No answer came, unless the wind moving in the pear tree counted. Clara knew she had not paid attention when her grandmother was alive, which made it tempting to blame the woman who could no longer explain herself. That temptation embarrassed her. She carried the book back inside and put it beside the bank statements, deciding that if the marks meant anything she would have to learn it as Evelyn had learned so much else, by looking until the repeated details stopped seeming accidental.
Mrs. Ada Phelps arrived that afternoon with a covered dish and a basket of eggs. She was a small, square woman in her late fifties who lived on the property north of the Jennings pasture and could carry a sack of feed under one arm while scolding a stubborn mule with the other. She had known Evelyn since before Clara was born, and their friendship had survived an argument over a property fence that neither ever admitted losing. Ada set the eggs on the counter, looked around the kitchen, and asked whether Clara had eaten anything besides crackers that morning.
"I had bread," Clara said.
"Bread is not a meal. Neither is being busy."
Clara smiled in spite of herself. Ada noticed the bank papers before Clara could move them and grew quiet. She had the tact not to ask how much was owed until Clara invited her to sit down and hear it. By the time Clara finished, Ada's hands were folded over the handle of her basket and her expression had become grave.
"Evelyn helped half this road at one time or another," Ada said. "Don't let that make you too proud to accept a little help now."
"Help won't pay the mortgage."
"No. But eggs and potatoes will keep you from buying groceries while you figure out what might. That's not nothing."
Ada went down to see the planted sticks before she left. She said very little, walking slowly along the fence and watching the brown water move between the rows. At the end she bent and touched the mud on a small rise near the creek, rubbing it between her fingers. Clara asked if she thought the cuttings would grow. Ada said she did not know, but she remembered seeing Evelyn carrying those same kinds of branches in winter and putting their ends into buckets before spring.
"She'd have been annoyed you let the whole county watch," Ada added. "Your grandmother liked to test a thing before she made a sermon out of it."
Clara looked out over the twigs. "I'm not making a sermon."
"Not you. Other people. They love a sermon about a girl doing something foolish. Now they can wait to see whether they're right."
On Tuesday, Walt Henderson came in a black automobile that looked polished even after the drive down the muddy county road. He wore a dark suit, thin spectacles, and the expression of a man accustomed to moving between other people's emergencies without allowing them to become his own. Ben