Rachel watched him. "He worked until his hands shook."
"Wouldn't admit anything was wrong. Wouldn't ask anybody for one damn thing."
Matthew paused. "When he died, I swore I wouldn't make his mistakes."
Rachel looked around the cookhouse. The ledger. The unpaid invoices. Thirty-six men.
Matthew's habit of carrying every problem himself. "You changed the details."
His eyes came to hers. "Not the habit."
Matthew breathed out once through his nose. "No."
The word sat between them. Rachel looked at his hands. "You still work until your body hurts."
"Yes."
"You still think asking is dangerous."
"Yes."
"You hired me."
"That took longer than it should have."
She smiled despite herself. Matthew looked at her. For a moment, the room felt warmer.
Not much. Just enough. Rachel put her hand on the table.
Not toward him. Simply resting there. Matthew's hand remained near the ledger. There were maybe six inches between them.
He looked at the space. Then at her. Rachel did not move. Neither did he.
Slowly, almost without meaning to, Matthew shifted his hand closer. Rachel's fingers relaxed. The distance narrowed. Four inches.
Three.
A horse screamed outside. Both of them jerked toward the sound. A second later, Eli shouted from the yard.
"Matthew!"
Matthew was on his feet before the chair finished scraping back. He grabbed his coat. "What happened?"
"Bay's caught herself in the stall!"
Matthew reached the door, then stopped. He looked back at Rachel. The burned cornbread sat between them.
So did everything they had almost said. "I'll be back."
Rachel nodded. "Go."
He disappeared into the cold. The door slammed behind him. Rachel sat without moving.
Her hand was still on the table. She looked at the place where Matthew's hand had nearly reached hers. Then she slowly drew her fingers back. Outside came the muffled sound of boots.
A frightened horse. Eli's voice. Matthew answering low and steady. Rachel looked at the ruined cornbread.
After a moment, she picked up the knife. Then stopped. She set it down again. The pan could wait until morning.
Some things, she was beginning to understand, did not need to be fixed the instant they went wrong. And some things could not be fixed by working harder. She covered the pan with a cloth, turned down the lamps, and left Matthew's blue-rimmed coffee mug on the table, just in case he came back.
He did. Not until nearly midnight. Rachel heard the cookhouse door open while she was still awake in the small room off the rear hall, and a moment later came the soft scrape of the mug being lifted from the table.
She did not go out. In the morning, the cup was washed and hanging from its hook. Nothing was said about the night before. That was how things remained for the next week.
Not distant. Not quite closer either. Matthew still came for coffee before sunrise. Rachel still left the blue-rimmed mug near the pot.
Their eyes met more often than they used to, and sometimes held a second too long, but neither reached again across the table. Winter tightened around Holloway Basin. January passed into February under hard skies and wind that polished the snow until it shone like tin. The cattle stayed low in the basin, where the cottonwoods broke the worst of the weather.
Men rode fence in pairs. Ice had to be chopped from troughs twice a day. The ranch was holding. Rachel's figures said so.
Food costs were falling. The men were staying. The pantry no longer looked as though three different people had been ordering blindly from three different stores. Then the freight began arriving late.