Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Hazel
The porch boards creak softly as I step out and ease myself into the chair beside Mae.
The day is cooling fast, heat bleeding out of the land as the sun slides lower behind the hills.
Light stretches across the pasture, catching on fence wire and tall grass before slipping away.
The ranch sounds different at this hour—quieter, but not asleep.
A gate clangs somewhere down the line. Hooves shift in the distance.
The slow exhale of a place winding down.
Mae sits with her elbows on her knees, hands wrapped around a chipped mug. She doesn't look over right away.
I let the moment breathe.
"I fixed the gate on the far pasture today," I say eventually, keeping my voice light. "The hinge was sagging. It swings clean now."
Mae nods once. "Good."
"Restacked feed too. Chace helped." I shift my weight, the wood warm beneath my palms. "Got most of it out of the heat."
"Good," Mae says again, the word worn but genuine.
We sit in silence for a while, watching the light change. This porch has held a thousand evenings just like this—some loud, some quiet, all of them layered with the comfort of routine. It still feels like home. Just thinner somehow, like something vital has been worn away.
"The place looks like it's holding together," I say, my eyes tracing the fence line. "At least on the surface."
Mae's mouth tips up at one corner. Not a smile exactly. "Most days."
The breeze picks up, cool against my skin. I lean back in my chair, listening to it move through the grass, the trees. Waiting.
Mae takes a sip of her coffee and sets the mug down carefully on the railing. The space between us shifts—not sharply, not unkindly—just enough to signal the end of small talk.
I draw a breath.
"Cole Maddox showed up at the rodeo last night."
Mae doesn't startle. She doesn't sigh. She keeps her gaze on the pasture, fingers loosely interlaced.
"Yeah," she says after a moment. "I figured he might."
I nod once. "He said he's made you offers. To buy the place."
Another pause. Longer this time.
Mae exhales slowly through her nose. "He has."
I turn my head then, studying my aunt's profile in the fading light. The lines at the corners of her eyes look deeper than I remember. Not from grief—from effort. From carrying weight she didn't ask for help with.
"How long?" I ask. No edge. Just a question.
Mae doesn't answer right away. She leans back in her chair, eyes lifting to the sky as the last of the sun dips below the ridge.
"First offer came about two years ago," she says finally. "Right after his father passed and he took over."
The words settle heavy but not surprising.
"And since then?" I ask.
"Three more," Mae says. "Each one higher than the last."
I let that sit for a moment, watching the way the light catches in her hair, silver threads I don't remember being there five years ago.
"You said no," I say.
"Every time," Mae confirms. She glances over then, meeting my gaze squarely. There's no defensiveness there. No apology. Just readiness. "This land isn't for sale."
I nod slowly. "What else did he do?"
Mae's hand stills on her mug. "What do you mean?"
"Cole doesn't just make offers and walk away politely when you say no," I say. "So what else?"
Mae is quiet for a long moment, her fingers drumming once against her mug before going still.
"He stopped being a good neighbor," she says finally.
I wait.
"Used to be, if someone's fence went down in a storm, you'd help fix it. If a cow wandered onto your land, you'd call and let them know. Little things." Mae's voice stays even, but there's an edge underneath. "Cole doesn't do that anymore. Hasn't for a while."
"What does he do instead?" I ask.
"Nothing," Mae says. "And that's the problem.
Fence goes down on our side near his property line, he doesn't mention it.
Stock wanders over, we don't hear about it until we're short a head and have to go looking.
Equipment breaks down and we need to borrow something—suddenly everything's in use or getting repaired. "
My stomach tightens. "He's making it harder."
"Deliberately," Mae says. "Nothing you could call him on directly. Nothing that looks like sabotage. Just a steady withdrawal of the kind of help ranchers usually give each other."
I picture it easily enough. Small problems becoming bigger ones because the usual safety nets aren't there. Time lost. Money spent on things that used to be solved with a phone call and a handshake.
"And the boarders?" I ask.
Mae's expression shifts, something sadder moving through it. "That started before Cole's offers. Right after your dad died."
My chest tightens, but I don't look away.
"People didn't leave because they wanted to," Mae continues. "They left because we couldn't give them what they needed anymore."
I know what's coming, but I let her say it anyway.
"Your dad was the draw," Mae says simply. "He was the one training their horses, giving lessons, working with their kids. When he died, we lost that." She says.
