Clara sat in the back between Nelly and Jonah and watched the landscape go by and tried to make herself believe in what was happening. This was the difficult thing about Clara. The thing nobody quite saw. She was 12 and she had spent three years protecting the other children and managing the practicalities of their shared life. And that meant she had very little room left over for the thing children were actually supposed to do, which was believe that things would be okay.
She watched Calder answer Benny's questions and she thought he doesn't know what he's taken on. She wasn't thinking it as a criticism. She was thinking it as a fact that needed to be dealt with because she had watched adults not know what they'd taken on before. And she had watched what happened when the realization hit them. And she was not going to let that happen to the little ones again.
She was going to be useful. She was going to be so useful that he couldn't afford to send them back. She didn't realize yet that this was exactly the wrong way to think about it. The ranch came into view as the wagon rounded a long bend, and even through all of it, the uncertainty, the careful not hoping, several of the children went quiet. It was bigger than they had imagined, not grand, not rich, nothing like that, but it was a real working ranch with a main house and a barn and a long fence line disappearing over a rise.
And there was smoke from a chimney that meant a fire had been left burning, and there were horses visible in the south field. "That's a lot of horses," Jonah said. It was the first thing Jonah had said in 3 hours. He was nine and quiet, and when he spoke, it usually meant something. Seven, Calder said.
Eight if you count the lame one in the barn. But I don't count her because she makes me feel guilty. Why does she make you feel guilty? Because I bought her from a man who told me she was sound, and she wasn't, and I should have caught that. He paused.
She's all right, though. Just can't work anymore. What's her name? I call her Penelope. She doesn't respond to it, but she doesn't respond to anything else either.
So Jonah turned this information over in his mind and said nothing more. But his expression had shifted slightly. And if you'd known Jonah, you might have recognized it as the beginning of interest. When the wagon stopped in front of the house, Agnes climbed down first and walked a slow circle around the structure with her clipboard, making notes in her small, efficient hand. Calder unhitched the horse and sent it to the paddic without being dramatic about it.
And the children climbed down and stood in the yard and looked at the house that might be their house. It was not fancy. The porch had one board that bent wrong underfoot. The window on the east side of the main room had a crack in it that someone had patched with putty well enough, but not invisibly. The steps to the porch had no railing.
Porchboard's third from the right, Calder said. Step around it. He wasn't saying it to anyone in particular, just saying it. The way you say things about your own house that you've been meaning to fix and haven't gotten around to. The twins stepped around the board together.