17. Proving It
Chapter seventeen
Proving It
Beckett
Icall Marcus back at six in the morning.
Laney is still on the porch when I make the call, which is deliberate. I want her to hear this. Not because I need a witness, not because I'm performing anything.
Because three days of distance taught me that the space between what I know and what she believes needs to be closed with actions rather than reassurances.
This is the first action.
Marcus picks up on the second ring.
"Beckett. You see the inquiry I forwarded?"
"I saw it."
"Weston Blackthorn. He's a legitimate buyer, well capitalized, knows the region. If you're open to a conversation I can—"
"I'm not," I say. "Tell him Silver Mesa isn't available. It won't be available. Not now, not in six months, not in five years." I pause. "Tell him to stop making inquiries through back channels about a ranch that isn't going anywhere and an operation that isn't changing hands."
A silence.
"That's clear," Marcus says.
"It's meant to be."
Another silence. Shorter. "You're happy out there."
It's not quite a question. Marcus has known me for fifteen years and he's hearing something in my voice that he hasn't heard in a long time. I know because I can hear it too.
"Yeah," I say. "I am. You should try it."
"Good." He says it simply, without his usual overlay of financial analysis. Just good. Like a friend rather than a partner. "I'll reach out to Blackthorn today."
We hang up.
I set the phone on the porch rail and look at Laney.
She's been looking at the ranch. Not at me. Giving me the call without making it an audience. She turns when she hears me set the phone down and her expression is carefully neutral in the way it gets when she's managing something large and not ready to show it.
"Done," I say.
She looks at the phone. Looks at me. "Just like that."
"Just like that."
She's quiet for a moment. "Beckett. That was a legitimate offer. You don't know what he was going to—"
"I know enough," I say. "I know what Weston Blackthorn has been doing since the day he first showed up at this ranch.
I know what that inquiry was about and I know what it wasn't about.
" I hold her gaze. "Silver Mesa isn't for sale.
That's not a financial decision. It's not a market decision. It's just true."
She looks at me for a long moment.
The morning is quiet around us, the ranch coming up into the early light the way it does, slow, unhurried, completely itself.
"He's not going to like that answer," she says.
"He doesn't have to like it."
"He might push."
"He can push all he wants." I pick up my coffee. "Silver Mesa has been here longer than Weston Blackthorn's opinion of it and it'll be here long after."
Something moves through her expression that she doesn't manage in time. Warm, unguarded, the fully open version of her that I have come to understand is the most honest thing I've ever been given access to.
She looks at the ranch in the morning light.
"Forty-three pages," she says quietly. Almost to herself.
"Forty-seven now," I say. "I added some things."
She looks at me.
"The piano," I say. "I'm getting it tuned."
Her expression does something complicated, moves through several rooms, lands somewhere I recognize. The same place it landed when I offered her the cabin. When I stood next to her on the phone with Hartley. When I carried Maisie across the yard with her jacket still around her shoulders.
The place that means she's letting something in.
"Okay," she says quietly.
"Okay," I say back.
We drink our coffee in the early morning quiet, the ranch breathing around us while Weston Blackthorn's inquiry sits somewhere behind us like a thing that has already been dealt with and doesn't require any more of our attention.
It doesn't get any.
I find Remy and Silas together at the equipment shed at seven.
This is not unusual. What is unusual is that I've asked them to be there specifically, which I did via text last night, which meant Remy responded with three questions and a gif that wasn't relevant to anything. Silas responded with a single word that said confirmed.
They're both there when I arrive.
Remy has coffee. Silas has his thermos. They look at me with the focused attention of people who have been summoned and are curious about the reason but too professional to ask before they're told.
I lean against the shed wall and look at both of them.
"I want to talk about the ranch," I say. "Not operations. Not schedules. The ranch as a place to live and work. What it needs, what would make it better, what I haven't thought of yet."
Remy and Silas exchange a look.
"This about Weston's inquiry?" Remy asks.
News travels fast. It always does on a ranch with Remy in it.
"Partly," I say. "Mostly it's about the fact that I've been here for a few months and I've been making plans but I haven't sat down with the two of you and asked what you actually need. That's on me."
