Her hands are steady, her voice is calm, and Biscuit responds to her the way he responds to Laney, with a gradual loosening of tension that says he recognizes someone who knows what they're doing.
Twenty minutes in she straightens up and says, "Mild impaction. He's going to be fine. Keep him walking another hour, make sure he drinks, call me if anything changes."
Laney exhales beside me. It's quiet, barely there, but I hear it.
"Thanks Emmy," she says.
Emmy packs her kit, looks between the two of us standing in the barn aisle at one in the morning with the particular expression she has apparently reserved specifically for situations involving me and Laney, and says, "Uh huh," to nobody in particular.
Then she leaves.
Remy left twenty minutes ago after Laney told him she had it handled and he should get some sleep. He went without arguing,which from Remy means he read the room and made a decision about it. Silas never came at all, which also means something, because Silas doesn't miss things.
The barn is very quiet now.
Just me, Laney, Biscuit, and another hour of slow circles to walk.
We fall into an easy rhythm without discussing it. I take the first stretch, Laney takes the next, we hand the lead rope back between us without ceremony. The barn settles around us, warm and dim at the edges where the light doesn't reach, smelling of hay and horse, carrying the particular nighttime version of itself that feels completely different from daytime.
We don't talk for a while.
It's not uncomfortable. That's the thing that keeps catching me off guard about Laney. The quiet between us has stopped being something that needs to be filled. It just sits there between us, easy, shared, like something we've both agreed to without discussing it.
She's leaning against the stall rail when I bring Biscuit around for another pass, her arms crossed loosely, watching the horse with the soft focused expression she gets when she's not performing competence for anyone and is just herself.
"You scared?" I ask. Quiet, not pushing, just asking.
She considers it honestly. "A little. Biscuit's been here longer than I have. He's part of the place."
"He's going to be fine."
"I know." She looks at me sideways. "You did good tonight. Keeping him moving. Talking to him."
"I read the chapter."
The corner of her mouth moves. "Yeah well. Tonight the chapter was right."
I bring Biscuit around again and she takes the lead rope from my hand and our fingers overlap for a second on the rope and neither of us moves away from it immediately.
She looks down at our hands.
I look at her.
The barn is very quiet.
"Beckett," she says. Soft. A little unsteady at the edges in a way her voice almost never is.
"I know," I say. Just as quiet.
She looks up at me and whatever she was going to say next stays where it is.
The space between us has stopped being a space in any practical sense.
Then Biscuit bumps his nose against her shoulder blade and she exhales a small sound that might be a laugh.
"He's feeling better," she says.
"Yeah," I say. Looking at her. "Me too."
