With Only Flour, Salt, and a Cold Stove, Clara Whitmore Promised Supper to Six Hungry Ranch Hands—Then the Widowed Rancher Who Had Forgotten How a Home Felt Sat at Her Table and Realized the Woman Everyone Else Dismissed Might Be the One Person Black Ridge Could Not Afford to Lose

The kitchen door latch lifted, and Ethan stepped inside again instead of going upstairs.

Clara turned with the dish towel still in her hands.

He had removed his work coat. Without it he looked less like the owner of Black Ridge and more like a tired man who had spent too long carrying every responsibility personally.

“The men liked supper,” he said.

“I noticed.”

A pause.

Ethan looked toward the table.

“I haven’t heard them talk through a meal like that in some time.”

Clara folded the towel.

“That isn’t because of me alone. Hungry people don’t waste much energy talking.”

He accepted the correction.

That mattered to her.

“Tomorrow I need a full inventory,” she continued. “What you have, what you owe the store, what can be bought, and when someone can get to town.”

His expression closed slightly.

“The ranch accounts aren’t part of your employment.”

“The kitchen account is.”

Another pause.

“You always this direct?”

“Yes.”

His mouth almost moved.

Almost.

“Fair enough.”

The next morning Clara rose before dawn.

She lit the stove and counted every pound of flour, bean, salt, coffee, pork, and meal left in storage.

Four days.

Perhaps five if she stretched things foolishly.

She would not.

When Tommy entered at five, she handed him coffee.

He stared at the cup.

“How do you take it?”

“Black.”

“Then black it is.”

“Nobody asked before.”

Clara turned the biscuits.

“I’m asking now.”

By six the men were back around the table.

Ethan joined them again.

No invitation this time.

Clara noticed but said nothing.

Afterward she opened her notebook before him.

“I need supplies tomorrow.”

“I’ll take the wagon.”

She gave him the list.

Flour.

Beans.

Cornmeal.

Potatoes.

Onions.

Coffee.

Sugar.

Vinegar.

Baking powder.

Salt.

Lard.

He read it once.

“Anything else?”

“Whatever the ranch can honestly afford.”

His eyes rose.

“I can manage the money.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said I need to know what kind of kitchen I’m expected to manage.”

The resistance in his face remained, but another emotion appeared beneath it.

Respect, perhaps.

Or simply the surprise of encountering someone who would not be intimidated by silence.

“All right,” he said.

Later Clara found two words added to the bottom of the supply list in Ethan’s hard handwriting.

Peppermint candy.

She looked at them longer than necessary.

Nothing about Ethan Callaway suggested peppermint candy.

Then Tommy entered, saw the words, and smiled before catching himself.

Clara folded the list.

Information filed.

Weeks passed.

Black Ridge developed a rhythm.

Clara learned Samuel’s stiff joints bothered him most in the morning.

Will never believed there were enough biscuits until the basket was directly in front of him.

Frank pretended not to care what she baked and loved cornbread with suspicious devotion.

Tommy had been sleeping in Ethan’s barn at twelve when Ethan discovered him and offered food, shelter, and work.

Ethan himself said little.

But he kept sitting at the table.

One morning Clara overheard a visiting woman criticizing Ethan for employing someone “unsuitable.”

The unfinished word did not need finishing.

Clara had heard every version of it before.

Ethan’s answer came flatly through the floorboards.

“She does the job.”

It was not romantic.

It was not even particularly warm.

But he refused the woman’s judgment.

Clara remembered.

Then she learned why the house had gone cold.

Margaret Callaway.

Ethan’s wife.

Dead four years.

The three rose bushes near the porch had been hers.

The herbs Clara found in the barn had been hers too.

Clara never asked Ethan about her.

Grief was not a door employment gave her permission to open.

Six weeks after Clara arrived, Ethan came in bleeding from a barbed-wire cut.

“Sit.”

“It’s fine.”

“I didn’t ask for a medical opinion.”

His eyebrows lifted.

Then he sat.

Clara cleaned and wrapped his hand.

“You remind me of my mother,” he said unexpectedly.

Clara tied the bandage.

“Good woman?”

“The best.”

They drank coffee afterward.

Ethan remained at the table twenty minutes longer than necessary.

Neither named what was changing.

Then Walter Crane arrived.

Expensive coat.

