My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Ring
Driven south across the plain, Amaia names her terms in his kitchen at the Owyhee compound and overhears him say through the wall that nobody has read the debt to his face in six years.
I packed in ten minutes, and my father did not come up to say goodbye.
Idoia did.
She stood in the door of my bedroom while I rolled two dresses and a nightgown into a duffel.
She held the camel coat over her arm like she was waiting for a taxi.
"You'll be fine," she said.
"He's not a cruel man.
"Everyone says so."
"Everyone says a lot of things," I said.
"Amaia."
She came in and set her hand on top of the duffel to stop me.
Her nails were done.
They had been done every Friday for as long as I could remember, and I had paid for two of those Fridays out of petty cash.
"Take your ledgers," she said.
"The small green one.
"It's the only one you'll want."
I looked at her.
"Why?" I said.
"Because you'll be bored," she said, and smiled with the dimple.
"You always are, without a column to add."
I took the green one and the pen.
I left her standing there.
The drive south took three hours in the dark.
It was a long black truck with a sheepskin on the bench seat and a dog's blanket in the back.
Ximun drove it with one wrist over the wheel and did not say a word between Boise and the river.
I did not ask him to.
The Snake River plain came up out of the dark in pieces, a fence line, a cattle guard, a single yard light on a pole.
Then it was only sage and stars, and the heater ticking.
I sat with the duffel on my knees and my hand over the little green ledger.
About Mountain Home he said, "Why did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Take my hat."
I looked out the window.
"Because you set it on the cloth like you owned the table," I said.
"And my father looked like he'd forgotten it was his."
He didn't answer.
His hand tightened once on the wheel, then eased, and the road went on.
The Etxeberria compound was a long low house of river stone with a tin roof.
There was a bunkhouse, a barn the size of a church, and a sheepfold walled in the same gray rock.
A light burned over the kitchen door.
A small old woman stood under it in a nightgown and a man's coat, with a silver braid down her front and a ring of keys at her waist.
She did not come down the steps.
She looked at me the way you look at weather.
"Another Iriondo," she said.
"Mother," Ximun said.
"Garazi," I said, because someone had to say something, and I held out my hand.
She looked at it.
She did not take it.
She went inside and left the door open, and that was my welcome.
In the kitchen Ximun set my duffel on a long scrubbed table.
He took a ring of black iron from his coat and put it down in front of me.
He didn't put it on my hand.
He put it on the wood.
"You'll wear it in front of my cousins," he said.
"The outfits will want to see it.
"You don't have to wear it in here."
"Good," I said.
"I have terms."
His eyebrows rose.
"I'm listening."
"A room with a lock on my side of the door.
"Access to the freight-line accounts, because I'm the price and I'd like to know the price."
I swallowed.
"And an answer.
"Why is the debt eleven years old?
"My father owes you four million dollars.
"He has never in his life spent four million dollars on anything.
"He spends fifty thousand a year on horses and dinners.
"I paid the bills."
He stood very still.
"Your father's company has had steady contracts every year of the eleven," I said.
"Hay, feed, hauling.
"I kept the books for four years.
"The company should have been in the black by the second.
"Where did it go?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Ximun said.
I stared at him.
"I thought you knew."
"I thought it was your father's vanity."
"It's not enough," I said.
"I've added it."
Something moved in his face, quick as a fish under ice.
"You'll have the room," he said.
"You'll have the lock.
"You may have the accounts when you're my wife in more than a ring."
"That wasn't the term," I said.
"It's mine."
"Then I'll have the room," I said, "and the question."
He almost smiled.
He didn't.
He took me up a narrow stair and opened the last door on the left.
It held a white iron bed, a quilt, and a window that looked out on the sheepfold and the black hills.
On the inside of the door there was a brass bolt, new, with the screw heads still bright.
"My mother put it on this afternoon," he said.
"She doesn't talk much, but she hears."
I turned.
He was in the doorway with his hat in his hand, and the hall light behind him showed the gray in his hair.
He did not come in.
"Good night, Amaia," he said.
"Good night."
I shot the bolt behind him and sat on the edge of the bed.
My hands were shaking.
I took off my shoes and lay down on top of the quilt in my clothes and stared at the ceiling.
At three in the morning I woke because I could hear a voice through the wall.
The wall was thin, old plaster over stone, and his room was next to mine.
He was on the phone.
"No," he said.
"No, she's not like them.
"She read the debt to my face.
"She made me say it in front of her father.
"Nobody has done that to me in six years."
There was a pause.
He said, lower, "I don't know what I've done."
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