The horse was gone. The wagon was gone. The good harness was gone. The two remaining chickens were still there looking confused and resentful in the gray light. And the family's one remaining milk cow stood in her stall, staring at Miriam with enormous brown eyes.
But the horse was gone, which meant Miriam had no way to travel to town, no way to haul wood, no way to do much of anything that required moving something heavy across distances. She went back inside and stood in the kitchen and looked at the shelves. One sack of cornmeal half full. Four potatoes. A jar of dried beans with less than a pound left.
A small tin of salt. Two onions going soft at the base. The preserved meat that had been hanging in the cellar was gone. Orson had taken it. The winter flour was gone.
Whatever else they might have scraped through on was gone. She had seven people to feed, including herself. She did the calculations standing right there in the kitchen, the way she had learned to do in the years, since she'd understood that Orson's optimism about money was a form of lying he couldn't stop doing even to himself. A week, maybe a little more if she was careful, if she skipped meals herself, if the cow kept producing, if the weather held well enough for the children to move around. Tessa found her there 5 minutes later.
Tessa was 12 and had her mother's eyes dark and steady and too old for her face. And she stood in the kitchen doorway in her nightgown and looked at her mother and then at the empty shelves and then at the note still sitting on the table and she didn't ask where her father was. She already knew. How bad is it? Tessa said.
Miriam turned around and looked at her eldest daughter for a long moment. Tessa had always known when things were serious. When Miriam tried to protect her from hard truths, Tessa had a way of finding them anyway, quietly without drama, as though hard truths were simply things that needed to be located and examined so they could be dealt with. Bad enough, Miriam said. Do we have enough food?
For a while. Tessa looked at the half full sack of cornmeal and the four potatoes and said nothing. She was 12 years old and she could count the same as her mother. I won't tell the little ones yet, Miriam said. Let them sleep.
Okay, Tessa said. She crossed the kitchen in her bare feet, opened the small cabinet beside the fireplace where the medical supplies were kept, and started taking stock of what was there without being asked. Miriam watched her for a moment, this child, who had already learned to prepare for the worst without being told, and felt something twist in her chest that was fiercer and sadder and more complicated than ordinary grief. Tessa, h, you don't need to worry about this. I'll figure something out.
Tessa glanced back at her. I know you will, she said completely matter of fact, as though that part had never been in question. But I can still help. Miriam didn't argue with her. There was no point arguing with someone who was right.