And was waiting to catch up to. The letter from Cheyenne arrived the second week of February. Harker had held it for them since the roads opened, and Gideon brought it back from the supply run along with the flour and the oil and the coffee, and he put it on the kitchen table beside her ledger without a word, and went out to help unload the wagon. It was a proper letter on Grand Hotel's stationary with a new name in the header where Perishes had been. She read it at the kitchen table while the bread was in the oven.
The the new manager wrote clearly and without flattery. He stated that her name had been cleared following Dale Coover's confession, that the hotel wished to make restitution for the damage done to her reputation, and that her former position was available with a salary increase, and a written employment contract, which Parish had never offered, a written contract that was new. She read the letter twice. Then she sat it down and looked out the kitchen window at the stone building, visible through the bare trees beside the ranch road, its good chimney against the February sky. Jaime appeared in the kitchen door.
He looked at the letter. He looked at her face. He did not ask. She looked at him. Do you know what a written contract is?
No, he said. It's a document that says what both parties agree to, what they'll do, what they'll get for it, signed by both of them. She folded the letter. It means if one person breaks their word, the other person has proof. He thought about this like a handshake but on paper.
Exactly like that. He came into the kitchen and went to check on the starter which was his morning task even on days she hadn't asked him to do it. He fed it and stirred it and moved it to its proper spot and stood back. If you went to Cheyenne, he said to the starter rather than to her, could you take the starter with you? She looked at the crock part of it.
Yes. A starter lives as long as you feed it. You could keep the rest here and it would keep going. So there'd be two of them. That's how starters work, she said.
You give part of it away and it doesn't diminish what's left. Both parts keep living. He was quiet. Jaime, she said. He looked at her.
Whatever I decide, it's not going to be because I don't want to be here, she said. I want you to understand that his face did something complicated and then smoothed back out. He was learning to manage his expressions from his father, she thought, except he had gotten fully proficient at it yet, which meant she could still see everything. Okay, he said. She made the lunch.