"None."
"If I want to turn around at any point —"
"We turn around."
The pause was longer this time. I waited.
"Saturday," she said. "What time?"
I told her. She said fine. I said great. We hung up like two people who'd just negotiated a treaty instead of a horseback ride, and I stood in the barn aisle grinning at a stall door for a solid minute before Jack walked past and said, "You look stupid."
"Thank you for your kind observation, Jack."
"You're welcome."
Saturday. Two o'clock. Sun high and the kind of warmth that Texas hoards like a secret — the rest of the country in sweaters while we were still in shirtsleeves, pretending fall was optional.
I saddled Dusty for myself and Rosie for Callie. My shoulder protested as I lifted the saddle — I worked through the twinge the way I worked through all of them, because the alternative was admitting my body was keeping a scorecard I wasn't ready to read.
I checked the saddlebags — water, blanket, and yes, the basket Momma had left on the kitchen counter at seven a.m. with a note that saidDon't forget the sandwiches. And don't forget to be yourself. The real one, not the showman.Because my mother couldn't resist a directive even when it was disguised as encouragement.
Callie's car came up the drive at two on the dot. Because of course it did. She got out. Jeans, boots, hair pulled back in a ponytail that swung when she walked. She tugged the hem of her shirt once — quick, barely there — and lifted her chin before she started toward the barn. I'd seen bull riders do the same thing in the chute. The private reset before the public brave.
"Hey."
“Hey, yourself." I was leaning against the paddock fence, which she clocked immediately.
"Are we doing this, or are you going to lean against things all afternoon?"
She turned to Rosie. Her hand came up before she seemed to decide to raise it — reaching for the mare's neck, fingers spreading into the coat. Her shoulders dropped an inch. Whatever Rosie was giving her, it was working faster than I could.
"She looks calm."
"She's a gem. Maisie's got good taste in horses."
She'd ridden as a kid — she'd mentioned that once, a fragment tossed out sideways, the way she gave personal information: in slivers, never straight on.
"Your mother gave Maisie an entire baking station," she said. "Maisie has an apron with her name on it."
My brows furrowed. "When did she have time to —"
"It was embroidered, Clay. That didn't happen overnight."
I closed my eyes, and sighed. "She's been planning this since the party."
"Your mother is a strategist."
"My mother is a menace."
"A well-organized menace with exceptional handwriting." She swung up into the saddle with an ease that caught me off guard. Good seat. Natural hands. Whatever she'd learned as a kid had stayed in her body, the way riding always did.
I mounted Dusty and led us out through the back gate toward the north pasture. The trail started wide — two horses abreast, easy ground, the kind of riding that let you talk or not talk, whatever felt right. For the first ten minutes, Callie kept her reins short and her spine straight — holding herself the way she held everything, like precision could protect her. Then Rosie dropped her head to sniff at something on the trail, and Callie's hands gave without thinking, and I watched the stiffness leave her one vertebra at a time.
Watching Callie Monroe ride a horse was an experience I was not emotionally prepared for. The way her hips moved with the saddle — fluid, natural, completely unconscious — was doing things to my blood pressure that my doctor would have opinions about. She had no idea. That was the thing. She had absolutely no idea what she looked like up there — back straight, hips rolling, that ponytail swinging with every stride — and the fact that she didn't know made it ten times worse. I shifted in the saddle and thought very deliberately about fence repair schedules.
Then she said, "I haven't been on a horse since I was sixteen."
"You ride like you were on one yesterday."
