Lucy agreed. Caleb looked around the table at all four of them. At the argument that was already developing between Owen and Evan about the fairness of democratic processes. At Lucy beginning to explain something about collective decision-making that she had apparently thought carefully about.
At Mara watching her children with an expression of someone who is very tired and also very fond and cannot always tell where one ends and the other begins. He got up and refilled his coffee. He stood at the stove and looked at his kitchen which was full of noise and had biscuits and a cloth on the counter and a rag rug on the floor that he could see from here because she'd brought one in from the bunkhouse after the first cold snap saying the kitchen floor was pulling the heat out through his feet. The curtains she'd hung were moving in the small draft from the window gap he hadn't fixed yet.
His coffee was good. Hutchins had come by again earlier in the week. Not to talk this time. Just riding past slowly in the way that some people do when they want you to know they're watching.
Caleb had seen him from the fence line and turned back to work and Hutchins had ridden on. He thought about Hutchins looking at this kitchen, at the rug, and the curtains, and the biscuits, and the table full of argument. He thought about what Hutchins saw and what he was wrong about and what he saw. He thought about being wrong, too.
About what he'd assumed when Mara's wagon had come through his gate. About what he'd thought a family meant, which was mostly what he'd lost. Which was mostly not what this was. This was something he didn't have a name for yet.
But it was working. Whatever else it was, it was working. He drank his coffee and went back to the table. "Owen," he said, settling back into his chair.
The argument stopped. Everyone looked at him. "You can do one thing during the wolf watches." Owen straightened up.
"What?" "You sleep with the barn door open and you wake up if you hear anything. Can you do that?" Owen considered this with the gravity it deserved.
"Yes," he said. "Then that's your job." Owen nodded, satisfied. He went back to his biscuit.