Expensive buggy.

Polished manners.

He represented men who wanted Black Ridge Ranch.

Ethan refused to sell.

Crane returned.

This time he carried worse news.

The ranch debt had been purchased by the company behind him.

The entire note would come due in ninety days.

Crane offered to forgive the debt if Ethan surrendered the deed.

Ethan told him to leave.

After the buggy disappeared, Clara followed Ethan into the kitchen.

“How bad?”

“Manageable.”

“Ethan.”

It was the first time she used his given name.

He looked at her.

“It’s bad.”

“Bring me the accounts tonight.”

“It isn’t your problem.”

“I know.”

He frowned.

Clara opened her notebook.

“I watched my father lose land while men who understood numbers better than he did told him not to worry until worrying was useless. I won’t watch that happen here if I can help prevent it.”

That night Ethan brought every paper.

They worked for two hours.

Clara added the numbers three times.

When she finished, the shortfall remained frightening.

But not impossible.

Ethan stared at the total.

“My father built this ranch.”

Clara placed her pencil beside the figure.

“Then we find out who bought the note, what they’re entitled to do, and what they aren’t.”

He looked at her.

“For someone I hired to cook, you take considerable liberties.”

“Yes.”

That almost-smile appeared again.

Clara placed her palm over the account book and made the choice neither of them could undo.

“Then let’s fight it.”

Clara kept her palm over the account book until Ethan nodded.

“Then we fight it.”

Those words changed her position at Black Ridge more than either of them understood that night.

She remained the cook.

She still rose first.

Still managed provisions.

Still baked bread and kept six ranch hands fed.

But the kitchen table became something else after supper.

Accounts.

Letters.

Supply figures.

Cattle prices.

Loan terms.

The practical machinery of keeping Black Ridge alive.

Ethan did not hand Clara authority over the ranch merely because she cared.

She did not want it that way.

He explained the livestock side.

She explained the household side.

When she believed one of his economies would weaken the men’s food, she objected.

When he believed one of her purchasing ideas cost too much, he said so.

They argued.

Calculated.

Changed each other’s minds.

That was more intimate than agreement.

Then Eleanor Voss arrived.

She was an older valley woman who had known Ethan’s father and Margaret.

She sat in Clara’s kitchen, drank coffee, and revealed what Walter Crane had carefully hidden.

The man behind Crane was Harold Kesler.

Bank owner.

Land buyer.

And Kesler had been acquiring ranches throughout the valley by purchasing troubled notes and applying pressure until the owners sold.

Black Ridge mattered because of its position.

If Kesler acquired it, Eleanor explained, his holdings would connect across the valley.

“He wants the whole thing,” Ethan said.

“He wants enough that the rest becomes easier,” Eleanor corrected.

Clara asked the question Ethan had not.

“Who can challenge him?”

Eleanor looked at her.

“A lawyer who isn’t bought.”

Clara knew one name.

Arthur Dean in Billings had worked on her father’s property dispute years before.

Her father had still lost the farm, but Clara remembered Dean because he had been the only man in the entire affair who read every document before speaking.

Ethan wrote to him.

While they waited, Black Ridge went to a church social.

Clara would have preferred staying home.

But she went.

The same women who had laughed when she stepped from the stage watched her enter beside Tommy and the ranch hands.

One woman told Clara—with carefully shaped politeness—that Ethan might eventually want a woman more appropriate to his position.

Clara felt the old wound.

She did not collapse under it.

Then Ethan appeared beside her holding two cups of cider.

He had heard enough.

“Clara is the best cook in this county,” he said calmly, “and she works harder than anyone on my property. I’d take it personally if anyone suggested she deserved less respect than that.”

He did not shout.

He did not threaten.

He simply made his position public.

Later Clara told him he had not needed to intervene.

“I know.”

That answer remained with her.

He had done it because he chose to, not because she had required rescue.

Crane approached them before the social ended.

He attempted a new tactic.

If Clara persuaded Ethan to sell, Crane suggested, the transition could be made easier for everyone—including her.

Clara looked at him.

“So you believe I can influence him.”

Crane smiled.

“You clearly matter here.”

“Then you’ve miscalculated twice.”

His smile thinned.

“How?”

“First, because you think I would trade his trust for your convenience. Second, because you think Ethan Callaway makes decisions because a woman whispers them into his ear.”

