Her voice remained steady, but she had begun folding the same towel twice.
“Thomas developed a fever. The doctor lived miles away, and we had no horse fit to travel. I walked to the next settlement, but the snow was deep, and by the time I found help, it was too late.”
Caleb did not move.
“I spent a long time thinking I should have done more,” Adeline continued. “I should have left earlier. I should have found a way to borrow a horse. I should have known how serious it was.”
She finally looked up.
“Grief makes a person believe there was a perfect choice somewhere, if only they had been clever enough to find it.”
Caleb felt the room grow painfully quiet.
He knew that thought. He had lived inside it every night since Sarah died.
He had replayed the days of her fever until he could recite every detail: the first cough, the heat in her skin, the doctor riding through the storm, the sound of the children crying upstairs while Caleb held his wife's hand and begged her to stay.
He had wondered whether he should have sent for the doctor sooner. Whether he should have taken Sarah to town. Whether he should have noticed how tired she was before the fever came.
And beneath every question waited the same impossible demand.
If he had loved her enough, he should have been able to save her.
Adeline seemed to read something in his face.
“You lost your wife recently,” she said.
“November.”
“I'm sorry.”
He nodded.
“I thought if I worked hard enough, I could keep everything from falling apart.”
“And has it?”
He looked around the kitchen. At the patched curtains, the repaired coat, the clean bowls, and the warm stove.
“Yes,” he said. “Some of it.”
Adeline set the towel aside.
“Then perhaps tomorrow we can mend something else.”
He almost smiled.
“What would that be?”
“I haven't decided yet.”
She picked up the basket and carried it toward the stairs.
At the foot of the staircase, she paused.
“Good night, Mr. Hart.”
“Good night, Adeline.”
He remained in the kitchen long after she had gone upstairs.
For the first time since Sarah's funeral, he had spoken about his grief without feeling that he had betrayed the memory of his wife. And for the first time, he wondered whether the silence he had wrapped around himself was not protecting his children at all.