Chapter 4 Mara — Day 7
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Opal's stew hits the table at six on the dot, the way it's hit the table for twenty-five years.
She sets the cast-iron pot down between the bread board and the water pitcher and steps back to let the steam do what steam does.
The clock over the stove reads six on the button.
The kitchen smells like beef and onions and the last of Opal's rosemary bread cooling by the stove.
Everybody's already sitting. That's how she likes it.
Thayer's on my left, hat on the peg where it belongs.
Rafe's across from him, leaned back in his chair like he's fixing to be told off for it.
Orin's beside Rafe, elbows off the table, both hands flat like he's afraid to move the wrong way.
Beau's at the far end where he's put himself since day one.
He hasn't asked to sit anywhere else and I haven't asked him to move up.
“Sit down, Opal,” I say.
“I'm sitting,” she says. She isn't.
“Sit.”
She sits.
Thayer says grace under his breath, quick, more habit than church. Rafe rolls his eyes at nothing in particular. Orin bows his head so far his forehead almost touches his water glass. Beau lowers his eyes and waits and doesn't do the thing with his hands most men do at a table they don't own.
Opal ladles. Bowls come around. Bread gets torn. Rafe reaches for the butter and Opal smacks his knuckles with the flat of a spoon.
“Guests first,” she says.
“There's a guest?” Rafe cranes around like he's forgotten. He grins at Beau down the length of the table. “Oh. Right. New guy.”
“Beau,” Beau says. Just the name. No smile back, no offense taken. He passes the butter down.
“Beau.” Rafe savors it. “You a Beau or a Beauregard?”
“Just Beau.”
“That's a shame. I like a Beauregard. Sounds like a man who owns a horse named Duchess.”
“No Duchess.”
“Any horse?”
“Not lately.”
“Rafe,” Thayer says, without heat.
“Yes, sir.”
Orin's watching the whole exchange like it's a lesson he's supposed to take notes on. He hasn't touched his stew. He's waiting to see if I'll pick up my spoon first. I pick up my spoon. He picks up his.
The stew's good. It's always good. Opal browns the meat twice, once for color and once for guilt, and puts too much thyme in it and doesn't apologize for either. I take two bites while I decide how to open my mouth and say the thing I brought them here to say.
I put my spoon down.
“There's a thing I need to tell y'all.”
Thayer looks up. Rafe stops chewing. Orin freezes with bread halfway to his mouth. Opal keeps stirring her bowl like she's already heard it and just needs a second to be brave.
Beau lifts his eyes from his plate. He doesn't move otherwise. He's watching me the way he watches horses — steady, no threat, nothing asked of me I don't want to give.
“The bank served the default notice last week,” I say. “Ninety days from the date on it. That leaves seventy-seven. That's what we've got.”
Nobody says anything for a beat. The stove ticks. The wind pushes at the window.
Opal's hand goes to her mouth. She doesn't make a sound. Her eyes fill up and one tear breaks and rolls to her chin and she wipes it with the back of her wrist like it's a fly.
“Opal—”
“I heard you, honey. I'm listening.”
Thayer nods. Once. Like I've said something we both knew was coming and now it's here and there's nothing to do but count the days.
“Well, sh—” Rafe starts, catches Opal's eye, and holds the rest of the word between his teeth. “Well. That's a hell of a thing, Mara.”
“Yeah.”
“Ninety days,” he says. “From the notice.”
“Ninety days from the notice.”
“So we've got, what—seventy-something now.”
“Seventy-seven.”
He runs his hand down his face. He's looking at the table like it might have the answer written on it. Rafe's twenty-six, cocky, and he loves this ranch more than he'd ever tell me sober.
Orin sets his bread down. Very carefully. Like he's been handed something breakable and is trying not to drop it.
“We'll fix it, ma'am,” he says.
He's nineteen. His voice cracks a little on ma'am.
He's looking at me straight, no hedge, no wink, no smile — just that awful young sureness that thinks fix is a word that always works because it always has for him so far, because his mama fixed his cuts and his daddy fixed the truck and his teachers fixed his math and nothing has ever come at him yet that fix wouldn't answer.
I have to look away.
I look at the window. There's a pale stripe of dusk left over the yard. I count to three. My own hand at my side clenches once, opens, clenches again — the small metronome I use when I need to remember to breathe.
“Thank you, Orin.” My voice comes out steadier than I expected. “Eat your stew.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
I make myself look down the table.
Beau hasn't moved. His face is what it usually is — quiet, careful, unreadable in the way I've stopped trying to read this week. But his right hand's wrapped around the handle of his coffee cup and the knuckles are white. Bone-white. Like he's holding the cup to keep it from going through the wall.
