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“The flour goes by the stove,” Boone said.

“It does now.”

He glanced toward the pantry door.

Josie’s expression warned him not to engage.

His beard shifted with the effort of holding back a smile.

The kitchen had always been the place where Carrow Creek turned labor into arithmetic. Calf counts. Hay yields. Breeding decisions. Rainfall, if we’d been lucky. Feed bills, if we hadn’t. The scarred oak table was older than any of us and marked by four generations of hot pans, pocketknives, coffee rings, and men pushing bad news back and forth until somebody claimed it.

Wyatt had claimed the head of it.

His hat sat on the bench beside him. His sleeves were rolled once, precisely even, and he’d put three sheets of paper in a line before him. Sale totals on the left. Expenses in the center. Something from the bank on the right.

On a yellow legal pad, he had written the figure.

The whole figure.

Even upside down, it had weight.

I pulled out the bench opposite him and sat. The movement tugged my shoulder. I kept my right forearm on the table and let the left hang loose, where neither brother could accuse it of anything.

Boone put the cooler by the island and took the chair at Wyatt’s right.

Josie hovered near the stove.

She never sat all the way down if she could help it. Right then, she didn’t even pretend. Her gaze touched the papers, Wyatt’s face, Boone’s, then mine.

“I should finish the transfer copies,” she said.

“They’re finished,” Wyatt said.

“I should check them.”

“You checked them twice.”

She looked toward the mudroom, where a plausible escape route waited through two doors and one gravel yard.

Boone pulled out the chair beside him.

Josie looked at it.

Then at him.

“This seems like a family meeting.”

“It is,” I said.

Her hand tightened on the strap of the canvas bag over her shoulder.

“And you’re family,” I added. “You know that.”

Color rose under her freckles.

Wyatt tapped the center page. “I need the veterinary expense totals confirmed before tomorrow. You should hear this.”

It was an excuse. A practical one, built to Wyatt’s specifications, square at the corners and able to bear weight.