Not enough.
They sold two horses.
Clara cried after the wagon left.
Elias pretended not to.
He failed.
Their daughter returned three years later trained as a nurse and midwife.
Elias acted unsurprised.
Nobody believed him.
Their son became a teacher.
People expected the huge rancher to be disappointed that his boy preferred books to cattle.
Elias built him shelves.
When a neighbor laughed that the young man had “soft hands,” Elias wrote:
Hands useful many jobs.
The neighbor shrugged.
Elias added:
Mouth useful fewer.
Clara nearly choked laughing.
Their children married.
Clara and Elias became grandparents.
A granddaughter inherited Clara’s hazel eyes.
A grandson inherited Elias’s stubbornness.
All the children learned signs.
Not because Elias demanded it.
Because they wanted to talk to him without paper.
At family dinners, conversations happened in two languages.
Sometimes simultaneously.
Arguments became spectacular.
Clara once accused the grandchildren of using sign behind her back.
They denied it.
Elias looked guilty.
She knew.
Her father grew old.
His farm survived under fairer loan terms.
He never became prosperous.
He did become less proud.
Near seventy, he injured his hip and could no longer live alone.
Clara faced a decision.
Invite him into the ranch?
Move him into town?
Leave him to hired help?
Old resentment returned.
So did guilt.
Elias watched her struggle.
He wrote:
What do you want?
Clara laughed bitterly.
“I don’t know.”
Elias waited.
She wrote:
I don’t want him here.
Then immediately:
That makes me terrible.
Elias shook his head.
No.
Clara stared.
He wrote:
Helping not same as living together.
She absorbed that.
They rented a small cottage near the ranch.
Close enough for care.
Far enough for boundaries.
Her father complained initially.
Clara told him:
“This is what I can give without hating you for receiving it.”
He stared.
Then nodded.
Eventually he appreciated the cottage.
Before dying, he asked to speak with Elias alone.
Clara never knew the entire conversation.
Elias respected the privacy even after the older man died.
She asked once.
Elias wrote:
He said sorry again.
“What did you say?”
Elias thought.
Then:
I said Clara decides what sorry means for Clara.
She stared.
“That’s all?”
He nodded.
Clara kissed him.
At her father’s funeral, she felt grief more complicated than expected.
He had failed her profoundly.
He had also taught her to read.
Carried her on his shoulders when she was small.
Sat beside her mother during illness.
Braided Clara’s hair badly after her mother died.
Then later treated desperation as permission to betray her.
Clara refused to simplify him.
Blackwood had simplified Elias into a monster.
She would not repeat the habit even for someone who hurt her.