You've worked this ranch all season, Mr. Keen. You know who I am."

"I know exactly who you are," he said without hurry. "Lenora Barrow. Takes her coffee black, doesn't waste a word she doesn't mean. I bought a cabin two miles west off the old Kessler section. Got a table now, two chairs. I'd like one of them to have you in it."

She stood turning the offer over like a coin she wasn't sure she could trust. "Six o'clock," she said at last, nodding toward the house. "I have bread rising. Can't leave it past six."

He settled his hat back onto his head, touched the brim once, and went. He did not look back, which she was glad of, since she stood there a full minute afterward with the twine still in her hands.

She told her mother she was walking out to check on Widow Pike's hens, which was not entirely a lie, since the widow's place sat along the same road. She changed her dress twice, called herself a fool both times, and wore the blue one in the end, the one without a mended seam at the shoulder. His cabin sat low against a rise of dry grass, with a stovepipe leaning slightly and a porch wanting another board. But the yard had been swept clean, and a jar of black-eyed Susans stood at the center of a table set with two plates, two cups, and a fork laid straight beside each.

"Fried some salt pork. There's beans I started this morning." He gestured at the biscuits stacked in a cloth. "Came out flatter than I meant them to."

He pulled out the chair facing the window, a folded blanket over the seat for cushion, and held it until she sat. Then he took the harder chair for himself. She looked at the flat biscuits and the scorched edge of one strip of pork, and she relaxed a little at that, because a man who tried and fell short was easier to trust than one who made it all look effortless.

"You didn't have to trouble yourself."

"Wasn't trouble." He passed her the beans first, waiting until her plate was full before touching his own. "First meal I've cooked in this house. I wanted it to be good."

They ate slowly. He asked whether she liked her biscuits burnt or pale, and she told him pale. He asked whether the garden was hers by choice or only by chore, and she opened her mouth for the usual list, then stopped because he'd asked which, not what needed doing.

"Both, I suppose." She turned her fork over once. "Started as chore. It's mine now because nobody else wanted it enough to take it from me."

"Flowers or vegetables?"

"Flowers." She felt foolish admitting it, since flowers fed nobody. "Zinnias, mostly. My mother says they crowd the beans."

Before dark, he walked her home, the two miles quiet and easy, and stopped at the Barrow gate without crossing into the yard. "I'll ask you again next week if that suits."

"Once was already more than most men manage."

Her hand found the gate latch behind her, steadying herself. He laughed, short and surprised, touched his hat brim, and left her standing there in the last of the light.

Four days later, she was hauling water from the well when she saw him at the fence line along the garden road, not at the house, hat already off, a small bundle of stems wrapped in a damp cloth in one hand. "Widow Pike had a few by her fence," he said. He held them out, a little sheepish, without stepping past the fence rail. "Figured you'd know whether I chose right."

She set the bucket down and took them. Zinnias, orange and deep red, cut short. She had told him she grew zinnias, not which ones she loved best. "How did you know?"

"I didn't." He shrugged, plain about it. "Only ones I liked the look of. Widow Pike helped me choose. And either way, I oughtn't linger with your mother's washing line in plain sight."

She almost smiled at that. "You didn't need to bring me anything."

"No." He settled his hat back on. "Didn't need to."

He touched the brim and went back down the road, unhurried. She stood at the fence a long moment before carrying the flowers inside and putting them in a jar on the windowsill, telling her mother only that Widow Pike had sent them along.

At home, the wound kept its slow accumulation in pieces too small to name as unkind. Her mother, folding linens, held up a length of ribbon meant for Lottie's trousseau. "Alma will want something like this, too, when her time comes." She smoothed it flat against her palm. "You were always my steady one, Lenora. Never needed the fuss the others do."