Then that's how we'll do it." From the hallway, Noah watched. He'd been lurking near the doorway in the way of older siblings who want to see something without being caught wanting it. Clara caught the edge of his shadow on the floor, but didn't turn around. She heard him move away.
Later that afternoon, she found him in the barn. He was supposed to be checking the water troughs, but he was sitting on a hay bale with a stick in his hand, drawing lines in the dirt floor. He looked up when she came in, ready to be caught at something. "I'm done with the troughs," he said preemptively. "I know," Clara said.
I could see from the house. She sat down on the bale across from him. "I came to talk to you." He looked at the stick in his hand. "About what?"
About your sister?" He looked up. "She's getting better," Clara said. "You've been good about checking on her. That matters to her."
He shrugged. "But the shrug was not as practiced as usual. She's going to need to feel like things are normal again," Clara continued. "The best person to help with that is you, not me, not your father. You."
Noah was quiet. He turned the stick in his fingers. "She follow you around much?" Clara asked. Before all the time, something shifted in his voice.
She used to come everywhere with me before mama died. After that, she just stopped. She didn't want to go anywhere. She's starting to want to again, Clara said. I've seen her watching you work.
His head came up. Tomorrow morning, Clara said, "When you go to feed the horses, take her with you. Let her help with something simple. Don't make a thing of it. Just let her be there.
He stared at her. She wants her brother back, Clara said simply. And I think you want your sister back, so go get her. The silence stretched. Then Noah said, "You ain't like the others."
The other women they sent." Yeah. How so? He thought about it. He was an honest boy underneath the anger.
You could see it in the way he took questions seriously. The way he didn't reach for an easy answer. The others tried to be nice, he said finally, like he made a face, like they were trying real hard to make me like them. You don't do that. No, Clara agreed.