Clarissa snapped Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook shut. “Emily...” she warned. “Time for bed.”
In the next moment her daughter’s light footsteps pattered up the stairs, and Gray appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Hope you don’t mind me tellin’ her these stories.”
She looked up. “They are certainly...educational,” she said carefully.
“Never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess it was educational. For me, anyway.”
“It would seem you learned a great deal, at a very young age.”
When he didn’t answer, she shot a look at his face. He had a hard time keeping his unruly dark hair out of his eyes, which, she admitted, were quite nice—an odd gray-blue, like the barrel of the revolver he kept in a holster hanging over the front door. She liked his mouth, too, except when it narrowed in disapproval at something one of the ranch hands did. Mostly his lips were firm and usually curved in a smile, especially around Emily.
But tonight it was his eyes that caught at her—steel hard and unblinking. “I guess I shouldn’t be telling her those things,” he said slowly.
“You mean about working in a silver mine?” At his startled look, she added, “I was listening as I made the cake.”
“No. Other things I guess maybe I shouldn’t be telling her, about my ma and pa and why I left home. Bet you never met anybody who ran away from home before.”
Something in his voice changed, and all at once she didn’t know what to say. He pushed past her toward the back door. “Gotta check the barn before I turn in.”
“Gray?”
He stopped and stood unmoving, his back to her. “Yeah?”
“My cake will be done when you get back. I’ll cut a piece for you and leave it on the table.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Clarissa.” He grasped the doorknob, then spoke over his shoulder. “Cut a piece for yourself, too. Maybe heat up the coffee. There’s something I want to say to you.”
When he disappeared through the doorway she found her mouth had gone dry. He wanted to say something to her? What was it? Was it about Emily? About Ramon spending his valuable time showing her daughter how to plant seeds for a kitchen garden?
All at once she was certain she knew what it was. He’s going to fire me.
She untied the apron and paced back and forth across the kitchen floor, waiting for the cake to finish baking and the cold coffee to heat up. Where would she go? What would she do?
She couldn’t think about it. At last she peeked in the oven, tested the cake with a straw from the broom on the back porch, and lifted out the cake pan using her bunched-up apron as a pot holder.
She was learning to cook! But perhaps not well enough to warrant her weekly three-dollar salary. Perhaps he expected his fried eggs not to be too hard or so runny they slid off his fork and the biscuits to be light and fluffy, like Maria’s, not hard enough to bounce, as her first batch had been. She couldn’t even think about attempting another roast chicken; she had to work up her courage for that.
The more she mulled it over, the more unsettled her stomach grew. She picked up a knife, sawed two squares from the cake and set them on two small plates. Before she could find forks, the back door banged open.
“Coffee smells good,” he remarked.
“It’s not fresh, I reheated this morning’s.”
“Still smells good.” He dropped into a chair. She poured him a large mug and slid the plate of cake toward him.
“You havin’ some, too?”
“Yes.”
He took a bite, and Clarissa watched avidly as he chewed and swallowed.
“Tastes kinda...um...flat.”
“Flat?” She took a tentative bite. The cake was nicely browned on top, and it had a fine texture. But he was right—it had no flavor at all. What had she done wrong? She grabbed Mrs. Beeton’s book and thumbed through the pages until she found the recipe. Flour. Sugar. Eggs. Saleratus. And salt. Salt! Good heavens, she’d forgotten to add salt. No wonder it tasted flat!
She snatched Gray’s plate away.
“Hold on a minute, it’s not that bad, honest!”
“Don’t lie to me, Gray. Don’t ever, ever lie to me.”
He blinked and his fork clattered onto the table. “Clarissa, I never lie. I’ve never lied to anyone in my entire life, not even—” He broke off.
Her breath stopped. “Not even who?”
“Not even my pa when I left home, uh, I mean ran away. I wanted to, though. God, I wanted nothin’ more than to tell him the truth, but...well, I couldn’t. But I couldn’t lie, either. So I didn’t say anything at all, I just up and left.”
Clarissa stared at him. “You hate my cake, don’t you? You just don’t want to tell me.”
Gray chuckled. “No, I don’t hate it. It’s true, it’s not a very tasty cake, but maybe you can pour something over the top, like a frosting or something. Maybe Mrs. Beeton can suggest something to rescue it.”
She began idly riffling through the pages.
Gray sipped his coffee and watched her. “You know, there’s lots more important things in life than one flat-tastin’ cake.”
She said nothing, but he could tell by her face that she wasn’t convinced. She’d probably been raised so starchy and proper in her rich brother’s house in Boston that she expected everything she put her hand to to be perfect. Well, he had news for her. Nobody’s life went like that.
For a brief minute he thought about telling her so, but the wary expression in her eyes made him hesitate. There were other emotions in her face, too—some he could read, like tiredness and disappointment and discouragement; other things were a mystery, especially an odd, hungry look she tried to hide that made his breath catch.
“I’m going for a walk,” he announced. He escaped out the back door and again made his way down the path to the barn where he plopped down on a hay bale to think things over. The warm air smelled like straw and horse dung. There was nothing in particular he had to do out here, so after a while he found himself talking to Rowdy.
“Had to get out of the kitchen, fella. Felt kinda closed in, hard to breathe, you know? Don’t understand why, exactly, just felt surrounded. Clarissa feels things, see. Me, I try not to feel things. That’s what’s kept me safe all these years.”
He stood up and nuzzled the gelding’s black nose. “We’ll talk again soon, boy. Next time I’ll bring you an apple.”
Some days later, Clarissa finished wiping the last of the supper plates and paused for her nightly stocktaking meditation. She had saved a few dollars already. Precious dollars. But she needed many more for the train ticket back to Boston. Emily was adapting, almost effortlessly, to life on the ranch but Clarissa grew more and more dispirited with every passing day. Or rather every passing breakfast, dinner and supper. It was a wonder Gray had not complained. It was an even greater miracle he had not fired her! Maybe that was what he’d wanted to talk to her about that night.
With a sigh, she hung the damp dish towel on the hook by the stove and drifted out the open front door to the porch where everyone had gathered—the ranch hands, Shorty and Nebraska, and even Erasmus, the old man who took care of the horses and swept out the barn. Maria and Ramon sat on the top step, holding hands.
The day had been scorching right up until the sun sank behind the far-off purplish