Noah is four. Noah knows things," Jacob said simply. "He's always known things. Mama used to say he came into the world already understanding it." Clara stood with the pot in her hands and felt the particular pressure of a conversation that had somehow gotten from dishwashing to the mention of a dead woman's opinion about her youngest son's emotional intelligence and she had no map for the territory she was in.
"Jacob," she said. "Yeah." "I am going to finish these dishes." "Okay." "And then I am going to go to bed."
"Okay." "And in the morning we are going to have breakfast and it is going to be a normal day. Jacob put down his drying cloth. She'd have liked you, he said. He said it to the dish rack, not to Clara.
Mama? She liked people who were straight about things. He picked up the drying cloth again. I just thought you should know that, in case it matters. He finished drying and went upstairs.
Clara stood at the sink for a long moment. She pressed her wet hands against the cool edge of the counter and breathed. Then she finished the dishes. The storm announced itself on Friday morning, the way late July storms in Texas often did not, with gradual build-up, but with the sudden change in the air pressure that made the horses restless and the chickens stupid, and Luke come inside three times to report escalating meteorological observations, as if he were being paid for the service. "The sky is getting green," Luke said on the third visit.
"I know," Clara said. "Green sky means bad storm," Luke said. "I know. Papa said he's going to check the south fence line before it hits." Clara looked up from the bread she was making.
"He went to the south fence." "He left an hour ago. He said he'd be back before noon." She looked at the window. The light outside had shifted to that particular yellowish quality that meant the storm was not a question, but a schedule.
"Jacob," she said. Jacob was in the doorway already, because Jacob had also been watching the sky. "I know," he said. "Get your brothers and sister to the main room. Stay there."
"What about Papa?" "He'll be back before it hits," she said. Because she said it, she needed it to be true. "Go." Jacob went.
She kept making bread because her hands needed something, and because if she stopped to think about a man on the south fence line with a green Texas sky overhead. She was going to do something her professional assessment of herself could not endorse. She shaped the loaves. She covered them to rise. She washed her hands.