Crane left soon afterward.

On the wagon home, Clara admitted something she had not intended to say.

“I’m afraid.”

Ethan turned toward her.

“Of Crane?”

“Of losing the ranch.”

She looked ahead.

“And of how much I care whether we do.”

Ethan was quiet.

Then he said, “I’m afraid too.”

“About Black Ridge?”

“Some of it.”

Neither asked him to explain the rest.

Not yet.

Twelve days later Arthur Dean replied.

The sale of Ethan’s note might have violated territorial lending requirements.

If the original bank had failed to provide proper notice before transferring the debt, Kesler’s position could be challenged.

Dean needed the original paperwork.

He needed Ethan in Billings.

Ethan refused at first.

“I can’t leave.”

Clara put both hands on the kitchen table.

“Yes, you can.”

“The ranch—”

“Has Samuel. Hector. Frank. Bud. Will. Tommy.”

“And you.”

“Yes.”

The word came out simply.

“I am here.”

Ethan studied her.

For years, he had treated leaving the ranch as equivalent to losing control of it.

Now Clara watched him confront the possibility that trust could accomplish what vigilance could not.

“When do I leave?”

“Tomorrow.”

He went.

For the first time since Clara arrived, Black Ridge operated without Ethan on the property.

She did not become ranch boss.

Samuel handled the cattle decisions.

Hector handled the equipment.

Clara coordinated food, supplies, correspondence, and information.

When Tommy saw unfamiliar men inspecting the east boundary, Clara did not ride after them foolishly.

She wrote to Eleanor.

She wrote to Ethan.

She asked Samuel what legal weaknesses existed in the property.

He told her about an old water easement.

Clara forwarded that information to Arthur Dean.

Black Ridge defended itself by using the people who actually knew it.

Ethan returned from Billings with cautious hope.

Dean believed Kesler’s note purchase could be attacked.

But the process would take time.

That evening Clara cooked him soup because he looked exhausted from travel.

He sat at the kitchen table after everyone else had gone.

For once he spoke about Margaret.

Not because Clara asked.

Because he chose to.

“She was right about this house,” he said.

“What did she say?”

“That it had good bones.”

Ethan looked toward the stove.

“After she died, I kept the ranch operating. Kept wages paid. Kept cattle alive. But the rest…”

He paused.

“I let it go cold.”

Clara understood he was not speaking only about the kitchen.

“How long?”

“Four years.”

Then he looked directly at her.

“Until someone walked in and lit it again.”

Clara lowered her eyes to her coffee.

The words frightened her because she wanted them.

Wanting things had never been Clara’s safe skill.

Working was safe.

Being useful was safe.

Hope was not.

“Ethan—”

“I’m not asking you for anything.”

She looked up.

“I know.”

“That matters.”

“Yes.”

He thanked her.

Not merely for supper.

For staying.

For challenging him.

For the accounts.

For sending him to Billings.

For everything she had done since the first evening.

After he went upstairs, Clara sat alone.

For years she had believed usefulness was the greatest claim she could make on anyone.

Now she was beginning to understand the difference between being needed and being wanted.

The legal fight intensified.

Dean discovered other ranchers whose notes had been moved through the same questionable process.

Kesler’s isolated pressure campaign became a pattern.

Four properties joined the challenge.

Walter Crane returned to Black Ridge one final time before the territorial hearing.

Clara was alone in the kitchen when he entered.

“You’ve caused a remarkable amount of difficulty,” he said.

“I cook.”

Crane’s mouth tightened.

“You know that isn’t all you’ve done.”

“No.”

“You could still persuade Callaway to accept a settlement.”

Clara wiped flour from her hands.

“You still don’t understand him.”

“I understand money.”

“Then you should understand that threatening a man with the loss of the thing his father spent forty years building was never going to make him grateful.”

Crane looked toward the warm kitchen.

His gaze paused on the stocked shelves, the repaired curtains, the men’s coats hanging by the door.

“You’ve become comfortable.”

“I’ve become useful.”

“Those are not the same.”

Clara considered him.

“No. They aren’t.”

The distinction had once protected her.

Now she no longer wanted usefulness to be the limit of her life.

Crane left.

Ethan returned before supper.

Clara told him everything.

He listened without interrupting.

