Neither of us makes any real move toward getting out of the truck.
Chapter five
Whiskey and Warnings
Beckett
The rain stops arguing and starts meaning it somewhere around three in the afternoon.
By then Laney and I have abandoned the truck and made it to the barn, which required crossing the ranch yard in what can only be described as a full commitment to being soaking wet. There was no graceful way to do it.
I stopped looking for approximately four seconds and just walked.
Laney didn't even hesitate.
She was already giving instructions before we cleared the barn door, shaking water off her hat and pulling out her phone in one motion. Her voice shifts into a register I haven't heard before.
Calm, direct, and completely in charge, the kind of tone that doesn't ask if you're listening because it already knows you are.
Silas gets the first call. She tells him to check the south pasture fence line and move the younger cattle to the upper field before the creek rises further. She tells him which gate to use and exactly why and he's already moving before she's finished the sentence.
Remy gets the second call. It's shorter. "Storm protocol. Start with the horse barn." A pause while he says something. "I don't care, Remy. Now." She hangs up and looks at me.
"The feed needs to be moved off the barn floor," she says. "Bottom bags will take on moisture if the drainage backs up. Stack them on the pallets against the north wall."
"Show me once," I say. "I'll handle it."
She looks at me for a half second like she's deciding something. Then she points to the feed bags and shows me the stacking pattern and moves on without making a production of trusting me with it.
I get to work.
The barn becomes a different kind of place during a storm. The rain on the roof is constant and loud. The horses shift in their stalls with the particular restless energy of animals that know something is happening outside and don't love it. I talk to them while I work, low and even, because I read that it helps.
Also because it turns out I was right about that one.
Biscuit watches me from his stall with his large patient eyes and I feel marginally less stupid for talking to a horse.
Laney moves through the barn with the efficient calm of someone following a routine she has memorized so thoroughly it lives in her hands rather than her head. She checks drainage channels, secures equipment, examines the roof line for any spots that need attention. She doesn't waste a single movement.
I watch her when I can get away with it.
Not in the way that gets me in trouble. Just the way you watch someone who is genuinely good at something and can't quite look away from it.
I finish the feed bags and find her at the far end of the barn checking the water runoff situation near the back wall.
"Done," I say.
She turns and looks at the stacked bags. Checks the pattern. Looks back at me.
"Good," she says.
It's one word.
I'm starting to realize that one word from Laney Jenkins means considerably more than a paragraph from most people.
The storm settles into a steady, determined rain by late afternoon.
The kind that isn't dramatic anymore. Just persistent, gray, and committed to ruining everyone's plans for the rest of the day.
