She was competent. That was what made her a problem. By the end of the first week, Odora had mapped the situation with some precision. Every morning, Marin was up before Bess and Tilda. She combed Bess's hair, checked that Tilda had her arithmetic done, confirmed that both girls coats were buttoned before school.
After school, she collected them from the road, started supper, and kept an ear on Bess's reading while she worked. On Saturday, she washed laundry. On Sunday, she ironed it. She was 13 years old. Odora had seen this before, not often, but enough.
A child who steps into an empty space because the space cannot remain empty, and who gradually forgets that the space was never meant to be hers. The tragedy of it was that Marin was good at it. She wasn't suffering in any obvious way. She was managing. She simply was not being 13.
The household had reorganized itself around her competence, the way a body reorganizes itself around an injury. Everyone had quietly accepted it as normal, including Garrick. Odora did not confront this directly. She didn't say anything to Marin about it. She didn't say anything to Garrick.
She simply began removing things from Marin's list, one at a time, without comment, without making the girl feel she had failed. The first thing was breakfasts. Odora was simply already in the kitchen before Marin arrived, and the oatmeal was already on the stove, and there was nothing left for Marin to do except eat it. The girl sat at the table with an expression of slight wrongness. The way you feel when you reach for a door handle that's been moved 6 in to the left.
She didn't say anything, but her jaw tightened. The second thing was Bess's hair. That one landed harder. One morning, Bess came downstairs with her hair already braided. Odora had done it while Bess was still half asleep loosely with a blue ribbon that had been sitting in Odora's sewing box for 2 years.
Bess turned in a small circle to show her sisters. Marin stared at the ribbon for a moment, then looked at Odora with something cold behind her eyes. She left for school without eating. That afternoon, Odora left a second blue ribbon on Marin's pillow. She didn't mention it.
Marin never mentioned it either, but 3 days later, she appeared at breakfast, wearing it in her hair, tied so tight it pulled. The way you wear something, you're not sure you've earned the right to want. The clothing problem announced itself in stages, the way most problems in a household with limited money do gradually until it wasn't gradual at all. Odora noticed Bess's stockings first. The girl wore them to school on a Monday morning, and from across the kitchen, Odora could see that more than half of each stocking was darn rather than original wool.
Not bad. Darning Marin's work was careful. The patches held, but Bess's feet had clearly grown past the point where any amount of repair was going to make those stockings function properly. They were tight across the arch. The girl walked with a slight adjustment that she'd stopped noticing.