Doc woke with the first grey of morning lighting his window, and the mingled smell of bacon and coffee twitching at his nose. He rose and shaved – thinking how easy it would be to get used to both hot water and a water closet just down the hall – and joined Matt and Kitty in the kitchen where Matt was putting away a hefty meal of eggs, bacon, bread, and coffee.

"You save any of that for me, you overgrown…" but before he could think of the right word, Kitty sat him down and put a similarly loaded plate in front of him. She took a chair next to Matt and sipped coffee from a painted china cup. Breakfast conversation didn't seem to be too lively.

Matt rose about the time a bright pink glow lighted the kitchen windows. If Doc expected to observe an amorous goodbye, he was mistaken – or more likely it had occurred while he was still sleeping peacefully in the small bedroom at the end of the hall that the Dillons had set aside as 'his'. Matt buckled on the gunbelt hanging by the back door and took his hat from the rack beside it. He laid a hand lightly on his wife's forearm and then with a familiar "See ya' later, Kitty," he settled the hat on his head and went out the back door.

Kitty rose to get the coffee pot off the stove, and to sneak a last glance out the kitchen window at the tall figure heading for the barn. She poured her own cup and offered Doc a refill that he gladly accepted. "You 'bout ready to go, Kitty?" he asked. "Want me to go hitch up the buggy?"

But Kitty laughed at that. "Matt will have one of the boys bring it out front in a bit, Doc. No need to trouble yourself."

"He tell you that, did he?"

Kitty shook her head and nibbled a leftover piece of bacon off Doc's plate. "Nope. But he will." She stood up gracefully, pressing a hand on Doc's shoulder to keep him from rising. "I've got a couple of things left to put in my bag. You just finish your coffee in peace. I'll be down in a few minutes and we can leave as soon as I finish with the dishes." He watched her heading out the kitchen door to the stairs.

It didn't take her long to get ready and the dishes, with Doc drying, took even less time. The buggy – as Kitty had foretold – was waiting when they stepped onto the front porch. Doc stored his medical bag under the seat and placed his own small carpet bag and Kitty's slightly larger one behind. He helped her up and they headed off down the road to Dodge.

The late autumn morning was clear and fresh, and they rode a few minutes in silence. But Doc knew it would only take about an hour for them to reach Dodge and it didn't take him long to come back to the subject that interested him. "You were up might early this morning," he commented.

Kitty shrugged. "I don't run a saloon anymore, Doc. And Matt doesn't have to stay up to make late rounds. We go to bed just about the time things would start getting lively at the Long Branch."

"What do you do of an evening?"

"Oh, we make dinner last a while. Matt will tell me what he and the boys did during the day. I'll finish cleaning up, and he spends some time going through the stud books in Jake's office." She smiled softly to herself. Evenings were the best time. They didn't actually do much, but Matt was there with her, no one else had a claim on either of their time, and they'd made their own routines. It wasn't usually long after dark – and dark was coming early these days – when Matt would stand up and go to the big front door. She kept a heavy shawl on a hook behind the door, and he would pluck it down and wrap it around her. They'd stand on the porch looking west towards the road for a bit. She'd stand just in front of him and those big arms would encircle her, warmer than the shawl, and then…

Doc's voice interrupted her pleasant reverie. "Jake's office?"

"That little room off the kitchen. You know, between Till's room and the living room."

"That was Rose's office. I suppose Jake kept his stud books there, but Rose did all the paperwork for the spread. Kept the books. Paid the bills. Paid the men. Didn't you know that?"

Her head was turned, looking at him curiously. "No. I didn't."

"Well, she did. All her household books were there. She kept a page for every month, sometimes two or three, for all the years they lived there. Rose told me she showed them to you."

"She did," Kitty agreed. "But they were in the kitchen, not the office. I figured they were, oh, recipes and things."

Doc snorted and his mare took this as a sign to move into a trot. She knew they were moving towards home. "Well, you just take a look at them when you get back, Kitty, and see what you find."

Kitty thought about her own ledgers from the Long Branch. They certainly contained more than just accounts from whiskey drummers and bills for new glassware. It was such a long time ago! She'd taken over the bookkeeping from Bill Pence pretty early in her tenure there - years before she actually bought in to the saloon. Bill couldn't add a row of figures to save his life, and forgot to make half the entries anyway. It wasn't that he had done so much better when Kitty took over the books, it was that he had, for the first time, known how well he was doing. And she could show him, month by month, how to make improvements.

