Adeline said nothing. She moved to the next stall and examined the hay stacked beside the wall.
“Do you have much work for the children today?” she asked.
“Samuel can help me sort the feed sacks. Grace has been trying to teach Ruth to sew, though I suspect the lessons are mostly about putting needles where they don't belong.”
“I could teach them a little sewing.”
“You don't have to keep them occupied every minute.”
“I know.”
“Children need to learn to entertain themselves.”
“I'm certain they do. But I happen to enjoy teaching.”
She said it simply, without making a grand declaration of her goodness.
Caleb watched her stroke Daisy's neck.
“Did you ever want children of your own?” he asked.
The question escaped before he had time to consider whether it was appropriate.
Adeline's hand stilled against the mare's mane.
For a moment, she seemed to be looking beyond the barn walls, toward some distant place neither the snow nor the passing years had managed to erase.
“Yes,” she answered.
Then she drew her hand away.
“But life doesn't always ask what we want.”
Caleb recognized the sentence. It was the kind of thing people said when the truth was too painful to explain.
He knew better than to press.
That afternoon, he took Samuel out to the barn to work on the feed sacks. Grace and Ruth stayed in the kitchen with Adeline, who produced a small wooden sewing box from her carpetbag.
Inside were several needles, two spools of thread, a few scraps of cloth, and a pair of tiny scissors whose handles had been polished smooth by years of use.
Grace leaned forward.
“Are those yours?”
“They were my mother's.”
“Can I touch them?”
“Of course. Just be careful with the scissors.”
Adeline spread the cloth scraps across the table.
“We're going to make something for Christmas.”
Grace's eyes widened.
“A dress?”
“Something better.”
Ruth looked up from the buttons she had been arranging.
“Better than a dress?”
“Much better.”
“What is it?”
“A surprise.”
Grace immediately began asking questions, but Adeline only smiled and measured a piece of cloth against the table.
The children worked through the afternoon. Grace learned to make a simple stitch, though her first attempts resembled a crooked fence line. Ruth concentrated on sorting buttons by color and insisted that the blue ones were the prettiest because they reminded her of the sky before winter arrived.