“Maybe he’ll find your horse, too, while he’s out.”
“Do you have horses?” I asked.
Silence, or maybe he was nodding or shaking his head.
I decided to redirect since I couldn’t see gestures. “A barn?”
“Yeah. Well-stocked too.”
Relieved, I sagged back against my pillow propped on the wall with a sigh. “This healing is taking too damn long. Any estimates of when I’ll be up and walking?”
“Too early to tell.” His footsteps came closer and then his weight dipped the corner of my bed. “You definitely don’t want to push yourself, though, since that could make it worse.”
My eyes burned in frustration. I had too many things to worry about to stay in one place for long, but since I was forced to, I felt trapped inside my bruised and broken body.
“That’s not the answer you were looking for, is it?”
“Not so much.”
“Well, I know something that will make you heal much faster. Two things, actually.”
“What?”
“Number one—my cooking. With Grady gone again, you’ll have to suffer through my cooking, I’m afraid.”
Gone again. Where had he gone before? But more importantly, “Hecooks?”
They’d spoiled me with how good the food was here—rich, savory stew that smelled so good that it roused me from sleep, cooked wild bird with crispy skin, flaky bread smothered in fresh butter. I’d been sleeping so much that I never heard who brought it in, but it was still hot by the time I woke, set on a raised tray by my feet. I’d followed my nose straight to it and dove in face-first.
“He does. Sadly, I’m no Grady in the kitchen, but I’ll try to make it so we don’t starve. And number two—how good are you at numbers?”
It took a moment for my brain and stomach to detach themselves from the idea of food, but even then, I had no idea what he was talking about. “Numbers?”
“The things you count and can add up and stuff? There are games to be had with them.”
Oh good. Number games. Despite how unimpressed I was with the very idea, it turned out he was right.
“Again. Please,” I begged after he’d demonstrated three times already.
“Okay, pick a number between one and twenty, but don’t tell me. Imagine it in your head. Got it?”
"Got it."
He had me add, subtract, multiply, and divide, tell him if the number I was thinking had curves or edges, and he would guess it, every time. Like magic.
"Can you teach me?" I asked after he'd guessed my number for the sixth time.
"Sorry, no. A gentleman never reveals his secrets."
I could sense his smile, how I bet it matched the warmth in his voice and was just as infectious as the sound of his laugh. Other than Jade and Lee, I'd never known anyone who'd bothered to spend time with me, especially when they didn't have to.
"You're good with your numbers. Do you go to school?"
"No," I said, flushing slightly with his praise. "School's too far away to travel in the winter, so my neighbor taught me while she taught her brother."
Jade had taught me everything her mother had taught her. Numbers were easy since I didn't have to see them; I just had to understand them, and Jade was patient enough to make sure of that. At around the same time she started to teach me, I'd had two older siblings living with Baba and me, a sister and brother who'd long since moved away, and none of them felt the need to teach me themselves. Or have anything to do with.
"I don't know how to teach someone like you," my sister, Jia, always used to say.
