Odora crouched down when Bess was putting on her boots. These pinch, don't they? Bess looked at her seriously. Only a little. All right.
Odora tied the boots, but she kept the information. Tilda's coat had mismatched buttons down the front, not two the same, and the elbow of her right sleeve carried a patch cut from what appeared to be a completely different wool in a completely different color, dark brown against the coat's original gray. The patch was sewn on cleanly, the color was wrong. Either that was the only fabric available, or whoever sewed it on hadn't bothered to match it, or more likely, both had been true at the time, and now nobody noticed anymore because it had been there long enough to seem like it belonged. Marin's skirt was the thing that stayed with Odora.
It was a good skirt, or had been, dark wool, serviceable weight for Wyoming winter. But the hem had been let down three times. Odora could see the lines where each previous hem had been pale ghost stitches from where the thread had been removed, one above the other, tracking the girl's growth upward over what had to be 2 or 3 years. There was no fourth line. The fabric below the current hem was almost nothing.
If Marin grew another inch, which she would, there would be no more letting out to do. The skirt was as far down as it could go. Odora found herself standing at the stove one morning thinking about those three pale lines and what they meant. They meant someone had been paying attention else, presumably letting the hem down once, then again, then a third time making the skirt last. They meant Garrick had noticed nothing since.
They meant Marin had been wearing a skirt measured for a 10-year-old extended as far as it would go and walking out into the world in it every day, not because she was proud, because there was nothing else. The Christmas notice from the schoolhouse arrived the second week of November. It came with a note from Dileia Frost about the program children were expected in their best clothing, small parts for each grade, refreshments afterward. Marin brought the mail in from the post box the way she always did. Odora was in the kitchen.
She watched the girl look at the envelope, read the address, and then very quietly, without hurry, tuck it between the flower tin and the wall on the larger shelf. Odora did not say anything. She waited 3 days. Then she went to get flour and found the envelope still there. She took it out and put it on the kitchen table.
Marin came in from school at 4:00 and stopped in the doorway when she saw the envelope. She looked at it. Then she looked at Odora. It came last week, Marin said finally. I know.
Odora kept stirring the pot on the stove. It was behind the flower tin. I was going to give it to Papa. All right. Marin didn't move.
Odora could feel the girl waiting for an accusation for some adult conclusion about what she'd done and why. She didn't give her one. After a long moment, Marin came into the kitchen and picked up the envelope and took it into the front room and set it on Garrick's chair. And that was that, or almost that. That night, after Garrick had come in and read the notice at dinner and said, "Only I'll tell the girls, Marin went to bed without finishing her food."