She kept the flower on the high shelf because she was tall, he said. She used to reach it without even going on her toes. I'm 5' 4, Tessa said. I'm going to need it lower. Something moved across EMTT's face that wasn't quite a smile, but was adjacent to one.
Yeah, he said. That makes sense. He turned to go, then stopped. The three steers from the south group that need conditioning. The one with the split ear is the strongest.
He'll show the best at auction if he's in form. Worth putting extra attention on him. I'll put that in the notes, she said. He walked back toward the barn without looking back. But the set of his shoulders was different than it had been when he'd arrived.
Tessa watched him go and thought one degree at a time. That's how you change the temperature of a room. Not with a fire, with one degree at a time. Hollis was the one she had the hardest time reading. He was 16, quiet in a way that felt deliberate rather than shy.
And he had the habit of appearing at the edges of situations, present enough to observe, far enough away to deny involvement. He watched Tessa with a focus that was almost unsettling, not hostile, just very careful, like he was building a case and hadn't yet decided which direction the verdict would go. He spoke to her for the first time, actually spoke beyond yes and no and passing the salt on a Thursday afternoon when she was in the root cellar taking an inventory of what they had stored against winter. He appeared at the top of the seller steps and said, "You're counting wrong. " She looked up. I'm sorry.
The turn barrels you counted four. There are four barrels, but two of them are only half full, because we had a bad yield on the late crop. If you're calculating how long the stores will last, you need to count by weight, not by barrel. She looked at her notes. She had in fact counted by barrel.
How do you know the yield on the late crop? Because I pulled most of it, he said. Spent 3 days in that field. I know what came out of it. She added a note.
Do you know the approximate weight difference? Second and fourth barrel from the left are about 60% full. Rest or full or close to it. She adjusted the calculation while he stood at the top of the steps watching her do it. That changes the estimate by about 3 weeks, she said.