He feels me looking. He eases his grip. Slow, on purpose. He picks up his spoon with the other hand and takes a bite of stew and swallows. His jaw works once. That's all.
“It's good, Opal.” Quiet. Down the table.
Opal makes a wet little laugh into her napkin. “You need more bread, honey?”
“Please.”
She sends the bread down. Every hand it passes through, someone says something else to fill the air with.
“We could sell the north hay,” Thayer says.
“That's next year's operating money.”
“Yeah.”
“We could put out for extra hands at half wage,” Rafe says. “Get the fall gather done for less.”
“Nobody works half wage in October,” Thayer says.
“They will if they're hungry.”
“Rafe.”
“I'm saying.”
I let them talk. I eat two more bites so Opal can see me eat two more bites. The stew tastes like nothing. I know it's good because it's always good. I'll remember later that it was good.
“I've got a meeting with Selene Hart at the bank Wednesday,” I say. “I'm going to ask for a stretch. I'm not going to get one. But I'm going to ask.”
“Selene's a decent woman,” Opal says.
“She is. She's also got a boss.”
“Yeah.”
“I'm not selling,” I say, so they know that first. “Not the north pasture, not the south. Not a strip for a road easement. Not a foot.”
Rafe nods hard.
“And I'm not calling Dante Rivas. He's called twice. I'm not calling him back.”
“Good,” Thayer says.
“Who's Dante Rivas?” Beau asks. From the far end. His voice is even.
“Solar man out of Presidio. Wants five thousand acres for panels. He offered fair the first time. He'll offer worse the second, and worse the third, and by the fourth he'll be offering to pay off the bank direct in exchange for a deed, and I'll spit in his coffee before I take it.”
Rafe grins. “Now that I'd pay to see.”
“You couldn't afford the ticket.”
“Fair.”
Beau nods slowly, committing the name to memory. He doesn't ask another question.
Opal reaches over and puts her hand on top of mine. Her hand's soft on top and rough on the palm and her wedding ring is warm from the stew steam. She squeezes.
“Your daddy would be proud of you,” she says.
“Don't.”
“I'm saying it anyway.”
“Opal.”
“He would.” She squeezes harder. “You listen to me. He would.”
I don't cry at the table. I made a rule about that a long time ago and I've kept it in front of harder news than this.
But my eyes sting and I look at the ceiling for a second and Thayer, who's known me since I was in braids, finds his water glass very interesting for exactly the length of time it takes me to blink twice and come back.
“Eat,” I say. “It's getting cold.”
They eat.
Rafe tells a story about a mare over at the Jessup place who's decided she hates hats — any hat, all hats, the whole concept of hats — and won't be caught within twenty feet of a man wearing one.
Orin laughs too loud because he's nineteen and relieved to have permission to make noise again.
Thayer says something dry and Opal snorts and even I get half a smile out of it.
Beau listens more than he talks. When Rafe asks him if he ever rode a horse that hated something specific, he says, “A pony that hated my brother,” and doesn't elaborate, and Rafe, who knows enough to spot a closed door, moves on.
By the time the bowls are empty, the light outside's gone and the kitchen's warm and the ranch feels — for one bad, honest minute — like the last house at the edge of a lot of dark.
Opal starts stacking bowls. Thayer stands. Rafe stretches and cracks his back and stands. Orin jumps up like he's been waiting for the starter pistol.
“I'll wash,” Orin says.
“You'll dry. I don't trust nobody's washing but mine.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Beau stands. He picks up his own bowl and his coffee cup, walks them to the sink, sets them down like they're the last two dishes in the county. He nods to Opal — a small, formal nod, the kind you'd give somebody's grandmother in a receiving line — and walks toward the mudroom without hurry.
“I'll take the porch light,” Thayer says to me. Which is his way of telling me he's leaving so I can breathe.
“Thanks.”
Rafe touches the brim of his hat at me on the way out. “Boss.”
“Rafe.”
“We'll fix it, boss.”
“Get out of my kitchen.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Orin's already sleeves-up at the sink beside Opal. She's murmuring something to him in Spanish I don't catch and he's nodding like he does.
I follow the sound of Beau in the mudroom.
The mudroom's between the kitchen and the back door. Coats on pegs, boots in a row, my dad's old canvas duster in the middle spot because I haven't been able to move it in four years. A wash sink. A bench. One bare bulb overhead.
Beau's at the bench. He's sitting to pull his boots on for the walk to the bunkhouse. He looks up when I come in and doesn't stand.