Hang it up. "They made the rest themselves because six ornaments do not dress a tree. Emma cut paper chains. Ben punched holes in harness scraps and made a lopsided row of leather stars that everyone agreed looked like turtles. Lucy strung dried apple rings, then ate two off the string when she thought nobody was watching, and Caleb, who was watching, helped her hide the evidence.
That was when Samuel laughed. Not a small sound. A real one, out loud, at his uncle stuffing a bare branch with a stolen apple ring, and it went through the kitchen like the stove door coming open. Lucy laughed because he did. Ben laughed because Lucy did.
Emma laughed until she had to sit down on the wood box, hair coming loose, laughing like a child instead of a small tired guardian. Caleb was looking at her when she turned back. He looked away as fast as she did. The children went down at 10:00. Samuel slept in his own bed for the first time, one hand around the knotted rope.
Emma said, "Merry Christmas, Eliza. "And shut her door before an answer could get complicated. The two of them came back to the front room and did not put out the lamp. The little spruce leaned in its bucket of sand with its turtle stars and its paper chains and one glass bird catching all the light in the room. " I haven't had a tree since my father died.
Sarah always had one. "Tom complained about the needles clear into February. Caleb stood with his hands behind his back. " She'd have liked this house. She'd have organized me inside a week.
"Eliza smiled at the floor. " My mother used to sing while she hung those. Something about a river. I remember about four words of it." " Sing the four." "
Absolutely not." " Four words. "He said, "I've heard a horse cry. Nothing frightens me. " So, she hummed them badly and stopped and started again, and he put out his hand palm up the way a man does when the fiddle starts and waited until she took it.
They danced perhaps 20 seconds to four words of a river song and the pop of a stove. His hand lay flat and careful at her back. Her forehead very nearly touched his shoulder and did not. Then he stopped and stepped back a full step and his hand came away from her waist. " Eliza?" "
Don't,"she said quietly, if it's something you can take back in April. " That's the trouble. His voice had gone rough at the bottom. I'm a man living in your house on your food with four reasons to want to stay that have nothing to do with what I feel standing here. If I said it tonight, neither of us would know which one was talking and if I said it, then I'd have taken it and wondered the rest of my life whether you only said it because you're kind and because Samuel sleeps better here.
She had no answer because the maddening thing was that it was not cowardice. It was the most careful respect anyone had ever shown her and she wanted to throw a boot at it. " Goodnight, Caleb." " Goodnight. "The Chinook came the last week of February and took a foot of snow off the valley in two days.
Eliza had never once resented warm weather until she stood on the porch listening to the eaves run doing arithmetic about the thaw. March came in wet. The road opened. Odell Fry sent word that he would be back the second week of April. On the 11th, a man named Whitcomb rode out from Sage Bend and offered Caleb Rowan the caretaker's post at the Miller's Fork horse camp, 60 head to winter, a four-room house with a good roof, wages, a garden plot.
Harmon Pyle at the Mercantile had spoken well of him twice. First of April, Whitcomb said putting his hat on, I'll want an answer. The room stayed quiet after the door shut. " That's a good place,"Eliza said. " The Forks has water year-round." "
It is, and your chimney's mended. "He had ridden up to Elkhorn Creek twice in February and come back with mortar dust on his sleeves. " So, you've got two ways to go instead of none." " Two ways to go,"he agreed, and went out to the shop. And that afternoon, she heard him take the wheels off the wagon to grease the hubs.
That was the beginning of the worst 3 weeks of Eliza Hart's life, and nothing happened in them at all. He worked harder than he had all winter. He rehung the dragging gate with Ben holding the post. He split two cords she had not asked for. He rebuilt the near corral rail, everything a man does when he means to leave a place better than he found it and cannot say so.
She rode fence and cooked for six and said nothing because every way she could think of to say it came out wrong in her own head. If she asked him to stay, he would say yes. That was exactly the trouble. He would say yes with four children behind him and a half-loaded wagon in the yard, and she would spend 40 years wondering whether she had asked a man to love her or offered him a roof and watched him take it. And Caleb, greasing hubs that did not need grease, thought, "She has been alone 8 years by choice, and she is too decent to be put in the position of turning down the hired man in her own kitchen. "
The children knew before either of the adults did. Lucy stopped talking about the spring falls. Ben started carrying his tools in a sack. Samuel took to standing in the hallway between the two wings with one hand on the doorframe like a boy at a border crossing. Emma found Eliza in the barn on the 29th of March. "
I have a question, and I want the true answer, not the kind adults give. "She had her arms crossed. " Are we going because you don't want us anymore?"Out in the corral, a horse blew. " No,"Eliza said. " Then why is my uncle greasing the wagon?"Because he's a proud man and a good one, and he won't be a guest in a house forever. "
That isn't a reason. "Emma's voice cracked straight down the middle. Lucy's been sleeping with her boots on. She thinks if she's ready it won't be like the other times. She scrubbed her sleeve across her face, furious about it. "
You told me not to unpack, so I didn't. And then you went and made this—this whole..."She stopped. Out of words that were not the enormous one. Eliza crossed the barn and put both hands on her shoulders. " I told you not to unpack because I hadn't earned the right to tell you anything else.
That was four months ago, and I've been a coward since Christmas." " Then say something to him." " Emma, he won't. "The girl looked up and her mother's face looked out of her, tired and stubborn and certain. " He never asks for anything.