Then he said, “When this legal fight is over, I want to ask you something.”

Clara’s heart stumbled.

“No.”

His expression changed.

“No?”

“If the question depends on whether Black Ridge survives, I don’t want it.”

He became very still.

Clara continued.

“I won’t have either of us wondering later whether fear made the decision. If you have something to ask me, ask while everything is still uncertain.”

Ethan looked at her for a long time.

Then he removed his hat.

“Clara Whitmore, when this ranch is secure or ruined, when we have cattle or none, whether I own this house or walk away from it with one suitcase—would you marry me?”

The kitchen seemed to hold its breath.

Clara did not answer immediately.

Not because she doubted him.

Because she needed to hear herself clearly.

“I will not become a replacement for Margaret.”

“No.”

“I will not spend the rest of my life proving I deserved to be chosen.”

“You won’t.”

“And I expect to have a say in the house I help keep.”

Ethan’s expression softened.

“You already do.”

Clara looked at the stove she had lit on her first night.

Then at the man who had learned to sit at his own table again.

“Yes,” she said.

Outside, someone dropped a bucket in the yard.

Tommy swore.

Ordinary life continued.

Ethan smiled.

And Clara realized the answer had not trapped her.

It had made the future larger.

Ethan’s smile remained only a moment before Tommy came through the back door demanding to know who had moved the grain scoop.

Clara laughed.

That became the beginning of their engagement.

Not an announcement in a parlor.

Not a dramatic ride through snow.

A marriage question asked in a working kitchen while Black Ridge Ranch still stood under legal threat.

Clara preferred it that way.

She had not agreed to marry Ethan because the ranch was safe.

It was not.

She had not agreed because she needed employment.

By then she knew she could work elsewhere.

She had not agreed because Ethan had defended her in town.

She could defend herself.

She agreed because he had spent months proving that his quietness was not a demand that she disappear inside it.

He listened.

Changed his mind.

Admitted fear.

Accepted help.

Respected the work she understood better than he did.

And when Clara told him she did not want his proposal tied to the outcome of the lawsuit, he asked again under the harder terms.

The next morning Tommy discovered the news through Black Ridge’s efficient rural intelligence system.

He walked into the kitchen trying desperately to appear casual.

“I heard something in town.”

“Did you?”

“About you and Mr. Callaway.”

Clara kept kneading dough.

“I expect you did.”

Tommy stared.

“Is it true?”

“It is.”

The boy stood motionless.

Then he crossed the room and hugged her.

Clara’s hands were covered in flour.

She wrapped them around him anyway.

Tommy held on longer than she expected.

When he stepped back, his eyes were bright.

“I didn’t think this place would feel like this again.”

Clara said nothing.

“When I got here,” he continued, “it was just somewhere to work.”

He swallowed.

“It isn’t now.”

Clara understood.

Tommy had arrived at Black Ridge before she had.

He had known the house during Ethan’s deepest grief.

A roof.

Meals when anyone remembered them.

Work.

Safety, technically.

But not warmth.

“I’m glad you’re staying,” Tommy said.

“I’m staying.”

That promise mattered almost as much as the one she had given Ethan.

Marriage planning happened around ranch work.

Eleanor Voss involved herself immediately.

Clara made one thing clear.

She would wear what she already owned unless there was some practical reason not to.

Eleanor considered that an unacceptable interpretation of events but negotiated instead of commanding.

Samuel said only, “About time.”

Hector nodded.

Bud nearly talked himself breathless.

Frank pretended the subject held no interest for him and then spent two evenings repairing a damaged bench that would be used during the ceremony.

The ranch continued.

So did Arthur Dean’s legal case.

His letters arrived regularly from Billings.

The deeper he investigated Kesler’s purchases, the clearer the pattern became.

Several notes had been transferred without proper procedure.

Other landowners stepped forward.

Records connected Kesler directly to transactions Crane had presented as independent business.

The case was no longer merely Ethan Callaway against a lender.

It concerned a series of properties.

That strengthened Black Ridge.

It also delayed certainty.

Ethan sometimes sat at the kitchen table reading Dean’s letters twice.

One night he folded a particularly encouraging letter.

“He’s going to lose.”

“Kesler?”

“Yes.”

Clara stirred gravy.

“Eventually.”

“Dean says the court could take months.”

“Then it takes months.”

