CHAPTER 18
Colt
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Colt burned the toast because he was listening for a truck that was not coming.
The bread went black at the edges before the smell reached him.
He had Beau's eggs half-scrambled, her lunch box open on the counter, a stack of repair invoices under his elbow, and the pink plastic cup she insisted on using every morning balanced too close to the sink.
Smoke climbed in a thin gray twist above the toaster.
Sleep had been more rumor than fact. He had left Wren's cottage before dawn with her warmth still in his hands, telling himself getting home before Beau woke was responsibility, not retreat.
A father did not get to drift around inside a feeling when breakfast, preschool, cattle, bills, and broken weather all needed him steady.
Then he had stood in his own kitchen and reached for two coffee mugs instead of one.
The mistake had put him cold through the ribs.
"Daddy," Beau said from the table, "the toaster is mad."
Colt snapped back. "It's not mad. It's just done."
"It smells mad."
"That part's fair."
He grabbed the toast, hissed when the heat bit his fingers, and dropped the blackened slices onto a chipped plate.
Smoke spread fast and bitter. Beau wrinkled her nose.
She was still in her pajama shirt and cowgirl boots, her hair coming loose from the two uneven braids he had managed before the eggs started sticking.
The pink cup clattered off the counter when his elbow bumped it.
Beau gasped as if he had dropped a window.
The cup bounced once, rolled under the table, and knocked against the chair where Harlow's star quilt lay folded for washing.
Colt went still. That quilt pulled the room backward and forward at once: Harlow sewing stars, Beau dragging it across the floor at two, Wren touching the edge with careful reverence.
He bent to retrieve the cup.
"Sorry, bug."
"It didn't spill because it was empty," Beau said, serious as a judge.
"Lucky break."
"Can toast be fixed?"
"Toast can be replaced."
He started to say Wren would scrape it with a butter knife and call it rustic. The words rose easy, domestic as breathing.
Colt closed his mouth before her name crossed the kitchen.
Beau watched him from over her fork. She missed plenty because she was five. She caught plenty because she was Beau.
"You looked funny," she said.
"Smoke got in my eyes."
"Smoke makes eyes wet?"
"Sometimes."
She considered that, accepted only half of it, and kicked her boot heel against the chair rung. "Can I have cereal?"
"Yes, ma'am."
He scraped the eggs into a small bowl anyway, because protein mattered and work his hands knew kept him from thinking.
Cereal. Fruit if he cut it fast enough. Lunch box with square crackers, grapes, the napkin she wanted folded into a triangle.
Morning requirements were mercy if a man used them right.
The phone buzzed near the ledger.
His eyes skipped past it.
He knew who it might be. He knew who he wanted it to be.
That was the trouble. Want had settled into him overnight with a weight that did not feel temporary.
He could still see Wren in the soft dark of the cottage, chin lifted, refusing pity.
She had said she would not be kept. He had believed her. He had wanted her harder for it.
And then he had come home to a child's cereal bowl and Harlow's quilt and the terrible math of promises.
He poured milk. Too much. It rose nearly to the rim of Beau's bowl.
"Careful," he said.
"You made a lake."
"I did."
"A cereal lake."
"Eat the dry islands first."
She giggled, and the sound should have loosened him. Instead it found every strained place in him. Beau trusted easy when she decided to. She had trusted Wren with flower crowns and stickers. She had trusted Colt to make every day happen in the right order since Harlow died.
He could not be the man who let romance make a liar out of her father.
The phone buzzed again.
Beau spooned cereal into her mouth and dripped milk down her chin. "At school we are making pictures for the kindergarten art show."
Colt reached for a towel. "Already?"
"The teacher says next month is not far if you are making art with glue."
"Glue slows a person down."
"I am making stars and boots. And maybe a flower crown but only if the yellow paper is not gone. " She wiped her chin with the back of her hand before he could stop her. "Can Wren come see?"
The towel stilled in his grip.
Beau looked up at him, open and certain, as if she had asked whether the sky could keep being blue. "At my art show. Next month. Families can come."
Next month.
The wedding would be over by then. Della Calloway and Ruston Farke would be married. Paloma Reyes would be paid. The reception pasture would return to grass and ruts. Wren would have made whatever choice waited on the other side of the week.
Next month was calendars, expectations, a folding chair in a school room, Beau craning her neck toward the door.
