"You've been up all night." "Sit down." A standoff of several seconds. Then Mabel, and this was the thing Clara would think about later, would turn over and look at from different angles Mabel sat. In the doorway, back against the frame, sliding down to sit on the floor with her knees pulled up, and she tipped her head back and closed her eyes.
She let someone else handle it. For the first time in 3 years, she let someone else handle it. Clara went downstairs and made breakfast. She made it the way her mother had made breakfast on hard mornings, the mornings after something difficult, when a family needed to be fed properly and reminded, through the act of a good meal, that they were still intact. She made eggs and salt pork and biscuits left over from yesterday, warmed in the pan, and she made a pot of oatmeal for Sam, because it was what sick children needed, and she made coffee strong enough to be useful.
The children came down one by one, drawn by the smell in the way children always are, Thomas first, then Daniel, then Luke, who appeared already holding the engineering book, and had to be told twice to put it down for breakfast. Ethan came last, saw the state of the kitchen, Clara at the stove, not Mabel, and paused. "Sam," he said. "Fever broke," Clara said. "He's sleeping."
"He's going to be fine." Something in Ethan's face, that carefully controlled 14-year-old face, gave way very slightly. "Good," he said and sat down. They were quiet at breakfast. Not the practiced quiet of people avoiding something, but the quiet of people who have been through a difficult night and are now sitting in the relief of its having passed.
It was a different quality entirely. Nate came down and drank his coffee standing, the way he always did, but he didn't leave immediately. He stood at the counter and looked at his children around the table, and then he looked at Clara at the stove, and she had her back to him, but she felt it, the way you feel someone's attention when it has real weight behind it. We'll push back the east fence work today, he said to Jane. Stay close to the house.
James nodded without surprise. Thomas, Daniel, Nate said, light work only. Ethan, I need you on the barn, but stay where I can see you. Yes, Pa. Ethan said Luke he said yes, Pa.
Inside today. Luke looked briefly devastated and then resigned. Yes, Pa. Nate set his coffee cup down. Clara, he said.
She turned. If you need anything, he said, come find me. It was not a complicated sentence, but she understood what it meant coming from him, which was, I trust you to tell me if something is wrong. I am not going to pretend last night didn't change something. I will, she said.
He went out. James caught her eye across the kitchen table and gave her the small deliberate nod of someone who has been watching something carefully and reached a verdict. She turned back to the stove. Sam slept until noon. She went up to check on him twice before he woke, sat beside him for a few minutes each time, checked his temperature, adjusted his blankets.
He was sleeping the deep legitimate sleep of a body that has been fighting hard and is now recovering, and she did not wake him. When he did wake, his eyes opened and found her immediately. You're still here, he said. I told you I would be, she said. He looked at her for a long moment.