15. Family Energy #2
Friday morning he hands me the weekly maintenance report without being asked.
It's a single printed page, the same one he gives Laney every week, a rundown of what needs doing, in what order, and what supplies are required. My name isn't on it. Neither is Laney's. It's just the ranch talking to the people responsible for it.
He hands it to me first.
I read it, make two notes in the margin, hand it to Laney.
She reads it, makes her own notes, looks at mine. Doesn't comment on them directly. Just incorporates them into whatever she's planning in her head and moves on.
Silas watches this exchange with the small private expression that means he's filed something away satisfactorily.
At lunch Remy drops into the seat across from me at the tailgate with his sandwich and says, completely unprompted, "You know what's funny?"
"You're going to tell me regardless," I say.
"Day one I called you Money Bags because I thought it was funny." He takes a bite. Chews. "Now I call you Money Bags because it's yours."
I look at him.
He looks back with unusual sincerity sitting underneath the usual grin.
"There's a difference," he says.
"I know," I say.
He nods. Goes back to his sandwich.
Silas, sitting at the far end of the tailgate, raises his coffee cup a fraction of an inch in a gesture so small that most people would miss it entirely.
I don't miss it.
I raise mine back.
The notebook has forty-three pages of notes in it now.
I counted this morning. Not because I'm tracking it specifically but because I was looking for a blank page and ran out faster than expected and had to start a second one.
Forty three pages of Silver Mesa. Irrigation lines, pasture rotation schedules, equipment upgrades, the bunkhouse renovation timeline, the covered arena plans, a detailed breakdown of what the cattle operation could look like in three years if we expand the herd by fifteen percent.
Real plans. The kind that stop feeling temporary before you even notice it's happened.
I'm at the kitchen table with both notebooks open, my coffee going cold beside me. The house carries that particular focused quiet of a Saturday morning when Maisie is still asleep and the ranch is just starting to find its feet. This is my favorite hour. The one that belongs entirely to this.
The covered arena is the biggest project. I've been talking to a contractor out of San Antonio who specializes in ranch construction, getting numbers, understanding timelines.
It's a significant investment. The kind that only makes sense if you're building something permanent. Something you intend to still be standing in twenty years.
I intend to still be standing in twenty years.
The bunkhouse renovation is scheduled for October, after the main cattle work is done for the season. New bathroom, proper insulation, covered porch, a decent kitchen setup that doesn't require Remy to do everything on a two burner situation that belongs in a college dormitory.
I've been collecting details from Silas for weeks, small things Remy would never ask for himself, additions that would make the space genuinely comfortable rather than just functional.
Remy doesn't know the full scope of it yet.
His face when he finds out is going to be something I want to be present for.
I make a note about the secondary irrigation line Earl sketched out, confirm the contractor timeline, add a question about water rights on the east boundary that I need to follow up with the county office about.
The ranch has layers I'm still learning, legal, historical, practical, all part of the accumulated complexity of a working property that has been operating for decades.
I'm learning them.
Page by page.
There's a section at the back of the second notebook that I started two weeks ago. It doesn't have a heading. It doesn't need one. It's a list of things I want for Silver Mesa that aren't operational. A proper garden off the south side of the ranch house.
The soil is good there, and Maisie has been asking about growing things.
A second horse for Maisie specifically, something young, something she can grow with.
A fire pit near the cabins, a proper one, built into the ground with seating around it for the evenings that have become some of my favorite hours of the week.
Small things.
Home things.
I'm writing a note about the garden when I hear the front door.
Laney comes through it with her morning coffee, hat already on, her hair in the ponytail she wears for working days. She stops when she sees me at the table with the notebooks spread out, takes in the scope of what's in front of me, raises an eyebrow.
"You're up early," she says.
"I'm always up early."
"Earlier than early." She comes around to look at the notebooks over my shoulder. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of her, smell the particular combination of coffee and the clean outdoor air she carries in from the morning. "What are all these?"
"Ranch plans," I say.
She reads a few lines. Looks at the contractor timeline. Looks at the irrigation notes. Her expression moves through something I can't fully read from this angle.
"This is a lot of planning," she says.
"It's a lot of ranch," I say.
She's quiet for a moment. Then she straightens up and takes her coffee to the kitchen counter and looks out the window at the ranch in the morning light.
"October for the bunkhouse?" she says.
"After the cattle season."
She nods slowly. "That'll work."
I watch her looking out the window. Morning light catches the auburn in her hair when she turns toward the window.
She holds her coffee in both hands, relaxed, settled into the quiet of the ranch house.
Behind her, Silver Mesa stretches through the glass like the whole place was built specifically for this moment.
I turn back to the notebook.
Add one more item to the list at the back.
Don't write a heading for it.
Don't need to.
The phone call happens at two in the afternoon.
I'm in the ranch house office, a room I've slowly converted from a storage space into something functional over the past few weeks, when Marcus Webb calls. Marcus is my former business partner, the one who thought I was having a breakdown when I announced I was buying a ranch in Texas.
He calls every few weeks to check in, which is his version of caring, delivered in the language of someone who expresses concern through information gathering.
He wants to know how Silver Mesa is performing financially.
I give him the honest numbers. The cattle operation is healthy, the ranch is covering its operational costs, the investment is sound. He listens with the focused attention of a man running calculations and asks the questions he always asks, margins, projections, growth potential.
Then he asks the question I wasn't expecting.
"Have you thought about what it's worth now versus what you paid?"
I lean back in my chair. "In what context."
"In the context that the market has moved. Ranch properties in that corridor have appreciated significantly in the last six months. You bought well, Beckett. If you wanted to exit you'd do it comfortably."
I'm quiet for a moment. "I'm not looking to exit, Marcus."
"I know. I'm just saying the option is there. You've got a clean operation, good staff, an established cattle relationship. It would sell fast." A pause. "Something to keep in mind."
We talk for a few more minutes about other things. Former colleagues, a deal that closed last week, the general state of the market. I wrap up the call and set the phone down and look at the ranch through the office window.
Exit.
The word sits in the room like something that doesn't belong there.
Like somebody accidentally tracked city life across the floorboards of Silver Mesa.
I'm still at the desk twenty minutes later when I hear Laney's boots on the porch. The front door opens, her particular stride crosses the living room, she appears in the office doorway with a question about the east pasture water schedule that she answers herself before I finish processing it.
Her eyes are moving to the phone on the desk.
"Everything okay?" she says.
"Fine. Business call."
She nods, turns to go.
"Marcus Webb," I say. "My former partner. Calls to check in occasionally."
She stops. "What did he want?"
I consider how to answer that. Not because I want to hide anything. Because the answer requires context that I don't have the right words for yet.
"He wanted to know how the ranch is performing," I say.
She turns back. Her expression is carefully neutral in the way it gets when she's managing something. "And?"
"He thinks it's performing well."
She nods slowly. Looks at the notebooks on the desk. Looks at the phone. Looks at me with an expression I recognize from the very early weeks, the guarded, assessing look she used to give me constantly and has largely stopped using.
It's back now.
"He give you any advice?" she asks. Careful. Even.
I open my mouth.
From outside Remy's voice carries across the yard about something with the tractor and Laney's attention shifts automatically, the ranch pulling her back the way it always does.
"I'll catch you later," she says. Flat, professional, the ranch manager voice she hasn't used with me in weeks.
She's gone before I can finish the sentence.
I sit at the desk and look at the empty doorway.
She heard enough to worry, not enough to understand.
And somehow that feels worse.
The difference between those two things is about to become a significant problem.