Chapter 10
TORIN
The Merc was quiet for a Sunday night. A handful of locals scattered across the small tables Ruby kept near the front windows, the coffee machine running its familiar low hum behind the counter.
It had been a few weeks since Claire came back to Mustang Mountain, long enough for the town to settle into a rhythm of watching her. Long enough for the rumors about Lois’s files to make their way through every kitchen and feed store in the valley.
Claire pushed through the door ahead of me, and I gave the room a quick scan. I clocked who was there, where they were sitting, and the quickest way out if things went sideways.
The temperature dropped the moment people recognized her. Not dramatically. No one stood up or walked out. It was way more subtle than that. A conversation at the corner table tapered off mid-sentence. A woman by the display case looked up from her phone and then looked carefully away.
Claire didn't miss it. She never missed anything. Her chin lifted by a fraction, and she moved to the counter without breaking stride.
"Do you want coffee?" she asked me, her voice steady.
"Yeah."
Ruby materialized from the back like she'd been waiting—which she probably had. Her eyes moved from Claire to me and back again with the efficiency of a woman cataloging information for later use.
"It’s nice to see the two of you out and about," she said as she set two mugs on the counter.
"We've been keeping busy," I said. "Figured we'd stop in for a minute."
"Mm." Ruby poured without being asked, her rings catching the overhead light. "Claire, honey. Word is you've been thorough with Lois's paperwork."
Claire accepted her mug and wrapped both hands around it. "That's the job."
"Of course it is." Ruby set the carafe down with a small decisive click. "Lois was a thorough woman herself. Always said the details mattered." She paused. "Some folks would rather the details stayed filed."
"I noticed," Claire said.
Ruby looked at her for a long moment, then at me, then back at her coffee station. Whatever she'd intended to say, she chose to leave it there. That alone told me something.
We took a table near the back, the same table I'd steered her to the last time, where the wall was behind us and the room was visible. Seemed like more than a few weeks ago that I’d convinced her to have a cinnamon roll with me.
So much had changed in such a short time, including the way I felt about the women in front of me.
She settled into the chair across from me, pulled her mug close, and let the quiet settle around us before she said anything. "Ruby’s still trying to warn me."
I didn’t want her to worry. "Ruby warns everyone. It's how she shows she cares."
"This felt different."
I turned my mug in my hands, not wanting to admit it. "Yeah. It did."
The room had eased back into its own conversations, but I tracked the undertow of the occasional glances our way, and the lowered voices that had nothing to do with volume control and everything to do with caution.
Claire had grown up with this. I'd grown up with a different version of it, being watched for different reasons, so I knew what it felt like to have a room make a decision about me before I’d opened my mouth.
"Is work still bothering you to come back?" I asked. The question had been sitting in my chest for a few days. I’d been grateful for the time we’d been able to spend together, but it wasn’t enough. I’d never get my fill of Claire Hollister.
She met my gaze, then looked away. "Yes."
"Your life back in Seattle—"
"Is waiting." She set her mug down. "I gave them a loose timeline when I left. They've been patient."
"But."
"But I’m not done here yet. Lois spent years putting those files together.
Whatever she was building toward—the 1912 transfer, the Bible entry, the breeding records that tie everything together—she didn't get to finish it.
" Claire traced the rim of her mug with one finger.
"I'd be walking away from the middle of something. "
I understood that. It was one of the harder things I'd ever learned on the job… that leaving a thing unfinished didn't make it stop mattering. It just meant someone else inherited the weight of it, or it sat there and waited.
She was quiet for a moment. "I keep thinking about what she left me. Not just the property. The letter. The files. She could have donated the papers to the county historical society and left me a simple deed. She didn't." Claire looked up. "She wanted me to find this."
I believed that. I'd believed it since the night I watched her half-climb through that window with a cut on her hand and absolutely no intention of asking anyone for help.
There was a reason Lois had chosen Claire as executor.
There was a reason she'd organized those boxes with tabs and cross-references and careful handwriting, knowing someone would have to sit down and read every page.
Lois Hollister had known exactly what she was doing.
"She trusted you," I said.
"Yeah." Claire's voice was quieter now. "She did."
Across the room, Larry Ingram shifted in his chair, and I heard him mutter something to the man with him. I didn't catch the full sentence, just the tail end about some things being better left in the ground. The other man nodded.
I set my mug down.
"Larry."
He turned. So did most of the room.
"If you’ve got something to say about historical records, say it so everyone can hear it. That way we're all on the same page."
Larry’s expression closed up the way men's faces do when they've been called out and they know it. "No offense meant, Torin. Just saying some old family history tends to stir more trouble than it solves."
"Stir trouble for who?" I let the question sit without softening it.
"Because Claire came back here to settle her aunt's estate, and while she was doing that work…
going through files most people in this town haven't thought about in forty years…
she connected the Hollister breeding records to Dawson Griffith's horse ledger.
Bad Habit, joint-listed under both families in 1912.
" I looked around the room slow and steady.
"That solved the lineage question on Dawson's stock. Which means the permits go through and this town gets the rodeo we’ve been trying to build. "
The room was very quiet.
"She did that," I looked at Larry. "So if anyone's got a problem with her finishing what her aunt started, I'd like to hear the actual reason. Not the comfortable version."
Larry didn't answer. No one answered.
I turned back to Claire.
She was watching me with an expression I couldn't fully read. Not surprise, exactly. Something more careful than surprise.
The noise of the room built back up gradually. Cups clattered against saucers. The legs of a chair scraped the floor. Ruby asked someone if they wanted a refill. The temperature had changed again, less wary now, or at least more honest about what the wariness had been.
Claire looked down at her coffee, then back at me. "You didn't have to do that.”
"No."
"But you did it anyway."
"Yes."
She held my gaze, and I let her read whatever was there. I was done being careful with what was true.
"I love you, Claire." My voice came out steady because I meant it, not because I had to work at it.
"I didn't plan to say it like this, in the Merc with Larry Ingram staring holes in the back of my head.
But you're sitting here trying to decide between the life you built somewhere else and the one still half-finished here, and I need you to have the full information.
" I turned my mug once. "I don't want you to leave again. "
She was quiet for long enough that I heard Ruby drop a spoon in the back.
"That's a lot of information," Claire said.
"Yeah."
She let out a long breath, like she needed the time to decide how to respond.
"I love you too," she said. "That part's not actually complicated." Her eyes were steady on mine. "The rest of it is."
"I know."
"I have a job in Seattle. I have a condo. I have colleagues who expect me back."
"I know that too."
"And this town still watches me like I'm about to burn something down just because of my last name."
"They'll get used to being wrong." I leaned forward slightly and set my elbows on the table. "I'm not asking you to make a decision right this second. I just want you to know where I stand before you make it."
She looked at me for a long moment, her hands around the mug, and something in her expression settled.
"I'm not ready to leave. The research, the Bible entry, whatever Lois was building toward…
I haven't found it yet. I can't leave so many questions unanswered.
" A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I'm too stubborn for that."
Relief surged through me. She wasn’t leaving yet. "I know."
"And I'm not ready to leave you." She said it straight out with no hesitation. No dressing it up.
I reached across and covered her hand with mine.
She turned her palm up and held on.
Around us, the Merc continued its low Sunday night rhythm—coffee and conversation, Ruby's voice weaving through the tables, the hum of the cooler unit and the distant sound of a truck passing on the main road.
The kind of ordinary that this town had built itself around for generations, all while sitting on top of a story it had never quite been willing to finish.
Claire wasn't walking away from it. And neither was I.