CHAPTER TEN
She met Silas Draycott three days later, at Caleb's own careful invitation—offered, she understood, as a kind of answer to everything she'd said in the timber stand, a first small act of the plainness she'd demanded of him.
"He's asked after you daily since you arrived," Caleb had said, "and I've put him off with excuses about your settling in, which was true enough at first and has become, these past days, rather less true than I'd like to admit.
He deserves to meet you fully, Margaret, and I think—I think you deserve to understand him a little, before you judge too harshly what I've been trying to protect. "
Silas Draycott's sickroom occupied what had once been the ranch's front parlor, converted, Margaret gathered, sometime in the past year when the stairs had become too much for him to manage.
A fire burned low in the hearth despite the mild afternoon, and the room smelled faintly of camphor and the specific staleness of a space that had held one person's illness for too long to fully air out.
He was smaller than she'd expected, given how large a shadow he seemed to cast over every conversation she'd had about him—a thin, silver-haired man propped against a bank of pillows, with Caleb's same dark eyes set deep in a face gone gaunt with illness, and a grip, when he took her offered hand, that was startlingly strong for a man the doctor had given, by Dr. Fielding's careful reckoning, no more than another season.
"So you're the one my fool son went and found himself, all the way out from Boston.
" His voice was rough, worn thin by illness but carrying still an unmistakable authority, the voice of a man used to being obeyed without argument for the better part of thirty years.
"Come closer, girl. I'll not shout across half a room to look you over correctly, and my eyes aren't what they were. "
Margaret came and sat in the chair drawn up beside the bed, and endured, without flinching, the frank, assessing scrutiny of a dying man determined to form his own judgment of her before illness took the chance from him completely. "Mr. Draycott," she said. "I'm glad to finally meet you."
"Are you." It wasn't quite a question, and there was a shrewdness in his eyes that reminded her, uncomfortably, of Caleb's own guarded watchfulness at their first meeting.
"Most young women in your position would say as much whether they meant it or not.
I've a nose for the difference, girl, dying or not, so you'd do well not to waste good manners on me that you don't rightly feel. "
"Then I'll tell you clearly, since I understand plainness is valued in this family, whatever difficulty some of its members have in practicing it consistently.
" She caught Caleb's sharp glance from where he stood near the window, and continued anyway, deciding the old man's evident appetite for honesty was worth the risk.
"I'm glad to meet you because I've heard a great deal about you these past weeks, Mr. Draycott, and precious little of it has come from your son directly.
I find I'd rather form my own opinion of the man who built this ranch than rely entirely on what others have told me of him. "
Silas Draycott laughed then, a short, rasping sound that seemed to cost him some effort, and looked past her toward his son with an expression of frank, delighted approval.
"Well. She's got teeth, Caleb, whatever else you've kept from telling me about her.
I like that better than I like most things you've brought home in your life.
" He turned his sharp eyes back to Margaret.
"He's kept things from you, has he? Don't look so startled, girl, I've known that boy since before he could walk, and I know precisely how he manages a difficulty—by carrying it alone until it breaks him, same as I taught him to do, may God forgive me for the teaching. "
"Pa—" Caleb started, but his father waved him off with an impatient hand.
"Let me finish, boy, I've not got the breath to waste on being interrupted.
" Silas's eyes had gone somewhere distant, remembering.
"I built this ranch out of nothing but stubbornness and a fool's confidence that the range would always provide, same as it provided the year before and the year before that.
Lost near everything once, in the winter of '73, and rebuilt it twice as careful as before, and thought myself wise for the lesson I'd learned.
But a man gets old, and proud, and starts believing his own good fortune is a kind of judgment on his character rather than plain luck that could turn on him any given season.
I built this herd too large, girl. I know it, whatever my son's told you or hasn't told you.
I've known it longer than he has, if I'm honest, and said nothing because I preferred my own comfortable belief in my own good judgment to the harder work of admitting I'd let it slip. "
Margaret felt something shift in her chest—not quite forgiveness, not yet, but a widening of the picture she'd been holding since that afternoon in the linen room. "You knew, Mr. Draycott? Before Caleb told you at all?"
"I knew before Caleb was fool enough to think I hadn't noticed.
" The old man's laugh turned into a cough, and Caleb moved instinctively toward him, was waved off again with the same impatient hand.
