“Instead, you came here with a secret.”
“I came here with a promise.”
He stared at her, then looked toward the window.
“Those can be the same thing.”
“I know.”
He wished she would argue. It would have been easier to be angry if she had been defensive. But she accepted his frustration without yielding her own dignity, and that left him with nowhere to place the resentment he had carried all evening.
Clara rose and approached him.
“Papa?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Can Miss Margaret stay for Christmas?”
Eli looked at the child’s hopeful face.
He had imagined this night in a dozen ways. In some, the woman who arrived would be cold and severe, and he would find himself regretting the whole arrangement. In others, she would be gentle and agreeable, and he would have to learn to tolerate the discomfort of having another adult in the house. In none had he imagined standing before the woman his wife had chosen as a friend, holding a letter that challenged the very idea of what he thought he needed.
He knelt in front of Clara.
“Miss Margaret can stay tonight. The storm is too dangerous for anyone to travel.”
Clara’s smile dimmed.
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we’ll see what the weather permits.”
“Then she might go?”
“Yes.”
Clara looked at Margaret, then back at him.
“Will she be lonely if she goes?”
Eli felt the question settle into him.
“I don’t know.”
Clara’s small hand touched his cheek. “I don’t want her to be lonely.”
Margaret rose slowly from the chair.
“Clara, I have been lonely before. I can bear it.”
The child frowned. “But you shouldn’t have to.”
Margaret’s composure faltered.
Eli looked at the woman standing beside the hearth, wrapped in his late wife’s blanket, with snow still melting from the hem of her coat. For the first time, he saw how much effort it had cost her to cross the threshold. Not merely the journey through the storm, but the decision to arrive at a stranger’s home and risk being turned away.
“Your room is at the end of the hall,” he said. “It’s been kept ready.”
Margaret blinked. “You prepared a room?”
“I expected you.”
“Then why did you look as though you wished I’d never come?”
“Because I’m a fool.”
The admission surprised them both.
Clara giggled.
Eli glanced at her. “Don’t encourage me.”
Margaret’s mouth curved into a faint smile.
“I won’t.”
He lifted the carpetbag and carried it down the hall. The guest room was small but clean, with a narrow bed, a washstand, and a window that looked toward the barn. A patchwork quilt lay folded at the foot of the bed. Eli had bought it in town after reading Margaret’s first letter, though he had not admitted to himself why he had chosen one with little blue flowers.