Eleanor Cunningham moved her face in an answering nod.

“If you got a taste for some fish, he’s taking orders,” Taylor added merrily.

For a moment no one spoke, and the silence was like a chill. Then Eleanor said, “Thank you, but I don’t eat much fish.” She turned to face Taylor. “You see everything I got?”

Taylor glanced at the goods she held, handed her the candy. “I do,” he answered. He wanted to ask about the iodine and the bandaging, but put the question aside. The reason it was needed was private, and he had long understood that it was bad business to be too nosy. “You take care of yourself,” he added.

“I will,” Eleanor Cunningham said. She looked at Noah, then stepped back, turned and walked across the store and out of the door.

“That’s a fine woman,” Taylor said softly. “Usually a lot more talkative, and she’s got a smile you’ll keep seeing a long time after she’s gone when she’s in a good mood, but she’s had her share of trouble.” Then he added in a manner that had apology to it—realizing he was talking to a stranger who did not know the facts: “Her husband’s dead.”

Noah felt his head dip in the ritual of acknowledgment, heard his voice speak from the ritual of response, “Sorry to hear that.”

“Boyd—that was his name—was in the war all over Europe,” Taylor continued. “Didn’t get so much as a scratch that I ever heard tell of, then comes home and shoots himself about a year ago.”

Noah took the news with surprise, a turn of his head toward Taylor. “Why’d he do that?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Taylor told him. “He got back from the war wearing the bars of a second lieutenant and carrying a lot more money than the government pays a soldier.” He paused, shook his head, let his smile grow. “But Boyd always was the kind of man that’d make you want to check how many fingers you had left after you shook hands with him. Used to pay off everything with twenty-dollar bills so new you could cut butter with them. That’s what I remember,” he added. Then: “Anyhow, there’s them who think that had something to do with it, thinking maybe he ran out of them new twenty-dollar bills.” He paused again. “War does a lot of things to people, I guess.”

“It does,” Noah said.

“When Boyd killed himself, it left Eleanor in a bind,” Taylor said. “She’s had her place up for sale, but nobody’s made any kind of offer that I know of.”

Noah gave a small shake of his head as if to say he understood how it was to be holding something you didn’t want. Then he glanced toward the door of the store.

“Well, I’m glad to meet you, Noah Locke,” Taylor said, reading the look.

“Same here,” Noah said. “How much I owe you?”

Taylor gave him the sum of the debt, took the money offered, and made change, saying, “My offer stands. You want some work while you’re here, I got the paint stacked up in the back of the store. Pay you eight dollars a day, plus one feeding.”