Friday morning he hands me the weekly maintenance report without being asked.
It's a single printed page, the same one he gives Laney every week, a rundown of what needs doing, in what order, and what supplies are required. My name isn't on it. Neither is Laney's. It's just the ranch talking to the people responsible for it.
He hands it to me first.
I read it, make two notes in the margin, hand it to Laney.
She reads it, makes her own notes, looks at mine. Doesn't comment on them directly. Just incorporates them into whatever she's planning in her head and moves on.
Silas watches this exchange with the small private expression that means he's filed something away satisfactorily.
At lunch Remy drops into the seat across from me at the tailgate with his sandwich and says, completely unprompted, "You know what's funny?"
"You're going to tell me regardless," I say.
"Day one I called you Money Bags because I thought it was funny." He takes a bite. Chews. "Now I call you Money Bags because it's yours."
I look at him.
He looks back with unusual sincerity sitting underneath the usual grin.
"There's a difference," he says.
"I know," I say.
He nods. Goes back to his sandwich.
Silas, sitting at the far end of the tailgate, raises his coffee cup a fraction of an inch in a gesture so small that most people would miss it entirely.
I don't miss it.
I raise mine back.
The notebook has forty-three pages of notes in it now.
I counted this morning. Not because I'm tracking it specifically but because I was looking for a blank page and ran out faster than expected and had to start a second one.
Forty three pages of Silver Mesa. Irrigation lines, pasture rotation schedules, equipment upgrades, the bunkhouse renovation timeline, the covered arena plans, a detailed breakdown of what the cattle operation could look like in three years if we expand the herd by fifteen percent.
Real plans. The kind that stop feeling temporary before you even notice it's happened.
I'm at the kitchen table with both notebooks open, my coffee going cold beside me. The house carries that particular focused quiet of a Saturday morning when Maisie is still asleep and the ranch is just starting to find its feet. This is my favorite hour. The one that belongs entirely to this.
The covered arena is the biggest project. I've been talking to a contractor out of San Antonio who specializes in ranch construction, getting numbers, understanding timelines.
It's a significant investment. The kind that only makes sense if you're building something permanent. Something you intend to still be standing in twenty years.
I intend to still be standing in twenty years.
The bunkhouse renovation is scheduled for October, after the main cattle work is done for the season. New bathroom, proper insulation, covered porch, a decent kitchen setup that doesn't require Remy to do everything on a two burner situation that belongs in a college dormitory.
I've been collecting details from Silas for weeks, small things Remy would never ask for himself, additions that would make the space genuinely comfortable rather than just functional.
Remy doesn't know the full scope of it yet.
His face when he finds out is going to be something I want to be present for.
I make a note about the secondary irrigation line Earl sketched out, confirm the contractor timeline, add a question about water rights on the east boundary that I need to follow up with the county office about.
