"Noted."
We work through the rest in comfortable silence. Glasses first, delicate and quick. Then plates, stacking them carefully on the drying rack. My hands are red from the hot water, pruning at the fingertips. I should have brought gloves.
Rogan reaches past me for another pot, his sleeve brushing my arm. "Can I ask you something?"
"That depends on the question."
"Why do you care so much?" He gestures at the kitchen, the organized chaos we're slowly taming. "About all this. The systems, the sourcing, the rules."
I scrub at a mixing bowl, buying time. "Because corners get cut. People get sick. Farms get blamed."
"That's the practical answer."
"It's the true answer."
"But it's not the whole answer." He sets down the towel, turns to face me fully. "You could just run your seed program. Send mea list and walk away. But you're here, washing dishes at ten PM, making sure I don't poison anyone."
My hands still in the water. "My family's farm failed when I was twelve."
He doesn't say anything. Just waits.
"There were a lot of reasons. Market prices, bad weather, equipment breaking at the worst times." I drag the bowl from the water, rinse it carefully. "But the final straw was a contamination scare. E. coli in the lettuce. Wasn't even our fault—it was the farm upstream, runoff from their livestock operation. But we were all lumped together. One outbreak and suddenly no one would buy from any of us."
"That's not fair."
"No. It's not." I hand him the bowl. "But it's reality. One mistake, one shortcut, one person who doesn't care enough to check their sources, and everything falls apart. My parents lost the farm. My dad had to take a job three towns over. My mom still won't eat store-bought lettuce."
Rogan dries the bowl slowly, deliberately. "So you came back to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"Someone has to protect what's left." I drain the sink, start on the soaking pot. The crust comes off easier now, flaking away under the scrubber. "The farmers here are good people. They care about what they grow. But they're vulnerable. One bad headline and they're done."
"And you think I'm a bad headline waiting to happen."
I glance at him. His expression is serious now, the usual brightness dimmed. "I think you're reckless."
"Fair."
"I think you love the spectacle more than the substance."
"Also fair."
"And I think—" I scrub harder, focusing on the pot. "I think you could be good at this. If you slow down enough to be careful."
He takes the pot from me, our fingers brushing. "I'm trying."
"Try harder." But my voice comes out softer than I intend.
The radio shifts to something slower, a woman's voice singing about highways and coming home. Rogan sets the pot on the rack, picks up the towel again.
"I don't know how to do this," he says quietly.
"Dishes? Because you're managing."
"All of it. The planning, the systems, the thinking three steps ahead." He wipes down the counter, focused on the task. "I cook by instinct. I taste and adjust. I don't—I can't work from checklists and protocols."
"You don't have to abandon instinct. Just balance it with structure."
"That's what my aunt used to say." He smiles, but there's something sad in it. "She'd leave me notes. Little reminders to check the walk-in temp, rotate the stock, pay the invoices on time. I'd find them everywhere. In the spice drawer, taped to the oven, tucked in the recipe box."
