Caleb and Clara were waiting beside the station platform, twenty minutes early, hand in hand, and Caleb thought, as he stood there with his wife's fingers warm in his own, that he had waited here once before, alone, with one hand on Sable's saddle and a terrible idea in his head, and that everything since then had been a kind of answer to that waiting. Then, he had been a man expecting a plain bride from a letter. Now, he was a man waiting with his wife for her sister, and the difference between those two men was the whole story of his life.
Clara wore her dark traveling coat, the same coat she had worn on the day she arrived, though it was mended now and softened by wear, and her black hair was braided over one shoulder, and the silver pendant at her throat caught the evening light. She was not nervous, exactly — Clara was rarely nervous in the way other people meant the word — but she was taut with a hope held so long it had become a physical thing, a tightness in her shoulders, a quickness in her breathing, a look in her steady eyes that Caleb had learned to read as clearly as print.
She will be frightened, Clara said, for perhaps the third time that afternoon.
She will be brave, Caleb said, "because she is your sister. And because we will be here, early, waiting, so that the first faces she sees are faces that already love her."
Clara squeezed his hand. "You remember what I told you, about fear? That it leaves you if you do the next thing anyway?"
I remember, Caleb said. "I have lived by it, since you taught me."
The conductor stepped down. Passengers began climbing onto the platform, a few at a time, townspeople and travellers, and Caleb and Clara watched each face, and then, from the final passenger car, a girl stepped down.
She was fifteen, and she was frightened, and she was brave, all at once, in the way that only the young can be both at the same time. She was smaller than Clara, slighter, with the same black hair, worn loose rather than braided, and the same dark eyes, wide as she took in the station, the town, the copper sky, and the two people waiting for her. She carried one small bag, clutched in both hands, and she wore a dress that had been mended many times, and her boots were dusty from the journey.
Clara moved first. She crossed the platform in three strides and took her sister into her arms, and Lily, who had held herself together for a whole train journey across a territory, came apart at last in the safest place she knew: her sister's embrace. She cried, quietly, without sobbing, her face pressed against Clara's shoulder, and Clara held her, rocking her gently, whispering words Caleb could not hear and did not need to hear, words in the private language of sisters who have been apart too long.
Caleb stood back and gave them room, because some moments belong to two people and a third person can only honour them by waiting. He watched Clara hold Lily, and he thought about Mara, who had held Clara this way once, and about Thomas, who had taught both his daughters to read, and about all the losses that had led, by a road no one could have planned, to this platform, this sunset, this reunion. He thought about his own mother, Ellen, who had suggested a marriage before she died, and who had never lived to see what it became, and he wished, fiercely and briefly, that she could see it now: not a practical arrangement, but a family, gathering itself together on a station platform in Red Hollow.
Then Lily lifted her head, wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and looked at Caleb, and Clara, still holding her sister's hand, said, "Lily, this is Caleb. My husband. Your brother, if you will have him."
Lily studied him with Clara's own steady look, younger and more uncertain, but unmistakably the same. "You are the man who married the letter," she said, and Caleb blinked, because Clara must have written her sister everything, honestly, as she did everything.
I am the man who married the letter, Caleb said, "and then had the good sense to marry the woman instead. And now, if you will let me, I would like to be your brother."
Lily considered this, seriously, the way fifteen-year-olds consider matters of great importance, and then she nodded, and then, to Caleb's surprise and delight, she smiled — a real smile, bright and sudden, that transformed her frightened face into something hopeful.
Then I would like that, she said. "I would like that very much."
Caleb helped her with her bag — she let him, after a moment's hesitation, which made him laugh, because Clara had done the same thing on this very platform, all those months ago — and they walked toward the horses. Clara had brought the bay mare with the white star, gentled and ready, and a second horse for Caleb, and Lily looked at the mare with eyes that widened further.
Is she for me? Lily whispered.
She is for you, Clara said. "Not borrowed. Yours, for as long as you are here, which I hope will be a very long time."
Lily approached the mare slowly, the way Clara had taught her in letters, speaking low, holding out her hand, and the mare, who had learned to trust Clara and Caleb, sniffed Lily's palm and blew softly, and Lily laughed, a sound like water finding its way again after a long drought.