The pencil stopped entirely. Mom had a tin of hand cream. He said cherry and almond. She kept it on the windowsill in the bedroom. After she died, it stayed there.
He paused. It was empty. It's been empty the whole time. She did not move. She did not speak.
She waited. I put it under my bed last winter, he said, because I was scared someone would throw it away. He looked up at her then directly with those old young eyes. I know the cream isn't there anymore. I know it's just the tin, but it smells like her still a little.
Then you should keep it, she said. For as long as you want it. I thought maybe stopped. He looked back at his book. There's a tin of the same kind at the dry good store in Mil Haven.
I saw it when we were there for the auction. Cherry and almond. Same label. She looked at him. He was looking very hard at his long division.
I just thought, he said, not finishing the sentence. Leaving it open in the way that 9-year-olds leave things open when they want someone to understand something they can't quite say. She understood. 2 weeks later, she came back from a supply run to Mil Haven with the ranch's regular order flour, lamp oil, salt, wire for the fence extension, and she put away the regular supplies. And then quietly, without announcement, she went to the window sill in the bedroom where the empty tin had sat for 4 years.
And she placed a new tinch of cherry almond hand cream beside it. Not in front of it, not replacing it, beside it. She went back to the kitchen and the ledger and the afternoon work, and she didn't mention it to anyone. 3 days later, she was at the kitchen table on a Sunday morning when Milo came downstairs and through the kitchen and stopped in the doorway. She was looking at the ledger.