She is my housekeeper, Florence. Florence looked at the porch step that no longer squeaked. She looked at the clean windows. She looked at the shirt Thomas was wearing, which had been pressed with an iron for the first time since Nettie died. She seems capable.
She is. And what happens when someone offers her a better position? Sarah Blake at the boarding house has been looking for kitchen help since spring. Better wages, closer to the church, a proper room instead of whatever you have her in. There is nothing keeping her here, Thomas.
You understand that? Thomas had not let himself think this far. The idea landed in his chest like a stone dropped into a well, heavy and sinking and making a sound that traveled outward through the quiet water. Clara could leave. She was a hired woman with no claim on this land and no obligation beyond the work.
If someone offered her better wages or a shorter ride to town or a place where the road did not turn to mud every time the sky darkened, she would have every reason to go and nothing, not one thing he had given her, would be a reason to stay. He looked at the kitchen window. Through the glass, he could see Clara at the counter rolling out pie dough while Sam sat on the floor near her feet playing with the scrap wood blocks that Thomas had cut for him months ago and nobody had smoothed until Clara took a rough stone to them earlier in the week. The boy was building a small tower. He was building it directly beside her foot, close enough that his shoulder touched her ankle each time he reached for a new block and he did not seem to notice or perhaps he noticed completely and that was exactly the point.
She has not mentioned leaving. Women do not always mention it before they go. Florence collected her basket and stood. I am only saying you might think about what this house looks like without her in it. Now that you know what it looks like with her.
She left. Thomas sat on the porch for a long time after, listening to the sounds inside the house. Clara was humming something low and tuneless while she worked. Not really a song. More of a murmur that filled the kitchen the way warmth fills a room when the fire is tended properly.
He could hear Sam talking to himself as he played, narrating the construction of his tower in the private earnest voice of a child who believes someone is listening even when he has not checked to see. Clara fixed the squeaking porch step on Saturday morning. Thomas heard the hammering from the barn where he was reshoeing the draft horse, and when he came inside for water the second step was silent for the first time since the previous spring. She was already back in the kitchen. She had flour on her forearms and was rolling out dough for a pie made with the last of the dried apples she had found in the root cellar.
The boys mentioned they like apple. She offered the explanation without looking up, as though she needed a practical reason for the pie beyond the fact that she had noticed a preference and decided to honor it. They do. Thomas filled his cup from the pitcher and drank it standing beside the table. He could smell cinnamon.