Just like Ma used to do. Except Ma wouldn’t have ignored his comment about forgetting about Amelia. She would have pointed out that either he was pretending or he was being rude. In this case, it was a little of each.
“I didn’t know if you would eat at the chuck wagon, but I saved you a meal in case you were hungry.”
His stomach rumbled. “I’m starved.” And he wasn’t about to turn away good food just because the woman offering it posed a problem in his tidy little life. He barely kept a snort from erupting. Tidy life? He hadn’t seen such since Ma died.
“Let me put my horse away first.” He wasn’t in a hurry. Of course not. But he ran to the barn and took care of the animal in record time. Only because he was hungry, his stomach rumbled to prove it.
As he stepped inside the house, Amelia got a plateful of food from the warming oven and set it before him.
“Thank you.” Mashed potatoes and pork chops drowned in rich gravy, turnips, and peas. “Did Gil sober up enough to cook?” He dug in without waiting for her answer.
“I made it.” She sat across the table from him.
“It’s good. Thank you.” He glanced toward the stairs. “Pa?”
“I found him in the trees to the west. He’s home and sleeping soundly.”
“I gotta say I was worried about him. I didn’t know if?—”
“If I could manage him?”
He nodded, then thought better of it, and shook his head.
“He was agreeable. Seemed to like having company. Poppy is calling him gampa.”
“That’s nice.”I guess. But wouldn’t it confuse Pa even more to have them move in and then move out? “I take it Gil was too hungover to cook.”
“He sobered up enough to join us for supper, then went to the bunkhouse. I hope he doesn’t have a bottle stashed there.”
Gil had bottles hidden in half a dozen places, but why bother saying so?
Zach cleaned his plate and snuck a glance around the kitchen. Ma always made dessert, but no reason to expect it now.
Amelia brought a large serving of apple crisp to the table.
How? What? Where? She must have found the apples in the cold room, though he thought they would be soft and unusable by now. He ate a bite of the dessert and barely held back a sigh of pleasure. Obviously, they’d been good enough to bake with. Either that or she had some kind of special skill. Whatever theanswer, he only wanted to enjoy the sweets. And relax knowing Pa was safe in bed and Gil was in the bunkhouse—whether sober or not remained to be seen.
“Were you able to deal with your cows?”
Her question startled him back to awareness of her presence. “We found a couple of dozen head hours away from water and had to drive them back at a slow pace. Lost six.”
“How did they get so far? Doesn’t seem natural.”
He cleaned his bowl and resisted an urge to lick it clean. “It’s not. Someone has been systematically separating them out a few head at a time and driving them away.”
“Where was your foreman? Morgan Grant. Right?”
He stared at her. “How do you know that?”
“From the letters?”
“The letters I didn’t write?”
She chuckled, her green eyes catching the lamplight in glittering sharpness. “You don’t by any chance have a twin no one knows about?”
“If I do, it’s about time he started pulling his share of the workload around here.”
She laughed, and he stared.
