Chapter 4: Give It Time

I sat, because my father was watching me.

Aitor poured my coffee himself and put exactly the right amount of milk in it.

I had not told him how I take it.

He had read that in my phone too, in some old message to the bakery.

"You left in front of the Block," Aita said.

He didn't sound angry. He sounded tired and a little wounded.

"Aitor said not a word about it to anyone."

"I'm sure he didn't."

My father frowned at me over his cup.

"Pello's boy has manners, neska. Be glad of that."

"Aita, he took my phone. He read everything."

My father looked at Aitor.

Aitor opened his hands.

"I did look at it," he said. "I'm sorry."

"I come from a place where a family keeps no secrets, and I got ahead of myself."

"I've asked her to forgive me. I'd like to start again."

He said it so humbly that my father reached across the table and patted his hand.

Something cold went through me.

I understood how this was going to go.

Every time I told the truth, he would agree with it, and be sorry, and win.

"There is something else," Aita said.

"You are tired, Rali. You have carried the books and the front for eight years."

"Aitor grew up on a sheep outfit. He knows grazing leases better than either of us."

Aitor lowered his eyes modestly.

"I've asked him to take over the ranch accounts."

"Those are mine," I said.

"They are the family's," Aitor said gently. "And I am family."

I looked at my father for a long moment.

He looked at his coffee.

I went upstairs to change out of the clothes I had worn to the clinic.

The door to the room over the kitchen stood half open on the landing.

Aitor had moved in four days ago with two bags, and the room looked like nobody lived there.