Bramwell read the margins when she was done, and occasionally wrote a response, and this had developed into a kind of written conversation that moved through the books on the shelf, and that neither of them ever directly mentioned. Miriam knew about it because she'd noticed the handwriting while she was dusting. She didn't mention it either. In early April, Gerald Foss wrote to say that he had prepared a formal legal response to Orson's lawyer and had filed documentation of abandonment with the county court. The legal position, he reiterated, was strong.
He could not predict when or whether Mr. Hensley would arrive in person, but they should be prepared for the possibility in late spring. Miriam wrote back with the dates in the note and a precise accounting of every resource Orson had taken when he left. Her handwriting was very even. She was calm going into this the way she was calm going into any practical problem, not because she felt nothing, but because she'd found somewhere in the years of Orson's failures, that the most useful thing she could do with a feeling was acknowledge it and then put it somewhere it wouldn't interfere with what needed to be done.
She told Tessa on a Sunday afternoon in April. She told her directly as she always told her things, sitting at the kitchen table with the window showing a gray sky and the smell of rain coming. Tessa listened. She was quiet for a moment when Miriam finished. Is he going to take us back?
She said. No. How sure are you? The law is on our side. Miriam said he abandoned us.
That's documented. He can't simply come back and declare everything is the same as it was. Tessa thought about this with the focused stillness she brought to important things. But he could try. He could try.
Miriam said. People can try a lot of things that don't succeed. Tessa was quiet again. Then does Mr. Concaid know. Yes.
She nodded slowly as though she'd expected that. Good, she said. Tessa, I'm not frightened, Tessa said. And she wasn't. Miriam saw she was something more precise than frightened.
Something that was anger and calculation in equal parts. The expression of a 12-year-old who was deciding how she felt about a problem before she settled on how to handle it. I don't want to go back, she said. Not to father. Not to that homestead.