At breakfast, Samuel ate three biscuits and asked whether there would be more tomorrow. Grace wanted to know if Adeline could make a doll's dress from the scraps in the sewing basket. Ruth said nothing, but she carefully pushed half a biscuit toward Adeline's plate.
Adeline looked down at it.
“Is that for me?”
Ruth nodded.
“You should have some.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
The little girl returned to her breakfast, apparently satisfied.
Caleb noticed that Adeline did not take the biscuit immediately. Instead, she broke off a small piece, ate it slowly, and wrapped the rest in a clean cloth beside her plate.
He wondered why.
Then Samuel asked him about the creek, and the moment passed.
After breakfast, Caleb prepared to ride out to check the cattle. The storm had eased during the night, but the temperature had dropped, and he wanted to make certain the windbreak behind the north pasture had held. He was pulling on his gloves when Adeline appeared at the back door carrying a basket of laundry.
“Will you be gone long?” she asked.
“An hour or two, depending on the drifts.”
“I'll have supper ready.”
“You don't need to plan the entire day around me.”
“I wasn't planning around you. I was planning around the children.”
He looked at her.
She seemed to realize how the words sounded, because she softened her voice.
“They'll be hungry when you return.”
Caleb adjusted his gloves.
“They're always hungry.”
“That's generally how children are.”
He might have smiled if he had not been thinking about the nearly empty pantry.
There were six potatoes left, a little cornmeal, half a sack of flour, dried beans, and the last piece of salt pork hanging in the pantry. He had counted everything the previous evening, then counted it again after the children went to bed, as though the numbers might improve if he stared at them long enough.
He had money coming when he sold the spring calves, but winter had arrived early and the bank had not grown more patient merely because his wife had died. He could sell more cattle, though every head he sold now meant fewer breeding cows come spring. He could borrow again, but the debt already pressed against him like a hand around his throat.
Christmas was four days away.
He had promised the children a Christmas tree because Sarah had insisted that some traditions mattered even when everything else fell apart. But a tree could not fill stockings, and a father could not wrap a promise in paper and make it look like a present.