“Bring it.”
She turned.
“Eli.
Vegetables?”
“Root cellar.”
“Bring anything that hasn’t become intelligent enough to introduce itself.”
Cade snorted.
Nora pointed.
“Cade, water.
Porter, clear the table.
Reeve, find seven clean plates.”
“Seven?”
Reeve asked.
“Yes.”
“There are six of us.”
“I eat.”
For the first time, Thomas’s mouth twitched.
Almost a smile.
Nobody moved quickly enough.
Nora planted her hands on her hips.
“Unless all six of you intend to stand there and watch a hundred-kilo woman starve beside you?”
That did it.
The kitchen exploded into movement.
Within minutes, Nora had sliced rot from potatoes, diced salt pork, salvaged the beans, chopped onions, and discovered enough flour to make biscuits.
Ru never left her side.
“Can I help?”
“You certainly can.”
She placed him at the table far from the stove and gave him dough to knead.
His tiny hands attacked it like a personal enemy.
“Gentler,” Nora laughed.
Ru looked surprised.
Perhaps laughter had become unusual in this house.
“You have to persuade biscuit dough,” Nora explained.
“Not murder it.”
Behind her, Thomas laughed.
A real laugh this time.
Every other boy turned toward him.
Thomas immediately stopped.
But something had changed.
Just a fraction.
Nora felt it.
She began humming as she worked.
It was an old tune her mother had sung while cooking.
Sleep now, little sparrow,
Night will pass away…
She had not thought about the song in years.
Then she noticed the room had gone silent.
Nora turned.
Thomas was staring at her.
“What?”
His face had lost its color.
“Nothing.”
“Thomas?”
He looked away.
“Nothing.”
Nora studied him, then returned to the biscuits.
Twenty minutes later, their warm smell filled the kitchen.
Six boys drifted toward the table as though pulled by rope.
Nora filled bowls.
Ru stared at his portion.
“All that?”
“All of it.”
“For me?”
“For you.”
Thomas took the first bite.
His expression changed.
Not happiness.
Not surprise.
Relief.
And somehow, that hurt Nora more than every insult she had endured in Sorrow Creek.
Soon the kitchen filled with spoons scraping bowls and biscuits tearing apart.
Ru ate so quickly Nora had to slow him down.
“Nobody is stealing it.”
He froze.
His eyes lowered.
“I know.”
But clearly he had not known.
Nora was placing food onto a seventh plate when the front door opened.
Every spoon stopped.
Heavy boots crossed the main room.
A tall, exhausted man appeared in the doorway.
Dirt covered his shirt.
His sleeves were rolled above powerful forearms.
Dark hair curled damply against his forehead.
A jagged white scar ran from his left temple to the edge of his jaw.
Harlon Greer.
The stranger Nora was supposed to marry tomorrow.
He looked at his sons.
At the full bowls.
At the steaming biscuits.
Then at Nora.
The nearly one-hundred-kilogram woman standing in his dead wife’s kitchen with flour on her cheek and a wooden spoon in her hand.
Harlon gripped the doorframe.
His face went completely still.
No one breathed.
Then Thomas looked at his father.
“Pa,” he whispered,
“she made Mama’s biscuits.”
Nora’s fingers tightened around the spoon.
Harlon’s gaze dropped to the basket.
“What did you say?”
Thomas swallowed.
“She made them exactly like Mama.”
“That’s impossible.”
Nora forced a nervous laugh.
“They’re only biscuits.”
Harlon crossed the kitchen.
He took one.
Broke it open.
Steam curled upward.
Then he tasted it.
The color drained from his face.
