“Did you want—”
“Toby.”
The boy sighed.
“Fine.”
Gideon looked at him.
“You always talk this much?”
“My father said questions stop you from becoming stupid.”
Etta froze.
Toby froze too.
The word father changed the room.
Gideon set down the knife.
“What happened to him?”
Etta turned away.
Toby answered.
“He got sick.”
Gideon looked toward Etta.
She kept kneading dough.
“Consumption,” she said.
“When?”
“January.”
Silence.
Gideon nodded.
“I'm sorry.”
Etta's hands continued moving.
“Thank you.”
Nothing more.
Grief recognized grief even when neither side introduced itself.
The children adapted faster than either adult.
Toby attached himself to ranch foreman Caleb Ross, a forty-seven-year-old former cavalry scout with a limp and endless patience.
Within two weeks Toby could identify every saddle tool in the barn.
Within three he could clean a stall without being reminded.
Clara adopted Gideon's old barn cat, despite Gideon repeatedly explaining the cat belonged to nobody.
“Then she belongs to herself,” Clara decided.
Gideon could not argue with that.
The cat began sleeping in Clara's room.
By November, the house sounded different.
Clara sang while drawing.
Toby ran down stairs despite Etta shouting not to.
Doors opened.
Chairs scraped.
Someone was always asking for food.
Etta apologized constantly.
“I'm sorry they're loud.”
Gideon looked at her once across the kitchen.
“Stop apologizing.”
“For what?”
“The noise.”
“They bother you.”
“No.”
“You disappear outside whenever they start arguing.”
“I disappear because cattle don't feed themselves.”
Etta gave him a look.
Gideon sighed.
“The noise doesn't bother me.”
She studied him.
“What does?”
He met her eyes.
“The quiet after.”
Etta stopped stirring.
Gideon walked away before she could ask what he meant.
That night she lay awake thinking about the sentence.
The quiet after.
She knew that kind of silence.
After Arthur died, the bakery had become unbearable.
The absence was not lack of sound.
It was the presence of a sound that should have been there.
Arthur coughing in the bedroom.
Arthur humming while carrying flour.
Arthur laughing when Clara stole sugar.
Arthur saying, “Etta, love, you've burned the edge again.”
For months she had hated every room because he was missing from it.
Maybe Gideon did too.
But who was missing?
The answer appeared by accident.
Clara found the portrait.
She was chasing the cat through Gideon's office when she noticed a large framed canvas turned backward against the wall.
She should have left it alone.
Clara rarely left anything alone.
She turned it around.
A young Gideon stood beside an older man and woman.
He was barely twenty-five.
No beard.
No scar.
Beside him stood another young man who looked enough like him to be family.
Between them sat a dark-haired woman in a pale dress.
She was smiling.
Clara called loudly:
“Mr. Cobb!”
Gideon entered the office.
Stopped.
His face emptied.
Clara pointed.
“Is this you?”
Etta came in behind him.
She saw the portrait.
Then Gideon.
“Clara, come here.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Clara obeyed reluctantly.
Gideon walked toward the portrait.
His fingers touched the frame.
For several seconds nobody moved.
Then he turned it facedown again.
“Don't touch things in this office.”
Clara's eyes filled immediately.
“I didn't know.”
“You know now.”
Etta stepped forward.
“She said she didn't know.”
Gideon looked at her.
His voice was cold.
“I wasn't speaking to you.”
Etta's entire expression changed.
The kitchen softness vanished.
“Then perhaps you should remember you're speaking to a six-year-old.”
Gideon's jaw tightened.
“This is my house.”
“And she is a child.”
“She went through my belongings.”
“She turned over a painting.”
“That doesn't make it hers.”
Etta stepped closer.
“No. And being your house doesn't make frightening her reasonable.”
Tension filled the office.
Gideon was used to men backing down.
Etta did not.
He looked at Clara.
The girl was crying silently.
Something in him broke.
Gideon exhaled.
He crouched.
He was enormous even kneeling.
Clara watched cautiously.
“I shouldn't have raised my voice.”
Etta's eyebrows lifted.
Gideon ignored her.
“The painting belonged to people I loved.”
Clara wiped her cheek.
“Are they dead?”
Gideon closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
Clara looked at the portrait.
“That's sad.”
“Yes.”
She stepped forward.
Before Etta could stop her, Clara wrapped both arms around Gideon's neck.
Gideon went completely rigid.
His hands remained suspended.
He looked toward Etta in what could only be described as panic.
Etta's mouth twitched.
“Don't look at me. You're the terrifying mountain man.”
Clara squeezed harder.
Slowly Gideon lowered one hand onto the child's back.
Then the other.
He did not say anything.
When Clara released him, Gideon stood.
He turned the portrait faceup.
It stayed that way.
Etta did not ask who the people were.
Not then.
Winter settled early over Bitterroot Ridge.
Snow covered the fence posts by Thanksgiving.
The ranch hands began eating supper in the main house more often because Etta refused to serve food out to the bunkhouse in a storm.
At first Gideon objected.
“This isn't a hotel.”
Etta looked around at twelve hungry ranch hands.
“You want me carrying twelve plates through snow?”
“No.”
“Then sit down.”
Gideon sat.
The men tried not to laugh.
They failed.
That evening the dining room held fourteen people.
Conversation rolled across the long table.
Caleb argued with ranch hand Martin Shaw about horse breeding.
Toby attempted to eat four biscuits.
Clara fell asleep halfway through pie.
Etta moved around the room refilling coffee.
Gideon sat at the head of the table.
Watching.
At some point Caleb caught his eye.
“You all right, boss?”
Gideon looked around.
“Yes.”
Caleb smiled knowingly.
Gideon hated that smile.
After everyone left, Etta found Gideon standing alone in the dining room.
She carried plates toward the kitchen.
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“You've been staring at that chair for five minutes.”
Gideon looked toward the seat beside his.
“Used to be my father's.”
Etta stopped.
The moment had arrived.
Not because she asked.
Because he offered.
“My parents built the first cabin here,” Gideon said.
“The portrait?”
He nodded.
“My father, Silas. My mother, Margaret. My brother Samuel.”
“And the woman?”
Gideon was silent long enough that Etta thought he would stop.
“Rebecca Lane.”
Etta set down the plates.
Gideon's eyes remained on the chair.
“We were going to marry.”
Etta waited.
“She died?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Fire.”
The single word changed him.
His shoulders tightened.
Etta moved no closer.
Gideon spoke to the empty dining room more than to her.
“My parents had gone to Helena. Samuel and Rebecca were here. I was driving cattle north.”
He swallowed.
“Lightning hit the roof during a storm. Cabin went up before Samuel could get her out.”
Etta's chest tightened.
“Samuel?”
“Made it outside.”
Gideon looked toward the portrait.
“Went back for her.”
Etta closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“I found what was left.”
Gideon's voice was flat now.
Not because he felt nothing.
Because he had felt it too many times.
“My mother died the next winter. Father three years later.”
Etta understood the house.
The locked room.
The silence.
“That's why you never married.”
Gideon looked at her.
“I learned what a family costs.”
Etta's expression softened.
“What does it cost?”
“Everything.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Gideon's eyes hardened.