"Not just the loss." He looked up. "That's different." She looked at him. The kitchen was warm and the storm was diminishing and the house held all six of her sleeping children above them and the man across the table was looking at her with an expression.
She had stopped pretending she didn't understand. Bramwell, she said, I know, he said. I'm not, she stopped. She started again. I think I might be.
She stopped again and made the short frustrated sound she made when words weren't cooperating. I'm not good at this, she said. I was married for 13 years to a man who made feelings into problems, and I got very good at not having them where anyone could see. I know, he said again gently. I think about you, she said.
She said it fast before the practical part of her brain could edit it. More than I expected to, more than I more than I planned on. She looked at her coffee. I don't know what to do with that yet. He was very still.
You don't have to do anything with it, he said. I know. I'm just She looked up. I'm telling you because I think you should know because you've been honest with me and you deserve honesty back. He nodded slowly.
When this is done, she said, "When Orson is handled and the legal situation is settled and my children are safe and I know what the ground under my feet actually is, then I'd like to she stopped. I don't know what I'm saying. You're saying then," he said. "Yes," she said. Then he looked at her with the particular expression of a patient man who has decided then is enough.
All right, he said. Outside the storm settled into ordinary snow, and inside something that had been uncertain between them became slightly less so, and neither of them made more of it than that, because neither of them was built for making more of things than they were, and that was, Miriam thought, one of the things she liked best about him. May arrived and with it the mud and the first real green on the south slopes and the sound of the territory coming back to life in the particular way Montana came back to life grudgingly and then all at once as though it had been saving everything up. Gerald Foss wrote in the second week of May to say that Orson's lawyer had filed a response to the abandonment documentation and that there would likely be a county court hearing in June. He also said that Orson Hensley had been cited in Billings, which meant he was in the territory, which meant the possibility of his arriving in person before the court date was real.
Miriam read the letter and wrote back to Foss with three additional pieces of documentation she'd thought of, dates, witnesses, specific figures, and told Bramwell about the Billings sighting over dinner. The table went quiet. Even the younger children understood from the quality of the silence that something serious was being discussed. Bramwell said, "Do you want me to ask the county sheriff to be notified?" "Yes," Miriam said.