Teresa had laid five slips of paper beside Harlan's plate. He moved them to keep his coffee from spilling on them and asked for the bread.
“That's nineteen months,” she said.
“We're eating.”
“You're eating. I've brought your dinner.”
Ruth put down her fork.
The kitchen was crowded because Harlan liked to eat there when he had no callers. Mateo sat on the end of a bench, easing his bad knee under the table. Benito, Teresa's brother, had a bowl in both hands. Ruth had seen him earlier among the horses, coaxing a suspicious mare past a flapping sack. He had looked at Ruth once and turned away.
Now he studied his sister as she pushed the papers back toward Harlan.
“I wrote down every day. Inés checked my adding.”
“A fine education you're giving her.”
“I mean to.”
Harlan opened one of the slips. His face altered less than Ruth expected.
“We've discussed this.”
“You talked. I'd like the money.”
“And your store account?”
“Bring it. We'll put them beside each other.”
Asa Bell came in carrying a broken strap. He stopped at the table. Years before, he had taught Ruth to throw a loop by making her rope a fence post until her arm ached. He looked older now, his shoulders thick under a worn shirt, but his pale eyes were as quick as ever.
“Tomorrow?” he asked Harlan.
Harlan shook his head. “Day after. Take the youngsters the morning following. Gives everybody time to get ready.”
“Which youngsters?” Carmela asked.
Harlan looked genuinely surprised that she needed to ask. “Luis and Inés. I told Mateo there'd be places for them.”
Mateo pushed his bowl away.
“You said work. Not taking them.”
“Work happens in a place, Mateo.”
Luis stood a little straighter by the door. “What kind?”
“Useful kind,” Asa said. “You do what you're told.”
“How much?” Teresa asked.
Harlan folded her paper. “Applied here. Toward what your people owe. Two growing children eating every day, and still you want to pretend a roof keeps itself up.”
Inés set the water pitcher down. She did it carefully, with both hands. Ruth noticed that before she understood what the girl was holding still.
“She isn't going,” Teresa said.
“It's already arranged.”
“Then unarrange it.”
Harlan's gaze moved to Benito, who had put his bowl on the bench. “Sit.”
“I'm standing.”
“I see that.”
For a moment nobody moved. Eva, hidden under the table with something she wasn't supposed to have, crawled out and went to Carmela. Her mother put a hand on her head.
Ruth heard herself say, “They aren't livestock, Harlan.”
He turned toward her, and the hurt in his face was so immediate that she nearly softened it.
“You've been here two days.”
“Long enough to hear what you're saying.”
“Then hear the rest. I've kept these families through years when there wasn't a penny in them. I've put up with laziness and running off and things I won't embarrass people by repeating. Now there's a chance for the young ones to earn what they eat, and I'm the villain?”
“Who asked you to keep us?” Benito said.
Asa shifted the broken strap into his left hand. Ruth saw Mateo see it too.
“Benito,” Mateo said.
“No. I want to hear.”
Teresa caught her brother's sleeve. He pulled free, but he didn't move toward Harlan.
Ruth rose. “You can't take children because you claim their mothers owe you.”
Harlan looked down at his plate. When he spoke, his voice was softer.
“Ruthie, don't make a show at my table.”
Nobody had called her Ruthie since she left. It landed exactly where he meant it to.
She stayed standing.
He put his napkin beside his plate. “We'll talk in the morning. All this noise isn't helping anybody.”
He walked out. Asa followed him, taking the papers Harlan had left behind. Teresa reached for them. Asa held them away from her for one ugly second before letting go.
Ruth went after him into the yard.
“Where are you taking them?”
“Where he tells me.”
“And if they don't go?”
He looked back through the door. “You mean to make it a fight?”
“I'm asking you.”
Asa laid the strap across the corral rail. “I bring strays home. Horses, cattle. He wants a man pulled out of another man's house, he can pay somebody else to explain that in town. Here, I do my work.”
“You know what this is.”
“I know whose ground I'm on.”
He took his knife out and cut away a torn end of leather. Ruth waited for him to look ashamed. He didn't oblige her.
Back inside, Carmela had taken the children's bowls to the far end of the kitchen. Teresa was gathering the scraps with quick, furious hands. Mateo tried to stand, his knee locked, and Benito helped him without speaking.
“The law doesn't let him hold you for debt,” Ruth said.
Carmela looked at her over Eva's head.
“We know.”
There was nothing for Ruth to say to that.
Luis was still by the door. He asked his mother whether the work might be good. He sounded younger now.
“I decide where my children sleep,” Carmela told him. “Tomorrow you'll help your father. Tonight you'll sleep here.”
She drew Eva onto her lap. The girl's shoe struck the table leg again and again until Carmela caught it in her hand.
Ruth went outside with her uneaten dinner in her stomach like a stone. Harlan stood at the mare's stall, rubbing a little ointment into a crack above the bandage. He held the lantern low so it wouldn't shine into the animal's eyes.
He saw Ruth and smiled, tired and inviting.
She turned away before he could call her over.