Norah started coffee and began taking inventory.
Flour, enough for maybe two weeks if she stretched it.
Cornmeal, less than that.
Dried beans.
Salt pork.
The preserves Charlotte had brought.
Some root vegetables in the cellar, though half were already rotting.
It wasn't enough for eight people to make it through winter.
Not even close.
The younger boys came down one by one, drawn by the smell of coffee and the reality of snow.
"Are we snowed in?" Ru asked, his small face pressed against the window.
"Looks like it," Norah said.
"For how long?"
"Until it melts or until the road clears enough for wagons. Could be days. Could be weeks."
Porter sat at the table, unusually quiet.
Reeve hovered near the door like he might bolt outside despite the storm.
Cade came down last, already dressed and looking restless.
"We should have stocked up more," Cade said, echoing what everyone was thinking.
"Should have doesn't help us now," Norah replied. "We work with what we have."
"What we have isn't enough."
"Then we make it enough."
Cade laughed bitterly.
"You can't just decide there's enough food when there isn't. That's not how it works."
"No. But you can decide to be smart about what you've got instead of panicking about what you don't."
Norah started rationing portions in her head, calculating how to make supplies stretch.
"We'll manage."
"You keep saying that like saying it makes it true."
"Saying it doesn't make it true. Working toward it does."
She looked at Cade directly.
"So either help or get out of the way, but stop wasting energy on complaining."
Cade's jaw tightened, but he didn't argue.
He just grabbed his coat and went outside, slamming the door behind him.
Ru climbed onto his stool.
"Is Cade right? Do we not have enough food?"
Norah wanted to lie.
Wanted to tell him everything would be fine.
That they had plenty.
That he shouldn't worry.
But Ru had already learned that adults lied when things got bad.
And she wouldn't be another person who taught him not to trust what he was told.
"We have enough if we're careful," she said. "That means smaller portions. That means nothing wasted. That means some days we'll be hungry. But we'll make it."
"What if we don't?"
"Then we figure out something else. But we're not at something else yet. We're still at being careful."
Ru nodded solemnly and went back to watching the snow fall.
The storm lasted three days.
Three days of wind that howled through gaps in the walls.
Three days of snow that piled so high the younger boys could barely see over it.
Three days trapped inside with too many people, too little space, and the kind of tension that builds when everyone's scared but no one wants to admit it.
On the second day, two more cattle died from the sickness that had been spreading.
Harlon and Thomas dragged the carcasses away from the herd, their faces grim.
They couldn't afford to lose more livestock, but there was nothing to do except watch and hope the disease burned itself out before it killed everything.
On the third day, the food situation became undeniable.
Norah had been stretching meals as far as they'd go.
Watering down soup.
Making bread from less and less flour.