I gave it to Peter when you didn’t come back.”
Andre’s shoulders lowered.
“All right.”
“I needed it finished.”
“I understand.”
For a moment they stood quietly beside the stable fence.
Then Mr.
Sullivan asked:
“Did the woman get home safely?”
Andre nodded.
“She’s at the boardinghouse.”
“Good.”
The older man adjusted his hat.
“Then it wasn’t a wasted afternoon.”
Andre looked up.
Mr.
Sullivan gave him a tired smile.
“Your mother would’ve done the same.”
That was enough.
Andre thanked him and started home.
He did not have the money he had hoped to earn, and his hands ached from the cold, but he felt strangely peaceful.
The wind had settled.
Above the plains, the first stars appeared.
When he reached the little white house, light spilled through the kitchen window.
Willa was sitting at the table with an open book and a wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
She looked up as soon as he entered.
“You’re late!”
“I know.”
She hurried over and hugged him.
“Mrs.
Bell came by.
She said you’d probably been caught helping somebody again.”
Andre laughed softly.
“She wasn’t wrong.”
Willa took his scarf and hung it near the stove.
“Did you bring anything?”
He reached into his satchel and removed the cheese Mrs.
Miller had given him.
Willa’s face brightened.
“Cheese!”
“And I’ve got potatoes left from yesterday.”
“Then we’re having a feast.”
Andre smiled.
“I suppose we are.”
They prepared supper together.
He cut the potatoes into small pieces while Willa stirred them in a pan with a little salt.
She told him about school, the spelling competition she hoped to enter, and a story her teacher had read about a girl traveling across the prairie.
Andre listened carefully.
He had learned that Willa did not always need answers.
Sometimes she simply needed someone to be interested.
When they sat down, she noticed how quiet he had become.
“Are you tired?”
“A little.”
“Did Mr.
Sullivan get angry?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Andre told her about the elderly woman.
He described finding her beside the frozen road, sharing his sandwich, lending her his gloves, and walking with her to town.
Willa listened with growing concern.
“Was she frightened?”
“I think so.”
“Did she have family?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Maybe nobody knew where she was.”
“Maybe.”
Willa looked toward the stove.
“That would be lonely.”
Andre nodded.
He had thought about the woman’s cold hands and tired face, but he had not considered how alone she might have felt.
His sister understood something he had missed.
“Did she say thank you?”
“Several times.”
“Was she nice?”
“Very.”
Willa smiled.
“Then I’m glad you helped her.”
Andre looked at the small piece of cheese on her plate.
“I missed a job because I was late getting back.”
Willa’s smile faded.
“Oh.”
He did not want her to worry, but keeping secrets about money had never worked very well between them.
She glanced toward the wooden box in the cupboard.
“Does that mean we might lose the house?”
Andre felt a heaviness settle in his chest.
He wanted to promise that nothing bad would happen.
He wanted to tell her that everything was under control.
But he remembered how gently their mother had always spoken to them when times were difficult.
She had never pretended that hardship did not exist.
She simply refused to let it become the only thing they saw.
Andre reached across the table and took Willa’s hand.
“I’m doing everything I can to keep us here,” he said.
“And whatever happens, I’m not leaving you to face it alone.”
Willa nodded slowly.
Then she squeezed his hand.
“I’m not leaving you either.”
He smiled.
“I know.”
For a while they ate in silence.
After supper, Willa helped wash the dishes, and Andre added another small log to the stove.
He watched the flames rise.
Willa came to stand beside him.
“Andre?”
“Yes?”
“Would Mama have helped the lady?”
He looked toward the shelf above the stove.
Their mother’s photograph stood there in a simple wooden frame.
She was smiling, her eyes bright, with one hand resting on the handlebars of the old bicycle.
Andre nodded.
“She wouldn’t even have thought twice.”
Willa considered this.
“Then you did the right thing.”
He looked at his little sister.
Sometimes children said the things adults spent years trying to understand.
Later that night, after Willa had gone to bed, Andre sat alone at the kitchen table.
The house made its familiar sounds around him.
The stove cracked softly.
Wind brushed against the shutters.
Somewhere outside, a horse called from a distant pasture.
He opened the wooden money box.
After counting everything twice, he added the payment from the Miller ranch.
The total was still short.
He sighed and closed the lid.
Then he took out his mother’s old sewing tin.
Inside were a few needles, a thimble, scraps of ribbon, and a folded piece of paper that she had kept beneath the lid.
He knew what it said.
She had written it years earlier, during a winter when their family had very little.
“We may not always have enough to share everything we own, but we will always have enough to share some kindness.”
Andre read the words slowly.
He had never noticed how much they resembled something she might have said on the road that afternoon.
For the first time in several days, he felt his breathing ease.
He put the paper back into the tin.
Before going to bed, he stepped onto the porch.
The bicycle leaned against the wall beneath the window.
He ran a hand along its faded frame.
“Guess you had a busy day too.”
The wind stirred the cottonwood branches.
Andre stood there a moment longer, looking toward the lights of town.
He wondered whether the elderly woman was warm now, whether she had eaten a proper meal, and whether someone would come looking for her in the morning.
He hoped so.
Then he went inside.
He did not know that Evelyn was still awake at the boardinghouse, speaking quietly with a man who had arrived from the railway station.