Mabel looked at the cloth in her hands. "When Ma was sick," she said, "I didn't. I thought if I just kept everything running, if I kept the house clean and the meals on time and everything exactly right." She stopped. "You thought if you kept everything in order, she'd get better," Clara said quietly.
"Yes, that's what you do when you love someone and you can't fix the thing that's wrong with them," Clara said. "You control what you can control. You kept this family alive, Mabel." "That's what you did. You kept them alive."
Mabel wrung out the cloth and placed it on Sam's forehead with great care. "It wasn't enough," she said. "It was enough," Clara said. "Your mother died anyway. That's not the same thing as it not being enough."
Sam stirred beneath their hands. "Clara," he said. "Right here," she said immediately. "Are you still here?" "I'm still here," she said.
"Don't go," he said. "I'm not going anywhere," she said. He settled, his breathing even slightly. The heat had not broken yet, but it had not climbed further, which she took as the first small victory of the night. Mabel looked at her across the bed.
"He's never asked me that," she said. "What? Don't go," Mabel said. Her voice was very quiet. "He's never said that to me.
He just assumes I'll be there." That's because you always have been, Clara said. Mabel said nothing for a moment. He likes you, she said. It was not an accusation.
It had moved past that. It was something closer to an acknowledgement, the tone of someone setting something down they've been carrying and we're not sure they could release. I like him, Clara said. He likes everybody, Mabel said. Sam like Sam has never met a person he didn't decide to love inside of 5 minutes.
A pause, something that was almost but not quite a smile. Pa says he got it from Ma. She was like that, too. Nate told me about her, Clara said carefully. A little.
She sounds like someone remarkable. Mabel looked at her then a long direct look. He talked about her, she said. A little, Clara said again. He talk about her, Mabel said.