The guilt lands sharp and familiar, but I force myself to stay present. To not flinch away from it.
"So they went to Cole's place," I say quietly.
Mae nods. "He's been expanding his operation. New facilities. Better rates. And he's got trainers on staff. People who'll be there consistently." She looks at me. "He made it easy for them to leave."
I swallow hard. "How many?"
"We're down to three boarders," Mae says. "Used to have twelve."
I do the math in my head. Twelve boarders at standard rates, plus training fees, lesson income. That's not supplementary money—that's half the ranch's operating budget. The number hits harder than I expected. Twelve down to three. That's not a slow decline—that's hemorrhaging.
"How bad is it?" I ask. "Financially."
Mae takes a long breath before answering. "We've got about a year. Maybe a little more if we're careful and nothing else goes wrong."
"A year until what?"
"Until we can't make it work anymore," Mae says plainly. "Until we have to seriously consider selling. Or losing it some other way."
The words hang there between us, stark and undeniable. A year. Twelve months to turn things around or lose everything my dad built, everything this family has held onto for generations.
"Why didn't you tell me?" The question comes out quieter than I intended. Not accusatory. Just hurt.
Mae looks at me fully then, and something in her expression softens. "Because you were building a life somewhere that didn't hurt to wake up in. I wasn't going to pull you back into all this just because we needed help.”
"It's my family's ranch," I say.
"It's mine to manage," Mae counters gently. "You left for a reason. I wasn't going to guilt you into coming back."
I open my mouth to argue, then close it. Because the truth is, I don't know what I would've done if she'd told me two years ago. Would I have come back then? Would I have stayed? Or would I have sent money and told myself that was enough?
"I called you every week," Mae continues, her voice soft. "And every week, you sounded good. Settled. Like you were finally finding your footing." She pauses. "I wasn't going to take that away from you."
"That should've been my choice," I say.
"Maybe," Mae allows. "But I made it mine."
We sit with that for a moment. The light has almost completely faded now, the pasture slipping into shadow. Somewhere in the distance, a horse nickers softly.
"I wasn't trying to lie to you," Mae says after a while. "I was trying to protect you."
I nod slowly. I understand that. I even appreciate it in a twisted way. But it doesn't change the fact that I've been living in a version of reality that wasn't true, making decisions based on information that was incomplete.
"You should've told me," I say again, but there's no heat in it. Just fact.
"Yeah," Mae says quietly. "Probably."
The porch light clicks on with a soft hum, spilling a warm circle across the boards and Mae's worn boots. The pasture beyond is fully dark now, the land holding its shape in shadow.
I lean back in my chair and stare out at the place I grew up. The place I left. The place that kept going without me, struggling in ways I never saw because no one wanted me to.
"So what now?" I ask.
Mae shifts, joints cracking quietly. "Now we figure it out. One day at a time."
"That's not a plan," I say.
"No," Mae agrees. "But it's what we've got."
I want to argue. Want to demand a strategy, a timeline, a clear path forward. But the truth is, I don't have those things either. I came back to help Mae with her leg. Temporary. Manageable. A week or two at most.
This is bigger than that.
This is a year of slow bleeding that I didn't know was happening. A neighbor circling like a vulture. A family legacy that's one bad season away from disappearing.
And I don't know if I'm the person who can fix it.
I don't even know if I'm staying long enough to try.
Mae stands and stretches, the movement slow and tired. "It's been a long day. We can talk more tomorrow."
I stand too, my body heavy with more than just physical exhaustion. "Yeah."
We move toward the door together, the night air cool and settled around us. Mae pauses with her hand on the screen door, looking back at me.
"I'm glad you're here, Hazel," she says quietly. "Even if it's just for a little while."
The words sit in my chest, warm and painful at the same time.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
Mae heads inside, and I linger on the porch a moment longer. The ranch looks the same as it did this morning. Gates closed. Fences standing. Animals quiet in the dark.
Nothing has shifted on the surface.
But I feel it anyway—the difference, subtle and undeniable.
A year. That's what Mae has. What we have.
One year to turn around five years of slow bleeding.
I turn and follow Mae inside, the screen door clicking softly shut behind me. The weight of it settles over my shoulders—not crushing, just there. Present. Real.
Tomorrow I'll wake up and muck stalls and check fences and do the work that needs doing.
Three weeks from now, I'll have to decide if that's enough.
But tonight, I just need to sit with what I learned.