I wasn't certain why you said it. He was very still. I wasn't certain, she said. Whether you said it because you believed I should have the freedom to choose, or whether you said it because the choice itself didn't. She stopped again.
She was not a woman who misstepped in language often, and she was stepping carefully. Whether my staying or leaving had the same weight for you. Garrick looked at his hands on the table. Then he looked at her. It does not have the same weight, he said.
The words landed in the kitchen the way the first true statement lands in a room that has been full of careful statements differently with more dimension to them. Odora said nothing. She waited. I told you to go because I thought I still think that if you stayed for the wrong reasons, it would become something you resented. The girl's need, my need, the dependency.
He looked at the thimble. I have needed people before and had them. He stopped. He picked up the thimble, then turned it once in his fingers, set it back. I was not willing to need you in a way that kept you in a place you hadn't chosen.
That's not an answer to what I asked, Odora said. He looked up at her. No, he said it isn't. The fire shifted in the stove. Some somewhere upstairs, one of the girls wanted to turn in their sleep, and the floor took the weight for a moment.
The house was quiet around them in the way a house goes quiet when everyone it contains is where they're supposed to be. I don't want you to go to Fort Collins, Garrick said, each word deliberate. He was not a man who talked about his interior life with any ease. And he was producing this the way you produce something from deep storage, with effort, and with the look of someone who has decided the effort is worth making. I have not wanted that since before Harland told me about the letter.
Since before I knew about the letter, he held her gaze. What I wanted and what I was willing to ask for were not the same thing, and I was trying to make sure the difference mattered more to me than what I wanted. Odora sat with that for a moment. Why? Because asking you to stay for my reasons would make this about me, he said.
And you've spent your whole life being useful to other people's reasons. I was not. He stopped. He looked at the table and then back at her. I did not want to be another person asking you to fold yourself around what they needed.