His visits had begun shortly after the funeral in January 1933. At first he brought practical reasons: a weather report, a replacement bolt, a warning that coyotes had been seen near the creek. She had answered his questions politely and returned to work before either of them could say something more personal. He had been careful, and she had been equally determined to remain unapproachable. Neither had realized how two years of short conversations could create an intimacy that seemed to have arrived without permission.
On Saturday they checked the hatch records before supper. The latest chicks showed a larger proportion of the silver-blue feathering than Vera had expected, but she reminded Daniel that the color alone was not the final measure. Some of the most ordinary-looking birds from the earlier hatch were sturdy and healthy, and she wanted to keep them until she understood what traits they carried. They discussed separating the young males, selecting breeding pairs, and the difference between preserving a lineage and producing enough birds for sale. It was a conversation about chickens, yet Vera found herself feeling as though Daniel had been invited into a room of her life that had been locked for years.
Supper was beans cooked with a little bacon, fresh bread, and two eggs she had saved because she wanted Daniel to taste them without anyone else telling him how good they were. He ate slowly, considered the flavor, and admitted that he understood why Martha had paid a premium. Then he asked about the farm itself: the debt, the north field, the condition of the well, the harvest she expected from wheat. Vera answered without trying to make the numbers prettier. She had spent too long shielding other people from her accounts, partly from pride and partly because saying the figures aloud made the danger more real.
Daniel listened, then offered his own figures from the previous two years. His farm had done better than hers in some respects, worse in others, and he had kept eighty acres of winter wheat going only by reducing expenses and repairing equipment instead of replacing it. He had lost money on cattle and earned a little from doing carpentry for neighbors. He had a comfortable reputation in the county, but comfort was relative, and she was relieved to hear him speak honestly about the decisions that had gone wrong. He was not a rich man pretending to understand scarcity; he was a working farmer who knew exactly what it could cost to be mistaken.
They sat after the dishes were done while the stove settled and the evening darkened the windows. Daniel asked about Thomas Aldren, and Vera found herself telling stories she had not told since the funeral. She spoke of the time her father walked three miles in snow to bring a neighbor's mare home, and of the day he sold a good plow because another family needed cash for a medical bill. She remembered him standing beside her at fourteen, making her repeat the steps of repairing a mower until she understood them rather than merely remembered them. Daniel knew some of these stories, but he listened as though hearing them anew.