He might have tried to thank her if he didn’t know better. When it came to Mildred, a comment meant to prop you up was always followed by one that might very well put you on your back.
“But if I’m supposed to believe that Isabelle is stowed away somewhere in this home of her own accord, I’m going to see for myself and not take the town’s word for it, be sure of that, Mr. Walker. Now please call for her, and if she wishes to have me go, I’ll hear her say as much.”
Her eyes, as usual, were cutting and hostile. She was older than Isabelle, and upon the death of John Foster had assumed the role of father to their four boys, and in turn had become more of a man in widowhood than John himself—who was born sick—had ever managed. She took off her riding gloves, long shoots of black satin, and stood before George as though a boulder could not shake her from her purpose.
“At least let me put the pan down,” he said.
The eggs were already ruined. He set the pan on the stove, wiped his hands on his shirt, and called mildly up the stairs:
“Isabelle, Mrs. Foster is here to see you.”
Mildred, unimpressed by his effort, stepped forward into their home, and although another man might have protested, he did not have the energy to stop her.
“Isabelle!” she yelled. “Isabelle, it’s me. I only want to make sure you’re well.”
Then, in a businesslike tone, she asked George if Isabelle was eating.
“Some.”
“Bathing?”
“That I cannot speak to.”
“I see. Isabelle!”
Mildred Foster was one of Isabelle’s oldest friends, and it had been clear from the beginning that she did not consider him suitable for Isabelle’s hand. Not that anyone was. He could hardly think of a time that Mildred had kind words for any man at all, even her own husband, whom she often described as either lacking in backbone or “limp in nature.” Which George found humorous. John, although shy, had been one of the few people he could tolerate over a dinner table, careful with his words, intelligent when he shared them. Mildred decried his condition and recognized the same faults in George, seeking always to display how much closer she was to Isabelle than he was. Little surprise that the silence from the stairwell brought him a tinge of glee now. He was almost happy she had arrived, just to be rebuffed.
“It would appear,” he said, “that my wife would rather be left alone. Now if you would”—he nodded at the door—“I have my breakfast to eat.”
Her eyes flitted from the stairwell to the front door. He let the moment sit, relishing her uncertainty.
“Get her through this,” she said. “You owe her that much, George.”
He went to close the door behind her.
“I will let her know you came. Thank you for your call.”
At the sound of pattering on the stairwell behind him, he turned around in disbelief. Isabelle was holding up her dress as she descended the stairs. She floated by George and out the door as if he were invisible.
Mildred turned in the yard and embraced Isabelle in a prolonged hug, petting her hair like a horse’s mane, cooing into her ear.
“It’s okay. Oh, Isabelle. Oh.”
George retrieved his eggs and ate them cold from the skillet, surveying the reunion of the two women lost in each other’s arms. There were no words for the resentment that claimed him, a jealousy of such magnitude he had half an urge to throw the skillet into the yard and make a show of things. They spoke too softly to hear the words, and after a time he stopped trying to listen. His curiosity shifted to his wife’s appearance, which seemed to bear no relation to his earlier fears, the idea that she might have wilted into something awful. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, gray but with bits of brown glinting like cinnamon in the sunlight; her face was soft and full, as vibrant with life as the day he’d first met her.
For a brief flash, like a glint of light caught in one’s eye, he saw before him that young woman he would one day come to marry. He was already in his thirties then, decrepit by the standards foisted upon a bachelor, and yet he hadn’t cared a whit that his household belonged to him and him alone. His days involved only what he cared them to, and no woman could help him find contentment, for he already had it in spades. Perhaps it would have remained that way had not a traveling wind band come to Old Ox, an event at the outdoor concert hall that Ezra insisted George attend, if only to be in the company of others for an afternoon. There were no theatrics upon that first sighting. She was with her father, both of them speaking to another young man, and when the boy had walked off, she’d scowled at his back, as though his words alone had been foul, forcing her father to giggle, and in that slight show of play, the willingness to shove modesty aside, George knew he’d found his match. Ezra was quick to inform him of who the young woman was, and, more important, that she had yet to marry. But before Ezra could ask if he’d liked to be introduced, George had already departed, so frightened was he by the prospect of even a conversation.