Norah bit off thread.
"Besides, quitting is what they expect. Why give them the satisfaction?"
"Because sometimes quitting is smarter than fighting a losing battle."
"And sometimes fighting a losing battle is the only way to find out it wasn't as lost as you thought."
Thomas looked at her properly then.
Something shifting in his expression.
"You really believe that?"
"I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
He went back to the bridle, but his shoulders had relaxed slightly.
After a moment, he spoke again.
Quieter this time.
"Ma used to say things like that. About not giving up even when things looked impossible."
It was the first time he'd mentioned his mother directly to Norah.
She kept her hand steady on her sewing, giving him space to continue or retreat.
"She was wrong though," Thomas continued. "Because she gave up in the end."
"She died. That's not the same as giving up."
"Feels the same from where I'm sitting."
His voice went hard.
"One day she was here telling us everything would be fine. Next day she was burning up with fever. Three days after that she was gone. And Pa just..."
He stopped.
Jaw clenched.
"Just what?"
"Stopped. Stopped talking to us like we were his kids instead of workers. Stopped caring about anything except keeping the ranch going another day. Stopped being our father."
Norah set down her sewing.
"He was grieving for two years."
Thomas looked up, and his eyes were angry.
"At some point, it stops being grief and starts being abandonment. He's been here, but he hasn't been here. You know what I mean?"
She did know.
She'd seen it the first night.
Harlon going through motions.
Surviving instead of living.
So buried in his own pain he couldn't see his sons drowning in theirs.
"People grieve differently," Norah said carefully. "Some people cry it out. Some people work it out. Some people bury it so deep they forget it's there until something forces them to remember."
"What kind are you?"
The question caught her off guard.
"What?"
"When your first husband died, how'd you grieve?"
Norah's hands stilled on the fabric.
No one had asked her that.
Not the reverend who'd arranged this marriage.
Not Harlon.
Not anyone.
"I worked," she said finally. "Sixteen hours a day at the dress shop, then took in mending at night. Barely slept. Barely ate. Kept moving because stopping meant feeling, and feeling meant falling apart."
"Did it help?"
"No. But it kept me alive until I could figure out how to actually live again."
She met Thomas's eyes.
"Your father's doing the same thing. It's not right, and it's not fair to you boys, but it's how he's surviving. The question is whether he'll ever stop surviving long enough to live."
Thomas considered this, then went back to the bridle.
But something in the set of his shoulders suggested he'd heard her.
The next morning brought the first real cold snap.
Frost covered everything, turning the ranch into something that looked almost beautiful if you ignored the fact that beauty out here usually meant death for something.
Livestock.
Crops.
People who weren't prepared.
Harlon took Thomas and Eli to move the cattle to winter pasture.