3 days later, snow began. Not the cautious early winter snow that comes in polite increments and gives people time to prepare. This was Wyoming deciding to get serious. By the second morning, it was coming sideways and the temperature had dropped to the kind of number that made everything outside the house dangerous and everything inside the house feel not quite warm enough. The ranch hands were managing cattle that didn't want to be managed.
Gideon was outside most of every day. The boys were trapped indoors, which meant Emmett's disappearing act had to work within the constraints of a house, and Jaime<unk>s orbit around Rosalie had tightened considerably. He started talking not about anything weighty. At first, he wanted to know how bread rose, why beans needed soaking, what the difference was between the two kinds of fat she kept in separate tins. She answered each question with the same matterof fact directness she'd use with any adult who asked, which seemed to be exactly what he needed because the questions kept coming.
What's this called? He asked one afternoon, pointing at the sourdough starter in its crock. A starter. It's alive yeast and bacteria. You feed it flour and water and it grows.
He stared at the crock. It eats in a manner of speaking. What happens if you forget to feed it? It dies. He was quiet for a moment.
Does it hurt it if you forget? She looked at him, 8 years old, standing in his socks with one of them still half off its foot, asking whether a bowl of fermenting flour could feel neglect. "No," she said more gently than she'd said most things. "It doesn't feel anything. It just stops working." He nodded, satisfied.
Then can I feed it? You can help me. She showed him the measurements, how to stir it in, how to scrape down the sides of the crock so nothing dried out and hardened. He did it carefully, the way you do something when you're aware it matters. The kitchen that afternoon was warm from the stove and dim from the heavy sky outside.
And it occurred to Rosalie against her better judgment that this was the kind of afternoon she had not had in a long time, the kind that didn't ask anything from you except to be present in it. She shut that thought down before it went anywhere useful, and started on supper. Emmett appeared that evening during a gap in the snow, stomping cold into the house and heading straight for the kitchen instead of upstairs for the first time since she'd arrived. He stopped short when he found her and Jaime both at the stove. He stood in the kitchen entry in his coat, snow in his dark hair, watching.
"Wash your hands," Rosalie said without turning around. "And you can help Jaime set the table." He didn't move for a moment. Then she heard his coat go on the hook and his boots on the floor and the sound of water at the basin. She didn't comment on it. She just moved the bread pan aside so there was room on the counter for him to take the stack of plates.
Supper that night was beef and bean stew because she'd traded two jars of her apple preserves with the older the ranch hand for three lbs of good beef. He'd come by through a complicated arrangement she didn't ask about the bones she'd already roasted and cracked into a broth. The broth, the beans, the beef, the dried onions, a pinch of the precious salt. It was not a sophisticated dish, but it was the kind of stew that did what food is supposed to do, which is make the place you're eating it feel safer than it did before you started. Gideon came in from outside later than usual, his coat iciff and his face set in the particular way of a man who had been dealing with problems for too many consecutive hours.