"Did the doctor come? " He did. "Did you get wet? " He looked down at his still damp shirt a little. Maisie looked at him with the serious assessment of a 4-year-old who had learned to read adults very carefully. "I'm sorry you got wet," she said. "Don't be.
I would have waited, she said. I knew you were coming. He looked at her small face on the pillow in the gray early light, and he thought about a man who had come into town for fencing wire and coffee 6 weeks ago, and had slammed his fist on a counter and declared something he hadn't known yet how to keep. He was learning. "Go back to sleep," he said.
She closed her eyes. He sat there until she did, and then he sat there a little longer, listening to his house settle around him in the quiet after the storm. Wesley asleep in a chair. Jonah in the hallway. Clara finally at rest.
The twins and Benny and Eddie arranged around the fire that Eddie had kept burning all night long. Outside, the rain had stopped. The road would be a mess. The creek would still be running high. There would be fence damage somewhere.
There always was after a storm like this. And the barn roof he'd been watching would need to be checked, and the morning chores would still need doing, no matter what the night had been. But that was morning's work. For now he sat in the gray light with his hand resting near Maisy's and listened to his house breathe. Maisie was up and walking around by the fourth day which the doctor had said was possible and which nobody had quite believed until she appeared in the kitchen doorway in her night gown asking if there was bread because she was hungry and being sick was boring.
Clara made her sit down and eat properly and not stand in drafts. And Maisie submitted to these conditions with the impatience of someone who felt better and wanted everyone to know it. Calder watched this from the doorway and said nothing because there was nothing that needed saying. Margaret's report reached Prescott by the end of that week. Calder knew this because Prescott arrived on a Friday morning without his usual appointment and without his list, which were two significant departures from his established pattern.
He came alone, which was a third. He stood in the yard and looked at the house in the barn and the children who were visible Wesley at the fence. Benny somewhere near the creek's edge technically still in sight. Eddie working December in the paddic with a patience that had become genuine rather than performed and then he looked at Calder. Mrs.
Vale's recommendation is highly irregular. Prescott said I imagine it is a full withdrawal of observation status at this stage. Is her professional judgment? Called her said. I assume she documented her reasoning.