Ethan watched her.

“My father built this place for what came after him.”

Clara set down the spoon.

“Then we make certain what comes after is worth the trouble.”

Their wedding was small.

Black Ridge did not stop functioning for it.

Cattle still required water.

Men still needed breakfast.

The stove still had to be lit.

Clara appreciated that the important day did not require the ordinary world to suspend itself.

Eleanor brought flowers.

Not roses.

The old rose bushes Margaret planted remained dormant beneath winter ground, and Clara would not cut anything from them for symbolism they had not yet earned.

Tommy stood near Ethan.

Samuel cleaned himself up with such determination that Bud claimed not to recognize him.

Ethan wore his best coat.

Clara wore a simple dress Eleanor had helped alter—not because Clara needed to become smaller or prettier or more acceptable, but because the garment fit correctly and allowed her to stand without pulling at herself.

That distinction mattered.

Before the ceremony Ethan found her alone in the kitchen.

“You all right?”

Clara looked at him.

Months earlier those words had been his clumsy way of asking questions he could not yet voice.

Now he meant exactly what he said.

“Yes.”

“If you aren’t—”

“I am.”

He nodded.

Clara stepped closer.

“Are you?”

Ethan looked through the doorway toward the yard.

“I thought I’d never do this again.”

Clara did not pretend Margaret had never existed.

“That frighten you?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

He looked back at her.

“Good.”

His eyebrows rose.

“I’d be concerned if only one of us had sense enough to be nervous.”

He laughed quietly.

They married.

No speech transformed grief into something harmless.

No vow erased Ethan’s first marriage.

No ceremony made Clara beautiful because she had become chosen.

She had already learned the more difficult thing:

her value had existed before anyone recognized it.

Marriage gave that value companionship.

Not permission.

Afterward, Ethan brought Clara’s suitcase from the small room off the kitchen.

He stopped outside the upstairs room that had remained closed for four years.

Margaret’s room.

Clara had never asked him to open it.

Ethan put his hand on the knob.

“I went in yesterday.”

Clara waited.

“There are things I want to keep.”

“Then keep them.”

“And things Eleanor says Margaret would have called foolish to leave untouched forever.”

Clara gave the door a respectful glance.

“You don’t need to decide today.”

“I know.”

That was the change.

Years of grief had convinced Ethan every choice was final.

Clara had taught the household something through bread, accounts, damaged fences, and legal letters:

most useful work happened one decision at a time.

He opened the door.

Not for Clara to replace the woman who had lived there.

To allow the house to continue living.

Winter passed.

Crane made one last appearance before the territorial court ruled.

He arrived without the expensive confidence Clara remembered.

Kesler’s position was deteriorating.

Other owners had testified.

Arthur Dean had found enough irregularities that the court was examining the note transfers collectively.

Crane stood on the porch.

Ethan joined Clara there.

“The company remains willing to settle,” Crane said.

Ethan glanced at Clara.

Months earlier, he might have dismissed the offer before she had finished hearing it.

Now he asked, “Terms?”

Crane explained.

The settlement still required Ethan to surrender land rights at a figure Kesler considered generous.

When he finished, Clara looked at Ethan.

“What do you think?”

He smiled faintly.

“No.”

Clara nodded.

“No.”

Crane’s frustration showed.

“You may still lose.”

Ethan’s expression remained calm.

“That’s possible.”

“And you would risk everything?”

Ethan looked around the yard.

At Samuel repairing tack.

At Tommy leading a horse toward the barn.

At the kitchen window glowing behind Clara.

“No,” he said. “I’m refusing to give it away because you’ve made losing sound inevitable.”

Crane left.

Clara watched the buggy diminish along the road.

“You enjoyed that.”

Ethan considered.

“A little.”

“Good.”

The court decision came the following spring.

Eleanor Voss arrived with the news almost as quickly as the official papers.

The territorial court ruled against Harold Kesler’s land company.

The transfer of Black Ridge’s note had not satisfied the required procedure.

Kesler’s claim failed.

Ethan’s deed stood free of the company’s control.

For several seconds after reading the ruling, Ethan did nothing.

Then he put the paper on the kitchen table.

Clara had expected relief to be louder.

Instead Ethan sat.

Samuel sat beside him.

Tommy leaned against the wall.

The men gathered.

