Chapter 16
LEVI
The dining hall is full by the time I get there, the last-day energy already running through the room like something in the air itself, everybody talking a little more, laughing a little easier, the week behind them and the drive home not here yet.
Darla's got the griddle going at full capacity.
Mandy's making a pass with the biscuit baskets.
Londyn's working the room with the coffee pot.
I slide up to the counter. Cass is already at a table near the window, coffee in front of her, listening to something Rhea's saying. She looks up when I sit down.
"Mornin’, Cass."
"Morning, Levi," she says. She holds my gaze for one second. The two of us, last night, sitting right there between us. Then she goes back to Rhea.
"Darla," I say, "I think you might love me."
She looks at me. "I love everybody. Some people I love from a distance."
I laugh and pick up my fork. Darla goes back to her griddle.
Macy Ford is holding court at the nearest table, both arms out wide, telling Cal and Finn something about Clover that requires her full wingspan to explain properly.
"She just looked at that tarp," Macy says, "like it personally offended her. Like it owed her an apology."
Cal's already laughing before she finishes. "She looked at it that same way every single day."
"And every single day I had to act surprised about it."
Finn has his coffee halfway to his mouth and a grin he's not bothering to hide.
Grant's in a window seat with a full cup and the expression of a man who arrived early, claimed his territory, and has no regrets about it.
Petra's at a corner table watching Macy the way Petra watches everything, quiet and present and not missing a word of it.
Jo comes through the door last. She takes the room in with one look, pulls out the chair across from Cass without asking, and sits down.
I'm watching Darla flip eggs on the griddle when the table goes quiet for one beat in the middle of all the noise.
"I heard this was your first T&O clinic," Jo says. “It didn't look like it."
Cass looks at her for a second. "Thanks," she says.
Jo nods. She pushes back from the table and heads off to find a seat somewhere else.
Rhea looks at Cassie. "Not bad."
Cass picks up her fork and goes back to her plate.
I know what her non-reaction looks like when something gets through. Jo landed that one. Cass took it in and put it somewhere private and didn't make anything of it. That's exactly how she handles things that matter.
I know a lot of things about her now that I didn't four weeks ago.
She feeds those cats before she does anything else in the morning.
She watches a horse for a solid thirty seconds before she says a word about it.
I know the difference between her flat expression and her waiting one.
It took me the better part of three weeks to figure that out.
Most people probably never do. I know what her face looks like when she stops holding everything back.
Nothing she's performing for, nothing she's protecting.
I've been carrying that across every room she's in since the first time I saw it.
Darla glances over her shoulder. "Eat your breakfast," she says, and turns back to the griddle.
I eat my breakfast.
***
By mid-morning, Sawyer has the whole T&O group mounted and lined up along the rail. She pulls an envelope out of her back pocket and holds it up.
"This is how we finish every T&O clinic," she says. "Timed runs. Full course, same order as yesterday. Fastest clean run wins." She turns the envelope. "A gift card to High Country Feed and Tack in Bozeman to the winner. Two hundred dollars. No faults, no refusals."
Cal straightens up in the saddle and looks at Finn like he's already decided this is his. Finn doesn't look back. Finn is looking at the course.
Cass comes up beside me at the rail. "Cal's going to be insufferable if he wins."
"Cal's going to be insufferable either way," I say.
She smiles.
Macy goes first and throws both arms up when she clears the standing box like she just won a buckle. Jo runs it quiet and correct, no wasted motion. Sable, Vera, and Grant come through clean one after another. Grant and Bear so dialed in together that it barely looks like work.
Then Cal goes, and Diesel comes off the line like he heard the word competition and made a personal decision about it. Cal hollers when he clears the box.
"Time?" he calls.
Rhea checks the stop watch. "Three fifty-two."
Cal pumps his fist. Finn turns back to the course without a word.
"You doing okay this morning?" I ask Cass, low enough that it stays between us.
"I keep thinking about last night," she says. No hedge in it, no sideways glance first. "The way you leaned into me at the rail. In front of everybody."
"Good thinking, I hope."
"Good thinking." She bumps my shoulder with hers. "I'm just not used to people knowing yet."
