Page 59 of Caroline’s Compass

“The water disagrees.”

Thomas adjusted his grip. The bucket leveled. Their eyes met over it, and for a moment anger eased into familiar cooperation. Then Lucy ran up and asked whether carrying water together counted as partial courtship. Half the bucket escaped before they reached camp.

At the evening camp, his notebook lay open on a crate while he helped Mr. Coleman tighten a wheel. Caroline did not mean to read it. She meant only to move the crate away from a curious mule.

Her own name caught her eye.

May 10. Company took the established northwest road on C. Whitaker's recommendation after cutoff inspection showed unstable bank and inadequate turning ground.

Below it, Thomas had recorded the slower mileage, reduced grazing, and Caroline's ration change. He had not claimed the decision, softened it, or punished her in ink because they had quarreled.

“Planning to steal it again?”

Thomas stood behind her.

Caroline closed the notebook. “The mule was interested.”

“He has strong opinions about routes.”

“You credited me.”

“You made the recommendation.”

“Even after yesterday.”

“Yesterday did not alter what happened.”

She wanted to ask whether it altered what he felt. Instead, she put the notebook back on the crate.

“Your mileage estimate was short,” she said.

“By three quarters of a mile.”

“I noticed.”

“I assumed you would.”

He returned to Coleman's wheel. Caroline returned to supper, neither of them having said anything that mattered.

Eleanor found Caroline recopying the same column after supper. “Rebecca can check this.”

“I have it.”

“Yes. You have had it three times.”

Caroline accused Eleanor of hovering. Eleanor agreed and remained seated. She would not take back the lead wagon or the ledger merely because Caroline wanted work large enough to bury anger. Instead, she peeled potatoes in silence until Caroline handed Rebecca half the figures.

Across camp, Thomas updated the route record. When Charlotte later brought Caroline the page to verify, every bearing she had chosen remained credited to her. Personal conflict had not made him diminish her work. The fairness made anger less comfortable, but not less deserved.

Mrs. Lawson joined her after the meal. She was a quiet widow traveling with two children and rarely offered advice without first washing a dish. Henry Lawson had been buried only days earlier. Grief had made her movements deliberate, as though every ordinary chore required a decision to remain among the living.

She dried Caroline's tin plate and said, “My mother used to preserve peaches in jars.”

Caroline waited.

“She guarded them so carefully that we found six spoiled jars after she died. Never opened them because she feared wanting them in winter.”

“Are you comparing Thomas to preserved peaches?”