You won't disappear into the kitchen when they come. I had no plans to disappear anywhere, she said. The corner of his mouth moved. It wasn't quite a smile.
It was adjacent to one. I know you didn't. The Hargroves came in February on a day that was cold and clear, the sky that particular winter blue that had no warmth in it, but was beautiful in the way of things that didn't need to be warm to be real. Cecilia came in first and saw the house, which was clean and warm and had the particular quality of a place that was being genuinely lived in.
And then she saw Caleb, who was 11 months old by then, and pulling himself up on everything and falling and pulling up again with the same furious determination he'd had since he learned the trick of it. He looked at his grandmother from the safety of Evelyn's hip, and after a suitable period of assessment, allowed himself to be transferred, which he did with more grace than the first visit, and Cecilia held him, and this time did not look at Evelyn the same way she had before. She looked at Evelyn differently. Not warmly, not with any particular evidence of a changed opinion, but differently.
The look of a woman who has reconsidered her category for someone and not yet settled on a replacement. Harlon sat with Nathan and spoke to him in the front room about ranch matters and Laramie business, and Margaret in the careful way that men spoke about things they found painful when they were not in the habit of speaking about painful things. She could hear the conversation from the kitchen without hearing the words, and she let it be private. She brought coffee.
She sat it down and left and came back later for the cups. It was when she came back for the cups that Harlon said to her, with his back still partly turned. The house is well-kept. She picked up the cups.
Thank you. Margaret kept it differently. He said it to the window. She had a different approach to things.
I'm sure she did. I'm not criticizing. I know, she said. He turned then and looked at her with the direct measuring look that she recognized was probably where Cecilia had learned hers.
He was looking for something and she didn't know if he was finding it or not. You care for my grandson, he said. Not a question. Yes, you understand.
He's he's Margaret's son, she said. I understand that completely. I've never thought otherwise. Something moved in Harlon Hargrove's face that she suspected very few people had seen.
He looked at his hands and then at the window and then at nothing particular and he said she would have been and stopped and didn't go on and she understood enough to know he didn't need her to respond. She took the cups to the kitchen. Cecilia found her there an hour later, standing at the window with Caleb on her hip, pointing out to him the particular way a blue jay moved in the yard, which was a game they' developed that she wasn't sure he fully understood yet, but that he seemed to find worthwhile. He says, "Ma," Cecilia said from the doorway.