4. You’ll Fit In Fine
You’ll Fit In Fine
The next two days, Navarro barely crossed Harris’s path.
The crew spent most of Thursday filming at a watershed project less than an hour from the ranch, close enough to return after dark but far enough that Harris saw little more than the production SUV leaving before breakfast and pulling back in after dinner.
That suited him just fine.
He noticed the vehicle both times because it crossed the main yard, where Harris happened to be working. Nothing more useful than that.
Friday belonged to the wedding.
By noon, every Shaw and half the ranch staff had been pulled into it.
Harris moved horses out of the guest corrals, hauled tables, repaired a faulty breaker in the event barn, and spent forty minutes redirecting rental cars away from a service road clearly marked NO GUEST ACCESS.
The sign had red letters, an arrow, and a locked gate visible fifty yards ahead.
Four separate drivers still stopped to ask whether the road was open.
Human beings were remarkable.
Evan dealt with the caterer, the rental company, and a florist who had arrived short on centerpieces.
Elise handled the bride’s family, three seating changes, and a flower girl convinced the horses were lonely.
Walt drove the shuttle. Della moved between the kitchen, lodge, and event barn while insisting she was only checking on things, which in practice meant knowing the location of every serving dish, staff member, guest allergy, and missing boutonniere on the property.
Even the film crew helped once their own work was done. Eli and the assistants carried chairs and strung lights while Priya negotiated permission to film the outdoor ceremony. Navarro spent twenty minutes securing table linens before the wind could relocate them to Wyoming.
Harris saw that because he was fixing the breaker. He was absolutely not monitoring Navarro’s location.
By the time the last guests left the barn, Harris was too tired to care that it was nearly morning.
* * *
Saturday was his mom’s birthday.
It began with Rain cutting her leg. Harris heard the mare hit the side of the trough before he saw what had happened.
Metal against wood, then the hard scramble of hooves on packed dirt.
By the time he reached her, Rain had backed against the rail, the lead rope pulled taut and blood already running down the inside of her lower leg.
“Easy.”
He caught the lead close beneath her chin and brought her head gently toward him. Rain shifted once, then found his voice and stopped fighting long enough for him to take the tension out of the rope. Her nostrils were wide, and she was holding the injured leg clear of the ground.
“Easy, girl.”
Harris crouched without releasing her. A broken end of tie wire protruded beneath the trough where it had no business being. The cut along the inside of Rain’s lower leg bled freely, but not in pulses. He ran his hand above it, checking heat, swelling, and anything wrong beneath the skin.
“Somebody call Claire.”
Noah, one of the ranch hands, headed for the door. From farther down the aisle, Navarro spoke.
“Anything I can do?”
Harris glanced back. Navarro stood near the barn entrance with the compact camera held against his chest, well outside the stall.
“No. Just stay back.”
“Okay.”
He did.
Harris turned back to Rain. A few moments passed before he spoke again.
“Okay if I film from out here?”
“Better not.”
“Okay.”
He lowered the camera and stepped away.
That was all. No explanation of documentary value, no promise to stay back while filming anyway, no bargaining for an angle that excluded the blood. He had offered to help, asked permission, accepted both answers, and gone.
Harris looked at the empty doorway half a second longer than the situation required, then returned his attention to Rain.
She had been Nell’s mare. Technically, Rain belonged to the ranch now, the same way Nell’s saddle, tack, and the boxes in Della’s attic belonged to the ranch. The paperwork had shifted. Nothing else had.
Rain was twenty, pale around the muzzle and stiffer through the hind legs than she used to be. Harris had known for years there would eventually be a last injury, a last winter, a last decision he did not want to make.
This wasn’t it.
Once he washed away the blood, the wound looked clean enough. No tendon involvement he could feel. Rain set the toe down when he asked her to shift, then accepted some weight.
Good.
Grief was easier when it came with instructions. Feed the mare. Check the leg. Fix the wire. Show up again tomorrow.
He moved Rain into a stall and flushed the wound again. Claire arrived twenty minutes later. Harris knew the sound of her SUV before it stopped outside the barn. Some things stayed in the body long after they stopped being useful.
She came down the aisle carrying her field bag, hair already escaping the knot at the back of her neck. “How bad?”
