"Let's clean your hand first. Then we'll fix the knife." She took him to the washstand in the kitchen and cleaned the cut efficiently, not making a fuss over it, not pretending it didn't hurt. Just dealing with it the way you dealt with small injuries, directly and without drama.
Cole sat very still and let her work. When she wrapped his hand in a strip of clean cloth, he said, "It doesn't need bandaging." "It'll bleed on everything if we don't." He looked at the bandage.
"Okay." Ruth was watching from her chair by the window. Clara caught her eye. Ruth looked away quickly.
That meant Clara was beginning to understand Ruth had been watching closely enough that she didn't want to get caught at it. Clara found a hammer and a finishing nail in the tool drawer near the back door. She and Cole sat across from each other at the kitchen table, and she showed him how to reset the pin carefully, how to hold the blade in alignment, where to tap, how hard, and when to stop. Cole watched every step with his full attention.
He asked two questions, both precise. When the blade was fixed and seated properly, Clara folded it closed and set it on the table between them. Cole picked it up, opened it, and closed it. The blade moved smoothly now and locked correctly in place.
He looked at her. "Thank you," he said. It was the first time he'd said anything unprompted to her directly. His voice was so serious and so young at the same time that Clara had to look down at the table for a moment.
"You're welcome," she said. "Keep it in your pocket, not your hand. And if the pin ever works loose again, you come find me." Cole nodded.
He put the knife in his pocket, got up from the table, and went to find his brother. Clara sat for a moment in the quiet kitchen with the afternoon light going gray in the windows and the wind pushing hard at the walls of the house. Ruth said from her chair, "His mother gave that knife to Eli on their wedding day. It had been her father's."
Clara looked up. "He's never let anyone else touch it," Ruth said. She had her mending in her lap, but she wasn't working on it. "Not Eli, not Jesse, nobody."
She paused. "He let you touch it." Clara didn't say anything. "I'm not saying what it means," Ruth said carefully.
"I'm just saying what happened." She picked up her needle. "Supper will want starting in about an hour. There's a venison roast in the cold pantry."
Clara stood up. "I'll find it." She was halfway to the pantry when Ruth spoke again, not looking up from her mending. "You were right about my hands."
"They've been bad since October." A pause. "I don't like admitting that." "I know," Clara said.