"I know," she said.
"I said what I wanted to say. I meant it. But that doesn't..."
"I know," she said again.
She stopped kneading.
Put both hands flat on the table.
Looked at the wall above the counter.
"Gideon, I know you've been... you've been honest with me. More honest than I expected, honestly. And I..."
She turned around.
There was flour on her cheek she hadn't noticed and wasn't going to notice.
And he wasn't going to tell her about it.
"I need to think about what's right for the boys. Not just what I..."
She stopped.
"What I want and what's right for them might not be the same thing."
"How are they different?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Because what I want is to stay here. And that's based partly on real reasons and partly on the fact that I've been exhausted and alone for two years. And you came out into a blizzard to take care of your animals. And when you came back, you stood in your own kitchen and told me the truth when you could have just... just let me make a decision in the dark."
Her voice was steady, but it had a rawness underneath it.
"That's not a completely rational basis for upending four boys' lives."
"What would be a rational basis?"
"I don't know," she said honestly. "That's the problem."
Gideon set the harness down.
"Can I tell you what I see? Not what I want. What I actually see."
She waited.
"Ethan," he said. "Three weeks ago, he was carrying the weight of the whole family on his back, and he knew it, and he was 13, and it was going to break something in him eventually, the way that kind of weight does. This week, he laughed at a horse and talked about spring. Not because he's fixed. That's not how it works. But because he put some of the weight down because there was somewhere to put it."
Clara's jaw tightened.
"Caleb," he said. "That boy is going to be fine wherever he is because he sees everything and he processes it and he adapts. But he said something to me a few weeks ago. He said this place feels like nobody's about to tell you that you have to leave."
He paused.
"Miles told me in the barn that you've been tired a long time. He's eight years old, and that's what he's carrying around. The knowledge that his mother is holding everything and running out of road."
Clara's eyes were bright.
She was not going to cry.
He could see her deciding not to, the way she decided things.
Firmly.
Finally.
With her jaw set.
"And Noah," he said quietly. "You told me he's been sleeping through the night. You said you didn't know what to do with that information."
She pressed her lips together.
"I think you do know," he said.
The kitchen was very still.
Outside, the tail end of the storm was moving east, leaving behind it the particular silence of a landscape buried deep in white.
Sound absorbed and muffled.
The world reduced to whatever was inside the walls.
"I'm scared," she said.
It came out simple and plain, the way she said things she'd been working up to.
"I married Thomas and I loved him and I did everything right, and he died, and the house went, and the money went, and I moved four times in two years. And I promised myself, I promised myself, that the next choice I made, I was going to be sure about. Not hopeful. Sure."
"I know."
"You can't tell me to be sure."
"Nobody can tell you to be sure."