Charlotte felt Ada put a hand on her arm. Then Ada herself was speaking and far more calmly.
“Thank you, sir, for your kind offer,” she said. “I regret to inform you that I am not matrimonially disposed at this time.”
“I appreciate the care you took with stating that,” he said. He stood up. “I still need to learn to read and write the best I can. That’s the only future I got now. I’d like to hope I’d retain my welcome here.”
“You will,” Ada said. “Always.”
Charlotte stood by, stunned. Just like that, one of her children was no longer a child. “How is it that you’re the calm one and I’m the wild one?”
“I don’t know.”
“You handled that beautifully. I’d say you just made a friend for life.”
Ada gazed out into space. “My first marriage proposal,” she said and Charlotte was surprised to hear almost a wistfulness in her voice.
“You’re planning on having more than a few?”
Ada came back to earth. “No. But it was a moment, anyway. I never had anyone ask to marry me before.”
“Can I just say one more time that you’re thirteen? And were you honestly aware of the person doing the asking? Promise me that next time you want that kind of moment you’ll pick someone even remotely acceptable.”
“I wonder what kind of dress I’d wear.”
“Please stop,” Charlotte said, “or I’m going to get the vapors like that old lady in the wagon train.”
Without saying anything, Ada put her arms around Charlotte’s neck and hugged her tight.
34
34
The moon of the falling leaves arrived and broad areas of color showed among the trees. Wild geese congregated in the fields. Formations of ducks flew high. The cicadas quieted but the great horned owl’s haunting call still echoed in the night.
In this muted season of harvest and dying back, Charlotte felt as if she and the pumpkins in the garden were the only ones growing larger all the time. She had artfully added length to her skirts so that the hiked up waistband didn’t leave a scandalous swath of petticoats. She knew she was, to some eyes at least, scandalous enough without a show of undergarments to compound the affront. The only good thing, she considered, was that her hair was filling in, curling down the back of her neck and over her ears, gently framing her face. Ada managed with more luck than skill to shape it so that it now retained some semblance of deliberation rather than vengeful wielding of scissors.