I appreciated that more than I said out loud.
What I cannot stop thinking about, lying here in the dark, is the moment I touched it. I was being careful. I had watched three separate tutorials and read the chapter on irrigation systems twice. I understood the coupling system. Theoretically.
Theoretically keeps coming back to haunt me and I'm starting to resent the word.
I suspect ranches operate primarily on spite and weather instead.
I sit up at five, give up on sleep entirely, and make coffee. Maisie won't be up for another two hours, which gives me time to think without anyone narrating my failures back to me in real time.
I take my coffee to the front porch.
The ranch in the early morning is a different thing than the ranch in daylight. It's quieter in some ways and louder in others. The sky is doing something extraordinary over the hill line, going from black to deep blue to a thin line of orange along the east ridge that has no right being as beautiful as it is.
The air smells like grass and something I can't name yet. Something clean.
I sit with that for a minute.
I bought this ranch because I needed something real.
Instead, I may have accidentally purchased twelve hundred acres of emotional growth.
Fifteen years of building Wilder Capital had made me very wealthy and very tired. Somehow, without noticing exactly when it happened, I became completely hollow.
The money stopped meaning anything. The wins stopped feeling like wins.
I would close a deal that should have felt like a victory, sit in my car in the parking garage afterward, and feel absolutely nothing at all.
Maisie deserved better than a father running on empty.
So did I.
I look out at the muddy east field catching the first pale light of morning and think: today I fix what I broke.
Even if it takes all day.
Laney comes out of the bunkhouse around seven with Remy and Silas The three of them stand at the edge of the east field surveying the damage with the quiet solidarity of people who have cleaned up messes before and will clean up messes again and have simply accepted this as a feature of ranch life.
I'm already there.
I have boots on. Work boots, not the leather ones I own. I found them in the equipment shed last night after everyone was gone and left them by the door so I wouldn't forget them this morning. I'm wearing jeans that I don't mind ruining and an old college shirt that has survived worse.
Laney looks at me. Then at the boots. Then back at me.
She doesn't say anything, which I'm learning means something different every time.
"Where do you want me?" I ask.
"Can you run a pump line?"
"I can learn."
Another look. This one slightly less guarded than yesterday's. "Silas will show you. Do exactly what he says and don't improvise."
"Noted."
Silas appears at my elbow like he materialized from thin air, which honestly makes me suspect he simply lives inside fence lines waiting to silently judge people. Which seems to be his preferred method of arriving places. He hands me one end of a heavy pump line and starts walking without explanation. I follow.
We work for the better part of two hours. Silas communicates primarily through demonstration and the occasional single word, which suits me fine. He shows me something once. I do it. He watches. He either nods or adjusts my grip without comment and we move on.
