Rose had simply begun writing down the provisions expenditures in a margin of the household log, and Ruth had organized the record. And within two weeks they had a system that tracked everything coming in and going out of the ranch with a precision that occasionally made made Calder slightly uncomfortable about his own prior recordkeeping which had been loose at best. Jonah had with no formal agreement and without anyone quite realizing it had been decided become the one who fed and checked Pearl every morning. He also by November had December eating from his hand, which Eddie regarded with the complicated pride of someone whose idea has been successfully built upon by someone else. Benny remained a force of nature.
He had been assigned officially to messenger duties, carrying word between the house and whoever was in the barn or the fields, and he performed this function with tremendous enthusiasm and a complete inability to deliver any message in under 3 minutes, regardless of its simplicity. Because Benny's messages always came with context, background, and at least two follow-up questions. He had also, without apparent effort, become the person in Red Hollow that everyone knew. This had happened because Calder had begun taking him on supply runs to town, partly because Benny was useful for carrying things, and partly because leaving Benny at the ranch on Sufi Zmpar for an entire afternoon was an undertaking that required coordination. In town, Benny talked to everyone.
The blacksmith, the woman at the postal counter, the three old men who sat outside the barber shop, regardless of weather. He talked to them all, and they talked back because Benny had the rare quality of being genuinely interested in what people said to him. And people can always tell the difference. By mid November, Calder was receiving more nods on the main street of Red Hollow than he had in 9 years of living 5 mi outside it. Some of those nods were from people who still thought the whole enterprise was reckless.
But the nods were there. Then the storm came. It started on a Tuesday evening in late November, which was earlier than anyone had expected for a storm of that type. The sky had been wrong all day. The wrong color, the wrong weight, and Calder had spent the afternoon moving things inside and securing what could be secured.
With Wesley working beside him, and Eddie on the south side of the barn doing the same without being asked, which was a thing Eddie did now, noticed what needed doing without waiting to be told. The first rain came just before dark. By 8:00 in the evening, it was a full storm, the kind that made the ranch windows shake in their frames and turned the road between the property and Red Hollow into something between mud and moving water. By 9:00, the temperature had dropped hard. Calder had gotten the fire built up and the children settled, most of them in various arrangements around the main room because the bedrooms were colder and the storm was louder and nobody wanted to be alone in it.
Benny was asleep against Eddie's shoulder on the seti. The twins were on the floor near the fireplace with a quilt between them. Jonah sat near the window with his knees up, watching the rain hit the glass, not sleeping, but not wanting company either. Clara was in the kitchen with the lamp on, ostensibly checking the morning's bread dough, but really just not ready to sleep. Nelly had already been asleep for an hour in the bedroom, the only one who had been unbothered by the storm from the beginning.
And Maisie was fine. That was the thing Calder would think about later, how thoroughly fine she had been all evening. She'd had her supper and played with Button the rabbit, and asked Wesley three times whether the horses were okay in the barn, and accepted his three assurances with diminishing satisfaction, which was typical Maisie. She'd been put to bed at her usual time, and had gone without protest. That should have been the end of the evening's concerns.
At 10:15, Clara called from the bedroom in a voice that Calder had never heard from her before. Not loud, not panicked, but tight in a way that made every person awake in the house turned toward it immediately. Something's wrong with Maisie. He was through the doorway in 4 seconds. Maisie was in the bed with both arms at her sides and her eyes open and her face the wrong color.
Not the color of sleep or of waking, but something in between that was not right. And when Calder put his hand on her forehead, the heat of it hit him like something physical. "How long has she been like this? " he said. "I don't know. " Clara's voice was still tight. "I checked her an hour ago, and she was fine.
I just came in to check the blanket, and she Maisie turned her head toward Calder's voice. Her eyes found his face. "Ph," she said. It came out scraped and thin. "I'm here. " He kept his hand on her forehead.
The fever was high. How high he couldn't say without a thermometer, which he did not have. Maisy, does anything hurt? She blinked. My head, she said.
And cold. I know. We're going to fix that. He looked up at Clara. Get every blanket in the house.
Called her. Clara said it quietly so the others wouldn't hear it through the doorway. The doctor. I know. It's 10 mi.
I know. The road. I know. Clara. He said it as gently as he could while still moving, pulling the second blanket up around Maisie, feeling her forehead again as if the temperature might have changed in 30 seconds.
It hadn't. Wake Wesley. Wesley was already in the doorway. He had been awake and heard Clara's voice, and he was standing there with his hand on the frame and his face doing the thing it did when he was calculating problems, not panicked, just working. The doctor's on Milfield Road, he said, past the Creek crossing.
I know where he is. Creek's going to be up. I know the roads. Lee. Calder looked at him.
I need you to stay here with all of them. While I go. Wesley stared at him. I need someone reliable in this house. Calder said.