"Yes."
"Say it back."
I have to swallow before I can. "Nobody touches me without my say-so."
He picks up the hat and sets it back on his head. "Welcome to Sharp Shooter Ranch, Hadley Cross."
Rogue walks me over to the cabin, boots on gravel, hat pulled low against the late afternoon sun.
Nash is on my hip because he woke up halfway across the yard and refused to be put down, looking at this man in the white cowboy hat with the wide, slow, unblinking stare.
Rogue doesn’t try to charm my son. He nods at him once and says, "How you doing, partner?" while he keeps walking.
Nash watches him the whole way.
The cabin is small, clean, and the porch has a swing on it.
Inside there are sheets on the beds, towels in the bathroom, and a cast-iron skillet on the stove that isn’t mine but might as well be, and on the kitchen table there’s a mason jar with a bunch of wildflowers in it that somebody cut from somewhere on this property and put there.
I don’t let myself cry in front of him. I’ll cry later, when the reality of all this settles in.
He walks me through the breaker box, the propane tank, and the water shut-off in the voice of a man who has done this before.
He tells me dinner is at six. He tells me he’ll send a prospect to unhook my trailer in an hour, and if I need anything between now and then, I should come find him at the clubhouse.
With that, he tips his hat and steps off the porch.
He walks back toward the clubhouse and I stand in the doorway with my son on my hip and I watch the white hat get smaller against the late gold light.
Nash watches him too.
"Mama," my son says, quiet, in the slow voice he uses when he is working a thing out. "Is he gonna be nice to us?"
I keep watching the man in the white hat until he reaches the clubhouse porch.
He climbs the steps. He turns, at the top of the steps, and he looks back at the cabin.
Atme.
He’s too far away for me to see his face clearly, but I can see the white hat tilted in my direction, and I canfeelthe weight of his eyes on me from across the yard.
He stands there for a second longer than a man who would check on a new hire would stand there.
Then he disappears inside.
I’m still holding my son. The screen door of the cabin is cool against my shoulder. The cicadas are loud. Somewhere out past the bunkhouse a horse stamps in a stall.
"Yeah, baby," I say. "I think he's gonna be nice to us."
Nash buries his face in my neck. "Mama," he says. "I don't want to be in another motel."
I close my eyes.
I press my mouth to the top of his head where his hair smells like cheap motel shampoo.
"We're not," I tell him. "We're not in a motel anymore."
* * *
