Part 2
Rook reached Claire before she made it to the porch. He examined the suitcase handle, walked a deliberate circle around her boots, then looked back at Nathan.
“She’s all right,” Nathan told him.
Claire waited with her hand low and still until the dog came closer. A brief scratch behind one ear earned her permission to pass.
The room Nathan showed her faced the eastern pasture. A faded quilt lay across the bed, and the drawer pulls on the dresser had been polished smooth by years of use. He opened the closet so she could see it was empty.
“My mother made the quilt,” he said. “There’s another blanket on the shelf if you get cold.”
Claire set down the suitcase.
“Room comes with the job,” he added. “It doesn’t come out of your pay.”
They agreed on twenty-eight dollars an hour for the trial. She would sort purchasing records, check the accounts, and help Virgil with the horses when needed. Nathan wrote the terms on a pad before either of them left the kitchen.
“At the end of tomorrow, you can go,” he said. “You don’t owe us an extra day because a pile of paper’s still here.”
“That works.”
He tore off a copy for her. Nothing about his manner suggested that accepting a room meant accepting anything else.
Outside, she followed him through the barns and along the corrals. The place surprised her. She’d expected signs of neglect after the letter and Nathan’s brief description at the station. Instead, she found clean water troughs, cattle carrying good flesh, and fences repaired with care rather than wishful thinking.
The machinery was old, but sheltered. The barn aisles were swept. Three young horses watched from a corral, their winter coats loosening in rough patches.
Nathan explained the work in short, exact pieces. His father’s illness had shifted more responsibility onto Virgil. Since coming home, Nathan had taken on most of it again, including tasks neither man enjoyed doing indoors.
Virgil listened to the introduction with his thumbs hooked in his belt.
“Boarding business, was it?” he asked.
“And training. I handled the books and most of the purchasing.”
“People always like horses until the pipe freezes Christmas morning.”
“I’ve had that Christmas.”
He gave her a small nod, but no welcome speech.
Claire didn’t try to win him over. At the desk off the kitchen, she opened the cardboard box Nathan had left for her and began laying out invoices by supplier. Through the window, she could hear a tractor refusing to turn over.
The records weren’t a mess. That made the problems easier to miss. Payments had been logged; deliveries had been received; nobody had gone back to compare them closely.
Before noon, two feed invoices caught her attention. She checked dates against the bank transactions, then searched for delivery slips. Both charges appeared to have been paid twice.
A different pattern emerged as she worked: small orders, frequent delivery fees, purchases made when supplies ran low rather than according to a schedule. She marked those separately. There was no point accusing a supplier of an error before she could prove it, or announcing savings that existed only in a spreadsheet.
Nathan came in with oil darkening one cuff and a smear of mud across his cheek. He washed at the sink while she cleared enough desk space to show him the records.
“These two need confirmation,” she said. “If the deliveries are what your slips say they are, you’re owed money.”
He bent over the papers.
“And these?”
“Delivery costs. You’re buying in a hurry.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll give you a number after the suppliers answer.”
He straightened, then nodded once. “All right.”
In the afternoon, Claire found Virgil beside the chestnut mare’s enclosure. The mare had a narrow white mark on her forehead and a habit of turning her hindquarters toward anyone who came in carrying a rope.
“She’s not mean,” Virgil said. “Just has several opinions.”
Claire watched before entering. When she did, she kept her body angled and the rope easy in her hand. The mare moved off. Claire let her, then changed position instead of following at her heels.
For a while, very little seemed to happen. Dust rose under the mare’s feet. A loose strand of mane lifted in the breeze. Claire waited for the ears to turn toward her before asking for another step.
“Don’t let her use that gate,” Virgil said.
Claire shifted away from the latch, quietly closing off the invitation to leave.
By the end, the mare followed for a few unhurried yards, stopped, and followed again. Claire rubbed her neck and ended there.
Nathan passed the fence carrying a socket set.
Virgil tipped his chin toward the mare. “You might’ve finally found something useful at that station.”
Claire laughed. Nathan kept walking, but she saw the corner of his mouth move.
Their first argument came behind the equipment shed.
Claire had started a list of things that might bring in money without hurting the operation. Nathan agreed that an old implement and a disused attachment could go. Then she pointed to the hay rake under a patched cover.
“No.”
“Do you use it?”
“If the main one breaks.”
“How often does that happen?”
“Often enough that I’m keeping it.”
She looked at the faded paint and the carefully greased moving parts.
“A backup still costs you maintenance and space.”
“So does waiting three days for a replacement in the middle of a cutting.”
His voice had gone flat. Claire closed the notebook.
“Then it stays on the maybe list until we look at the numbers.”
He didn’t answer.
Later, returning a folder to the office, she noticed a photograph she hadn’t examined before. Nathan’s father stood beside the same rake. A boy in an oversized cap perched on its frame, grinning so broadly that his eyes were nearly shut.
She took out her notebook and drew a line through the rake.
Rain started before supper. Nathan stood at the stove while Claire finished sorting papers, and the smell of onions softened the office’s stale dust. Virgil had gone home. Rook stretched beneath the table with one paw resting on Nathan’s boot.
They ate with more empty chairs than company between them.
Claire explained the purchasing changes she thought were possible. Nathan listened, asking only a few questions. When she finished, she put down her fork.
“There’s something larger than feed bills, isn’t there?”
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