"Shorter road through Anson's Creek." He jumped down from the fence, easy and unhurried as he did everything. "I figured you might want company on the explanation of why a stranger just handed $60 to Caleb Mercer on your behalf."
"I didn't ask you to do that."
"No, you didn't." He turned his hat over once. "And I reckon you're going to tell me it wasn't my place to say, and you had the situation in hand, and you don't need some wandering nobody putting himself in the middle of your business."
She dismounted. "I was going to say thank you, and then tell you all of that."
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. "Well, the $60 was what I had available on short notice. I can get more wired from a bank in Laramie, but that takes time, and I'll need to know what you're actually dealing with before I start throwing money at it."
"You're not throwing money at anything," she said sharply. "This isn't your debt."
"No, it isn't." He looked at her directly, the way very few people had looked at her since Henry died—like she was a full person with her own gravity, and not just a problem to be solved or ignored. "But I'm standing here anyway, so why don't you tell me what's actually going on?"
She almost said no. The reflex was strong. She had learned over eight months that opening her situation to others meant opening herself to advice she hadn't asked for, pity she didn't want, and men who thought helping meant taking over. She had learned to keep the whole terrible architecture of her life folded up tight in her chest where it couldn't be interfered with. But there was something in his stillness that was different. He wasn't leaning forward. He wasn't offering solutions. He was just standing at the fence of her lane in the afternoon light with his hat in his hand, waiting for her to decide.
So she decided.
"Come inside," she said. "I'll make coffee and I'll show you the ledgers."
The kitchen still held the smell of the morning's bread even though she hadn't baked since Tuesday. She moved through it automatically: filling the percolator, setting it on the stove, pulling Henry's ledgers down from the shelf above the desk in the corner where she'd been working through them every night for three months. Nathan sat at the table and didn't touch anything. He waited until she set the coffee in front of him and sat down across from him before he spoke.
"Tell me about your husband."