The main house, where Kate and Jackson live with their kids, is expansive and fully furnished in antiques, most of which have probably been here since the Wells family started this ranch a century ago. The space is filled with warm wood tones and the ever-present scent of freshly baked bread.Chatter springs from the kitchen, where you can always find at least a couple of the wives and girlfriends. In the mornings, they’re sipping coffee and setting out bagged lunches for the cowboys. In the afternoons, they’re drinking beer or sangria and gossiping while they bake bread for the next day’s lunches.
Sure enough, I stroll into the kitchen right as Kate’s emerging from the fridge with a dark amber bottle in her hand.
The kitchen manager, Beryl—an Indigenous Secwépemc woman with long silvery-gray hair and eyes that are constantly smiling—looks over at me and waves with a flour-coated hand. “Hey, kid. Hungry?”
She gestures to some sort of pastry-looking thing.
“Nah. I mean…yeah, fuck it. I am.” I skirt around Kate, careful not to bump her as she pops the top off her beer, and grab what turns out to be a Danish. “I actually wanted to see if Jonas and I can borrow a bit of counter space in here.”
She looks at the small boy and beams. “Afterhe washes his hands, of course.”
Probably should’ve hosed him off first.
Jonas has spent enough time in the kitchen to know better than to question Beryl, and he immediately gets to rolling up his sleeves on his short walk to the sink.
“What do you need counter space for? Is this another science experiment?” Kate raises an eyebrow.
I shake my head vigorously. “No, no, no. I learned my lesson about Mentos and Coca-Cola. It’s Whit’s birthday, so Jonas and I wanted to make her a cake.”
“Coltwants to make her a cake,” Jonas corrects me.
Kate and Beryl stare at me. Unblinking.Knowing.
“Well, in that case.” Beryl wipes the flour dust from her hands with a tea towel. “How much time do we have? Maybe we should make cupcakes so it’s a bit faster?”
Instantly she’s milling about, making trips to and from thepantry for supplies, and setting it all out on the counter while softly humming to herself.
Kate follows suit, but in a slightly less kindhearted way. She insists we wear aprons—adorning me in a particularly cute pink one that’s covered in red hearts.
Nobody makes mention ofwhyI’m so invested in making sure she has birthday cupcakes, even as I grill Jonas about whether Whit prefers vanilla or chocolate, or when I spend the entire bake time deciding between frosting colors.
Beryl pulls them from the oven, dipping a clean finger into Jonas’s batch of frosting to taste. Since black wasn’t an option, Jonas suggested orange frosting so our chocolate cupcakes look like Halloween. Apparently, it’s his mom’s favorite holiday.
Something to note.
“I think we might have some Halloween sprinkles in the pantry,” Kate says without looking up. She’s been sitting at the kitchen table the entire time we were baking, flipping through a magazine. Occasionally, she’d lift her head to make a loud observation about how poor my baking skills are.
Beryl gestures toward the pantry door, silently asking if I’d like her to grab some.
“Nah, we’ll stop by the corner store and grab some sour keys to put on top. They’re her favorite.”
The corner of Beryl’s lip tugs upward. “I’m sure they are, and I won’t ask any questions about how you know that.”
“Colt came over to play video games and he bought atonof candy because he didn’t know what kind we liked. The pile was probablythis big.” He moves his hands in a half-circle above the quartz countertop to show a comically large height—definitely way bigger than the real amount of candy I brought.
“Wow, that was really nice of him.” Beryl shoots me a look.
“Supernice,” Kate quips.
With the actual worst timing in human history, Denny saunters into the kitchen. “Aww, you guys are talking about what a nice guy I am again, aren’t you?”
He sidles up next to Beryl, eyeballing the cupcakes, and she smacks at his hand.
“Colt’s the nice guy this time,” Kate says. She’s set the magazine down now—fully invested.
“What did he do?” Denny asks, then follows up with, “And also, can you stop swatting at me and let me have one of these?”
“These are for Whit,” Beryl says, shooing him away while simultaneously sliding the plate of pastries across the counter. “Have one of the strawberry rhubarb Danishes instead.”
