She walks back toward the ranch house in her turquoise boots with her notepad under her arm and I stand at the creek boundary in the late afternoon light and look at the oak tree catching the last of the sun and think that Saturday at six o'clock cannot arrive fast enough.
One more day.
Then forever.
Chapter twenty-four
The Beginning of Ours
Laney
Something is happening on this ranch.
I know this early Saturday morning because the evidence is impossible to ignore for someone who has been reading Silver Mesa's rhythms for four years and knows exactly what normal looks like.
Normal is not this.
Remy is unusually focused. That is the first sign. Normally Remy operates at a baseline level of cheerful distraction that is as consistent as the Texas weather is not.
This morning he arrived at the barn at six, delivered a suspiciously rehearsed good morning, went straight to work, and has not made a single unnecessary comment all morning.
Remy has not gone ninety minutes without an unnecessary comment since I have known him.
Silas is also behaving strangely, which is harder to identify because Silas's baseline is already quiet and contained. But I know Silas. I know the difference between his regular quiet and his deliberate quiet and this morning he is being deliberately quiet in a way that has a specific texture to it.
Like someone carefully holding onto information they are trying very hard not to spill.
Maisie is the most obvious.
She comes to find me at the barn at seven with her notepad, which she has been carrying around for two days now and which she closes immediately when I look at it, and tells me she needs to show me something at the creek later.
"What kind of something?" I say.
"A nature something," she says. Without blinking.
I look at this child.
She looks back with the innocent expression she deploys when she is being anything but innocent, which I have learned to recognize with considerable accuracy over four months of Maisie Wilder operating at full capacity in my vicinity.
"A nature something," I repeat.
"There's a bird," she says. "A specific bird. I want you to see it."
"What kind of bird."
A pause just a little too long. "A blue one," she says.
I look at her.
She looks at me.
"What time?" I say.
"Six o'clock," she says. Immediately. Like she's had the time ready.
I file that away and go back to work and spend the next hour cataloguing the evidence.
Remy disappears behind the barn around nine with what appears to be a string of lights and a legitimate reason for having them that he delivers too quickly and with too much detail.
