Then she went to get Amma up. March came, not arriving so much as negotiating. It offered a warm day, then took it back, gave a week of thaw, then three days of snow to remind everyone who was in charge. Teased mud out of the frozen ground, then froze it again. But it came, and with it the roads cleared enough, Burell made a run south.
Room for two passengers to a settlement near the Arizona border. From there, Desa and Amma could reach their people. He sent word the morning they were to leave. Gideon was at the stove, which was where he was when things happened that he needed his hands occupied for. Amma came out first, her traveling bundle over one shoulder, moving fully properly without the management she'd been doing for months.
She stopped in the middle of the cabin and looked around it at the map on the wall, at the tool shelf she'd never touched, but had almost certainly evaluated at Norah's quilt on the chair. She walked to the chair, picked up the quilt, carried it to Gideon. He turned from the stove. She held it out to him. "You should have this back, " she said.
He shook his head. "Amma, it should be on the bed, " she said. "Used, not stored. On the bed is a thing that is part of a life being lived. " She looked at him steadily.
That's what she would want. "You know that? " He stood there with the quilt in his hands. Yes, he knew that. He had always known it.
He folded it not the way he'd folded it for seven years. Corners squared, edges matched, the careful maintenance of a preserved thing, but the loose fold of something between uses. Something that would be unfolded again soon. He set it at the foot of the bed. Amma watched him.
Then there's something growing near the east fence post. I I planted it 2 weeks ago when there was a thaw day. You'll see it in April. Maybe May. What is it?
Something my grandmother showed me. High ground plant blue flowers in summer. She paused. Small but persistent. He looked at her at this woman who had spent the worst weeks of her life in his cabin and had in the margins of all of it planted something in his ground.
Thank you, he said, which was not sufficient. but was the word he had. Thank you, she said back with the weight she brought to things that mattered to her. Then she went to the door. Desa was there.
Of course, she'd been at the east window. She turned when Amma touched her arm. Something passed between them. Quick, wordless, complete. Then Desa walked to where Gideon was standing, stopped in front of him.