Eleanor produced a bottle her husband had been saving.

She filled small glasses.

“To Black Ridge Ranch,” she said.

Then she looked directly at Clara.

“And the woman who kept it standing.”

Clara shook her head.

“We kept it standing.”

Eleanor’s expression suggested she considered that correction unnecessary.

But Clara meant it.

Samuel’s knowledge had mattered.

Arthur Dean’s legal work had mattered.

Eleanor’s warning had mattered.

Tommy’s eyes on the boundary had mattered.

The men’s labor had mattered.

Ethan’s willingness to stop carrying everything alone had mattered.

Clara’s contribution did not become smaller because others had contributed too.

She had spent years believing recognition was scarce.

Now she understood respect did not have to be rationed.

They drank.

That evening Clara walked outside.

The three rose bushes beneath the kitchen window showed new growth.

She crouched.

Living wood.

She had inspected them through winter and refused to assume.

Now the evidence was unmistakable.

In May, all three bloomed.

Clara saw them first.

Morning light came sideways through the kitchen window.

The stove was already warm.

Flour sat on the shelf.

Salt beside it.

Coffee simmered.

She stood holding her cup and looked through the glass at three roses Margaret Callaway had planted before illness took her.

Clara felt no rivalry with the dead woman.

Margaret had loved this house.

That love remained part of it.

Clara’s love did not require erasing hers.

Behind her, footsteps crossed the kitchen.

Ethan stopped.

Then, with a tenderness that still occasionally surprised her, he put his arms around Clara from behind.

Only briefly.

No performance.

No possession.

A familiar gesture between two people who had learned the terms of each other’s closeness.

“The roses,” Clara said.

“I see them.”

“Margaret never did.”

“No.”

Ethan’s voice held grief.

It no longer held only grief.

Clara rested one hand over his.

“They came back.”

“So did the house.”

He released her and poured coffee.

Tommy came thundering down the stairs, sixteen now and still apparently incapable of arranging his hair before breakfast.

He ate three biscuits while insisting he was not very hungry.

Samuel complained about his knees.

Frank complained about nothing in particular, which Clara had learned meant he was content.

Bud talked enough for everyone.

The kitchen filled.

This time Ethan did not sit at the table because Clara had set an extra place for a grieving man who had forgotten how to join his own household.

He sat because it was his table too.

Clara pulled the biscuits from the oven.

Ethan glanced at the supply list she had left near his cup.

“Peppermint candy?”

She looked at him.

“That was you.”

He became suspiciously interested in his coffee.

“For Tommy.”

Tommy looked up.

“You ate half of it yourself.”

“I did not.”

Samuel coughed into his hand.

Clara laughed.

Years earlier she would have covered the sound.

She would have made herself smaller instinctively whenever joy drew attention.

Not anymore.

Black Ridge was still work.

Always would be.

Weather would come.

Cattle prices would change.

Fences would break.

People would disagree.

Marriage did not turn labor into ease.

It made the labor shared.

And Clara’s place in that household was no longer defined by the meals she could produce from empty shelves.

She cooked because she loved the work.

She kept accounts because she was good at them.

She challenged Ethan because he needed challenging and returned the favor.

She cared for Tommy without pretending kindness gave her ownership over his future.

She honored Margaret without surrendering her own place in the house.

And Ethan had changed too.

He asked.

Listened.

Shared information before crisis forced him to.

A man who once believed responsibility meant carrying every burden privately learned that partnership required the opposite.

That spring Black Ridge Ranch stood free and clear.

The rose bushes bloomed.

The long table remained crowded.

And the woman who had arrived with one suitcase, expecting only wages and lodging, finally stopped treating her life as something borrowed.

Clara Callaway stood in the kitchen one quiet May morning before everyone else woke.

Flour beneath her hands.

Salt on the shelf.

Heat moving through the iron stove.

She remembered her first evening.

Empty shelves.

Six hungry men.

A widower standing in a doorway.

Thirty minutes.

Almost nothing.

She understood now that almost nothing had never been the whole truth.

She had possessed skill.

Judgment.

Endurance.

Choice.

And the stubborn certainty that a cold stove could be lit.

Clara placed another piece of wood on the fire.

Flame rose around it.

Outside, Margaret’s roses opened in the morning sun.

Inside, Black Ridge began another day warm.