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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 degrees below ordinary.
“Don’t stand on ceremony,” Ned said as he sat down. He dumped the milk from a bucket into a deep pan and covered it, after taking out a cup of milk. “Join us.”
“I can wait until you are done,” she said.
“Maybe you could if you were the czar of Russia’s chore girl. I mean it. Get a bowl and join us.”
She did as he said. He pushed out the empty chair with his foot.
“Barn’s getting cold and Pete isn’t much fun to cuddle,” he said, as he took a sip of the coffee, nodded and raised the cup to her in salute. “Damn fine, Katie Peck. I’m going to build you a room today.”
And he did, after instructing her to move what little furniture the sitting room possessed to the other side of the doorway arch that cut the room into roughly two-thirds and a third. She did as he directed, coughing from the dust she raised.
“The only problem I have noticed with housework is that five or six months later, you have to do it all over again,” he commented, gesturing for Pete to pick up the other end of a settee.
Once the furniture was moved and the floor swept, Ned worked quickly, measuring and marking boards he had dragged from the barn with Pete’s help. When he gave her no assignment, Katie decided to tackle the stove, which hadn’t seen a good cleaning in years.
She found a metal pancake turner in the depths of a drawer of junk and scraped away on the range top until her shoulders hurt. All the time, Ned and Pete walked back and forth, bringing in more boards. After the fifth or so trip, Ned stopped to watch.
“Funny how this stuff built up and I continued to ignore it,” he told her, sounding more matter-of-fact than penitent, which scarcely surprised her. She was coming to know Ned Avery.
“A little attention every day—not much, really—keeps the carbon away,” she said, and surprised herself by thinking, Kind of like people.
“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll surprise you. No peeking, now.”
She stopped long enough at noon to fix everyone jelly sandwiches and canned peaches, then continued into the afternoon until the stove was clean. The hammering continued, punctuated with laughter, which soothed her heart in strange ways.
With his own shy smile, Pete borrowed the kitchen broom.
“How does my new room in there look?” she asked, pretty certain that Pete would spill the beans, because his mind was too simple to keep a secret all the way from breakfast to supper.
Pete surprised her. “Not gonna tell. You have to wait.”
Impressed, Kate built a fire in the stove, determined to cook something better than sandwiches. Ned had already pointed out the smokehouse next door. She sliced off several steaks as her mouth watered. Even in her more enlightened place of employment in Massachusetts, meat was a rare treat administered only on holidays. Soon steaks and sliced potatoes sizzled. She opened another can of peaches and poured them into a bowl this time. She had found some pretty dishes that only needed a rinse.
She was about to call the brothers to the table when they came into the kitchen. Ned held out a key to her, just an ordinary skeleton key for a simple lock that anyone could pick, but which meant more to her than Ned Avery would ever know.
“Take a look.” He gestured her into the sitting room, or what remained of it.
She stared in surprise. “I... I thought you were going to carve a tiny space out of this side of the doorway,” she said, delighted. “Where will you sit in the evenings?”
“I already told you we use the kitchen for everything,” he reminded her, his eyes on her face.
Ned had turned the larger side of the sitting room into her bedroom, leaving only a small area on the other side of the open archway for a chair, settee and a table, the kind for books or magazines. She stared at the new wall and door, then opened the door and sighed with the pleasure of it all.
The bed was just a cot, perhaps an army cot scavenged from somewhere. Because her boss had given her the lion’s share of the former sitting room, it included the potbellied stove. He and Pete had dragged in one of the stuffed chairs and a footstool.
“I have another washbasin somewhere, and I can put up some pegs for your clothes. Sorry I don’t have a bureau.”
What could she say to such kindness? She barely knew this man, and he had given her something priceless—a room of her own, a safe one.
“Thank ye,” she managed, hoping tears wouldn’t well in her eyes. No employer wanted to hire a crybaby.
“Try it out,” her boss said.
She walked inside her room, her own room. She sat down in the chair and put her feet upon the footstool. I can sit here and reread my Ladies’ Home Journal, she thought. This might be the best winter of my life.
