“Yours must be a nice place, if he won’t leave it.”
He shrugged. “Pa fought for the Confederacy, and came out here with nothing.”
“Your mother, too?”
“A little later. I was born in Mississippi. As soon as he had a holding out here, he sent for us.”
“Mr. Ave...”
“Ned.”
“No, it’s a Mr. Avery subject,” she insisted, which made him chuckle. “Mr. Avery, I can probably manage without a room of my own. I’m asking too much.”
He stopped the team. “Have you ever asked for anything before, Miss Peck?”
Embarrassed, she thought a moment. “I never dared.”
“I think maybe you’re overdue. It won’t kill Pete and me to spend a night in the barn.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it, because she wanted that room. “Very well.”
“Is the matter closed?”
“Yes.”
“Good thing, because I don’t like to argue about stuff that needs to happen.” Ned pointed to a spot where the road turned toward the river they had been paralleling. “We’ll be on Avery land soon.”
She hung on to the seat and pushed hard against the footboard as Ned guided his team into the river. She looked around, pleased with the bright yellow leaves that seemed to shiver as they passed. She thought of winter to come, and suppressed an involuntary shiver of her own.
“You need a warmer coat. Didn’t anyone ever look after you?”
“No.” She winced inside at how bleak and bald the word sounded, and she wondered just when she had gotten used to mostly nothing.
They topped a small rise, then Ned coaxed his horse down into a lovely valley. October winds may have been blowing cold, but she liked what she saw, except for what had to be Ned Avery’s home. She pointed.
“Yep. It’s a real sow’s ear. I guess we just got used to it,” he said, and she heard all the apology in his voice.
A body gets used to a lot of things, she thought, and wondered just when she had given up. Another thought struck her. For the first time since she couldn’t remember, someone was looking after her. It was a pleasant thought. She doubted Mr. Avery saw it that way, since he had made a business deal with her, but she felt herself relax, somewhere inside her body, or maybe it was her mind. She waited for the feeling to leave, but it seemed to settle in, like a cat on a hearth.
In a short time, she stood in the middle of a little kitchen, being introduced to a woman who looked as capable as Ned. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Higgins,” she said as they shook hands after Ned’s introduction.
A few whispered words to Ned, and Mrs. Higgins waved a cheery goodbye. In a few minutes, Kate heard hoofbeats.
“She watched Pa for me. This is Peter,” Ned said, and pulled a younger man closer, one with the same blond hair and build, but vacant blue eyes, with the same dark rim around lighter blue, but none of the intensity. “He does the best he can, most days.”
“Hi, Pete,” Katie said, and got a vague smile in return.
The rancher indicated the next room. “This is the sitting room.” He held his hands out, as if measuring the space. “I can build you a room right here. There won’t be a window—that would make it too cold.”
She followed him through the next connecting room. This room had a bed, and crates stacked on top of each other for clothing. “Pete and I sleep here. Wait. I’ll see how Pa is.”
She stood there, Peter beside her. He cleared his throat.
“Ned was looking for a chore girl.”
“He found one.”
“You can cook?”
“Pretty much anything you want to eat, Peter,” she told him. “You do like to eat, don’t you?”
Pete nodded, and then looked away, as if that was too much conversation.
She looked through the connecting arch to the next room, where Ned stood looking down. She went closer and saw Daniel Avery.
He was so thin, and probably not as old as he looked. She had already observed that the men out here had lots of wrinkles on their faces, sort of like sea captains from back home.
“Pa, this is our chore girl, Katie Peck,” Ned was saying. “She’ll be looking after you, after all of us, I guess.”
The older man looked at her, then carefully turned himself toward the wall. Kate sighed, wondering what it must feel like to be strong one day, then brought low by a heart ailment another day.
“Never mind, Mr. Avery,” she said. She touched his arm, then pulled the blanket a little higher. “I am here to help and that is all.”
“Don’t need...” the old man began, then stopped. His shoulders started to shake. “...help.”
Kate quietly left the room. Ned followed her, his expression more troubled than she wanted to see.
“I was afraid he might do that,” he said in apology. “He knows we need you, but his dignity...”
“Doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “You hired a chore girl and I will do my job.”
She said it quietly, as she said most things, as she had lived her own hard life that bore no signs of getting easier. She looked down at her hands, surprised to see that she still carried the doorknob and hinges. She knew other people must have epiphanies now and then—the minister said so—but she never expected one of her own. Here it came, filling her with peace. She handed the hardware to Ned Avery.
“I can do this,” she told him. “Just watch me.”
Kate began her work in the morning, after a surprisingly comfortable night in the bed usually belonging to Pete and Ned Avery. Ned had insisted on changing the sheets the night before and she was glad of it, considering how dingy they seemed.
His eyes wide with surprise, Pete watched his brother make the bed. “He never tucked in anything before,” he told Katie.
Ned had turned around with a smile. “I can’t even trust a brother to watch my back,” he said. “Pete, you’re toast.”
Pete laughed out loud. Something in Ned’s eyes told Kate that no one had laughed in the Avery household in recent memory.
“No respect whatsoever,” Ned said with a shake of his head. He gathered up the nearly gray sheets, put his hand on Pete’s neck and pulled him from the room, but gently.
There wasn’t any privacy, not with the rooms connecting the way they did. As Ned tended to his father’s needs, she winced to hear Mr. Avery insisting that no chore girl would ever touch him.
“I don’t know how long it will take, but he’ll come around,” Ned had told her as he put on his coat. Katie heard the doubt in his voice. “Come on, Pete.”
I have many things to prove to Mr. Avery, Kate thought. She began in the kitchen, laying a fire in the range, a black monstrosity that, like everything in the house, needed a woman’s touch. She knew there would be Arbuckle’s and a grinder; soon the aroma of coffee spread through the house. She made a pot of oatmeal. By the time the brothers opened the door, ushering in frigid air with them, toast was out of the oven and buttered, and the oatmeal in bowls.
She stood by the table, her hands behind her back, pleased with herself, even though the meal was many