Then he turned his head and found her in the chair. "You stayed," he said. His voice was rough from the cough, but steady. "I said I would."
He looked at the ceiling again. Clara waited. "My mom used to sit there," he said. "When me and Jesse got sick, she'd sit in that chair all night and not leave."
Clara was very still. "Jesse doesn't remember that," Cole said. "He was too little. But I remember."
His voice was entirely matter-of-fact, the way children sometimes talked about devastating things because they hadn't yet learned that devastating things were supposed to be performed with more weight. "I remember everything about her." "That's a gift," Clara said quietly. Cole thought about that.
"Dad says so too." A pause. "He doesn't talk about her much, though. I think it hurts him."
"It probably does," Clara said. "That doesn't mean he doesn't think about her." "I know." Cole's eyes were getting heavy again, the fever pulling him back toward sleep.
"Clara?" "Yeah?" "I'm glad you didn't go to Mrs. Pearson's." Clara pressed her hands together in her lap.
"Me too," she said. Cole slept. Clara sat in the chair his mother had used and kept watch over him in the lamplight. She did not let herself think too far ahead.
Thinking too far ahead had a way of making the present moment feel like something that didn't belong to her. She belonged here right now. That was enough. That was what she had.
Around midnight, Eli appeared in the doorway. He'd slept; she could tell. Some of the worst of the exhaustion had smoothed out of his face. He looked at Cole, then at Clara.
"How is he?" "Fever's down a little. Breathing's been steady. He woke up once around eleven, talked for a minute, and went back to sleep."
Eli came into the room and crouched beside the bed. He checked Cole's temperature with the back of his hand, the way parents did, the quick, certain movement of someone who knew the baseline by instinct. He exhaled. "Better."
"Yes." He straightened up and looked at Clara in the chair. She was tired. He could see that clearly.