She paid them what the work was worth. She put it in writing. EMTT asked her once. The following winter why she was so careful about the contracts. He was 12 by then, and helping with the ranch accounts more formally, learning the things Gideon was teaching him, and the things she was teaching him that Gideon didn't know how to teach.
Because a thing you've agreed to verbally can be reinterpreted, she said. A thing in writing has to be argued with directly. It's harder to change a written word than a memory. He considered this. Is that why you wrote the contract for the building?
Did you think P would change his mind? No, she said, but I've learned not to build on someone else's goodwill alone. Even goodwill, I trust. He wrote that down in the margin of his accounts notebook, which she noticed and did not comment on. Gideon saw her watching EMTT write and said that evening sitting at the kitchen table after supper.
He takes everything you say seriously. He takes everything seriously. She said he always has. He didn't used to talk this much. Gideon said before you came.
She looked at him. He was waiting for something worth talking about. Gideon was quiet. Was that aimed at me? Take it however it lands.
She said he looked at his coffee. He'd made it again and it was too strong again which was never going to change. and she had stopped trying to manage it, just fixed it when she poured her own cup. Some things were like that. You accepted the too strong coffee and you adjusted for it because the person who made it got up early to do it and that was its own kind of language. I wasn't good at talking to them, he said after Clara.
I know. I thought if I didn't talk about what wasn't there, it would hurt less. Did it? He looked at her. No, it just meant the space where things weren't said kept getting bigger.
She put her hands around her cup. They needed you to talk to them, she said. Not about her specifically. Not all the time. Just to talk to be present in conversation, not just in the room.