"I'm dying, girl, not blind, and not so far gone in illness that I've lost the sense to count cattle against grass same as I've done every autumn for thirty years.
I've let my son believe he's protecting me from a truth I've known for months, because it seemed to matter to him so badly, the protecting of it, and because I hadn't the heart to take even that small comfort from him, watching me go the way I'm going.
" His eyes found Caleb's, and something passed between father and son that Margaret recognized, with a small ache, as a conversation neither of them had ever quite managed to have plainly, despite a lifetime of proximity.
"I want grandchildren before I go, that much is true enough, and I'll not pretend otherwise to spare anyone's feelings on the matter.
But I want more than that for you, boy. I want you to learn, before it costs you what it near cost me, that carrying a thing alone isn't strength.
It's only a slower, lonelier way of breaking. "
The room was quiet a long moment, the fire popping softly in the hearth, and Margaret watched Caleb's face work through something complicated—grief, she thought, and something like relief besides, the particular relief of a man discovering that a burden he'd carried in careful secrecy had never actually been secret at all.
"How long have you known, Pa?" Caleb's voice had gone quiet, almost young-sounding, and Margaret understood she was watching something rare—a grown man asking his father a question he'd perhaps been too afraid to ask for months.
"Since the tally in September, same as you.
" Silas's eyes had softened, watching his son with an expression that held, beneath its evident sternness, a depth of feeling Margaret suspected the old man rarely allowed himself to show so openly.
"I watched you go quiet after that count, boy, the same particular quiet your mother used to go when she was carrying a worry she didn't want to trouble me with.
I knew what it meant. I've counted enough autumns myself to know what an overstocked range looks like on a man's face, even when he thinks he's hiding it well.
" He paused, drawing a slow, careful breath, the effort of speaking plainly costing him more than his stubborn pride wanted to admit.
"I let you believe I hadn't noticed because I wanted, selfishly, to let you have the comfort of protecting me a little while longer.
That was my failing, not yours, whatever else you've got to answer for in the matter. "
"I've been a fool, then," Caleb said finally, quietly, "twice over. Once for building the herd too large in the first place, and once for thinking I was sparing you both something you'd each already worked out for yourselves."
"You've been your father's son, is what you've been.
" Silas reached out and took Margaret's hand in his free one, his grip still startlingly strong.
"See that you don't let him go on being quite so much like me, girl, once I'm not here to watch it happen.
He's a better man than I was at his age, whatever his faults.
But he'll need someone plainspoken enough to call him on this particular failing, since I'll not be here to do it myself much longer, and I'd rather leave that work in capable hands than leave it undone entirely. "
"I mean to be exactly that plainspoken, Mr. Draycott," Margaret said, and found, to her own surprise, that her eyes had gone unexpectedly damp. "You have my word on it."
"Good." He released her hand, looking suddenly more tired than he had at the conversation's start, the effort of it plainly costing him more than he'd let show.
"Good. Now leave an old man to his rest, both of you, and go on and be young together somewhere I don't have to watch it and feel every year of my own age doing it.
Caleb—see she gets home before dark. I'll not have my future daughter catching cold on my account, whatever else I've failed to spare her. "
They left him to his rest, and walked together toward the wagon in a silence that felt, to Margaret, utterly different from the silences that had come before it—not guarded, not careful, but the quiet of two people who had just been handed, by a dying man's plain reckoning, a clearer understanding of exactly what they were both still learning to become.
"He's not what I expected," Margaret said finally, as Caleb helped her up into the wagon seat.
"He rarely is, to anyone meeting him for the first time." Caleb's voice was rough with an emotion he made no particular effort to hide, not this time. "Thank you, Margaret. For not judging him harshly, and for not sparing me the judgment I likely deserved instead."
"I don't think either of you deserves so simple a judgment as harsh or otherwise, Caleb.
I think you're both men who learned the same lesson too well, and are only now beginning to understand it wasn't the lesson you thought it was.
" She settled beside him as he took up the reins, and found, watching the ranch house recede behind them in the fading afternoon light, that whatever fracture their confrontation in the timber stand had opened between them had begun, in this one difficult, tender hour, to knit itself back together—not fully healed, not yet, but mending in a direction that felt, for the first time since the linen room, truly hopeful.