Just that. Nothing attached to it—no elaboration, no “what are you thinking” or “have you considered” or “you know what you should do.” Just the plain fact of it, delivered the way someone might note that the sky was blue or the coffee was cold.
My first instinct was to argue. Having a plan was the mechanism I used to keep fear at a manageable distance—the careful construction of next steps, contingencies, exit strategies. Without one, I was just a body moving through space, subject to whatever forces happened to be acting on it.
But the plainness of Decker’s statement stopped me before the words could form. He wasn’t offering reassurance or performing concern. He was just reporting a fact—that whatever plan I might eventually need didn’t have to exist yet, that this moment could be what it was without being required to lead somewhere specific.
I nodded instead.
We sat a while longer. The mountain didn’t move. The air got colder as the afternoon light began to fade, the shadows stretching longer across the yard. Somewhere behind the house, a horse whinnied—a high, questioning sound that hung in the air for a moment before fading.
Decker’s presence beside me was neither demanding nor pretend. He wasn’t sitting with me out of obligation or the kind of pity that treats people as projects rather than humans. He was just there, the way the mountain was there or the cold air was there—a fact rather than a gesture.
When he finally stood up, brushing his palms against his jeans, the movement was so casual I almost missed it. “Dinner’s in twenty,” he said, his voice carrying the same quiet certainty it had in the truck. “Nothing fancy. You’re welcome to join us or I can bring a plate to your room if you’d rather.”
The offer was so matter-of-fact—so free of the weight of charity—that it took me a moment to process it as kindness rather than obligation.
“I’ll come,” I said, surprised by how easily the words came out.
He nodded once, then turned and went back inside, leaving the door ajar behind him.
I sat for another minute, watching the light change on the mountain’s face. The cold had worked its way through my jacket and into my bones, but I wasn’t quite ready to go in—to trade the clarity of sitting alone with my thoughts for the more complicated reality of being a person among other people.
So I stayed where I was, hands wrapped around the cold mug, eyes on the horizon, and gave myself permission to exist exactly as I was—not a problem to be solved or a situation to be managed, but just a person sitting on porch steps, watching a mountain as the day turned toward evening.
* * * *
After dinner, I asked to borrow Decker’s laptop to send my grandfather a message. The meal had been simple—spaghetti with sauce from a jar, garlic bread, a salad Rawley had thrown together while the pasta cooked—but it had felt strangely normal, sitting at the table with these people I barely knew, eating food I hadn’t cooked.
We’d talked about the baby with the feeding issue, about the ranch’s upcoming projects, about nothing that required me to explain myself or justify my presence.
Now, with dishes stacked in the sink and everyone dispersed to different corners of the house, I needed to let my grandfather know we’d arrived.
“Sure,” Decker said, retrieving the laptop from a desk in the corner of the living room. “Password’s 8557.” He handed it over without further comment—no questions about who I was contacting or why, no warnings about appropriate use or time limits. Just the simple acknowledgment that I’d asked for something and he was providing it.
I sat at the kitchen table with the laptop open, the blue light from the screen washing my face in the darkening room. The password field accepted the numbers on the first try, and the desktop appeared—a plain blue background with a single folder labeled “Ranch” and nothing else. No personal photos, no documents with revealing names, just the clean functionality of a tool rather than an extension of its owner.
I opened the browser and navigated to my email. The login field waited, cursor blinking in its empty space. I typed my username, then my password, then hit enter before I could reconsider.
My inbox loaded—forty-three new messages, most of them hospital newsletters and nursing association updates I’dbeen too distracted to unsubscribe from. Nothing from my grandfather. Nothing from anyone who mattered.
I created a new message, addressed it to the account I’d set up for him last year after he’d finally conceded that checking email was easier than driving to the library, and started typing.
Grandpa—
I stopped, deleted, started again.
Made it to Montana. People seem decent. I’m okay. Nothing’s broken that won’t heal. Will call Sunday like we said. Love, Jasper.
Short. Direct. Nothing that could be used against either of us if someone else read it. I hit send before I could second-guess the wording or add the dozen other things I wanted to say—that I missed him already, that I was scared of being a problem someone else had to solve was settling into my chest like a physical thing.
The message disappeared into the ether, the screen confirming its delivery with a bland “Message Sent.” I stared at it for a moment, the blue light making the bruise on my cheek look darker, more defined. Then, with the browser still open and the cursor sitting in the search bar, I did the thing I had been actively not doing for weeks.
I typed my own name.
The results loaded in the time it took to draw a breath—page after page of links, most of them to my professional profiles, my nursing license, the hospital staff directory where my name and credentials still appeared despite my absence. Nothing new there. Nothing concerning.
It was the “People Also Search For” section that caught my eye—the algorithm’s best guess at what someone looking for me might actually want. And there, three items down, was a link to a forum thread I’d never seen before:“Looking for Jasper Arnold, neonatal nurse, formerly of Omaha General.”
My stomach dropped. I clicked the link.
