Ruth stood on the porch with her arms crossed and said nothing when the large widow climbed down from the stage — Della picked up her own trunk before Jacob could decide whether to help and said: “Someone show me to my room” — Ruth, startled out of her prepared hostility, led the way — what does a woman do when every door has already decided to stay closed before she knocks?

Ruth stared at her.

“Well?” Della said. “The trunk won’t carry itself.”

Ruth, startled out of her prepared hostility, led the way inside.

The room was clean. Jacob had made it so — she could tell from the careful corners of the sheets, the way a man makes a bed when he wants to be fair to someone he does not yet know.

Supper that first night was salt pork and potatoes and coffee black as judgment. Della had brought dried apple rings in her bag and set them on the table between the salt and pepper without comment.

Ruth looked at them. “We didn’t ask for those.”

“Nobody asks for apples. They’re just there.”

Mae reached for one.

Ruth caught her sister’s hand. “Mae.”

Della looked at Ruth directly. “She is seven years old, and they are apple rings, and she is hungry. Let her eat.”

The two of them looked at each other across the table.

Jacob, who had said nothing, reached for an apple ring himself.

Ruth released her sister’s hand.

That night, Della heard footsteps stop outside her door. Small ones. They stayed for a long time before retreating. She lay still and listened until silence came back, and then she closed her eyes.

In the morning, she found a single pine cone on her doorstep.

She set it on the kitchen windowsill where the light could find it and said nothing at breakfast.

Mae was watching when she set it there.

Della did not look at her. But she heard the small exhale — the particular sound of a held breath finally released.

Ruth’s campaign against Della was organized and patient, which told Della more about the girl than anything else could have. She put the salt in the sugar jar. She hid one of Della’s boots. She came to breakfast with a series of pointed questions about Della’s dead husband that were designed to wound.

“What did Mr. Marsh die of?”

“His heart,” Della said.

“Was it sudden?”

“No. It was slow and unkind and he bore it with more grace than it deserved.”

Ruth blinked.

“You are trying to make me feel like a fool for asking,” Della said. “You will not succeed. Questions are not weapons unless the person being asked has something to hide. I have nothing to hide.”

“Everyone has something to hide.”

“Perhaps. But I am not going to waste energy hiding it from a twelve-year-old.”

Ruth slammed her cup down and went outside.

Jacob watched from his end of the table. “She is not usually so—”

“She is exactly as she should be,” Della said. “She loved her mother and she does not want me here. Those are both reasonable positions.”

Mae, who had been eating her porridge with focused attention, looked up.

“The question,” Della said, more to the table than to anyone in particular, “is not whether she will come around. The question is whether I am worth coming around to.”

Mae put her spoon down and looked at Della with her whole face.

Della looked back.

“Eat your porridge,” she said. “It will be cold.”