Ruth Ames said, "That is exactly what makes it unusual." She climbed into the buggy and picked up the rains and looked down at him and said, "The August visit will be my last. After that, the placement becomes permanent and the society sends a letter." He said, "And then what?" She said, "And then they are yours."
She drove away. Caleb stood at the fence and watched the buggy go north toward town, and he stood there longer than the watching required. July brought heat and grasshoppers, and a week when the well ran low, and Caleb carried water from the creek and buckets, and Lucille helped him pour it into the trough, and Bess sat on the porchstep with her cup and watched them work. The cup had taken on a new role in the house. Bess did not drink from it.
She carried it the way another child might carry a doll tucked in the crook of her arm or set on the table beside her plate or placed on the window sill where she could see it from the bed. It was the last object she touched at night and the first one she reached for in the morning. One evening, Caleb was mending a harness on the porch and Bess came out and sat next to him and set her cup on the boards between them. She did not say anything. She sat there and watched him work the leather through the needle.
And after a while, she reached out and touched the sleeve of his shirt with two fingers very lightly, as though checking whether the arm inside it would pull away. He did not move. He kept working the harness. And Bess left her fingers on his sleeve for a few seconds and then pulled them back and picked up her cup and went inside. That night after the girls were asleep, he sat by the stove and looked at his hands and thought about what it means when a child who does not trust anyone touches you of her own choosing.
And he decided it meant more than 80 acres or a dozen head of cattle or $52 or any of the other numbers he had used to measure his life before the train came in 40 minutes late on a Tuesday afternoon in April. August came. Ruth Ames came for the final visit on a Friday afternoon. She wore a different dress, a blue one, not the dark traveling dress he had seen on the platform, and she had her hair pinned differently, and Caleb noticed both of these things and then told himself to stop noticing them. She did the inspection.
She asked her questions. Lucille answered them with the authority of a child who has been running a household for 4 months and knows it. Bess sat at the table and held her cup. And when Ruth Ames asked her if she wanted to stay, Bess said yes. And then she said, Lucille says, "We live here now."
Ruth Ames wrote it down. She closed her ledger. She said, "The placement is permanent. I will file the paperwork in New York and you will receive a letter within 8 weeks. Caleb said, "Thank you."