He confirmed. Mara had her hands around her coffee cup. She wasn't alarmed exactly, but she was alert in the way that she got when something required being thought through carefully rather than reacted to quickly. "What do we do?" "Tonight we bring the smaller animals inside the barn.
The horses are already in. I'll set watches. I'll take the late one. Evan can take early evening if his arm is up to it."
"My arm is fine." Evan said. "Your arm is not fine." Caleb said. "It's 6 weeks.
We're on week two. You can do the early watch and you can sit in the barn doorway with the lantern and make noise if you hear anything, but you're not going out in the field, you understand me? Evan looked at him. It was not a look of defiance.
It was the look of a boy who was trying to decide whether to argue and concluding after a moment that the argument wasn't worth the cost. "Understood." He said. "Good."
Caleb said. They were quiet a moment. Then Owen said, "Can I do a watch?" "No."
Said Mara, Evan, Caleb, and Lucy in more or less perfect unison. Owen looked around at all four of them and then looked at his biscuit. "That's four against one." He said.
"That's not fair." "Life's not fair." Evan told him. "Evan."
Mara said. "It's true though." He said. "It is true."