She thought about what she had decided about what was possible and what was enough. She thought about Thomas not the way she's been thinking about him all week, as the gravity around which everything else oriented, but differently. As the person who had taught her what a practical man looked like, and as someone who would have recognized without difficulty what Gideon Mercer was. Tell me about your family, she said. Gideon looked at her.
Toby asked, and you didn't answer, she said. I'd like to. He looked at the table, at the coffee, at his hands. It took him a moment that was long enough that she thought he might not answer. And she was already forming the words to tell him he didn't have to when he spoke.
Her name was Ruth, he said. My son was Daniel. He was four. He stopped. Started again.
It was a fever. Both of them within 10 days of each other. The closest doctor was 3 days ride and it was spring thaw and the roads he stopped again. There was nothing I could do that I didn't do. I've spent four years being sure of that and it doesn't fix anything, but it's true.
No, she said it doesn't fix anything. He looked up at her and the thing in his face was something she could look at directly because she had the same thing in hers and they both knew it and neither of them needed to perform anything about it. It was just there between them. The specific weight of loss that doesn't go away, but that you learn to carry differently after long enough. If you're lucky enough to find something that shifts the carrying.
The box in the corner? She said the wooden chest. What did you take out of it? He was quiet for a moment. A dress?
He said Ruth's. I'd kept it folded since he stopped. I moved it to the bottom under other things. He looked at his coffee. It was time.
Mara understood the significance of that. She understood it exactly. The way you understand something when you have done the equivalent yourself put something away not to it but because carrying it in your hands was different from carrying it somewhere it couldn't you making decisions ay she said softly he looked up the east parcel she said if it has road access I'd want to survey it properly before we committed to anything something shifted in his face something that was not quite a smile and was more important than one. Ferris can do that. He said he's got the equipment.