Chapter 4 #2
I wanted to explain. To tell him that I knew it was bad, that it hadn’t always been this bad, that I’d been planning to fix it but the grant money hadn’t come and the feed costs went up and the vet bills were constantly a problem and there simply were not enough hours or dollars to keep forty acres from slowly falling apart.
I didn’t say any of it. I pressed my teeth together and let him look.
We were halfway down the east side when my phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen and my stomach dropped.
Hendricks Feed Store.
“Sorry, one second.” I stepped away and answered. “Hey, Dale. Still good for the delivery today?”
“Hey, Lark. Yeah, listen. I tried to run the credit card you’ve got on file, and it’s not going through. I can hold the order for you, but I can’t load the truck until we get payment sorted.”
Shoot. I’d known this was coming. “Right. Okay. Can you try the other card? The one ending in 4112.” I turned slightly away from Logan, though there was no way he couldn’t hear this.
“Sure, hang on.”
Fifteen seconds. Twenty. A hawk circled over the east pasture, and I counted the rotations and did not think about what happened if the second card didn’t clear.
“Okay, that one went through. You’re all set.”
“Great. Perfect. Thank you, Dale.” I hung up and slid the phone into my back pocket.
The backup card had $340 left on it. The feed order was $310. Thirty dollars of breathing room. I’d figure out the rest later. I always figured out the rest later.
But damned if it didn’t feel like every possible financial thing was conspiring against me over the past eight months.
“Feed delivery’s coming this afternoon,” I said, turning back to Logan. “I’ll show you where everything gets stored.”
If he’d heard enough to piece together what had just happened, he didn’t show it. He just nodded and kept walking the fence line.
We crossed back toward the east paddock. Duchess and Maverick had drifted closer to the fence, curious about the new voice in their territory. Duchess reached her head over the top rail as I approached, and I caught her muzzle in both hands and pressed my forehead against hers.
She exhaled warm and slow against my neck. I closed my eyes.
I stood there with my forehead against hers and let the knot in my chest loosen. Her ears flicked forward, then relaxed. She lipped at the collar of my jacket, searching for the peppermints she knew I kept in my pocket.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “Let me enjoy this for a second.”
She nudged harder, and I gave in. I fished a peppermint from my pocket and held it flat on my palm. She took it with her soft lips and crunched it once, satisfied.
She exhaled again, long and patient, and the tightness behind my ribs let go the rest of the way.
For five seconds, the fading paint and the leaning fence posts and the $30 left on the backup card didn’t exist. There was just this.
Her breath. Her weight leaning into me. The thing I had built my entire life around after everything had been taken from me.
When I opened my eyes, Logan was standing a few feet back with his hands at his sides. He was watching, but he looked away when I straightened up. He’d seen something he hadn’t been meant to see, and he was giving it back to me without comment.
Duchess tossed her head once, annoyed that the attention was over.
“Come on,” I said to him. “Let me show you where you’ll be sleeping.”
We swung by his truck and got his duffel and headed to the cabin that sat about forty yards to the right of the main farmhouse, tucked between two cottonwoods.
It was small, but it was clean and functional.
Kitchen with a dining nook, a living area, bedroom, bathroom, a couple of closets.
I’d aired it out and put fresh sheets on the bed after Beckett left from watching over the place while I’d been gone a while back. No one had stayed there since then.
I pushed the door open and let Logan go in first. He set his duffel down in the living area and moved through the space quietly, looking at each room.
Kitchen. Bedroom. Bathroom. I leaned against the doorframe and watched him open a closet, check the bathroom faucet, come back to the kitchen and open two cabinets.
“It’s not much,” I said. “But it’s clean, it’s warm, and the water pressure’s decent. Towels in the bathroom closet, some basics in the kitchen. Coffee, a few canned goods, nothing exciting.”
He opened the fridge. Empty except for a couple bottles of water and a stick of butter I’d put in there this morning.
“I’ll get you a proper grocery run when the feed delivery comes in,” I said. “For tonight, there’s—”
“This is fine.”
“There are also eggs in the farmhouse if you want breakfast tomorrow, and I usually have—”
“Lark.”
I stopped.
“This is more than enough,” he said. He picked up the duffel and carried it into the bedroom. Set it on the floor next to the bed, precise and centered. Then he came back and stood in the kitchen, looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “Thank you.”
Two words. No elaboration, no small talk, no follow-up questions. Just a man standing in a clean, simple space that was enough for him because his threshold for enough had been ground down to nearly nothing.
You’re always good at this, the voice said. Small and familiar. Wearing my mother’s inflection the way it always did when I was tired and my guard was down. Good at making yourself useful so nobody looks too closely at what a mess you’ve made of things.
I blinked her voice away. Less conspicuous than covering my ears with my hands.
“Evening chores start at six,” I said from the doorway. “But don’t worry about tonight. Get settled, get some rest. I’ll handle it.”
“I can help.”
“You just got here. Get settled, get your bearings.”
“I’ll start on the fence line this morning. I can figure out what I need from the equipment shed and then be ready for chores.”
That surprised me. He’d been here less than an hour, and he was already making a plan for the north fence. I almost argued, almost told him he didn’t have to earn his keep on day one, but the look on his face said he needed the work more than he needed the rest.
“Equipment shed is the gray building past the barn on the left. It’s not locked.” I paused. “If you find a ratchet winch in there, you’re a better archaeologist than I am.”
He smiled. “I always wanted to be Indiana Jones. Finally will get my chance.”
“See you at six.”
I gave him a wave, pulled the door shut behind me, and stood on the small porch.
The morning sun was climbing over the ridge, sharpening the shadows across the pastures.
From here, I could see the barn with its peeling paint, the leaning fence posts along the north line, Duchess still standing at the rail where I’d left her.
I walked back toward it all. Feed delivery this afternoon.
After that, I needed to update the feeding schedules, check the medication log, call the vet about Princess Whiskers’s follow-up, and find time to look at the secondary grant application that was due in ten days and still mostly blank on my laptop.
I’d handle it. All of it. The same way I always did. One task, then the next, then the next, nobody asking how I was holding up because I’d made damn sure they never thought to ask.
The farmhouse was ahead of me. My cheerful yellow beacon, although the inside left a lot to be desired. I climbed the porch steps and went inside to country music still playing from the speaker I’d left on this morning and coffee still warm in the pot.
I had work to do.