She sat without moving, not watching her hands on the table before her but some space well beyond them or far closer, he could not tell which. After a time she sighed, nothing more than breath gone out of her but he felt it as a vibration, a rippling out of not just her lungs but the muscles and fibers of her body, the sound more a gathering of herself than relaxation. She stood and lifted her valise from the floor and placed it on the table, undoing the clasps so it spread, a squat hourglass animal. She went then to the sink and with her back turned to him stripped to the waist, letting her clothes fall, the heap ragged and stiff with travel. She washed herself with a coarse cloth meant for scouring pots, spending great time on her face and hands before abrading her upper body. Then still avoiding his eyes she dug into the valise and brought out a cotton nightgown and pulled it over her head. She reached under it and dropped her skirts and underclothes and lifted the nightgown to bunch with a rude knot about her waist. Used the same cloth to wash herself below, a furious scrubbing, finally lifting each foot to place on the grillwork edge of the range to wash it, thrusting the cloth between the toes and working it back and forth as if to clean away the ground covered, the miles traveled. Norman watched at first and then averted his eyes but still watched, not sure if this private act displayed before him was confidence or indifference. When she was done she loosened the knot and her gown fell around her. Then she bent to gather the fine rumpled sour suit and without ceremony pressed it hard down into the valise, snapping shut the clasps to cover it all. As if it were gone from her. Then she looked at him, her eyes wide, flickering, not steady. He saw them filled with troubling, with fear. He didn’t believe this to be directed at him but knew no other target. The eyes reminded him of a young horse, raised wild without human touch, now confined, smelling the upright creature approaching.

He said, “You got that over with quick.” Overhead there were footsteps, murmured voices, then quiet. The supper split-wood settled in the stove firebox. He could hear Leah breathing, little rags of phlegm in her throat.

“There wasn’t nothing.” Her voice rough, as if her throat were scarred or skinned over, as if bark grew there.

“Nothing of your mother? No word, nobody knowing anything?”

She shook her head. Again, her voice quivering, a spent arrow shaft, she said, “There wasn’t nothing.”

Confused as much by her as her words, he said, “What do you mean, nothing? No town? No people there at all?”

“No, no,” she cried. “Just there wasn’t nothing.”

“Leah.” His voice opening out around her name.

“What do you want of me!”