She looks at the field. "We ran it well."
"You ran it. I followed your lead."
"You held the northwest corner for forty minutes in a sideways flood."
"Under your direction."
She looks at me. "Beckett. Take the compliment."
"I'm trying to give you one."
"Give it after you take yours." She stands, brushes mud from her knees. "You were good today. Real good. Not book good. Not spreadsheet good." She looks at me directly. "That's ranch good,"
Ranch good.
From Laney Jenkins standing in a flooded field in the rain after a crisis that tested every person on this property.
I stand up.
Look at her.
"Thank you," I say. "I didn't find that chapter in a book."
She holds my gaze for a moment. Something moves through her expression that is tired, warm, completely real and half laughing. She reaches over and straightens my collar, which is a small ordinary gesture that lands nowhere near small or ordinary.
"Come on," she says. "We've got a barn roof to inspect."
She starts back across the field.
I follow.
Beside her.
The barn roof has lost three panels on the northwest corner.
Not catastrophic. Repairable. But standing inside the barn looking up at the gray sky coming through where solid roof usedto be while the rain drips through in three steady streams onto the barn floor below is its own brand of deflating after a four-hour crisis.
Remy stands beside me looking up at the holes with his hands on his hips.
"Well," he says.
"Yeah," I say.
"Could've been worse."
"Could've been better."
"That's ranch philosophy right there." He looks at me sideways. "You want the good news or the other news?"
"There's good news?"
"The good news is it's fixable. I know a roofer in Silver Ridge who owes me a favor." He pauses. "The other news is the favor is from a situation I'd rather not explain in detail."
I decide not to ask.
Silas appears from the back of the barn with a bucket which he positions under the largest drip with the calm practicality of a man who has patched barn roofs before and understandsthe interim measures. He looks up at the holes. Looks at Remy. Looks at me.
"Tuesday," he says.
