CHAPTER 12
Colt
◆
By late morning, pencil shavings had gathered along the kitchen table like pale curls of cedar wire.
Colt had sharpened the same pencil three times because the ranch ledger kept eating the point.
Coffee sat in his mug, gone bitter from cooling too long beside a stack of feed invoices.
Across from him, Wren Calloway had a hay receipt in one hand, a diesel statement in the other, and Beau's blue crayon wax smudged along the heel of her palm where Beau had reached across the ledger to improve a cow.
"It needed boots," Beau said.
The cow on the page had four blocky legs, two horns, a flower crown, and now a pair of purple boots on each hoof. It stood on top of a column where Colt had meant to write the date for the hay field irrigation repair.
Colt looked at the mark, then at his daughter. "That cow can't walk in eight boots."
"She can if she practices."
Wren's mouth tucked at one corner. "That is a strong design theory."
Beau gave her a serious nod and bent over the picture again, yellow crayon gripped in her fist. Her hair had escaped one braid in soft loops around her face.
Harlow's old tin of crayons sat open beside her.
Colt had brought the tin from Beau's room because Beau had wanted to work too, and because he did not discuss real numbers in front of her.
Coloring was work to Beau. Numbers with teeth were not.
He turned the ledger page enough to keep the crayon wax from spreading. The blue smear stayed there anyway, rubbed into the paper.
Wren tapped the hay receipt against the table, not impatient, more like she was counting silently.
She had come after breakfast with a folder under one arm and a look on her face that said she had talked herself into not apologizing for being useful.
Colt had nearly told her the invoices could wait.
Then he had looked at the stack on the office shelf, at the south hay field schedule pinned under a coffee cup, and at the notice from the feed supplier he had meant to answer two days ago. Pride was a fine thing until it started costing late fees.
"This one," Wren said, turning the diesel statement so he could see it without reading the total aloud, "doesn't belong with the current bills. It is a duplicate statement with the same account number and same billing period."
Colt reached for it.
She kept one finger on the line instead of pulling back. "See? The invoice date changed because they reprinted it. The purchase list did not."
He leaned closer. Pencil lead dust streaked his thumb. Wren's finger rested near his, clean nail, ink mark on the side of it, the blue crayon wax catching in the crease below her knuckle. Once, he could have taken her hand without thinking through every consequence. The wanting had not learned.
He cleared his throat. "I would have caught it."
"I know."
The answer bothered him because she sounded like she meant it.
At the end of the table, Beau lifted her head. "Caught what?"
"A paper trying to sneak into the wrong pile," Wren said before Colt could decide how to explain.
Beau frowned at the diesel statement. "Papers don't have feet."
"That is why they need help moving."
"My cow has feet."
"Eight boots' worth," Colt said.
Beau smiled and went back to coloring. The crayon made a thick, waxy drag over the ledger page. Coffee bitterness sat on Colt's tongue. Pencil shavings, old paper, and crayon wax made the ranch kitchen feel smaller than it was.
Wren sorted without fuss. Paid. Due. Call first. Check against ledger.
She skipped the show of understanding, the sigh over his handwriting, the softened voice when she found trouble.
She asked for a ruler once, found it under the salt shaker, and drew a straight line down a scrap of paper like she had done it a thousand times in rooms with better chairs and worse manners.
Colt watched her more than he should have.
Wren had always been good with patterns. Fence lines, flower rows, who was lying at a town supper. At sixteen, she could look at a sagging gate and know whether the weight was wrong or the hinge was tired. Austin had not taken that from her. It had trained it into cleaner marks.
She slid the scrap toward him. "I am not touching amounts while Beau is here. These are only buckets."
He looked at the headings.
Hard due date. Flexible if called. Dispute. Ranch rhythm.
"Ranch rhythm?" he asked.
"The bills do not know when your checks come in. They should."
He wanted to argue. Instead he saw the shape of it, plain as a gate hung level.
The auction money came when it came. Hay and feed did not wait for sentiment.
Preschool came on the date it came because Beau's care was not a place to gamble.
Diesel swung with pasture work. Irrigation repair could not be wished into a later month if the south hay field needed water now.
"Daddy," Beau said, "is Miss Wren coming to my picnic?"
Colt set the paper down carefully. "She said she would."
