Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Hazel
The house smells like onions and something simmering low and patient.
I step inside and shrug out of my jacket, hanging it on the peg by the door out of habit. Dust still clings to my cuffs. My muscles carry the good kind of ache, the kind that comes from work done with intention. From being useful.
Mae stands at the stove, back to me, wooden spoon moving slow through a pot that doesn't look fancy or celebratory. Just dinner. Practical. Sustaining.
"You get back alright?"
"Yeah." I move to the counter, wash my hands under warm water. "Town was busy."
Mae glances over her shoulder. "Get what you needed?"
"Yeah. Stuff for the barbecue." I dry my hands. "Worked the colt with Eli after."
That gets Mae's attention. She turns, leaning a hip against the counter. "The new one?"
"Yeah. He's got opinions."
Mae smiles faintly. "They always do."
"He settled though. Took some time, but he did."
"Good." Mae stirs the pot again, slower now. "Eli's good with them."
"He is."
Mae nods once, like that confirms something she already knows. The kitchen settles back into its quiet rhythm. Spoon against pot. The low hum of the overhead light. Outside, the last of the daylight slips away.
Mae reaches for the salt, sprinkles a careful amount into the pot, then pauses.
"I swear," she says, more to herself than anything, "every time I go to the store lately, something's gone up again."
I look up from where I'm stacking the groceries I brought in. "Yeah?"
Mae shrugs. "Groceries. Fuel. Doesn't seem to matter what." She sets the salt down and wipes her hands on a towel. "Been spacing out the supply orders. Trying to stretch things."
I still.
It isn't what Mae says. It's how she says it. Casual. Offhand. Like a comment about the weather. But I catch the way her eyes don't quite meet mine after. The way the spoon rests longer on the counter than necessary.
I file it away. I don't say anything yet.
"Want me to chop something?" I ask instead.
Mae shakes her head. "Almost done."
I lean back against the counter, watching her. Waiting. I don't push. Mae has always talked when she's ready. Anything forced just stays shut longer.
We work in silence for a minute. Mae plates the food. I set the table. The clink of dishes sounds louder than it should.
When Mae finally sits down, she doesn't eat right away. She rests her hands on the table, fingers curled loosely, gaze fixed somewhere just past my shoulder.
"Things are tighter than they used to be," she says.
The words land without drama. No sigh. No warning. Just fact.
I look at her. Really look. "How tight?"
Mae's mouth presses into a thin line. She hesitates, just long enough for me to see the calculation there. Then she exhales.
"Feed's up. Fuel too." Mae sets down her fork. "When things run late, even a day or two, it stacks fast. Payments don't line up like they used to."
I nod slowly, letting that settle. "Is it bad?"
"No," Mae says immediately. "No. We're fine." She holds my gaze, firm. "I don't want you thinking otherwise."
"I'm not," I say. "I just want to understand."
Mae relaxes a fraction. "It's tight weeks, not a collapse."
I glance down at my plate, appetite gone. "Is Eli—"
Mae cuts me off gently. "Eli's done everything right."
There's no hesitation in that. No softening. Just certainty.
"He's kept things moving," Mae continues. "He's careful. He plans. He stretches every dollar farther than most people would." She shakes her head. "This isn't about him."
I absorb that. Let it settle. The image of Eli in the corral earlier flickers through my mind. Calm. Focused. Holding tension without letting it turn sharp. The way he stepped back when I invited him to dinner—like he knew better than to let things get easy between us.
"So it's timing," I say.
Mae nods. "Mostly. When things move on schedule, we're fine. When they don't..." She trails off. "It narrows fast."
I sit back in my chair. I don't say what I'm thinking yet. About the pasture. The cattle. The way the days have felt compressed lately, like everything is leaning toward a deadline no one has named.
Mae reaches across the table and touches my wrist briefly. Not pleading. Just grounding.
"I didn't want this on you. Not right when you got back."
I cover her hand with mine. "It's not."
Mae studies me, then nods. "Good."
We eat then, quietly. The food is good. Familiar. But the air between us has shifted. The door Mae opened doesn't slam wide. It just stays ajar, letting in a draft I can't ignore anymore.
And I don't want to.
The silence stretches longer than comfortable.
I hear myself speak before I've fully decided to.
"What can I do?"
The words come out even. Practical. Like I'm asking where the extra towels are kept or whether Mae needs help clearing the table. No drama. No promise wrapped inside it. Just a question with weight to it.
Mae looks at me then. Not quickly. Not with surprise. She studies me the way she always has when something important is on the table, gaze sharp and searching, like she's looking past the words to whatever sits underneath them.
Mae doesn't answer right away. She leans back in her chair, fingers lacing together, considering.
"I didn't want you worrying about all this," Mae says finally. Voice gentle but firm. "Not yet. You've got enough to figure out without the ranch stuff too."
I rest my forearms on the table. I don't argue. Don't rush to soften the moment.
"It's my worry if I'm here," I say quietly.
Mae's brow furrows.
"And I'm here."
Mae searches my face. Not for guilt. Not for obligation. For intention.
I don't offer sympathy. I don't frame it as helping out or easing a burden. I don't promise to fix anything. I'm offering capacity. Time. Attention. A set of hands that knows the land well enough not to slow things down.
Something shifts.
Mae's shoulders ease a fraction. Not relief. Acceptance.
She nods once. A single, decisive motion.
"Alright," she says.
It isn't permission. It's acknowledgment.
I feel it in the way the air changes between us. In the way Mae's gaze lingers now without caution, measuring me not as someone passing through, but as someone standing in place.
I'm not visiting anymore.
I'm back in the room.
After we clear the plates, I stand at the sink long enough to rinse the last dish twice, more for the steadiness of the routine than because it needs it.
