No one questioned her. It had been, after all, self-defense.
She kept the farm as well as any man. Better. She worked. How she worked! She kept herself numb with labor, her mind drunk with the liquors of fatigue.
After five years, he came. He just appeared inside the door flap, looking a little nervous but grinning.
"I'm Jack Hamstrong," he said, his voice full and wholesome, like Iowa corn. "I—you weren't at the spaceport so I figured, what the heck. I just walked."
"This is my farm," Annie said. "My hands are on every inch of it."
Hamstrong's ruddy face turned in on itself a little. "I know. I know the story. I didn't come to take anything away. I came to—good Lord, didn't you know you'd be sent a husband?"
Annie's eyes went queer, like a cat's. "A husband?" If they'd told her, she hadn't heard. "Go away," she said. She looked around at her farm, the fruits of her travail—alone. The virgin birth.
"No," he said firmly. "It's yours and mine. Legally. I'm not a mean man, Annie. You'll find me patient. But stubborn. I can wait."
Annie sighed. Or was it a shudder? She looked up again at the puckering edges of the evening sky.