How old did you say they are? 8. She said nothing for a moment, Mister Boon, she said when she was getting ready to leave. I want to be clear that my role in this is supervisory and that I have not changed my preliminary assessment that this situation carries significant risk. I understand, Calder said.
However, she paused. I intend to suggest to the board that the twoe review be extended to a 6-week review on the grounds that insufficient time has elapsed to accurately assess a situation of this complexity. I appreciate that. Don't thank me, she said. I'm doing it because it's the accurate position, not because I've formed an opinion about your fitness.
All right, she started toward her buggy. The four-year-old named the rabbit button, she said without turning around. After me, I heard. I am choosing to take that as a compliment. I'd take it as one, Calder said.
Margaret got into her buggy and drove away, and this time when she left, she was doing it slightly faster than she'd arrived, and she did not look back. Calder watched the road behind him in the house that had been silent for 6 years. Somebody was laughing. It sounded like Benny. And someone else was telling him to be quiet, which sounded like Wesley.
And someone else was joining in anyway, which sounded like Eddie. And underneath all of it, barely audible, there was a sound he hadn't heard in this house in so long that it took him a moment to identify it. It was Jonah. Jonah was laughing. Calder stood on the porch in the early evening light and listened to the sound coming out of his own house and thought about a 4-year-old on a cold train platform reaching her arms out to a stranger.
Then he went inside. The six-week review came and went without drama, which surprised Calder and seemed to mildly disappoint Prescott, who had arrived with his list and his good coat, and found a household log, a signed schooling arrangement, a completed porch railing, and nine children who looked by any observable measure, like children who were eating regularly and sleeping in beds and learning things. Prescott made notes, asked questions, walked through the rooms, looked at the provisions. Then he left and filed a report that said in official language that the situation remained under observation, but that no immediate action was warranted. Margaret told Calder about the report's language at the dry goods store in town.
3 days later when they happened to arrive at the same time and she happened to mention it in the tone of someone passing along weather information under observation. Calder said it's the best you were going to get from Prescott at 6 weeks. Margaret said he needs more time to be wrong about something before he can admit it. Calder looked at her. You think he's wrong?
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.
Eddie was at the kitchen table with his right wrist wrapped in a cloth that Clara had dampened and bound with the practical efficiency she brought to most medical situations, which was to say efficiently and without excessive sympathy because excessive sympathy with Eddie tended to make him defensive rather than grateful. She had assessed what needed doing and done it. Eddie looked up when Calder came in. His expression was already set in the particular configuration. That meant he knew he'd done something wrong and was prepared to receive the consequences but was not going to apologize before he'd established that he'd had reasons.
The post he started I know what the post did. Calder said he sat down across from him and looked at the wrapped wrist. Can you move your fingers? Eddie spread them slowly. Yes.
Does it hurt more if you do that or less? More. But it's not I can move them. All right. Calder looked at him.