"Papa, she saved Henry. She didn't leave. She stayed up all night and she didn't leave." Nathaniel's eyes found Eleanor's across the room. Something complicated moving behind them.
Gratitude certainly, but something else too. Something that looked almost like the beginning of hope. The kind he'd stopped allowing himself years ago. "Your week's up tomorrow," he said quietly once the children had gone to check on the horses. "I know you planning on going."
Eleanor twisted her apron between her hands. "I don't have anywhere to go, Mr. Carter. I told you that from the start. That's not what I asked."
She looked up at him, this stranger who'd found her half frozen in the mud a week ago, and offered her the first honest kindness she'd received since her husband's death. She thought of Boston, of the family that had discarded her like spoiled meat of the boarding house that turned her away, of a world that had made abundantly clear it had no place for a woman alone. And she thought of Henry's fever breaking in her arms, of Clara weeping against her shoulder, finally letting someone close enough to catch her. I don't know how to be anyone's mother, Eleanor said. I never had children of my own.
I don't know the first thing about raising them, about being what this family needs. Nobody knows that going in. Nathaniel took a step closer. I sure as hell didn't, and I've had 6 years of practice failing at it. But you sat up two nights with a sick boy who isn't yours, and you held my daughter while she cried for the first time in 3 years.
And if that's not knowing how, I don't know what is. Eleanor felt something crack open in her chest. Some wall she'd built brick by brick since the day her husband died. Since the day his family had made her feel like less than nothing. "What are you asking me, Mr.
Carter?" Nathaniel was quiet for a long moment, the fire popping softly in the hearth behind him, the sound of Clara's laughter drifting faint from the barn where she and Henry were tending to the horses. I'm not asking for love, he said finally. I know that's not something a person can ask for, not honest. But I've got a ranch that's falling apart and two children who need a mother more than they need anything else in this world.
And you've got nowhere else to be. And if I'm not mistaken, nowhere else you particularly want to be either. "That's not a proposal, Mr. Carter. That's a business transaction."