You didn't want me to feel like you wanted something from me. So you kept your distance even when you were standing in the same room. He looks at the table. Beth is gone. She says the person I was when I married Henry is not who I am now either.
She believed everything was going to work out because he believed it and that was enough for her. I can't do that anymore. I had to learn to believe things on my own terms. And what is that? He says she thinks about it.
Someone who needs a thing to be real before she can trust it. Someone who needs to see the joints before she'll stand on the floor. That's fair. He says, "I'm not asking you to convince me of anything." She says, "I'm saying I see what's in the room. I've been seeing it for a while.
I just needed the land to be settled before I could look at anything else directly. And now the land is settled. And now the land is settled." From the cradle, young Henry makes a sound of increasing urgency that suggests his opinions about being ignored have reached a threshold. They both look at him. He looks back with the absolute democratic attention of an infant who has not learned that some conversations are private.
Amos looks at the child and the thing in his face that is usually careful lets go somewhat. The room with different curtains, the one she has seen before, but not this openly. Can I? He stops. Yes, she says without making him finish.
He picks up young Henry with the concentrated care of someone handling something irreplaceable. Gets the head supported correctly, settles the child against his arm. The boy accepts this with the equinimity of a person who has not yet developed preferences about who holds him. Amos looks at him for a long moment, something she has not seen before, a softness carefully maintained against the rest of his expression. He looks like his father around the eyes, she says.
You'll see it better in a few years. I'd like to, Amos says quietly, plainly. She does not answer immediately. Outside, the wind moves. A hawk calls once from the timber and is silent.
I'm not looking for anything to complete me, she says finally. I have 40 acres and a child and enough mending work to get through winter. I don't need completing. He nods. He is listening.