I look out at Laney's cabin.
The porch light is on.
"Maisie," I say.
"Mm."
"You're eight."
"I know."
"You're also the most observant person on this ranch."
She considers this seriously. "More than Silas?"
"Different than Silas."
She nods, accepting this distinction. "Dad?"
"Yeah."
"You smile more too." She says it simply, without agenda, the way she says true things. "All the way up to your eyes now."
I look at the hill line going dark against the sky, the ranch settling around us, Rowdy snoring across our feet, the porch light on in cabin two.
"Yeah," I say quietly. "I know."
She tucks her feet further under her and we sit in the warm dark and I think that forever is not nearly long enough for this place.
Or the people in it.
Saturday morning I'm up before everyone.
This is saying something because Laney is usually at the barn by five-thirty and Silas has some kind of internal clock that I'm convinced runs on a different time zone than the rest of the world. But I'm up at five, coffee made, sitting at the kitchen table with my ranch notebook open, working through a long-term improvement plan that's been taking shape in my head for the past two weeks.
Not an optimization spreadsheet.
Not an efficiency analysis.
A home plan.
Things like a proper covered arena for the horses so winter weather doesn't shut down training. A new irrigation system for the east field that won't fail when someone with good intentions and poor practical skills touches the coupling. Better equipment storage. A bunkhouse upgrade that Remy and Silas have been too polite to ask for but that I can see every time I walk past that it needs doing.
I write for an hour with my coffee going cold beside me and the ranch waking up outside the window.
There's a particular quiet satisfaction in being a man building something he intends to keep.
Remy appears at seven with Maisie in tow, which means she was up early and migrated to the bunkhouse for company.
She does that with increasing regularity, and Remy and Silas have accepted it with zero resistance. She's wearing her turquoise boots and carrying a piece of toast and has the bright uncomplicated energy of a child who slept well and has plans.
"Remy says we can move the tack room around today," she announces.
"Remy can do that without my supervision," I say.
"He says he needs your opinion on the shelving."
I look at Remy over her head. He shrugs with the innocence of a man who absolutely engineered this situation. "It's a two person job," he says. "Shelving decisions require input."
