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.
Not to any of that, she paused. I won't. I know, Miriam said. I just want to make sure you know that I know, Tessa said. In case it's useful.
Miriam looked at her daughter. It is, she said. The storm that came in mid-April was the worst of the season, which was notable given that the season had already provided several serious candidates. It came in from the northwest overnight, the way the late season storms did. Deceptively, the sky had been mostly clear at sunset, and by midnight the wind was significant, and by 2 in the morning, Miriam could hear it battering the north side of the house with a sound like something large and angry trying to get in.