13. Chapter 13
Rebel
By the third time she avoids being alone with me, I stop pretending I haven’t noticed.
It happens in small, defensible ways. She leaves the barn office before I get there, or hands a question off to one of the other grooms instead of bringing it to me herself.
None of it is overt enough to challenge, and none of it is something I can name without sounding like a man who has started tracking one employee too closely.
Which is exactly what I’ve done.
I stand at the end of the foaling aisle, and watch her laugh at something the farrier says.
It isn’t flirtation; even from twenty feet away I can see how careful she is with the laugh, how it stops at her mouth and never reaches her eyes.
Even from across the aisle, she looks careful with herself, the sound barely carries, and she never looks in my direction.
I understand the message well enough. We crossed a line, and now she wants distance from whatever comes after. Regret has a way of making itself useful, and avoidance is one of its more efficient forms.
She comes down the aisle toward the gate where I’m standing and reaches for the lead rope hanging beside it at the same time I do. She realizes it’s me and jerks her hand back fast enough to leave the space between us feeling singed.
"Sorry," she says, already stepping away.
It's flat, brief, and delivered without looking at me.
I take the rope off the hook and give her the kind of nod I could offer any employee. "No problem."
She keeps going. I listen to her steps fade into the rest of the barn noise, then stand there longer than I should with the rope hanging from my hand and the distinct sense that I have just been dismissed from something I had no right to think was mine.
If regret is what this is, it ought to simplify things. Instead it leaves a bruise in places I would rather not admit exist.
By midmorning, I make a decision I would prefer to call disciplined.
I stop finding reasons to cross her path. Questions that would usually go through me get handled through Wade, the office, or whichever senior hand can answer them without dragging me into it. It’s a clean adjustment on paper.
In practice, it means I hear her voice without seeing her face. I catch pieces of her day secondhand, which is perfectly fine.
Near noon, I step out of the office just as she comes up the drive from the broodmare paddock with a halter slung over one shoulder. She slows when she sees me. For a moment I think she might say something, and against my better judgment I almost stop walking.
Instead, I lift two fingers in acknowledgment and keep going.
When I glance back from the corner of the barn, she’s still standing there. Not for long. She adjusts the halter and heads inside without looking after me.
By early afternoon, the ranch gives me enough real problems that I should stop thinking about invented ones.
Breeding season strips romance off this business fast. Tight timeframes and a single bad call can cost money in numbers large enough to make most people sloppy with the truth afterward.
One of our mares is running two days behind where Doc Rhodes wanted her.
The transport company for next week’s semen shipment still hasn’t confirmed the revised delivery.
Everyone needs something, and all of it matters.
For a little while, the day does what I need it to and stays crowded enough to keep me out of my own head.
The first sign of trouble shows up in the paperwork built to catch it.
Wade’s halfway through transport timing when I reach for Juniper’s medication chart to confirm whether Doc adjusted her anti-inflammatory after yesterday’s stiffness.
The binder is thick, tabbed, and as close to idiot-proof as paper ever gets on a ranch where tired people move fast. I flip to her page, scan the entries, and stop.
The dose is marked at 6:00 a.m. on today’s line.
It should have been noon.
I check the previous sheet, then the standing order clipped behind it. Same mare. Same med. Same notation from Doc. Administer after the midday feed unless soreness increases overnight. Nothing in the overnight notes suggests it did.
"Who handled Juniper this morning?" I ask without looking up.
Wade shifts his weight. "Tana handled the first checks in that row. Caleb did the feed. Why?"
I turn the binder so he can see the line.
He studies it, expression flattening into concentration rather than alarm.
"Could be that someone wrote the wrong time after the fact.
Could be they gave it at noon yesterday and copied the line wrong today.
Hell, with everybody running on bad sleep, it could be as simple as somebody writing a six that was meant to be a twelve. "
All of them are plausible, and none of them are good.
I glance toward the cabinet where the meds are locked.
The box for syringes is closed and nothing looks disturbed.
Outside, a gelding bangs once against a stall front and somebody swears under their breath.
The ranch keeps moving like it always does, even when the kind of mistake that starts on paper can do just as much damage as weather or injury.
"Check the inventory log," I say.
Wade grabs the log, runs a finger down the sheet, and exhales through his nose. "No discrepancy there."
I take the binder back. One wrong line on one tired day could mean almost nothing, but it still sits wrong.
The detail comes from Tana an hour later, in the tone of someone trying not to make a problem larger than the facts can support.
I’m at the treatment counter signing off on a farrier invoice when she appears in the office doorway with Juniper’s halter draped over one forearm. She doesn’t step fully inside.
"Do you have a minute?" she asks.
"If this is about Juniper, yes."
Her eyes flick once to Wade, then back to me. "It is."
Wade takes the cue and pushes off the file cabinet. "I’ll go see whether Caleb ever found the shipping tags he misplaced."
When he’s gone, she comes in two steps, no more. Up close, the makeup under her eyes can’t quite hide how worn out she is.
She sets the halter on the desk. "Her chart says she got the anti-inflammatory at six. Maybe she did. But if she had, I would’ve expected her more relaxed through the left shoulder by first turnout. But she moved like the stiffness was still sitting there, then around noon she eased all at once."
I lean back in my chair. "You’re saying the time is wrong."
"I’m saying the horse doesn’t agree with the paper."
It’s a very Tana answer, precise in the place that matters and uninterested in dressing itself up for my comfort. She slides a thumb along the worn leather of the halter strap while she thinks.
"Also," she says, "Juniper’s feed tub still had half her feed in it at seven ...thirty. Caleb told Cassie this morning she cleaned it up right after meds because she was hungry again. That doesn’t fit either."
For a moment neither of us speaks.
This is no longer one wrong number written by a tired hand, but a pattern trying not to be seen.
I don’t thank her for bringing it to me. With anyone else, that would be an omission. Instead I turn Juniper’s chart back toward me and tap the line with one finger. "Walk me through her morning. Start at first checks."
She nods once and does exactly that. She gives me times, behavior, body stiffness, appetite, the order in which stalls were handled, who crossed that aisle, who was late, who doubled back for a missing lead rope.
By the time she finishes, the picture is clearer and more troubling for how ordinary all the pieces look on their own.
"You think somebody changed it after the fact," I say.
Her mouth tightens. "I think either the horse got medicated late and somebody covered sloppy work, or the chart got touched by someone who wasn’t writing down what actually happened. I don’t know which is worse."
Neither do I.
I rise from the chair, take Juniper’s binder, and hold her gaze long enough to make the next part plain. "Pull Caleb, Cassie, and the morning meds log. Then get me the camera times for the north aisle if the system actually recorded them for once."
She studies me for half a second. "You believe me?"
I hear what sits beneath her question, and dislike the fact that I put it there.
"I believe you noticed something real," I say. "That’s enough to act on."
It isn’t everything I could say. It’s more than I should probably let show.
She gives a short nod and turns for the door.
My hand tightens once on the edge of the desk before I say her name.
"Tana."
She looks back.
"Good catch."
Something shifts in her face and is gone before I can name it.
Then she’s moving again, already halfway back to the barn, and I’m standing in my office with a binder in one hand and the unwelcome certainty that if Wild Mercy is cracking, I trust her instincts before I trust the paper trail built to protect me from exactly this.