He looked at the wooden box on the shelf, the one Clare had started building. He said whoever put that together knew what they were doing. Clare said nothing. I told him about you, Thomas said. What did you tell him?
That you run this house, that you've been here seven weeks, and in seven weeks, the children are better than they've been in two years. He looked at her steadily. He asked if you'd be willing to testify if it comes to that, about the household, the children's well-being. Clare held his gaze. Yes, she said.
It might get complicated, Thomas said. Whitmore's people will try to make your presence here look like something it isn't. They'll use the Hfordford sisters and anyone else who will talk. "Let them try," Clare said. Thomas looked at her.
Something in his face broke open just slightly. Not dramatically. Not the way things broke open in stories. Just a small fracture in the controlled surface of a man who had been holding everything together alone for two years and was sitting across from someone who was undeniably, unmistakably holding it with him. Ow.
Emily drew a picture of the ranch. He said it seemed like a change of subject. It wasn't. She left it on my pillow last night. First thing she's drawn since Eleanor died.
She drew it from the north the way it looks when you come down from the upper pasture. The way it looks in fall. It's a good view, Clare said. She drew you in it, Thomas said. Standing in the garden.
A silence. She put you in the picture of this place. Thomas said, "My daughter." Clare looked at her coffee cup. She could feel her pulse in her hands.
"Thomas," she started. "I know," he said. "I know the situation. I know it's complicated. I'm not."
He stopped. Started again. "I'm not saying anything I haven't got this right to say yet. I just wanted you to know that. He picked up his coffee cup and stood."
"Supper smells good," he said. He went to wash up. Clare sat at the kitchen table and looked at the grain of the wood and thought about a 14-year-old girl drawing the home she loved with a woman standing in the garden who had arrived 7 weeks ago with a cloth bag and $11 and a determination not to become attached. She pressed her palm flat against the table. She had been put in the picture.