Wren's gaze flicked to him, then to Beau. "If I am still invited."
"You have to bring yourself," Beau said. "And no boring shoes."
"What counts as boring shoes?"
Beau considered this with the seriousness of a judge. "Shoes that don't make you taller or faster."
"I will see what I can do."
Colt felt the answer land somewhere under his ribs. Wren had agreed yesterday, and still the idea sat in him like a calf crowding a weak gate. Beau made places for people faster than a grown man could build fences around them.
The clock over the stove clicked toward noon.
The south hay field needed water by twelve-thirty or the irrigation timing would push into the afternoon rotation.
He had cattle to move off the grazed section before the heat got heavy, a pump to listen to, and one child who would be asleep in twenty minutes if the day held steady.
Beau's crayon rolled toward the ledger. Wren caught it with two fingers before it reached the coffee ring.
"Rescue," Beau said.
"Successful," Wren answered.
Colt should have been relieved by how easy they were together. Instead, fear stepped into the room and took off its hat like it planned to stay.
He pushed back from the table. "Nap time after lunch."
Beau's head snapped up. "I am not sleepy."
"You colored a cow into eight boots. That's tired work."
"She is a fancy cow."
"Fancy cows nap too."
Beau sighed with her whole body, but she let him make a sandwich, let Wren stack crayons back into Harlow's tin, and let the ledger sit closed while she ate.
Colt kept the talk to the picnic, the weather, and whether purple boots would get stuck in mud.
Wren followed his lead without making him name it.
After lunch, he carried Beau down the hall because she insisted her legs were saving strength for the picnic. She wrapped one arm around his neck and held the flower-crowned cow in the other hand.
"Miss Wren can't see my star quilt if she stays in the kitchen," Beau whispered.
Colt stopped at Beau's doorway. "Your star quilt is yours."
"I know."
"Some things don't have to be shown just because someone is kind."
Beau leaned back to study him. Her eyes were Harlow's in color and her own in the way they went straight through a man's poor cover. "Miss Wren likes stars."
"Maybe."
"Mama liked stars too."
The hallway went quiet around that.
Colt pressed a kiss to Beau's hair. "She did."
Beau accepted the answer as enough, for now.
He settled her under Harlow's star quilt, checked the window latch, the nightlight, and the small cup of water by the bed.
She gave three more arguments against sleep, all of them weak.
By the time he reached the kitchen again, the little monitor on the counter carried the soft rustle of her turning over.
Tuck Saddler stood outside the open back door, one boot on the step, a broken hinge from the feed-room latch in his hand.
"She down?" Tuck asked.
"Getting there."
"I'll be at the barn if you need the field checked."
Colt glanced toward the south window. "I need to open the irrigation myself. Pump's been knocking."
Tuck lifted the monitor from the counter and set it on the porch rail beside his tools. "I'll fix this hinge where I can hear her."
Colt nodded. "Twenty minutes."
"Take thirty. You move faster when you're mad, and today you look efficient."
Wren had gone very still at the table, a pencil held above her scrap paper.
Colt gave Tuck a look. "Hinge."
"On it."
Tuck moved out of sight with the monitor close enough that Beau's soft hum still threaded through the open door. Colt trusted him. That did not make leaving the kitchen easy. Nothing involving Beau and Wren in the same day was easy.
Wren waited until his boots crossed back to the table. "I can finish these here while you check the field."
"You want the whole mess, you come see where the mess is made."
Her eyebrows lifted. "That almost sounded like an invitation."
"It's a warning."
"Those have sounded like invitations from you before."
He looked at her too long. The kitchen held bitter coffee, pencil shavings, and the faint sweet drag of crayon wax. Outside, heat shimmered over the yard and the south hay field waited for water.
He gathered the invoice stacks, clipped them under one hand, and led her out.
The south hay field lay beyond the equipment shed, a rectangle of stubborn green fighting the dry spell better than the pastures around it.
Sprinkler pipe ran in sections along the edge, patched in two places with couplers he did not trust. Beyond the field, cattle spread in the shade line, slow and watchful, ready for the afternoon rotation as soon as the gate opened.
Colt crouched beside the pump and listened.
The knock was there, buried under the motor hum. Manageable so far. Bad enough to become a bill if ignored.
"That sound is expensive," Wren said.
"Most sounds are."