I can survive losing another roof, she told him. I don't know if I can watch my children lose another home. Orson set down the leather. He didn't offer her an easy promise because he understood even then that easy promises were exactly what she couldn't afford to hear. I don't expect you to trust one promise tonight, he said instead.
Let me earn your trust one ordinary day at a time. That's all I can offer you, Miriam. But it's honest. She nodded and said nothing more and went back inside. But she thought about those words longer than she let on.
The gate between them, the literal one, the wooden one at the edge of the property, became something neither of them spoke of directly, but both of them carried in their minds. One evening, Tobin asked why it had to be latched every night. A gate keeps safe what belongs inside, Orson told him. From the porch, not quite out of earshot, Miriam spoke without turning around. And when does a gate become a wall?
Orson had no answer for that. He only knew, standing there in the fading light, that his whole life had somehow folded itself into a gate he'd never once thought to open. Not for anyone. Not until five strangers had shown up and forced his hand. Miriam's gate was different, though built from the same lumber.
Hers wasn't made of wood. Hers was a vow she'd made to herself. Somewhere in the darkest weeks after Ephraim died, never depend on anyone again. It had kept her upright through 11 brutal months. It had also, she was slowly beginning to understand, kept her from letting anyone close enough to help carry the weight.
The fever came on a Tuesday night, and it came for Tobin. It started small, a warm forehead, a boy too quiet at supper. and by midnight it had climbed into something that made Miriam's hands shake as she pressed a cool cloth to his skin. She was not in that moment simply a mother tending a sick child. She was a widow reliving the exact shape of the worst night of her life. Ephraim's illness had started this way, too.
Small, quiet, a fever that seemed manageable right up until it wasn't. "He's fine," she kept whispering to herself. to Tobin to the dark room and her voice shook worse with every repetition. He's fine. He's fine. Orson came without being called.