Ruth shook her head.
“You're sad.”
Adeline's face went very still.
“I am not sad.”
Ruth looked at her with the blunt certainty of a child who had not yet learned to disguise what she saw.
“You have the same eyes Pa gets when he looks at Mama's chair.”
Caleb could not move.
Adeline stared at the little girl, her lips parted, and for a moment the careful composure she had worn since arriving at the ranch seemed to slip away.
Then she knelt.
“Oh, Ruth.”
The little girl pushed the rabbit into her hands.
“You can borrow it until you feel better.”
Adeline accepted the toy.
She did not cry. She only held the rabbit against her chest and closed her eyes, as though a three-year-old had just entrusted her with something far more precious than knitted wool.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Ruth patted her shoulder.
“You can give it back later.”
Then she returned to her chair and resumed eating a piece of bread.
Caleb looked away, unable to trust his own expression.
That night, after the children had gone to bed, he found Adeline standing beside the Christmas tree. She held the knitted rabbit in one hand and was looking at the wooden star near the center of the branches.
“Ruth said I could borrow it,” she explained.
“I heard.”
“She is a remarkable child.”
“They all are.”
Adeline nodded.
“Yes. They are.”
He stood beside her.
The tree cast a soft shadow across the wall, and the candles on the table had burned down to small golden flames.
“Thank you,” he said.
She glanced at him.
“For what?”
“For today. For the tree. For the meal. For helping them remember their mother without making them feel they have to stop loving her.”
Adeline looked back at the branches.
“They will never stop loving her.”
“I know.”
“And neither will you.”
Caleb swallowed.
“No.”
She held the rabbit a little closer.
“Then perhaps that's not something we need to fix.”
He looked at her.
For months, he had thought of grief as a wound that had to close before he could live again. He had imagined that happiness would mean the absence of pain, that a day without tears would be proof that he was finally recovering.
But Adeline seemed to understand something he had not.