Thomas looked at her with the expression of a man who has already exhausted the other options. Unless you know a way to grow lumber out of Colorado clay. What about the McKenna brothers? Clare said, I heard Morrison mention them last time I was in town. He said they do trade work materials for labor on the other end.
Thomas was quiet. They fixed the Hadley barn that way, Clare continued. Ruth Hadley told Emily, "Labor McKini boys take the first two weeks of work on the Hadley farm come spring." "That's a hard trade," Thomas said. "It's better than Whitmore's terms," Clare said.
Another quiet. She had learned by now that Thomas's silences were not dismissals. They were how he processed. He was a man who thought before he spoke, which was rarer than it should have been and more valuable than most people knew. I'll ride over to the McKini place, he said at last.
Good, Clare said, and turned back to the basin. She heard him put his cup down. Then he said, How do you know about Whitmore's terms? She glanced over her shoulder. Jacob mentioned them in passing.
He was talking about the ledger. Thomas said nothing. Your son pays attention to everything, Clare said. You should know that. I know it, Thomas said quietly.
I just didn't know he was sharing it. He trusts me, Clare said simply, without making a thing of it. The word trust sat in the air between them for a moment. Thomas picked up his hat from the hook by the door. "I'll be back before noon," he said, and he went out.
Clare stared at the basin. She was still here. She had stopped counting days somewhere around 19 and she was still here. And she had just helped Thomas Walker negotiate a lumber trade over coffee before 9:00 in the morning. And she needed to think seriously about what that meant.
She decided to think about it later. She made more coffee and called the children down for their Sunday morning reading. It was Lily who told her about Eleanor. Not all at once, not as a formal disclosure. The way children reveal things in pieces sideways through the gaps in other conversations when they've decided you're safe enough to let something through.
It started because of the music box Lily had taken to bringing it downstairs on Sunday evenings and winding it and setting it on the kitchen table while Clare finished the dinner dishes. The thin sweet melody would fill the kitchen and Lily would sit with her chin in her hands and listen. Clare had learned not to comment on it. She simply let it play. But on this particular Sunday, Lily said without looking up.
Mama used to say that song was for when things were hard. Clare kept her hands moving in the basin. What kind of things? Just hard things. Lily traced a pattern on the table with one finger.