"I'm not asking you to apologize," Eleanor said. "I'm telling you that I understand how the arithmetic worked in your head. I just want you to hear that it didn't work out the way you calculated. She gestured at the farm. The odd working alive gesture of a woman standing in the middle of something she built.
Because I am still here. Thomas looked at her for a long moment. She could see something moving through him. Guilt. Genuine and uncomfortable.
The kind that has nowhere good to go. You've done well, he said. It cost him something to say it. I have, she said simply. He cleared his throat.
I'd like, he stopped, started again. If there's anything you need going forward, I'd like to be useful. Eleanor looked at her brother. He was 41 years old and he was a man of limited imagination and genuine, if imperfectly expressed, affection, and he was standing in the dirt of her farm asking to be allowed back into a story he had tried to write the ending of himself. "Come at Christmas," she said.
"Bring Catherine and the children, there'll be a proper dinner." He blinked. "That's yes. Yes, we will." "Good," she said. Now I have squash to finish pulling. He left.
She went back to the garden and Ruth, who had been entirely invisible in the kitchen and had definitely heard the entire conversation, appeared in the doorway with two cups of coffee and a look of profound respect. That Ruth said was magnificent. It was practical, Elellanor said, taking a cup. It was both, Ruth said. Benjamin heard about the documents from two different people before Elellanor told him herself, which happened the following Sunday when he came by on the pretense of checking the barn brace, which did not need checking, as they both understood, and she poured him coffee and told him the whole story plainly, because she had found that the particular quality of his listening made plainelling feel right.
When she finished, he was quiet for a moment. 20 Acres that were always yours, he said. Yes. And your brother? I've dealt with Thomas, she said.
He looked at her. She had noticed in the months of his company that he looked at her with a consistency that she was not accustomed to. Not the looking past of men who assessed her appearance and found their gaze elsewhere. But the looking at of a man who found the subject genuinely interesting and was in no hurry to look somewhere else. You're not angry, he said.
It was an observation, not a challenge. I'm something, Eleanor said. I'm not sure anger is the largest part of it. She turned her coffee cup in her hands. Mostly, I think I have the land.
I have the work. I have what I needed. Even if the way I got it was, she stopped. Mostly, I think I just want to keep going. Benjamin looked at his own coffee cup for a moment.