Margaret picked up a spool of thread and examined it with more focus than the thread required. I think she said carefully that the situation is not what Prescott assumed it would be. Whether it will remain that way is a separate question. Fair enough. She put the thread down.
Miss Daly tells me Eddie read a full paragraph aloud last week. She told you that? She tells me most things. Margaret looked at him directly. I've been the one funding her salary since the county cut the school budget two years ago.
She keeps me informed. Calder absorbed this. You fund the school. Someone has to. She said it without any apparent interest in being credited for it.
Are you going to buy something or are you going to stand in my way all morning bought his coffee and his fencing wire and drove home? And he thought about Margaret Vale the whole way back the cloth rabbit she'd brought without being asked, the school she funded without advertising it. The way she'd looked at the household log the twins had produced with an expression she'd worked hard not to show. He was still thinking about it when he pulled into the yard and found Wesley on the porch with an expression that meant something had happened. What?
Calder said. Eddie fell off the fence. Calder was down from the wagon before Wesley finished the sentence. Where? He's fine.
Wesley said quickly. Clara already looked at him. His wrist is sore, but he can move it. He was on the top rail again and the post gave. Calder stopped moving.
He stood for a moment in the yard and let the adrenaline settle. Which post? The one on the east corner of the paddic. The one you told him to stay off. I told him to stay off it because it was soft.
I know. Did you tell him? I told him twice. Wesley's voice was flat. He told me he'd checked it and it was fine.
Was it fine? Clearly not. Calder exhald. Where is he? Kitchen.