Evelyn turned. "He started a few weeks ago. He says it to me and sometimes to Nathan and once to the coffee pot, so I'm not entirely sure what it means to him yet." Cecilia looked at her grandson in Evelyn's arms, and something in her face was just tired.
Not hostile, not strategic, just the tiredness of a woman who had lost her daughter and had spent months fighting the wrong battle and had arrived at the other side of it with no daughter and no victory and a grandchild who said ma to someone else. "I didn't like you," Cecilia said. "I know. I still don't know if I like you."
"I'm not asking you to like me," Evelyn said. I'm asking for the chance to show you who I am, which is different. Cecilia looked at her. And who are you?
I'm the woman who was there when Caleb had a fever that could have gone bad. I'm the woman who gets up at night when he cries. And I'm the woman who tracks what he eats and makes sure he's warm and has learned every sound he makes and what each one means. She shifted Caleb on her hip.
I'm not his mother, and I know that. I will never ask him to forget that there was someone else. But I am what's here, Mrs. Hargrove, and what's here matters. Cecilia was quiet for a long time.
Caleb made a grab for the collar of Evelyn's dress and held on. "You're very sure of yourself," Cecilia said finally. "I've had to be," Evelyn said. "It's not the same thing as being certain about everything."
Cecilia looked at her grandson one more time and then at Evelyn and said carefully, "He seems healthy." It was not an apology. It was not a concession. It was a woman finding the smallest true thing she could say and saying it.
He is, Evelyn said. He's doing very well. The Hargroves left before dark. Nathan stood at the gate and watched the buggy go and then came back to the house and stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at Evelyn with an expression that was tired in the good way.
The way of a man who has carried something difficult a long distance and has finally been allowed to set it down. How did it go? He said the kitchen part. Better than the first time.
She put Caleb in his chair and started on dinner. She may never be warm to me. I'm not counting on it. But But she's choosing her grandson over her position.