Supper was the thing. Clare had understood planning it that the meal was not a meal. It was evidence not assembled coldly. Everything on that table was there because it was how supper happened in this house genuinely every night. But she was aware as she set it out that every ordinary thing on that table was arguing a case.
The bread, the stew with its proper balance, the butter that Emily had helped churn, the table laid by Lily, who had appointed herself table setter weeks ago, and took the job with seriousness. The picture of water Noah carried in without being asked. Jacob sitting down and pulling Ben's chair out for him without thinking about it. Thomas said, "Grace." Harriet sat across from Emily and looked at the table and looked at the children and Clare watched her taking it in with the expression of a woman recalibrating.
The conversation at the table was ordinary. Lily told Harriet about the music box. Noah reported on something that had happened at school involving a frog that he considered hilarious and nobody else seemed to find quite as funny though. Harriet smiled genuinely. Jacob talked about his mathematics with the careful precise vocabulary of someone who loves a subject and does not always have an audience for it.
And Ben, sitting beside Clare, as he had taken to doing at supper, leaned over at a certain point and said in a voice loud enough for the table to hear. Miss Clare taught me that rabbits can't actually fly, but they can jump very high, and that counts for something. The table laughed. Harriet's eyes went from Ben to Clare. Whatever calculation had been in those eyes when she first walked in was changing after supper.
After the children were upstairs, Clare was washing the dishes when Harriet came and stood in the kitchen doorway. You don't have to. Clare started. I want to ask you something, Harriet said. Clare dried her hands and turned.
Harriet looked at her directly. How long have you been here? Nearly 2 months, Clare said. And before that, the children. Emily was running the house.
Clare said a 14-year-old girl was running the house. Jacob wasn't going to school. Ben wasn't speaking. She held Harriet's gaze. That is not a criticism of Thomas.
That is what grief does to a family. But it was the situation. Harriet was quiet. The man who wrote to me, she said carefully. He said the children were being neglected.
What man? Clare said. A pause. He didn't give his name, a letter. He said there were concerns.
He said, "As Elellanor's family, I had an obligation to Harriet stopped. She looked at something invisible. He said Thomas couldn't manage that the children needed better than what they had." "An an anonymous letter," Clare said. Harriet's chin came up slightly.