Bo paused. "And Jack? Not a word about this to anyone. Understand?" "About you playing farmer for a week? Wouldn't dream of mentioning it, Boss."
Jack's grin belied his words. "Though I expect Cookie's going to have questions when I tell him where you are." "Tell Cookie to mind his own business." "Sure thing." Jack mounted his horse, then looked back with unusual seriousness.
"Boss? For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing here." Before Bo could respond, Jack had spurred his horse into a trot, leaving Bo alone with his uncomfortable thoughts and a scythe that suddenly seemed to weigh more than it should. The rest of that first day established a pattern that would hold for the next several days.
Bo worked on fence repairs while Kelly continued her endless round of chores, cooking, cleaning, tending the garden, caring for the children, managing the animals. They moved around each other like cautious dancers, polite but distant, each hyper-aware of the other's presence. But small things kept happening that eroded that careful distance. On the second morning, Bo found a plate of biscuits waiting by his campsite, still warm from the oven.
That afternoon, when he hammered his thumb while fixing a fence post, Kelly appeared with a tin of salve and clean bandages. Her touch was gentle and efficient as she wrapped his injury. "You should be more careful," she said. "I'm out of practice," Bo admitted, flexing his thumb. "Been a while since I did this kind of work myself."
"The privilege of wealth," Kelly observed. But there was no bitterness in her tone, just a statement of fact. "The isolation of wealth," Bo corrected without thinking. Then, realizing what he'd revealed, he stood abruptly. "Thank you for the bandage."
Kelly stood too, studying his face with those perceptive eyes. "You're lonely." "I'm fine." "Those two things aren't mutually exclusive." Kelly gathered up her supplies.
"You can be fine and still be lonely, Mr. Callahan. In fact, I think sometimes being fine is just another word for being alone without complaining about it." She walked away before Bo could formulate a response, leaving him standing by the fence with a bandaged thumb and a chest that felt oddly tight. That evening, as Bo sat by his campfire eating beans straight from the can, he heard singing drifting from the house.
Kelly's voice, clear and sweet, carrying the melody of an old hymn. "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." Bo found himself frozen, spoon halfway to his mouth, listening. Thomas had been right. She was really good at it.
On the third morning, Bo woke to find small footprints in the damp earth near his campsite and a handful of wildflowers laid carefully on a flat rock near his bedroll. Indian paintbrush, their red-orange blooms bright against the gray stone. Bo stared at those flowers for a long moment, throat tight. Then he carefully picked them up and tucked them into his shirt pocket before anyone could see.
It was also the third morning that brought the first real test of their fragile truce. Bo was sharpening the scythe when he heard Kelly cry out in alarm. He dropped everything and ran toward the sound, hand going automatically to his gun, expecting danger, outlaws, wild animals, any of the hundred threats that plagued frontier life. Instead, he found Kelly frozen in place near the chicken coop, her face pale with terror.
On the ground, not five feet from where her youngest daughter, Martha, with her corn-husk doll, played in the dirt, was a prairie rattlesnake coiled and buzzing its warning. Time seemed to slow down. Bo saw it all with crystalline clarity. The snake, its rattles vibrating in agitation.
Martha reaching toward it with the innocent curiosity of a child who didn't know danger when she saw it. Kelly unable to move forward or call out for fear of triggering the strike. Bo didn't think. He drew and fired in one smooth motion, a skill honed by years on the frontier where the difference between fast and dead was measured in heartbeats.