The afternoon Gideon finally said the thing he'd been not saying for weeks arrived without announcement, the way most important things do in the middle of an ordinary task, with poor timing and no preparation on either side. She had been in the study going over the February accounts with him, a task she had taken on sometime in January without either of them formally deciding she should because because the household financial management and the food management were connected to separate cleanly. And Gideon's system for tracking expenditures was, to put it charitably, impressionistic. She had developed a better ledger. He had accepted this with the same matter-of-act practicality he'd accepted most of her organizational improvements as if she had identified a loose board and fixed it and the only reasonable response was to acknowledge the floor was more stable now.
She was cross-referencing the feed costs against the cattle count for the spring market calculation. He said without looking up from his own portion of the accounts the Cheyenne letter she kept writing. What about it? You haven't said what you're going to do. I haven't decided.
It's been 2 weeks. I'm aware. She finished the column. Decisions like this take the time they take. He was quiet for a moment.
Outside the study window, the February afternoon was going gray and cold. The short light of mid-inter, already pulling toward dusk at 4:00. I want to tell you something, he said. She put her pen down. He looked at the accounts ledger in front of him as if it had become very interesting.
His hands were flat on the desk. I am not good at this, he said. I want to say that first so you understand what you're hearing when I say it. All right, she said. When Clara died, he said her name, his wife's name, for the first time since Rosalie had arrived.
When she died, I thought I thought the way you manage grief is you stop expecting things to go right. Stop counting on anything being what it looks like because if you don't count on it, it can't be taken. He paused. That works for a while. It got me through 8 years.
She did not say anything. She waited. And then you showed up, he said, with a battered suitcase and a recipe book. And inside of 3 weeks, you had reorganized my pantry and my ranch and my sons, and apparently also me, and I did not see any of that coming. He finally looked at her.
I don't know how to say this without it sounding like I'm adding up what you've done here and calling that a reason because it's not that. What you've done here is it's considerable and I see it, but that's not what I'm trying to say. Then what are you trying to say? She said carefully, not unkindly. He held her gaze.