“Inside lower leg. Wire.”
“Deep?”
“Don’t think so. She’s bearing a bit of weight.”
Claire set down the bag and entered the stall.
After that, they barely needed words. Harris shifted Rain before Claire asked, handed over gauze when she reached toward her bag, and adjusted the light when she leaned closer.
When Rain sidestepped, Claire caught Harris by the wrist for balance without looking. Her hand was gone again a second later.
Nothing about the contact felt strange. That was probably the strangest part.
Twelve years of marriage left habits behind.
Claire still knew where Harris would stand before he moved there; he could tell which instrument she wanted by the position of her hand.
They had spent too many nights in barns, clinics, and the cab of her truck for those things to disappear because they had signed some divorce papers.
Sometimes Harris wished the habits had been enough.
Life with Claire had been good. She had been good. He had wanted her, loved her, and built most of his adult life with her. Imagined his future with her. There had been no betrayal or cruelty, nothing clean enough to point at and say there, that’s where the marriage had failed.
Claire had been ready for the next part before he was: children, a house that belonged to the two of them instead of Harris’s little cabin, a future planned farther ahead than the next calving season or Nell’s next PET scan. Harris had always found a reason to wait.
Then Nell got sick again, and waiting became reasonable.
Necessary, even. What Harris had never told Claire was that beneath the fear and grief, some shameful part of him had also been relieved.
The decision had been taken out of his hands.
He could postpone the future without admitting he had already spent years postponing it.
By the time they finally looked at their marriage honestly, too much of it had been built around what they never said. Claire wanted the life they had talked about. Harris wanted to want it with the same certainty she did.
Turned out wanting to want something wasn’t the same as choosing it.
He had loved Claire. Some days he still wished that had made the rest simple.
It hadn’t.
Claire leaned closer to check the wound’s depth. A shape stood farther down the aisle.
Navarro. No camera this time.
He rested one shoulder against the wall, watching quietly from a distance that would not crowd Rain or the people working around her. His attention moved from Claire’s hands to the bandage supplies and then to Harris holding the mare’s head.
What did the scene look like from there? A veterinarian and the former husband who already knew what she needed. Familiarity without marriage. A whole history visible in the space between two people who barely spoke.
Harris tightened his hand on the lead rope. Why the hell did he care what Navarro made of it?
Claire began wrapping Rain’s leg, and Harris looked back down.
“She’ll be sore,” she said when she finished. “Keep her quiet today. Hand-walk tomorrow if there’s no swelling. If there’s heat above the wrap, call me again.”
“Yup.”
Her phone vibrated inside the outer pocket of her bag. Claire read the screen and began packing more quickly. “Colic call north of town. Send me a picture tonight.”
“I will.”
She zipped the bag and looked at him properly for the first time. “When did you sleep last?”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask how you were.” The corner of her mouth moved.
Same old trick. Ask one question, mean another. Harris had once been able to identify the second one without thinking. Some habits survived divorce.
“Late night,” he said.
“So I gathered.”
Of course she had. On the ranch, privacy usually lasted until breakfast.
Claire lifted the bag. “Try sleeping before your mother’s party.”
“Got work.”
“You always do.”
There was no accusation in it now. That should have made the words easier to hear.
She touched Rain’s shoulder and left for the next animal requiring her. Harris glanced down the aisle.
Navarro was gone.
* * *
By midafternoon, Jay had showered off the dust and followed the smell of butter and peaches into the lodge kitchen.
He found Elise surrounded by flour, pie plates, galvanized flower buckets, and more fruit than seemed reasonable for a birthday gathering of fewer than forty people.
Three pies cooled along the counter while two more waited beside the stove, one finished with pastry leaves that looked suspiciously professional.
“You’re either here to help or steal food,” Elise said.
“Can’t it be both?”
“Fine. At least be useful while you thieve.”
Jay washed his hands. A notebook lay open beside the flower buckets, its page divided between table counts, serving dishes, and notes for the next event. Four short stems stood separately in a drinking glass beneath a label written in purple crayon: JUNE’S. DO NOT USE.
“Della doesn’t like cake?”
“She likes pie more.” Elise pushed a cutting board toward him. “Slice those. Not too thin.”
“You’re trusting me with a surprising amount of responsibility.”