I'm not good at things. Levi's good at music, Caleb offered. He plays harmonica like a dying cat. Better than you play anything, Levi shot back. Holden sighed.
This is Jonah. He gestured to the last brother, a man about Holden's age with a scar running along his jawline and eyes that looked like they'd seen too much. Jonah nodded once, but didn't speak. And that's all of us, Holden finished. Six brothers, one ranch, and more work than we can handle.
You already met the terms, one week, fair pay, your own space. We don't expect miracles. We just need someone who can cook a meal that doesn't poison us and maybe keep this place from falling apart entirely. Evelyn looked around the room at the six men staring back at her. They were rough, hard-edged, the kind of men the frontier made when it ground everything soft out of a person.
But there was something else there, too, something she couldn't quite name. They weren't leering at her, weren't sizing her up like a piece of meat. They just looked tired. I'll start tomorrow, she said. Holden nodded.
Good. Levi, show her to the storage room. The rest of you, get cleaned up for supper. The brothers dispersed, and Evelyn followed Levi up a narrow staircase to the second floor. The storage room was exactly what Holden had described.
Small, barely big enough for a cot and a wooden crate that served as a table, but it had a window that looked out over the plains, and the door had a lock on the inside, and that was more than she'd had in a long time. Levi hovered in the doorway, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I know it's not much," he said, "but it's I mean, it's something, right?" Evelyn set her canvas sack on the cot. "It's fine."
"Okay, good. That's good." He paused. "Do you need anything? Water or I'm fine."
"Right. Okay, I'll just" He gestured vaguely down the hallway. "Supper's in an hour. I'll be there." He left, and Evelyn closed the door behind him.
She stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of boots on the stairs, voices drifting up from the kitchen, the crackle of the fire downstairs. Then she turned the lock. The click echoed in the small room, and for the first time in 3 years, Evelyn let herself exhale. She woke before dawn. Old habits.
On the road, sleeping too late meant missing the only safe hours to travel. It meant waking up to find your pack gone, or worse, waking up to find someone standing over you. So, Evelyn had learned to sleep light and wake early. And even now, in a locked room with a roof over her head, her body didn't know how to do anything else. She got dressed in the dark, same clothes she'd worn yesterday, same clothes she'd worn for the past 2 weeks.
Then she unlocked the door and made her way downstairs. The house was silent. No boots on the floorboards, no voices, no fire in the hearth. She was alone. Good.