16. Misunderstandings #2
"I'm just checking the fence rail," he says. "For structural integrity."
"The fence rail is fine."
"Seems a little wobbly to me." He leans on it. Tests it. Looks at me. "You know what's funny."
"Remy."
"He said I'm not going anywhere." Remy looks at the corner of the barn where Beckett disappeared. "Man says that a lot for someone you're worried is leaving."
I look at Copper.
Copper looks back with his large patient eyes and the particular equine expression that communicates nothing and somehow everything.
"Take him back to the barn," I tell Remy.
I hand over the lead rope and walk in the opposite direction and tell myself the stinging behind my eyes is the Texas dust.
It's not the Texas dust.
Maisie knocks on my cabin door on Thursday evening.
I know it's her before I open it because her knock is distinctive. Three quick ones, a pause, then one more, like a signature she developed somewhere along the way and now uses every time she shows up at my door.
I open the door and she's standing on the porch in her turquoise boots and her pajama top and a pair of jeans she clearly pulled on in a hurry, her hair in the lopsided braids she does herself when she doesn't want to wake anyone up to ask for help.
It's seven-thirty.
She's holding a plate with two pieces of French toast on it.
I look at the plate. Look at her. "Did you make French toast."
"You taught me how," she says. "Last week. Remember?"
I step back and let her in because there is no version of this where I don't let her in.
She sets the plate on the cabin table with the careful precision of someone transporting something important
She pulls out a chair, sits down and looks at me with those serious eyes that have been seeing straight through people since before she had the vocabulary to describe what she was seeing.
I sit across from her.
We look at the French toast.
"It's a little dark on one side," she says. "I'm still working on the heat thing."
"Looks good to me," I say.
She picks at the edge of her napkin. Looks at the table. Looks at me. Decides something.
"Dad's sad," she says. Plain. Direct. The way she says everything that matters.
I keep my voice even. "He told you that?"
"He doesn't have to tell me." She looks at me with the particular patience of a child who has been reading her father her entire life. "He's quiet in the wrong way. There's a quiet that means he's thinking good things. This isn't that quiet."
I look at the French toast.
"He didn't do anything wrong," she says. Carefully. Not accusing. Just stating. "I don't know what happened but I know he didn't do anything wrong because I know my dad."
The cabin is very quiet around us.
"I know that too," I say softly.
She looks at me for a moment. "Then why is he sad?"
I don't have an answer that is appropriate for an eight year old. The honest answer involves thirty three years of accumulated fear and a word overheard through a doorway and the particular damage that hope does to a person who has spent their whole life being careful about it.
"I'm working through something," I say. "It's not about your dad doing anything wrong."
She considers this seriously. "Is it about you being scared?"
I look at her.
She looks back with the calm certainty of someone who has thought about this already. "You get a certain face when you're scared," she says. "It looks like your regular face but quieter. Dad gets it too sometimes." She pauses. "You both have the same scared face which I think is kind of funny."
I stare at this eight-year-old sitting at my cabin table at seven-thirty on a Thursday, with slightly dark French toast and the emotional intelligence of someone four times her age.
"Maisie," I say carefully. "How are you this perceptive."
She shrugs. "I read a lot."
Despite everything I laugh. Short, real, the first one in three days that hasn't required any effort.
She smiles when she hears it. Satisfied. Like she came here with a specific goal and has achieved it.
"Will you fix it?" she asks. Quietly. Serious again.
I look at this child who knocked on my door at seven-thirty with French toast and the bravery of someone who decided love was worth showing up for regardless of whether it was comfortable.
She learned that from somewhere.
I think about where.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I'm going to fix it."
She nods. Picks up her fork. Gestures at the plate between us. "You should eat it warm," she says. "It gets weird when it's cold."
I pick up my fork.
We eat French toast together in the warm cabin and she tells me about a book she's reading and I listen and somewhere underneath the listening I am making a decision that I should have made three days ago.
Tomorrow morning.
Porch coffee.
I'm going to fix it.
I'm on his porch at five-fifteen.
Earlier than usual. Earlier than either of us normally gets there. The ranch is still mostly dark, the hill line just starting to separate itself from the sky, the barn a quiet shape against the pre-dawn. I've been awake since four.
I stopped pretending to sleep at five, got up, made coffee, then walked across the yard before I could talk myself out of it.
Maisie said fix it.
I'm fixing it.