He said what? Thomas was quiet for a moment. He dried his hands on the towel by the sink. He said it was about time someone was looking after the place properly, he said. He said he heard there was a woman out here who had the kitchen running again.
He paused. He said Red Valley was rooting for us. Clara stirred the pot. Good, she said. Her voice was even.
Then we won't disappoint them. What she had not counted on was Jacob. She had thought she understood him, the The arms, the jaw, the boy who had taken on weight too large for his frame and organized his entire self around carrying it. She had thought she had seen the shape of him clearly enough. She had not seen all of it.
It was a Thursday evening, two weeks into July, and she had asked Jacob to bring in wood for the stove, and he had not come back in the time it usually took, and she went to find him and found him sitting on the wood pile with his arms on his knees and his face pointed at the ground. She didn't announce herself. She sat down on the other end of the wood pile and looked at the same patch of dirt he was looking at. She waited. He lasted 3 minutes.
"She used to sit out here," he said. "Mama, in the evenings. She said the light was better out here at the end of the day." Clara looked at the evening light. It was true.
It came in low and gold and gentle on the backside of the barn. "She sounds like she noticed things," Clara said. "She noticed everything," Jacob said. His voice was level, but it cost him. She knew when something was wrong with any of us before we said a word.
She'd just know." He pressed his fists against his knees. "I've been trying to do that for the little ones, but I'm not" He stopped. "I'm not her. I can't do it like she did."
Clara was quiet for a moment. "No," she said. "You can't." He flinched. She had expected that.
"Because you're not her," Clara said. "You're 10 years old and you're her son, and that is entirely different from being her. You are not supposed to be able to do what she did. That was not your job." "Somebody had to," Jacob said.
His voice cracked at the edge of it. "Yes," Clara said. "And you did, and it was more than any 10-year-old should have been asked to carry. She turned to look at him. But Jacob, I'm here now.