Then he turned back to the sisters. He loomed over them, blotting out the sunset.
“Rules,” he said. “One: stay out of my room. Two: you pull your weight. Everybody works on Black Mesa. Three: don’t go near the canyon ridge after dark. Wolves.”
Nell forced her voice steady. “What kind of work?”
Silas’s gaze dropped to her hands, soft compared to ranch hands’ calluses. “We’ll find something,” he grunted. “Hank’ll show you to your rooms. Dinner’s at sundown. Late means you don’t eat.”
He walked up the steps and slammed the door behind him like he was sealing himself back into a coffin.
June exhaled a harsh laugh. “Welcome to hell.”
But Hank looked at them with sudden gentleness, like he’d been saving it up. “Don’t mind him,” he said softly. “He barks loud so he don’t have to feel nothin’. Come on, now. Let’s get you warm.”
The east wing smelled like dust and sleeping rooms. White sheets covered furniture like ghosts wearing formalwear. Underneath, though, the pieces were beautiful: a rocking horse carved with care, a sewing machine, beds with goose-down mattresses, a child’s dress folded in a drawer as if someone might return to claim it.
Nell’s throat tightened. “This was… for his family?”
Hank nodded, lighting the potbelly stove. “Wife and a little girl,” he said. “Winter fever took ’em. Snow was ten feet deep. Doctor couldn’t get here in time.”
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