And then he looked at his father at the stove. We should look at the Kellerman land again, he said. Warren turned from the stove. What? East pasture.
They haven't sold it. I checked with their hand last month. If we have a working balance and we approach the bank in Missoula about a secured loan now, while we have a positive settlement in hand, we're in a different conversation than we were before. Warren looked at the settlement sheet. He looked at Calder.
Something was moving in his expression that was about more than East pasture acreage. "You and Tessa figure out the numbers," he said. "Bring me a proposal. " Calder looked across the table at Tessa. She looked back at him. "After the winter accounts are settled," she said.
"February, maybe when we know the full picture. " February Calder agreed. Holla set a bowl of cornbread on the table and said if we add the Kellerman parcel we'll need to extend the north water line by at least a/4 mile. I know Calder said the pipe cost is not trivial. I know that too. I'm just saying it needs to be in the calculation.
Put it in the calculation. Tessa said write it down tonight. Put every variable you know about in a column and we'll work through them. Hollis looked at her with the particular expression he had when given permission to do a thing he'd already decided to do. I already started, he said, and went back to the stove.
Tobin made a noise that was suppressed laughter. Even Warren at the stove did something with his face that was not quite a smile, but was related to one. They sat down to supper, all of them, which was how it had been since the blizzard, all seven of them at the table at the same time. And the stew was in is imperfect in two specific ways that Hollis had failed to fully correct. And the cornbread was good.
And the conversation moved the way conversation moves when people have been through something together and have come out of it on the same side. It was not a smooth or easy supper. Tobin argued with EMTT about a fencing technique with an energy that seemed disproportionate to the stakes. Milo spilled his water and was mortified by it in the way that 9-year-olds are mortified when they do something clumsy in front of people they're trying to impress. Warren told a story about the first time he'd entered an animal in a livestock show 23 years ago that ended badly and that he'd apparently never told anyone because all five of his sons looked at him with expressions of complete surprise.