7. Gracie
— ? —
Gracie
The highway unspools in front of me like a promise.
I drive for two hours before I let my mind wander.
The city lights fade, then the suburbs, then the sprawl of strip malls and gas stations that mark the edge of anywhere, and by the time the stars come out on the second night, I’m in the kind of darkness you can only find in Texas, deep and velvet and endless.
At a truck stop outside of Waco, I pull over and stare at my phone.
Twelve missed calls, all from him.
I block his number.
My thumb hovers for a second after I do it, like some part of me expects the world to end. But nothing happens, the screen goes dark, and the night stays quiet.
I pay cash for gas and a terrible cup of coffee. The clerk doesn’t look twice at me, and that feels like a gift. No one here knows who Malcolm Koch is or cares about gallery openings or museum tours or which woman inspires him at two in the morning.
I’m just a tired woman in jeans, buying bad coffee, going home.
Back on the road, the paranoia sets in.
He could find me. The farm is in my name, has been since Dad died, and it’s the obvious place. If he wanted to, he could be there before me. A flight and a rental car, and he’d beat me by a day. What if he’s already in the air, and I round a curve and see his truck in my rearview mirror?
I check the mirrors. Nothing but darkness and stars.
Then I check again anyway.
Stop it. He’s not following you, he’s at the studio with Odette, reading your note, figuring out how to spin this for the press.
But I take a longer route anyway. Backroads instead of highways. Little towns I used to drive through with my father when I was a kid and the world felt simple. The names roll past like a lullaby: Clifton, Meridian, Cranfills Gap.
And then, as the light starts to go gold at the edges, Cedar Hollow.
I drove the first night straight through, slept a few hours in the car at a rest stop in Arkansas, then kept going, and the farmhouse comes up over the hill at dusk. I wanted to arrive like this, with the sun setting and the fields gold and the house rising up out of the land like it grew there.
It’s smaller than I remembered. Smaller and sweeter, white paint peeling a little at the corners, porch sagging in the middle where Dad always said he’d fix it and never did.
But the porch light is on. The fields are turned, dark earth waiting for seed. The whole place breathes, alive and cared for.
Denny.
I park in the gravel drive and sit for a moment, just looking. The old oak tree, the barn where Mal and I said our vows, the fence line where I first saw a man with paint under his nails feeding my horse stolen apples like he’d known her all her life.
The screen door bangs open.
“Holy - Gracie?”
Denny is twenty-two now, all lanky limbs and shaggy hair and the kind of earnest face that makes you want to trust him immediately. He was nineteen when I hired him, fresh out of high school and desperate for a job. I taught him everything my dad taught me. When I left for the city, he stayed.
He stares at me like he’s seeing a ghost.
“Hey, Denny.”
“What - you - I didn’t-” He’s coming down the porch steps now, boots loud on the wood, and his eyes are suspiciously bright. “You didn’t call. You didn’t even-”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay? Is it-” He stops himself before he says Mal’s name, and I’m grateful for it. “What happened?”
“Yeah.” I get out of the car, and my legs are stiff from two days of driving. “I came home.”
Relief and worry chase across his face, and under them a protective anger that makes him look older than his years. For a second, I think he might actually cry.
Then he sniffs hard, rubs his nose with his sleeve, and scowls.
“Bout time,” he says. “Place has been boring as hell without you.”
I laugh. It comes out watery. “You’ve done a good job. The fields look great.”
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs, trying to look casual and failing completely. “Had to keep busy somehow. You, uh - you want help with your bag?”
“I’ve got it.”
We walk inside together. The house smells like dust and lemon cleaner and whatever Denny baked last, banana bread, maybe, or zucchini. The furniture is the same, the photos on the walls are the same, the creak of the floorboards is the same.
I’m home.
I sleep in my old bed that night. The mattress is too soft and the sheets smell like lavender fabric softener, and I lie there in the darkness listening to nothing.
No traffic, no restless pacing from the next room, no hum of a city that never stops moving.
Just silence. Clean and wide and mine.
For the first time in years, it isn’t lonely.
By the end of the week, I’ve scrubbed every surface in the house, fixed the porch railing, and helped Denny mend the east fence. My hands are calloused again. My shoulders ache in a good way. But the farm can’t pay me yet, not until the harvest comes in, and my savings won’t last forever.
I need work.
At the feed store in town, I’m loading fifty-pound bags into the truck bed when I see the notice tacked to the corkboard by the door.
LARGE-ANIMAL VET NEEDED Working farm, good pay Ask for Bree. Marigold
Marigold is two hours down the highway. Far enough that no one will know me.
I tear off one of the little paper tabs with the phone number.
The next morning, I drive out.
The Salazar farm is a place that makes you believe in second chances. Everything thrives here, the pastures, the gardens, the chickens scratching in the yard. A riot of wildflowers grows along the fence line, and someone has painted the barn doors bright turquoise.
A pig the size of a small couch comes shrieking across the yard as I park, and I have to wait in the truck until a woman in boots jogs over to shoo it away.
“Sorry about that! Hamlet gets excited about visitors.”
I climb out, eyeing the pig warily. “Hamlet?”
“My daughter named him. She’s going through a Shakespeare phase.” The woman sticks out her hand. “Bree Salazar. You must be here about the job.”
“Gracie Tate.”
Her handshake is firm and callused. She looks me over once, takes in the mud on my boots, the practical ponytail, the shadows under my eyes, and her expression shifts into recognition, maybe, though not of my name or my face.
One runaway wife recognizing another.
“You got experience with large animals?”
“I’m a vet. Small-animal practice in the city, before I - left. Grew up on a cattle farm. I can handle anything you’ve got.”
“Cattle, horses, goats, pigs.” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Plus whatever strays my daughter drags home. Last month it was a three-legged donkey.”
“I like donkeys.”
She almost smiles. “You got references?”
“Not recent ones. But I can show you what I know.”
She studies me for another long moment. Behind her, a little girl is setting up a card table by the gate, arranging paper cups and a hand-lettered sign that says LEMONADE $1.
“That’s Rosie,” Bree says. “She’s saving up for a pony.”
“She already has a three-legged donkey.”
“She’s ambitious.”
We look at each other. The pig snuffles around my boots.
“Okay,” Bree says finally. “I’ll give you a trial week. Seventy hours, fair pay, there’s a guest room if the drive gets old, and if you can handle Hamlet without screaming, you’re hired.”
Relief floods through me so fast I almost sway. “Thank you. I won’t let you down.”
“See that you don’t.” She turns toward the barn, then pauses. “Whatever you’re running from - that’s your business. Long as you show up on time and do the work, I don’t need to know.”
My throat tightens. “I appreciate that.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Hamlet bites.”
She walks off to wrangle the pig, and I stand there in the morning sun, looking at this thriving farm with its turquoise barn and its shrieking pig and its little girl selling lemonade.
Five months. That’s what I gave myself. Five months to figure out who I am without him.
Maybe this is where I start.
Monday, then. I start Monday.