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.
That the morning you weren't here when we came back from the north field without you, and I didn't know where you were, and then Matteo told me you'd gone out in that storm to find me. That was the first time in 8 years I understood what it would cost me to lose something again. He stopped. Not what you do here, you Rosalie. specifically. The study was very quiet.
She looked at him. His face had none of its management on it. Whatever he usually kept behind the flat evaluating look, and the morning quiet was just there, visible, and it was more than she had let herself expect. She had rules. She had made herself a very clear set of rules.