"You're welcome," Clara said without turning from the stove. Lily stayed in the doorway. "How did you know which one?" "It was the only dress you never wore on the days it rained," Clara said. "When the ground was wet and muddy, you wore the blue one.
The hem on the gray one was harder to manage in mud. Another silence. You watch us, Lily said, not accusing, observing. I pay attention, Clara said. There's a difference.
Watching is looking for something to use. Paying attention is looking because you care what you see. She heard Lily exhale a slow, complicated breath and then the soft sound of the girl sitting down at the kitchen table. My mother used to say something like that, Lily said. Clara set the wooden spoon down carefully.
She turned around. Lily was looking at the table. Her jaw was tight in the particular way of someone working very hard to keep their face from showing something. "Would you tell me about her?" Clara asked if you want to.
You don't have to. The kitchen was very quiet. Outside, a wind was moving through the pines and the sound it made was low and steady like breathing. She made the best biscuits, Lily said finally. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
We tried to make them the same way after she died, and they always come out wrong. And Emma says we're measuring wrong, but I think it's something else. I think it's just, she stopped. I think it's just that she's not here. Clara sat down across from her.
I think you're right, she said. Lily looked up. Her eyes were bright, but she hadn't cried yet. Was holding it back with everything she had. "It's allowed to be that way."
Clara said, "Some things are wrong because a person is missing. Not because you measured wrong, not because you didn't try hard enough, just because there's a hole where someone used to be, and the biscuits know the difference." Something broke open in Lily's face. She cried then, not loudly, not with the dramatic grief of a child, but with the quiet, thorough weeping of someone who had been holding an enormous weight for a very long time. And had finally found a surface strong enough to set it down on.
Clara did not move to her. She did not say hush or it's all right or everything will be okay because none of those things were true and Lily was old enough to know it. She simply stayed at the table and let the girl cry until the crying was finished. When Lily lifted her head and wiped her face with the back of her hand, she looked exhausted and lighter at the same time. "I'm sorry," she said.
Don't be, Clara said. I haven't done that in a long time, Lily admitted. I know, Clara said. Lily studied her. How?