Colt set the towel beside Beau's bowl. "I don't know, baby."
Beau's eyebrows drew together. "Because Wren has work?"
"Maybe."
"We can ask."
"Maybe."
"You said maybe twice."
"I heard myself."
"Maybe means you might say no."
He looked at his daughter and saw Harlow's steadiness in her stare. Harlow had loved Beau into the world, and she had never let Colt hide behind a half answer when a whole one was owed. That trust could feel like a chain on mornings when grief knew where to press.
"Maybe means I need to talk to Wren before I promise something for her," Colt said.
Beau's frown softened. "That is polite."
"I'm trying it."
"Can you ask today?"
His chest went tight enough to make his next breath work. Today. After leaving while Wren slept or pretended to sleep, after he had kissed her hair and hated himself for the quiet step off her porch.
"I can talk to her," he said.
The words made no promise. They fell short. Beau accepted it because she wanted to, and that made him feel worse.
The phone buzzed a third time. Colt turned it facedown under the top invoice.
"Finish breakfast," he said. "We have to move."
"The toast died."
"We'll hold a service later."
Beau laughed again, and he made himself smile for her. He cut grapes, found the missing hair tie in his shirt pocket, packed the lunch box, and signed the preschool paper with a pen that barely worked. Every ordinary motion laid a plank over the drop inside him.
Then he lifted the invoice stack and saw the top total again.
The pump part from last week. The hay delivery.
The feed order Junie Mabry had held two extra days because Junie knew more than she said.
The fence supplies. The truck battery repair.
Beside it, half hidden under the ledger, lay the unopened Bennet Orvell envelope with its clean white corner accusing him in another language.
Colt shoved the envelope beneath the ledger and told himself the bills were reason enough to think straight.
Reason enough to slow down.
Reason enough to keep Wren out of promises he could not afford to break.
By the time he got Beau into the truck, the kitchen still smelled of burned toast and the cup was back in her hand, clenched like proof that the morning had survived him.
The preschool lane was muddy along one edge from the storm two nights before.
Tires had cut brown half-moons into the caliche, and children in bright backpacks moved toward the low building with the solemn disorder of calves finding a gate.
Colt kept one hand on Beau's shoulder while she hopped over a puddle she could have walked around.
"Careful."
"I am doing big hops."
"That's what I'm worried about."
She landed with a splash that dotted his jeans. "Oops."
"Mm-hm."
"Can I tell the teacher Wren might come?"
There it was again. The little rope slipped around his wrist and pulled tight.
Colt crouched in front of her, ignoring the damp ground. "You can tell her you're making art. Let's wait on who is coming until we know."
Beau's mouth pinched. "But if I don't tell, the chair might be gone."
"They'll have enough chairs."
"Last time the tall man had to stand."
"I'll stand if I need to."
"Wren can have your chair."
The easy generosity of it nearly split him. Beau was already making space, building a future with crayons and folding chairs while Colt tried to tell the difference between caution and fear.
"Go on in," he said softly. "I'll see you after school."
"With snack?"
"With snack."
"The square crackers?"
"Already packed."
She threw her arms around his neck. Her boots knocked his shins. He held her a second too long, and she squirmed because five-year-olds did not understand a father trying to memorize what he had to protect.
"Daddy," she said into his shoulder, "you are squeezing my backpack."
He let go. "Sorry, bug."
She ran toward the doorway. The teacher lifted a hand. Beau turned once to wave, pink cup flashing in the morning light, then disappeared inside.
Colt stood there until the door closed.
His phone was in the truck. He could have checked it then. He should have. Instead he looked at the wet prints Beau's boots had left on the lane and let the practical part of his mind take over.
North pasture. Shade rotation before heat rose. Trough repair before cattle pushed the fence. Parts, if he had them. Feed store, if he did not.
He drove out with his jaw locked and the radio off.
The broken trough had turned the north pasture into a churned mess by the time he reached it.
Water spread in a shallow silver sheet around the concrete pad, reflecting the hard morning sky.
A cracked coupling spat in irregular bursts from the supply line.
Each pulse hit the trough wall, spilled over, and drew the cattle closer.
They crowded the mud, bawling low, annoyed by waste they did not understand.
Tuck Saddler was already there, one boot sunk to the ankle, hat brim low.
"Float's hung and the coupling's split," Tuck said.
"Of course it is."
"Cattle found it before I did."
"They have a gift."