24. The Beginning of Ours
Chapter twenty-four
The Beginning of Ours
Laney
Something is happening on this ranch.
I know this early Saturday morning because the evidence is impossible to ignore for someone who has been reading Silver Mesa's rhythms for four years and knows exactly what normal looks like.
Normal is not this.
Remy is unusually focused. That is the first sign. Normally Remy operates at a baseline level of cheerful distraction that is as consistent as the Texas weather is not.
This morning he arrived at the barn at six, delivered a suspiciously rehearsed good morning, went straight to work, and has not made a single unnecessary comment all morning.
Remy has not gone ninety minutes without an unnecessary comment since I have known him.
Silas is also behaving strangely, which is harder to identify because Silas's baseline is already quiet and contained.
But I know Silas. I know the difference between his regular quiet and his deliberate quiet and this morning he is being deliberately quiet in a way that has a specific texture to it.
Like someone carefully holding onto information they are trying very hard not to spill.
Maisie is the most obvious.
She comes to find me at the barn at seven with her notepad, which she has been carrying around for two days now and which she closes immediately when I look at it, and tells me she needs to show me something at the creek later.
"What kind of something?" I say.
"A nature something," she says. Without blinking.
I look at this child.
She looks back with the innocent expression she deploys when she is being anything but innocent, which I have learned to recognize with considerable accuracy over four months of Maisie Wilder operating at full capacity in my vicinity.
"A nature something," I repeat.
"There's a bird," she says. "A specific bird. I want you to see it."
"What kind of bird."
A pause just a little too long. "A blue one," she says.
I look at her.
She looks at me.
"What time?" I say.
"Six o'clock," she says. Immediately. Like she's had the time ready.
I file that away and go back to work and spend the next hour cataloguing the evidence.
Remy disappears behind the barn around nine with what appears to be a string of lights and a legitimate reason for having them that he delivers too quickly and with too much detail.
Silas takes a phone call near the equipment shed that he walks away from the barn to take, which Silas never does, Silas takes calls wherever he happens to be standing.
June's truck pulls in at ten.
June doesn't come to Silver Mesa on Saturdays unless invited or unless there is a gathering. Something is happening.
She finds me at the round pen and hugs me slightly longer than a Saturday morning hello requires and then talks about nothing with the focused energy of someone who needs me to keep looking at her and not at whatever Remy is doing behind the barn.
I look behind the barn and Remy is looking at the sky.
There is absolutely nothing interesting in the sky.
I look at June.
June looks at me with bright eyes and the expression of someone holding something in that has been building since approximately the moment she arrived.
"You look nice today," she says.
I'm in my work clothes.
I have been in my work clothes since five-thirty.
I look at the ranch around me. At Remy and his string of lights. At Silas's deliberate quiet. At Maisie's notepad. At June's bright eyes.
I look at the ranch house where Beckett has been in his office since breakfast with the door almost closed.
Something warm moves through my chest. So large and so certain that I have to breathe through it carefully.
Oh.
I know what's happening.
I know exactly what's happening. And it must be happening at 6:00 today.
I go back to work and say nothing and feel the day stretch out in front of me with a completely different quality than it had an hour ago.
Saturday suddenly feels about three days long.
In the best possible way.
I decide not to let on that I know.
This is the gift I can give him. The genuine surprise of a woman who didn't see it coming, or at least the performance of one, which given that the actual surprise happened three weeks ago when I read three lines in a notebook and stood very still in the office with a supply invoice in my hand.
He deserves the moment.
So I go about my Saturday with the focused normalcy of someone who is absolutely not counting down to six o'clock and absolutely not thinking about an oak tree at the creek bend catching the evening light.
It is the most acting I have ever done in my life, which is saying something considering I survived two years of county fair fundraising meetings without openly losing my mind.
Silas finds me at nine with a fence issue on the north boundary that needs looking at. I know immediately this is manufactured because I just drove that fence line Tuesday and it was sound.
Silas knows I drove it Tuesday because he was there. But I go because going is easier than explaining that I know and because watching Silas manufacture a ranch problem with a straight face is genuinely impressive.