Mae moves around me in the kitchen with quiet purpose, putting leftovers away, wiping the counter, the evening folding itself into its usual shape even though I can feel the shift underneath it.
The conversation with Mae sits heavy in my chest, but not in a bad way. More like weight I'm choosing to carry.
When the kitchen is finally clean and the house settles, I dry my hands on a towel and glance toward the hallway.
"I want to check something," I say.
Mae looks up from where she's stacking containers. "Now?"
I nod. "Yeah. Just... Dad's office."
Her expression softens, but she doesn't ask questions. She gives a small nod toward the back of the house, an unspoken permission. "Light's on if you need it."
I move down the hall, the floorboards creaking in the same places they always have. The house feels different at night. Smaller. Warmer. The sounds contained. My childhood bedroom door sits half closed, a thin stripe of darkness behind it, and I keep walking.
The office door opens with quiet resistance, like it hasn't been used much lately but hasn't been forgotten either. Inside, the air is cooler. Dust and old wood and the faint trace of aftershave, or maybe just memory.
I flick on the lamp.
The light pools across the desk, catching on the edges of stacked folders and a couple of notebooks Mae must have moved to one side for safekeeping. The room isn't preserved like a shrine. Just unused. Mae's kept it available even if no one sits here anymore.
I pull the chair out and sit. The wood creaks under my weight, a sound that hits harder than it should. I rest my hands on the desk for a moment, palms flat, feeling the grain beneath my skin.
Then I open the top drawer.
A worn spiral notebook lies inside, cover bent, the corner softened from years of being handled. I lift it out and turn it over. My father's handwriting stares back at me from the front in thick black ink. Blocky. Certain.
My throat tightens.
I don't stop.
I open it.
The pages are filled edge to edge. Dates. Names. Weather notes. Short observations written in the margins. It isn't pretty. It isn't organized in a way I would have recognized back then. But now, sitting here with Mae's words still in my ears, it feels like a map.
Timing discipline. Not perfection. Just the steady, relentless management of days.
I flip through and find a section where the handwriting changes slightly, more hurried, as if he'd been jotting notes on the fly.
Move cattle early if heat hits by noon. Don't wait for the perfect day, you'll lose the window. If you're behind, you'll stay behind.
My fingers pause on the page.
I can hear his voice in the bluntness of it. Not unkind. Just clear. My father was never a man who pretended the land would forgive you if you forgot about it for a week.
I flip again. More notes. Rotation reminders. Grazing days counted out. A scribbled line about storms rolling in early one year, forcing a change in plans.
I keep going until something else appears.
A list of names.
Not cattle. People.
Boarding: Collins mare, full care Training: Roper gelding, tune-up Lessons: Tues/Thurs evening
I stare at it longer than the rest.
My dad's handwriting has always been all over the ranch.
But this—this is a part of the operation I haven't thought about in years.
I can picture it now with sudden clarity.
The extra trailers parked along the side.
The visiting riders. The steady stream of town kids showing up for lessons in summer, their helmets too big, their excitement loud enough to carry all the way to the house.
The boarding and training program was an entire income stream.
And it's gone now.
I swallow, the reality of it settling in.
Of course it is. He was the one with the reputation. The one people trusted with their horses. The one who could take a nervous colt and turn him into something steady. Who could tune up a barrel horse, troubleshoot a problem, teach a teenage girl how to sit deep and stop yanking on the reins.
I helped sometimes. I was around it. I even loved it. But I didn't understand what it meant financially.
Back then, I was young. Living in the moment.
The ranch was the background to my life, not the fragile machine keeping the lights on.
I cared about the horses and the work and the way the sun felt on my shoulders after a long ride, but I didn't care about invoices or deposits or how a boarding fee paid for diesel and feed.
I didn't pay attention back then.
I flip farther and find a page where my father has written numbers down the side in neat columns.
Boarding fees. Lesson fees. Training packages. Names beside them. Payments marked with small checkmarks.
My chest tightens.
I can almost see the sequence of loss. How that income stops in one abrupt, brutal moment.
How the ranch would have felt it immediately.
How Mae would have taken over what she could.
How Eli would have taken over what he had to.
How the cattle operation alone carries them, but not with the same cushion.
Not with the same margin for a late season or a missed window.
I lean back slightly, the chair creaking again, and stare at the desk lamp's circle of light.
So much of this has been happening while I'm elsewhere, believing the ranch is simply... the ranch. Constant. Permanent. Like land can't be vulnerable.
I turn the page again and find more of what I need. Notes about when my dad moved cattle to avoid a cold snap. A reminder to repair a fence before a storm line hit. A sharp, underlined sentence that feels like it was written after a mistake.
Losing days costs money. Losing horses costs the ranch.
I run my thumb along the edge of the paper.
The colt earlier comes back to me. The way it took patience and steadiness to keep him from turning fear into fight. The way he finally softened, finally chose to stand.
Trust, earned slowly.
Timing, managed relentlessly.
And the piece I've been missing until this moment.
They don't just need to catch up. They need income that isn't tied to the cattle clock alone. They need something that can steady the ranch when weather steals a week or the market dips. They need what my dad built with his hands and his reputation.
I stare at his handwriting again.
I have his blood. I have the skill. And I've spent years not using it.
I reach for the next notebook. This one's thinner, more recent. I flip through quickly—more of the same. Rotations. Weather patterns. Client names that thin out toward the end, then stop altogether around the time he died.
The last entry is dated two weeks before the heart attack.
I close it and set it aside.
I don't need to read every page to understand what happened here. What was lost. What needs to come back.
I close the final notebook gently and stack it with the others, my palm resting on the cover for a moment like I'm making a promise I don't need to speak out loud.
Not yet.
But soon.