Chapter Six (#ulink_70e784db-484b-55a3-8148-5282da85bc27)
Kate spent a peaceful night in her room, sitting for a while in the chair and reading, as she suspected wealthy people did. Her new bed was narrow and the mattress thin, but she had no complaint.
She debated whether to lock the door. Key in hand, she had the power, but the urgency was gone. She closed the door, and that was enough.
In the morning, she woke to angry voices in the back bedroom. Kate opened her door slightly and listened as Ned and his father argued about leaving him alone to the mercies of “a dratted female I can barely understand” while his sons rode fence today.
“Try a little harder, Dad,” Ned said.
“What for?” his father shot back. “You know I’m dying, I know I’m dying, and that...female with the damn fool accent knows I’m dying!”
“I guess because it’s the civilized thing to do,” Ned replied, and he sounded so weary.
“You don’t need me,” Daniel Avery argued. “You can run this ranch.”
“Did it ever occur to you that we love you?” Ned asked, sounding more exasperated than weary now, and driven to a final admission, maybe one hard for a man not used to frills, if love was a frill.
Katie dressed quickly, pleased to see that Ned or Pete—likely Ned—had laid a fire in the cookstove. While the argument about her merits and demerits continued in the back room at a lower decibel, she deftly shredded potatoes and put them in a cast-iron skillet to fry.
She silently ordered the argument down the hall to roll off her back. She was the chore girl and she was getting through a winter doing something she hadn’t planned on, because Saul Coffin, drat his hide, had a temper. Sticks and stones, she thought. That’s all it is.
Breakfast on the table brought a smile to Ned Avery’s set expression. He asked for the ketchup, then ate silently before finally setting down his fork.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he told her.
“I’ll set his food on that little table by his bed and just leave him alone with it,” she said, getting out another plate.
“I can take it to him. Maybe I had better,” Ned said, starting to rise.
“Eat your breakfast,” she said, as she started down the hall with Daniel Avery’s steak and hash browns on a tray.
Mr. Avery was staring at the ceiling, which she noticed for the first time was covered with newspapers. Just standing there, she stared up, too.
“‘Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian crown, is found dead with his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera in Mayerling.’ Oh, my,” she said, then sat the tray of food on the table where he could reach it and left the room. She thought she heard him laugh.
She sat down in the kitchen to oatmeal, which she preferred to steak in the morning, and was just spooning on the sugar when she heard, “Ned!” from the back of the house.
“You should have let Ned take Dad his breakfast,” Pete told her.
“That’s enough, Pete,” Ned snapped, as he got up from the table. “Maybe I appreciate a little initiative.”
From the vacant look on the younger brother’s face, Kate could see he did not know the word, and felt surprisingly sorry for him.
Ned came back and took the ketchup off the table. “He wants this.”
“Stubborn man,” Kate said.
“I’m just pleased not to see the whole thing on the floor,” her boss said, and he sounded more cheerful. “He wants some of your coffee, too.”
“I’ll take him both,” Kate said. “Sit down and finish your breakfast.”
He did as she said. “Are you as stubborn as he is?”
“Ayuh,” she said, which made him laugh.
She took ketchup and coffee down the hall, pausing inside the last bedroom to read something else from the ceiling that looked a little newer than Crown Prince Rudolf’s misfortune. “Mr. Avery, it appears that Christine Hardt has patented the first brassiere. If you need anything else, just ask. I intend to earn my thirty dollars a month.”
She returned to the kitchen and finished her breakfast as Ned poured himself another cup of coffee, gave her an inquiring look, and poured her one, as well.
As she ate, he filled her in on the day’s task, which included the mysterious “riding fence” he had mentioned earlier. She had spent a lifetime cultivating an expressionless face, the kind that mostly encouraged people like her stepfather to forget she was even in the room. Ned Avery seemed to see right through it.
“I can tell you have no idea what I’m talking about,” he said, elbows on the table.
“I am curious,” she admitted. “I don’t think anyone rides fence in Maine.”
“Probably not. I’ve seen Maine on a map and it looks pretty squished together. We’ll just be riding down the fence line to make sure the bob wire is tight and all the strands are in place.”
