Page 87

“Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

I wrote the total neatly.

Outside, the light thinned. I turned on the lamp, angling the shade away from her eyes.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“You can leave the rest with me,” she said.

“I’m halfway through.”

“I know. I meant if you have ranch work.”

“Nothing that needs doing tonight.”

There was plenty that needed doing tomorrow. There was always plenty. Dad had left us land enough to spend three lifetimes catching up.

Tonight there was a table and a woman across it, and she hadn’t taken her coffee outside because she hadn’t made any.

Water stood beside her hand.

I counted that as good judgment and kept it to myself.

She picked up the next sheet.

“If we use the conservative volume for the first run, then the margin on the second—”

She stopped.

I waited.

Her eyes had lowered to the page. The pen rested just above a column.

I figured she’d found an error.

“What?”

Nothing.

“Which margin?”

Her chin dipped a fraction.

Then I heard her breathe.

Not the clipped breath she took before correcting something. Not the quiet sigh she tried to disguise when a number wouldn’t behave.

A slow breath. Deep enough to move her shoulders.

I looked at the clock.

Nine seventeen.

“Priya?”

Her pen touched the page and left a tiny crooked mark.

She was asleep.