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“She’s a very strong woman. But she also seems quite sad.”
“She is strong. Yeah, I need to call her. What about Suzie Q?”
“Brenda has her.”
“That won’t do. She has a good heart, but she’s not active enough. And if Suzie Q’s left to her own devices... She might be okay in the summers, but too many predators come too close around the home ranch in winter.”
He’d warmed up nicely, but I still eased into meatier questions — was it only because I was interviewing a chef or because I was hungry that I was thinking in food metaphors?
“Were you already working at the ranch when Wendy came?”
“That would have been my second year. Just a kid.”
I wasn’t going to let him extend a ten-foot pole between him and what I wanted to know about.
“But smart enough to pick up on the changes and the rivalry between Brenda and Wendy.”
Still trying to back away from it, he said, “Didn’t get all the nuances.”
“But enough to recognize tension.”
He gave into my statement. “Hard to miss. And Ulla would get talking and forget I was there.” He chuckled again. This one ever so lightly flavored by rue. “Got an education sometimes. Not only about those two going after Simon — have you heard about that?”
“Yes.”
“Ulla got talking about his interest in Keefe. But it wasn’t like that. Simon wasn’t like that. He was fascinated by Keefe. Called him a savant — I remember looking up the word after he used it — and not an idiot savant.”
That word rang with recalled anger, so someone had used the phrase about Keefe.
“I was with them a lot of the time and there just wasn’t any of that. Not to mention Keefe would have told me. He did tell me. Years later when he declined the advances of an older man, then after he and a woman guest... He said it wasn’t unpleasant, but he didn’t see what the fuss was about. That was Keefe. He certainly was not sexual with Simon.
“A while back, the ranch put together a sort of yearbook of folks who’d worked there over the years and what they were doing. Simon did real well back east in wealth management. Well enough he had his own wealth to manage. Saw him a time or two when I was chef for a restaurant in Boston. He’s a nice man.”
“Were there other men Wendy and Brenda wrangled over?”
He appeared struck by that question. “Hadn’t thought about that, but, no. Not head-to-head, so to speak. Looking back, I don’t expect either was celibate, but maybe their tastes diverged. Or they worked out a way to stay out of each other’s way — you know what I mean?”
I did.
Without ever saying a word, a pair of women could agree to not let head-to-head competition happen. Out of friendship, sure. But I’d also seen it happen without a friendship at stake. More like a wise preservation of emotional resources.
I suppose the same with men.
I flashed back for a second to when Tom and Mike each expressed his attraction to me. In that case, they hadn’t agreed — implicitly or otherwise — to not pursue the attraction, instead, letting time and events show how things would turn out, while treating each other with respect and friendship. Entirely mature. Sometimes it drove me nuts.
But we were well past that. Since Tom and I were to the stage of saying—
“I do.” I quickly added, “Know what you mean.”
I thought of Jennifer’s comment about unrequited love.
“You said Keefe wasn’t really interested in... relationships. But what about other people caring for him that way?”
“People care about him, sure. Feel responsible for him in a way. Brenda for sure. Wendy, too, in a way. Like she inherited him, along with the ranch, and whatever anyone might say about the rough edge of her tongue, she loves that ranch. Or even me, even though I haven’t — hadn’t — seen him as much as I should have, especially since I moved here.”
I thought I’d lost him. Either to contemplation of the drive from Cooke City to here I’d heard about or — more likely — to regrets for not seeing his friend.
So his next words startled me slightly. “But someone wanting a romantic relationship with Keefe? I don’t see it. I know there’s been talk about Brenda and him. But I don’t see it. I truly don’t. Not now, not ever.
