Bramwell, she said. I know the situation is Bramwell. She stopped him. I hear you. He waited.
I'm not. She stopped. She looked at the account book and then back at him. I'm not ready to say certain things. I don't know if I'm She stopped again, which frustrated her because she was generally better with words than this.
My husband left me six children in a note and I don't trust my own. She made a short frustrated sound. I'm being careful. I know, he said. I'm not trying to be difficult.
I know that, too. She looked at him. You're not angry. No, he said simply. Most men would be I'm not most men, he said.
Not arrogantly, just as a fact. She sat with that for a moment. Give me time, she said. All right, he said. He stood up, picked up his hat from where he'd left it on the edge of the desk.
He looked at her once more, and there was something in his face that she recognized because she felt a version of it herself, something restrained and careful, and very much present beneath the restraint. For what it's worth, he said, "I've got nowhere to be." He went out. Miriam sat in the chair in the study with the account book in her lap and looked at the empty doorway for a long moment. Outside she could hear the distant sound of children's voices coming in from the barn.
Wade, she thought, and probably Samuel arguing about something with the focused intensity they brought to all their arguments, which meant it was important to both of them and would probably resolve itself in 10 minutes. She could hear the particular high clear sound of Clara's laugh, which was the sound Miriam measured good days by. She looked at the numbers in the account book. She looked at the doorway. She thought about a man who said he had nowhere to be and meant it, and who had been demonstrating it every single day since November without asking for anything in return.
She went back to the accounts, but her mind wasn't entirely on the numbers. The last day of February brought the letter from the postmaster in Carver's Mill, delivered by a writer who came through despite the snow because it was marked urgent. Miriam carried it into the kitchen and set it on the table while she finished the bread she was working on. And when Bramwell came in, she nodded toward it. He picked it up.