We get on the 4 wheelers and drive the north fence line together while Silas studies fence posts with the concentration of a man trying very hard to sell me a completely imaginary problem.
He points out a post that is, objectively, completely fine.
"Looks fine to me," I say.
"Look closer," he says.
I look closer at a sound fence post.
"Still fine," I say.
He looks at the post. Looks at me. Looks at the post again. "Might need monitoring," he says.
"I'll keep an eye on it," I say seriously.
He nods. Mission accomplished. We head back to the barn without mentioning the fence post being fine. Silas doesn't say anything about anything, and it somehow becomes the most comfortable dishonest conversation I've ever had.
June stays for lunch, which she announced at eleven with the casual tone of someone who definitely planned this from the moment she arrived. She and I eat at the tailgate while Remy is conspicuously busy doing things near the creek that I am conspicuously not looking at.
"What's Remy doing down there?" I ask.
"Ranch stuff," June says immediately.
"What kind of ranch stuff."
"The kind that needs doing." She hands me a piece of cornbread she brought from the bakery. "Try this. New recipe."
I try the cornbread.
It's the same recipe it's always been.
"Great," I say. "Really different." She beams.
I love her completely.
Maisie checks on me twice during the afternoon with the focused concern of someone making sure an extremely important plan is still on schedule. She drifts past, looks at me, decides I'm where I'm supposed to be, drifts away again.
The second time she stops beside me at the round pen fence and watches me work Copper for a few minutes with the settled patience of someone with time to spare.
"You still want to see the bird at six?" she says. Casual. Practiced.
"I'll be there," I say.
She nods. Something in her expression shifts. The practiced casual drops for just a second and underneath it is something real. Something that looks like the eight year old version of the giddiness I've been carrying all week. The good kind.
She puts it away quickly and goes back to casual.
"It's a really good bird," she says.
"I'm sure it is," I say.
She walks away toward the barn and I turn back to Copper and think that this child has known the ending of this story longer than anyone.
She just let the rest of us catch up.
The afternoon crawls by slower than a Texas traffic jam behind a tractor.
I say this as someone who has managed flash floods, cattle escapes, irrigation disasters, colic emergencies at midnight, and four months of desperately trying not to fall for a man I had already fallen for anyway. I know long afternoons.
This one seems longer.
The ranch keeps moving around me the way it always does, tasks completing themselves, the crew doing what they do, the Texas afternoon heat doing its committed work on the temperature.
I do my part. Check on the horses, review the arena construction progress, talk to Dale about the access road final grading happening next week.
Normal ranch afternoon, completely abnormal internal experience.
At two o'clock I catch Remy coming up from the creek direction with dirt on his knees and the expression of a man who has been doing something physical and is managing his face about it with limited success. He sees me seeing him and stops.
We look at each other.
"Fence work," he says.
"There's no fence near the creek," I say.
"There's a fence near everything on a ranch," he says with great dignity.
He walks past me toward the equipment shed.
I let him go.
At three-thirty Pearl Bishop's truck comes through the gate, which is either the most normal thing in the world because Pearl goes where Pearl goes, or the least normal thing because Pearl doesn't make ranch visits on Saturday afternoons without reason.
She finds me at the barn.
Looks me over with those sharp eyes.
"You look good," she says.
"I'm in my work clothes, Pearl."
"You look good in your work clothes." She says it like it's settled. "How are you feeling?
I look at her.
She looks back with the serene expression of someone who knows exactly what's happening and has decided her role today is moral support delivered as casual conversation.
"Pearl," I say quietly.
"Mm."
"You're terrible at acting normal."
She considers this. "I'm seventy eight years old. I've earned the right to be transparent." She pats my arm. "You're going to want to fix your hair before six."
She walks toward the ranch house to find Beckett.
I stand at the barn door and look at the ranch in the late afternoon light and let the feeling I've been managing all day have a little more room than I've been giving it.
It fills the space immediately.
The enormous, breathtaking, slightly dizzying weight of being chosen.