"Gideon," she said, "I know you have Cheyenne. " He said, "I know what that means. Your reputation back, a contract, your own position in your own name. I know that matters. I'm not asking you to give that up. Then what are you asking?
He looked at his hands, then back at her. I'm asking if there's a version of the next thing that includes staying here. Not as the cook. Not because of the boys, though I won't pretend they don't matter in this. He paused.
As my wife, if that's something you could consider, the word landed in the room and stayed. She sat with it. She did not reach for it immediately and she did not push it away because this was the kind of moment where doing either of those things too fast was how people made decisions they spent a long time living with. You're asking me to marry you. She said I'm doing it badly, he said.
But yes, why now? Because you're about to make a decision and I think you should have all the information. He said and she heard the echo of what he'd told her weeks ago in the pantry and something tightened in her chest. I told you not to read into that, she said. I know you did.
I'm serious, Gideon. I meant it when I said the Cheyenne position was real. I know that, too. She stood up from the desk. The co truth.
She went to the window and looked out at the gray afternoon and the stone building visible beside the road, and she thought about Cheyenne and what it had taken from her and what getting it back would mean. She thought about her mother's recipe book in its box on the kitchen counter. She thought up to its windows were dark. the abodto starter in its croc and what she had told Jaime that morning about how a starter didn't diminish when you gave part of it away if I stayed she said to the window the building would still be mine what I build there would be mine that's not negotiable it was never in question he said and I'm not going to become invisible inside this house I've been someone's employee for most of my adult life and I've watched women become invisible when they married and I won't do it I would not know how to make you invisible if I tried," he said. "And I have not tried. " She turned around. He was watching her the way he'd watched her in the stone building without commentary, just attention, and she thought about how few people in her life had looked at her that way, like she was something worth paying attention to without needing to be managed or reduced or explained.
"I need to think," she said. "I know. Don't look at me like that while I'm thinking. " He looked at the ledger. She went back to the kitchen. She did not make a decision that day.
She made supper instead, a long slow braze that needed attention every 20 minutes, which gave her something to undo with her hands while her mind worked through I things she'd been not thinking about for 6 weeks with increasing effort. She fed the starter. She set the table. She called the boys for supper. And she served the food and she ate at the counter the way to she always did. day watching the table, watching Gideon, watching EMTT tell his father something about the fence repair he'd helped with that afternoon, watching Jaime eat with the focused application he brought to everything she put in front of him.