Miriam thought about the years she'd spent trying to make Orson's poor decisions add up to something workable. I've had practice with difficult situations, she said. He looked at her for a moment. You could have run a trading post, he said. Or a hotel if someone had given you the capital.
It wasn't a compliment exactly. Or it wasn't only a compliment. It was also an observation. And it had a slight edge of something in it that she recognized as anger on someone else's behalf. She found that unexpectedly disarming.
Nobody gave me capital, she said simply. No, he said, I don't expect they did. He went back to his food, and she went back to hers, and the fire popped once in the great, and the wind pushed at the windows, and neither of them said anything else for a while. Outside, the snow was still coming down. The winter, it appeared, had decided to take this seriously.
Tessa found Miriam in the kitchen early the next morning, which was not unusual, but she was wearing an expression that meant she wanted to say something she wasn't sure she was allowed to say, which was slightly more unusual. What? Miriam said. Tessa sat down at the kitchen table. I like it here, she said.
I know. I don't mean the food or the warm rooms. She was quiet for a moment, organizing something internally. I mean, I like how it works here, how people know what they're doing, and they just do it. Nobody's waiting to see if someone else is going to fix things.
Miriam turned from the stove to look at her daughter properly. On the homestead. Tessa said carefully, "I was always waiting for something to get better for father to do something. She picked at a thread on her sleeve. I didn't realize I was doing it until we got here, and I noticed I wasn't doing it anymore."
Miriam was quiet for a moment. "How long have you been thinking about that?" "A, Tessa, I'm not sad about it," Tessa said, which was the clarification Miriam had been about to ask for. "I'm just saying it out loud, so it's not just a thing I'm thinking. It's easier when things get to be a thing I'm saying.
She looked up. You taught me that. Miriam looked at her 12-year-old daughter, who had her eyes and her mother's stubbornness and her grandmother's precision with language, and felt the particular complicated love of a parent looking at a child who is going to be fine, more than fine, Anon, and understanding that you can't quite take credit for it because they got there on their own. Yes, Miriam said. I did teach you that.
So, Tessa said, "I just wanted to say it. We're okay here. We are, Miriam said. Tessa stood up, apparently satisfied. August is teaching Wade how to check a hoof properly, she said, already moving toward the door.