Chapter 24 #2
Lark pushed her harder. Gimbal braced, absorbing the shift in Fallon’s weight without moving an inch. Fallon looked down at the dog, and her hand went to Gimbal’s head, brief and testing.
“She knew I was going down before I caught myself,” Fallon said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s the whole point.” Lark’s voice was warm and matter-of-fact. “She’s reading your body faster than you can. By the time you feel the instability, she’s already there.”
The retrieval work came next. Bending down was a dislocation risk, and every time Fallon would normally reach for something she’d dropped, Gimbal would be there first. The poodle picked up a phone, a set of keys, a water bottle, and returned each one to Fallon’s hand without hesitation.
Then came the alert behavior, Gimbal responding to subtle changes in Fallon’s posture and breathing that signaled a pain flare or joint instability before Fallon herself had registered it.
For someone whose body lived with constant pain and could give way without warning, those few seconds of advance notice were the difference between catching herself and hitting the ground.
Lark wasn’t lecturing. She was matching Fallon’s energy, which was spare and direct, and Fallon was responding to it. The two of them moved through the ring together with Gimbal between them.
Gimbal locked in. The poodle shifted her weight toward Fallon, pressed her shoulder against Fallon’s leg, and matched her stride with a steadiness that said she had found her person and wasn’t letting go.
Fallon’s hand went to Gimbal’s head again, but different this time.
Her fingers curled into the dog’s coat and stayed.
Her face changed into something quieter and deeper than a smile, the kind of expression that only surfaced when you’d been carrying something heavy for a long time and suddenly felt part of the weight lift.
Beside me, Isaac went still. His hands stopped moving on the fence rail and his breathing changed, and when I glanced over, every bit of the charm and the confidence had fallen away. He was watching Fallon with her hand on that dog, and there was nothing left between his face and what he felt.
“Tell me about her,” I said.
He didn’t look away from the ring. “We were on a mission. Things went sideways. She almost died. I almost died trying to make sure she didn’t. But she’d been pushing her body way too hard even before that. She…suffers because of her hEDS.”
“How long ago was the mission?”
“Two months.” He shifted his weight off his bad side. “Everything about that woman is complicated, but damned if I’m not all the fuck in.”
I knew that feeling exactly.
“I’m not leaving Garnet Bend,” I said. “I’ll do some part-time work for Warrior Security if they’ll have me. But this is where I’m supposed to be. This is home.”
Isaac looked at me. “Reid would be glad to hear that.”
“Yeah.” I held his gaze. “He would.”
I pulled a splinter from the fence rail and turned it between my fingers. In the ring, Fallon was walking Gimbal through figure eights, the poodle adjusting her pace to match every change of direction, and Lark stood a few feet back, watching.
“How are things going beyond the personal?” Isaac asked. “The ranch. Pawsitive. All of it.”
I could have given him the easy version. I didn’t.
“Good, except Lark’s in financial trouble.
A second mortgage on the property got bought out by an investment group, and they’ve called in the full balance.
Acceleration clause. Thirty days.” I kept my eyes on the ring.
“The number is more than anything she can put together in that window. Grants that should have come through this year didn’t. ”
“Shit. That sucks. How bad?”
“Pretty fucking ugly. Bad enough that she’s calling her parents today to ask for a loan. They’re pretty big money in Upstate New York.”
“Upstate New York. Her parents.” Isaac’s head turned. “Lark Monroe.”
“Yep.”
He went quiet in a way that had nothing to do with the easy charm. “I know that name. My family runs in the same circles. Old money, old rules.”
“That’s them.”
“Does she have a good relationship with them?”
I let out a frustrated huff. “Not in any way, shape, or form. She left years ago and really hasn’t been in contact since. Sounds like they’re Grade A assholes. Her ex-husband too. Carter Hollis.”
“Yeah, I met him. Just a couple times, but it was enough to know I didn’t want to know him any better.” He shifted against the fence. “I think you’re calling that right, from what I know of them. Families like that don’t write checks without a leash attached to them.”
“I know. I sat with her last night while she worked through what she’d say.
Asked her every shitty question or remark her mother is going to throw at her.
” I gripped the fence rail. “But there aren’t any other options, so what can we do?
She refuses to let this place go down. It’s helped too many people. ”
Isaac was quiet for a long moment. He watched Fallon in the ring. Gimbal was pressed against Fallon’s leg, and Fallon had stopped walking. She was just standing there with her hand spread wide on the dog’s back, feeling the animal breathe. Lark stood nearby, not interrupting.
“How much?” Isaac said.
“How much what?”
“The mortgage. The full balance they’ve called in. What’s the number?”
I told him. He didn’t flinch.
“I can cover that.”
I looked at him.
“Don’t give me that face. I walked away from my family’s lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have their money.” He turned to face me. “Most of it is sitting in accounts I’ll never touch. Private loan, whatever terms she wants, no interest, no conditions. I’ll write the check today.”
“Isaac, you don’t even know her.”
“I know what she built.” He nodded toward the ring, where Fallon was moving again with Gimbal pressed against her leg. “I know what that dog just did to Fallon’s face—a sense of peace that woman rarely ever feels, even when things are good.”
“Still…” I didn’t want to get my hopes up and especially didn’t want to mention anything to Lark unless Isaac had really thought this through.
“I know the Monroes, and I know what they’ll attach to the money if Lark gives them the chance. They’ll lord this over her forever.” His voice was easy but his eyes weren’t. “If money fixes this problem, then money should fix it. Not a phone call that makes her beg people who threw her away.”
I turned back to the ring. Lark said something that made Fallon’s mouth curve into what looked like the beginning of a real smile. Gimbal’s tail swept low and steady, the rhythm of a working dog who had found her place.
The offer was real. I could see it in my friend’s face, and it would solve the problem that had been eating through Lark’s life for months. But I was standing at a fence discussing her financial crisis with someone she’d never met, and I knew exactly how that was going to land.
“She’s going to be furious,” I said.
“At you for telling me?”
“At me for telling you. At having to accept charity.”
“Then don’t call it charity. Call it a loan, call it a business investment, call it whatever she needs it to be.” Isaac’s voice was steady. “But tell her the offer exists before she picks up that phone. Then she can decide for herself.”
In the ring, Fallon laughed. The sound was quiet and startled, pulled out of her by Gimbal nudging her hand with a persistence that reminded me of Tova at three in the morning, pressing her nose into my palm until I came back from wherever the nightmare had taken me.
Lark was watching them, her clipboard against her chest, wearing the expression I’d seen on her face a hundred times, the one that meant everything she’d poured into this place was worth it.
Isaac was watching the same thing, and there was nothing on his face except a tenderness so complete it made the rest of him disappear.
Lark still had to agree. It was her debt, her decision, and there was a real chance she’d be angry that I’d opened my mouth.
But there was a path now that didn’t run through her mother’s silence or her father’s absence, and the dread I’d carried into this morning had a different shape than it had an hour ago.
She wouldn’t have to make that call.