I can only tell you about this place. And in this place, yes is yes. Maisie looked at the fire. How do I know? She said.
It was such a direct question, so cleanly put that Calder took a moment before answering. "You don't," he said. "Not yet. You'll have to watch and decide. " She turned and looked at him fully for the first time since he'd sat down beside her. Her dark eyes were very serious.
Wesley says that too, she said. "Watch and decide. " Wesley sounds like a smart kid. He is. A pause. He worries too much.
Somebody has to. Maisie almost smiled at that. Almost. That's what he says about me. She looked back at the fire.
My name means something, she said out of nowhere. The lady at the first house told me. She said it means a pearl. That's right. She also told me I was too much trouble.
Maisie said it without visible distress, just factually, the way you report the weather. So, I don't know which thing she meant more. Calder looked at this 4-year-old child who had just summed up in two sentences what it felt like to be told, "You were precious and disposable at the same time. " and he thought about several things he could say in response. And then he decided none of them were right. I think you can be both, he said.
A pearl in a lot of trouble. Doesn't cancel each other out. Maisie thought about this with appropriate seriousness. Okay, she said. Okay.
She stood up, apparently satisfied by something, though it wasn't entirely clear what, and walked to the bedroom doorway and then stopped and looked back at him. You didn't tuck me in before, she said. I didn't know you needed it. I don't need it," she said with four-year-old dignity. "I just like it. " Calder got up off the floor and followed her to the bedroom and tucked her in, and she was asleep before he got back to the main room.
He stood in the quiet for a moment, listening to the ranch settle around him. The fire had burned low. Above him, the loft had finally gone silent, even Benny eventually ran out of things to say. The night wind came under the east door, the one with the gap at the bottom he'd been meaning to seal for two winters. He sat down at the table and looked at his hands.