Silas looks at his thermos. Back at me. "You asked about the bunkhouse."
"I asked about fixtures and insulation. I didn't ask what would make Silver Mesa feel like the place you want to spend the next ten years." I look at both of them. "So I'm asking now."
There's a moment of quiet that has a different quality than most quiet. The kind where people are deciding whether they're being handled or genuinely asked. I wait it out because I've learned that Remy and Silas both need a moment to arrive at honesty, and crowding that moment doesn't help.
Remy gets there first, which is unusual. Normally Silas leads on serious things.
"The indoor arena," he says. "Not just for the horses. For training, for events, for having somewhere proper to work when the weather goes bad." He pauses. "Laney's been wanting one for two years. Previous owner kept saying maybe."
I write it down. It's already in the notebook but I write it down again because I want him to see me writing it.
"The bunkhouse kitchen," Silas says. Measured. "Two burners and a microwave isn't a kitchen. We cook actual meals. We'd like to do it properly."
"Full kitchen," I say. "It's already on the plan. Scheduled for October."
Silas nods once.
"What else." I look at Remy.
He thinks about it honestly. "A proper wash station for the equipment. We're cleaning everything with a hose and a prayer right now. Something with actual drainage and a pressure setup would save about four hours a week across the operation."
I write that down. It's not in the notebook. It is now.
"Silas," I say.
He's quiet for a moment. "The access road to the south pasture. It gets impassable in heavy rain. We lose time every wet season moving equipment the long way around."
"How long has that been a problem?"
"Three years."
I write it down. Look at both of them. "Why didn't the previous owner fix it?"
Remy and Silas exchange another look.
"Honestly, we didn't think it was worth asking," Remy says. "He was a good owner. Not a present one."
I close the notebook.
Look at both of them.
"I'm a present owner," I say. "Anything this ranch needs, anything you need, you bring it to me directly. Not through Laney, not through a maintenance report. Directly." I pause. "That's not a request."
Remy looks at Silas.
Silas looks at me.
"Okay, boss," Remy says.
It's the first time he's called me that.
Not Money Bags or the new owner or the billionaire.
Boss.
I pick up my notebook and head back toward the ranch house and think that forty seven pages might need to become sixty before this is done.
Laney finds out about the equipment shed meeting from Remy.
This is not surprising. Remy's ability to keep information to himself has a shelf life of approximately four hours under normal conditions, and considerably less when the information involves something he finds meaningful.
By the time I'm back at the ranch house with my expanded notebook he has already told her, which I know because she appears at the office door at nine with an expression that is doing several things simultaneously.
I look up from the desk.
She looks at me.
"You met with Remy and Silas this morning," she says.
"I did."
"About what the ranch needs."
"Among other things."
She comes into the office and sits in the chair across the desk, which she has never done before.
The desk has always been mine, and she has always interacted with it from the doorway with the unconscious body language of someone who understands where the lines are.
The office carried the same boundary with it.
Sitting in the chair is new.
I notice it and say nothing about it.
"The access road to the south pasture," she says. "Silas told you about that."
"Three years," I say. "Why didn't you put it in a maintenance report?"
She looks at the desk. "Previous owner had a budget ceiling for non-operational improvements. The road didn't meet the threshold."
"What was the threshold?"
She tells me.
It's a number that I spend approximately one second looking at before I write a figure in the notebook that is considerably larger and turn it to face her across the desk.
She looks at it.
Looks at me.
"That's the annual improvement budget going forward," I say. "Operational and non-operational. Laney's discretion on allocation."
She is very still for a moment before she says, "That's a significant number."
"It's a significant ranch."
"Beckett."
"This is your operation," I say. "You know what it needs better than any maintenance report can communicate. I'm giving you the resources to address it without having to build a case for every decision."
She looks at the number again. I can see her processing it, running through the list of things she's been managing around for four years.
All the things that were unobtainable. The access road, the wash station, the arena, a dozen smaller things that accumulate into the quiet frustration for someone who cares deeply about something and has been working with less than it deserves.
"The arena project," she says quietly.
"Contractor's coming next week for a site assessment."
She looks up. "You scheduled that already."
"Yesterday afternoon."