He stopped in the kitchen door the same way Emmettz had. This seemed to be a family trait, these pauses, this recalibration, and looked at the table set with all four plates and the steam rising from the pot on the stove and his two sons sitting in their chairs. "Sit down," she said. "It's hot," he sat. She served.
Nobody talked for a few minutes, just the sound of spoons and the wind working itself against the windows and the fire doing its job in the stove. Then Jaime said, "I helped with the starter today." Gideon looked at him. "The what? The bread starter. Rosaliss got it in a crock.
It's alive. It's yeast." Emmett said in the tone of an older brother who has already processed this information and is now above it. It's bacteria and yeast, Rosalie said. Emmett's right that it's not alive the way you and I are alive, but it is a living culture. Gideon looked at her.
Something in the way he looked. It wasn't the evaluating look. Wasn't the flatness. She wasn't sure what it was, and she wasn't going to spend time trying to identify it. Where'd you learn to cook like this?
He asked. My mother, she said. She had a recipe book. She started it when she was younger than I am now and added to it her whole life. Is she still she died 2 years ago?
He nodded. Didn't push. She appreciated that more than she would have said. The next morning, she found Matteo Serrano waiting at the kitchen door before breakfast. He had his hat in his hands, which was either politeness or or apology, and he looked like a man who had been working up to saying something for a few days.
Miss Hartwell, he said, can I ask you something? Ask. Some of the men are, he paused, looking for the right word. Some of them heard what was said in town about you and Cheyenne. She turned from the stove and a couple of them are saying they're not comfortable eating food from someone who he stopped again.
They're saying they can't be sure. She looked at him steadily. Matteo Serrano was about 30 with the direct gaze and the careful manner of a man who had spent his life having to be twice as careful as the men around him and knew exactly what that cost. "What do you think?" She asked. He met her eyes.
I think the stew last night was the best meal I've had since I came to this ranch. And I've been here 3 years. Then eat it, she said. The men who don't want to can make their own arrangements. He almost smiled.