“If not?”
“We’ll fix them. I’ll have a roll of wire and staples with me, and the straightener. Up you get, Pete.”
Pete shook his head. “Don’t like to ride.”
“I need your help.”
Ned gave his brother a push out the door. Ned looked back. “Can you fix us some sandwiches from the leftover steak, and stick some apples in that bag?”
Kate wiped her hands on her apron, ready to begin.
“I’d do it myself,” Ned said, sounding apologetic, “but I’ve noticed something about sandwiches.”
“Which is...”
“They always taste a little better when someone else makes them. Back in a minute,” he said.
Pleased with her boss, Kate made sandwiches, adding pickles from an earthenware crock to the thick slabs of beef between bread. She found waxed paper in a drawer and made two sandwiches apiece. Four apples went in the bag on the bottom. She put the rest of the coffee in a canteen she noticed by the canvas bag and handed the whole thing to Ned when he returned to the kitchen, bringing in more cold weather with him.
“Pete’s pouting in the barn,” he announced.
“He really doesn’t like to ride?” she asked.
“Afraid of horses.” Ned leaned against the table. He shrugged. “I still need his help.”
“Maybe I could help,” she offered.
“Can you ride?”
“I can learn,” she replied.
“I believe you would try,” he told her. “Just keep an eye on my father. I set his, well, his, well you know, close to his bed.”
She nodded. “I’ll remove his breakfast dishes later. Maybe I’ll read to him.”
“I doubt he’ll let you.”
“I can try.”
He gave her an appraising look, one part speculation, two parts evaluation, and another part she didn’t recognize. He slung the bag over his shoulder and startled whistling before he shut the door.
Poor Pete, she thought, wondering what the slow brother would really rather do, given the opportunity.
She thought about the Averys as she set a sponge for bread. She glanced down the length of the cabin through the arches, wondering if she dared risk the wrath. Why not? she asked herself.
Mr. Avery pretended to sleep as she gathered up the empty dishes, and tucked the ketchup bottle under her arm. Back in the kitchen she busied herself with the bread dough, then cleaned through layers of debris and ranch clutter while the loaves rose to impressive height. What was the use of ropes she could not have guessed, but there were enough partly used liniment bottles stuck here and there to make her wonder just how troublesome the cow business could be.
The fragrance of baked bread filled the little ranch house. When it came from the oven still hot and not entirely set, she cut off a generous slice, lathered it with butter, put it on a plate and carried it down to the last bedroom, where Mr. Avery immediately pretended he slept. She left the bread on the table and washed her hands of that much stubbornness.
She slathered her own slice and propped her feet up on another of the kitchen chairs to enjoy it. The wind blew and beat against the one small kitchen window. She eyed the window, and wondered where she could find material for curtains.
Sitting there in the kitchen, wind roaring outside, she felt herself relax. The whine and clank of the industrial looms that had been her salvation from mistreatment, but the author of headaches, had never seemed farther away. No matter what she decided in the spring, she never had to go back.
If only Daniel Avery, rail-thin and suffering, would agree to a truce. She glanced at the calendar, the one with a naked woman peeking around a for sale sign—where did Ned get these calendars?—and resolved to find better calendars, and while she was at it, a better job for Pete and comfort for Mr. Avery. What she would do for Ned escaped her, but she had time.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_9465d784-7889-5005-b24f-6b9ff1757ca5)
Not in years had Ned Avery come home to a house fragrant with the twin odors of fresh bread and cinnamon. Ma had been dead so long he could not remember much about her, except her lovely eyes. Katie had eyes like that—brown and appealing.
Pete decided to sulk in the barn, so Ned shut the kitchen door and breathed in the pleasant fragrance, aware that this might mean something delicious to eat, but just savoring an unexpected, simple pleasure.
He watched Kate Peck come down the hall from her father’s room, carrying an empty plate. She smiled her greeting—another unexpected pleasure—and put the plate in the sink. Without a word, she cut off a slab of bread, slathered it with butter and handed it to him.
