Blackthorn Ranch, Red Hollow, Wyoming. Another pause. You're Rosalie Hartwell. You've been feeding my family for 3 weeks and you just came out in a blizzard to find me, which is the strangest thing anyone's done for me in a long time. She let go of his hands.
She sat back. Stay awake, she said. I mean it. For the next 2 hours, stay awake. All right, he said.
He watched her stand up and then he said rosily. She looked at him. Thank you. She didn't answer that. She went to check on the status of the whiskey.
Roy produced a bottle from somewhere she didn't ask about. She cleaned the cut on Gideon's temple, which was deeper than she would have liked, but it stopped bleeding properly on its own, and she bandaged it with strips of clean cloth, and he sat through all of it without complaint, which was either stoicism or the kind of exhaustion that leaves a person too tired to object to things. Jaime had appeared at some point and was sitting on the floor near the stole leaning watching his father with the focused quiet of a child who has been frightened and is not over it yet. Gideon looked at him. Hey.
Hey, Jaime said. You all right? You weren't here, Jaime said very simply in a tone that contained considerably more than the words themselves. I know, Gideon said. I'm sorry.
The kitchen was quiet around that for a moment. Then Gideon said, "Who kept the stove going?" "Emmett," Jaime said. "And me, Rosalie told us before she left." Gideon looked at the stove, at the fire working steadily behind the iron door, at the kettle beginning to steam on the burner. He looked at Rosalie's back at the counter. "She told you before she left," he repeated.
"She left us instructions," Emmett said from the doorway. He had come back in without anyone noticing, which was either his disappearing trick or just how quiet the house got when important things were happening. She said to keep the stove up and Roy to add wood an hour from when she left. He looked at Rosalie. Royy's going to want to know if that timing holds for tonight.
Tell him yes, she said. I'll reassess in the morning based on what the storm does. Emmett nodded and went to find Roy. She made supper from what was available, less than she would have liked, but she worked with what the day had left her. Thick porridge with the last of the dried apple, biscuits from the morning's remaining dough, a strong stock from the bones she'd been simmering all day.
Simple, hot on the table. Gideon ate at the kitchen bench instead of the table, because moving him again seemed unnecessary, and he seemed disincclined to argue about it. She set his bowl beside him, and he ate steadily, which was a good sign, and the color was coming back into his face, which was a better one. Matteo came in for supper and sat at the table with the boys, and Roy leaned in the doorway and ate from a bowl he held in his hands, which was how Roy ate, regardless of the circumstances, apparently. The kitchen held six people, and the warmth from the stove and the smell of the stock, and it was crowded and unbutful, and nothing about the evening was graceful, but it was functional, which Rosalie had learned was actually more than most things managed.