6. Chapter 6 #2
I stand in the doorway and feel the day rearrange itself again: staffing, schedules, guest rooms, who can be doubled up where, who will complain, who has a horse on overnight watch and cannot afford to lose sleep to somebody else’s snoring through a plywood wall.
Somewhere in the middle of that, Montana becomes part of the problem.
She’s housed on the east side, because apparently bad timing wasn’t finished with me yet and had decided to get practical about it.
I close my eyes for a second, open them, and turn back to the hallway. “Get me every room that took water,” I tell him. “And tell maintenance to leave it alone until Wade and I walk it.”
He starts in on fans, permits, drying time. I let the words run past me and look at the damage instead.
This stopped being about one burst pipe the second it got into the walls.
By the time Wade reaches the housing wing, the easy fixes are already dead.
On paper, there are always places to put people …
the tack loft over the north barn, cots in the old bunkhouse, doubled-up rooms if nobody minds living on top of each other for a week.
None of that survives contact with actual human beings.
Wade and I walk the east-side rooms with the hall runner damp under our boots.
He doesn’t say much at first. He doesn’t have to.
The smell says enough. So does the warped floor, the paint pulling loose at the trim, the wet line crawling higher than it has any right to.
When we reach the room at the end of the corridor and he sees the stain spreading across the ceiling, he lets out a breath through his nose.
“Well,” Wade says, looking up at the ceiling stain, “that just moved past annoying.”
“That is not a useful scale.”
“It’s the one we’ve got.”
He leans into the doorway and keeps looking, taking in the bed frame, the wet wall, the bucket somebody shoved under the worst of the drip. “How many on this side?”
“Four rooms occupied. Two already torn open. East bath’s out until the plumbing line clears.”
He nods once, already shifting people around in his head before I finish saying it.
We go through the obvious options because that’s what you do before you admit the answer you don’t want.
The loft over the north barn still runs cold at night and has no shower worth mentioning.
The old bunkhouse is holding two temp hands and half a pallet of boxed supplements because storage flooded last month.
Doubling people up sounds manageable right up until you remember foal watch, early turnout, and the fact that tired ranch hands start hating each other fast when they lose sleep.
“West wing?” Wade asks.
“Full.”
“The cottage?”
“Contractors.”
That is when he looks at me.
“Main house.”
The word just sits there.
I look back down the hall at the stacks outside the damaged rooms … duffels, boots, a plastic laundry basket, somebody’s blanket folded over the top like that makes any of it less temporary.
“The guest rooms are for owners and clients.”
“Today they’re for whoever you don’t want breathing mold.” Wade folds his arms. “Call it what you want. It’s still the cleanest fix.”
He’s right, which does nothing to improve my mood.
Once the main house is on the table, the rest narrows fast: who needs to stay closest for night checks, who can be trusted not to turn somebody else’s hallway into a circus after midnight, who is least likely to make the whole arrangement worse just by existing inside it.
The list gets shorter fast, and I don’t like where it lands.
I drag a hand over the back of my neck and feel the day settle deeper under my skin. This is the version of bad timing I was trying not to have to deal with … a practical mess big enough to knock every boundary I’ve tried to rebuild clean off its footing.
Wade watches my face for half a second too long. “You already know where this is headed.”
Yes. That’s exactly the problem, and by late afternoon, the decision is no longer mine to avoid.
Maintenance has shut the water fully off and contractors are cutting into drywall.
Two of the displaced hands can be doubled up in the west side for a night or two if nobody minds tripping over duffels.
One can take the old bunkhouse because he’s on day shift and apparently sleeps like the dead.
That still leaves one room, one person, one answer I’ve been trying not to say out loud since the first drip hit the floor.
Montana stands in the main hall outside the office with her overnight bag at her feet and a folded blanket over one arm, like she already understands exactly how little dignity there is in being moved around by plumbing.
She looks tired, worn thin at the edges from a day that started in my bed, crossed through a foaling emergency, and somehow still found room to get worse.
Cassie's beside her, arms folded. Wade leans one shoulder against the wall, silent in the way he gets when he knows the most useful thing he can do is let the inevitable happen.
I stop three paces short and hand the key across.
“The west guest room,” I say. “Second floor. End of the hall.”
Montana looks at the key, then at me.
Nothing in her face moves much, but I can see the exact second the meaning lands. This isn’t just a room or temporary housing. It’s the main house ... my house.
She curls her hand around the key slowly, like she’s not sure whether to take it or throw it back at me. “This is what you came up with?”
“It’s what’s open.”
Cassie straightens from the wall, because apparently silence would kill her. “It’s actually the nicest room on the property, aside from Rebel’s fancy office, of course.”
“Cassie,” I say.
She lifts both hands. “Leaving.”
She isn’t, not really. She just drifts far enough toward the mudroom to pretend she’s no longer in the conversation while still absolutely listening.
Montana keeps her eyes on mine. “How long will this be for?”
“A few days,” I say. “Maybe less if the repairs move faster than expected.”
We both know that's optimistic.
She shifts the blanket higher against her arm and glances toward the staircase, then back at me.
There’s no gratitude in the look and no relief either, only the same sharpened awareness that has been there between us since the inn, now wrapped around something more dangerous because this isn’t weather or bad timing for one night.
This has structure, walls, and my staff, my kitchen, my hallway, my control being asked to coexist with her toothbrush on a sink twenty feet from my bedroom.
She shifts her weight onto one hip, blanket pinned higher against her side. “So that’s happening.”
“It is.”
The answer comes out flatter than I mean it to, or maybe exactly as flat as I mean it to. Hard to tell anymore.
Wade straightens off the wall. “I’ll have somebody move the rest of your things over.”
“No,” Montana says without looking away from me. “I’ve got it.”
That tracks.
She gathers the bag and blanket and heads for the stairs. A few steps up, she stops and glances back at me.
“This fixes the sleeping problem,” she says quietly. “Nothing else.”
Then she keeps going.
I listen to her steps on the staircase until they disappear into the second floor of the house I built specifically to keep my life in separate, manageable rooms.
Now one of those rooms belongs to her, and forced proximity that lasts a night is one thing. A few days in my house is something else entirely.