Once the books were her own, well, she recorded the daily business, and the bills, and when they were paid, and her deposits at the bank. She frowned at the thought of the occasional loan she'd had to take out when business was bad. Careful notes of interest paid, and broad, sweeping lines of text that showed her pleasure when she paid off Banker Bodkin. But there were also little things in those books no one else would understand – a tiny check mark in the top right corner of some pages that marked when her monthly bleeding began and, later, the more and more common small 'x' in the same location that showed something else. There were comments mixed among the deliveries and appointments. "Marshal left for Hays." "Matt back from Mexico." "Gunfight. Two men killed. Marshal Dillon took a bullet to the leg." She had left those ledgers for Annie and Sam. Would they notice? Would Annie even look? Kitty set herself a firm intention to make a more than casual inspection of that row of Rose's ledgers holding down her own kitchen shelf.

They were quiet for a bit. The air was brisk, but not really cold. There hadn't been any snow yet, although the ground was frosted over some mornings. Doc was persistent. "You have any plans for the work at Kincaid?"

Kitty was regarding her hands with great interest. After a while she managed, "I think Matt needs to do that, Doc. It's not that I'm not interested, it's just, well, he's a little sensitive about it."

"We talkin' about Matt Dillon? Or you have some other fella tucked away up there at the house?"

"This is really none of your business, Doc."

His reply was very calm. "Anything that leaves my girl with tears on her face middle of a weekday afternoon is my business. No matter where she is or who she's married to."

Kitty didn't answer at first, but she did tuck a hand through his arm. A ways down the road, she asked lightly, "You remember when Matt first came to Dodge, Doc?"

"Yes, I do. We'd lost two marshals and a sheriff in less than a year. I didn't see much hope for him making a go of it."

"You give him a lot of advice about what to do?"

That brought a kind of choked chortle. "I did not. Wasn't my business. Not that everybody else in town didn't. He listened, too. At least he stood quiet while folks talked at him. He walked around a lot. Threw a dozen men out of town. Shot half a dozen others. Took those big fists of his to gents who had a right to be there but didn't behave the way they should. I took out a bullet or two. Sewed up some places a gun creased him. Took out a tooth some thug knocked loose." Doc sighed, "And after about six months, I took my pistol off my desk and locked in up in a drawer. Stopped keepin' my shotgun next to the door. He an' I began playin' checkers now and then."

Kitty tightened her grip a little on his arm. "That's what he's doing now, Doc. Walkin' around a lot. Getting' a feel for the lay of things. Gettin' to know his men and his land. I have to let him do that."

They could see the line of Dodge on the horizon now. The mare wanted to speed up but Doc held her to a slow walk. "It's your land, too, Kitty. You told me yesterday you wanted to try to fix things. It's still early days but I think you need to start as you mean to go on. Always harder to change things after you've fallen into a habit. Start thinkin' about what you can do to help manage the ranch. Find Rose's books. Start payin' the bills and ordering the supplies. You know how to do that, dontcha?"

"Well, I always figured I did. I certainly did it for the Long Branch. But the ranch is so different. Needs different things…"

Doc reached over and patted her hand. "Nothin' you can't learn, Kitty. Nothin' you can't learn. And if you ask Matt questions, well, mebbe they'll be things he knows and he'll enjoy telling you. And if he doesn't know, then it's probably something he needs to find out."

Dodge was growing. They could see the low rise of Boot Hill behind it. "You get up and cook for Matt every morning like you did today?"

"Yes. You think that's important?"

Doc couldn't help rolling his eyes. "Kitty, where's Matt been eating the majority of his meals the last fifteen years?"

That surprised her. "I suppose that when he's not out on the trail he's been eating mostly at Delmonico's." She thought about that. "Not the best food in the world."

"Marginally edible would be my opinion."

"You're not a bad cook, Kitty. I don't doubt that means a lot to Matt – would to any man. You could invite the boys in for supper now and then. One or two at a time. Let them see what home cooking is like."

"I never expected to have to work at keeping Matt satisfied by cooking for him, Doc," she replied drily.

"Guess he's pretty satisfied with his meals." Doc threw her a sly glance, "And with a few other things."

Kitty smiled. "Yes, I suppose he is." But then she sat quiet for a few minutes while the mare trotted them willingly through the outskirts of Dodge. "I think maybe that's the real problem, Doc. Matt is pretty satisfied with everything. And I'm not."