Concaid returned. Then she went back to the kitchen and started dinner because dinner needed to happen regardless of anything else. Bramwell came back at dusk. Denny met him at the barn door and told him what had happened. Miriam heard him come into the house.
She heard him stop in the hallway. She heard him stand there for a long moment before he pushed open the kitchen door. She was at the stove. She turned around because she'd rather see whatever expression he was wearing than be surprised by it from behind. His face was not what she expected.
He was a man who kept things contained. She'd understood that about him within two days. And whatever was happening in him right now was contained too, but not all the way. Something had come loose around the edges of his composure that she'd never seen before. Denny told me what you did, he said.
I'll write it in the accounts, she said. Every penny. That's not He stopped. He pulled off his hat and held it in both hands. And for a moment, he looked at the floor.
And then he looked up at her with an expression she didn't know how to read. That mayor belonged to my wife, he said. The kitchen was very quiet. Her name was Elbeth, he said. She died 6 years ago.
She was the one who picked out that horse. She'd had her 3 years when he stopped again. His jaw tightened. When she died, Miriam set down the spoon she was holding. "I've kept that mare ever since," he said.
"Not because she's the most useful animal on the ranch. Because he didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to." Miriam looked at this man standing in her kitchen holding his hat in both hands, and she understood something suddenly that rearranged everything she thought she'd understood about Red Spur Ranch. The house that had no curtains and no pictures.
The study full of books that hadn't been opened in 3 years. The enormous house built for a family she could see now that it had been built for a family standing almost empty because the person it had been built for wasn't in it. He hadn't hired her because he needed a housekeeper. He'd hired her because an empty house had gotten to be too much to live in. She didn't say any of that.
I'm sorry about your wife, she said. He nodded once. The mayor will be all right, she said. Dr. Puit said she should rest for a week, but she'll be fine.