"They've known for a while, Cass."
"I know. I'm getting used to it anyway."
Petra runs it clean. Then Finn rides Dusk to the line, and the whole rail goes quiet the way it does when everyone already knows something is about to matter.
Dusk comes off the start forward and honest, ears up, moving through every obstacle without a flinch. Four days of patient work showing in every stride. When they hit the bridge, Finn's hands go completely loose on the reins. Dusk crosses it steadily and blows out hard when he reaches the far end.
The rail erupts. Cal is the loudest. Macy grabs Jo's arm. Even Grant is grinning.
Finn brings Dusk back from the far end of the arena at a walk, one hand on the gelding's neck, his mouth pressed tight, fighting a grin.
Rhea calls the time. "Three forty-one."
Cal's face goes through three expressions in two seconds.
"That's my horse," Finn says, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Cass leans into my arm at the rail, her shoulder settling against mine. I keep my eyes on Sawyer walking out to Finn. I don't move. This is the first time she's done it. Out here, where anyone can see.
Darla is on the fence two posts down with her coffee. She looks over at the rail, looks at me. Tilts her head.
"Don't say it," I tell her.
"I didn't say a word," Darla says. She takes a long sip.
***
I'm cleaning the water trough in the pasture when I hear the truck come through the gate.
I know that engine before I see the truck. I set the brush down on the trough rail and walk toward the lot.
Garrett's truck is parked in front of the barn. He's already out, one arm up on the hood, standing there looking at the arena.
"Garrett."
He turns around. He looks the same as he did the last time he stood in this lot, tired in the way of a man who came here for an answer and still doesn't have one.
"Thought you'd be out at the arena," he says.
"Thought you'd call first," I say.
He drops his arm off the hood and looks at the ground for a second. "Yeah," he says. "Well, you probably wouldn't have picked up anyway, so I didn't bother."
We stand there in the lot with the afternoon running around us. I tip my head toward the barn, and he follows me in.
Inside, it's cool and dim, the smell of hay, grain, and dust.
"You never picked up. Not once. Not in fourteen years." His voice stays even. "The note's due in thirty days. I need you to come back in person so we can sit across the table from the bank and close it. Both names are on the note. I can't do it without you."
"I know."
"You said no last time," Garrett says. "Standing right here. You said no, and I drove home with nothing."
"I'm going back," I say. "In person. I'll close it."
He looks at me the way he looked at me last time, like he's deciding whether to believe it.
"You want to know what it looked like after you left," he says. It's not a question.
I don't say anything.
"The land went first," he says. "Not all at once.
A parcel here, a parcel there, just enough to stay current with the bank.
I was maybe sixteen the first time I understood what that meant.
Dad would come in from a meeting in town, grab a drink, and not say anything.
The next week, there'd be a survey crew out on the east fence line.
" He looks at the far end of the barn. "The cattle started thinning when I was eighteen or so.
Same thing. Twenty head, then thirty, then another twenty.
He'd tell me it was temporary. That prices would come back. They didn't come back."
He stops for a second. I don't say anything.
"He was still working the property then, mostly.
Getting up, doing the rounds, keeping up appearances.
But the drinking was bad by that point and getting worse.
By the time I was twenty or twenty-one, he'd stopped doing much of anything.
He got up in the morning, walked to the front room, poured a glass, and that was his day.
By noon, he was drunk. By supper, he was passed out.
I'd come in from the barn, step around him and make something to eat then go to bed. I’d do it again the next morning.
I was running what was left of it. Which by then wasn't much.
" His jaw moves. "The horses went around the same time.
No cattle meant no real reason to keep them.
We sold them off, and I watched every one of them load up and go down the road. "
I stand there and take it in.
"By the time he died, there was nothing left but the house and the barn and the corrals sitting on a piece of ground too small to ranch.
I got a job at the Hendersons' place two miles over just to cover the payments and keep food in the house.
I filed the estate papers on my lunch break.
" He looks at me. "I've been trying to make minimum payments for three years out of a ranch hand's wages.
Some months I couldn't. I'd call the bank, beg for time, catch up when I could. Waiting on you."