And now Marcus Webb has called from San Francisco with his exit language and his market valuations.
He dropped a word into a quiet afternoon that has undone months of careful brave feelings in about forty-five minutes.
I know I'm probably wrong about this.
I know that hearing half a conversation through a doorway is not the same as knowing what was said. I know Beckett has forty-three pages of home plans in two notebooks on that desk. I know he told Maisie forever on the front porch and meant it.
I know all of that.
Knowing it and feeling it are two different things.
Right now the feeling is winning.
I go inside before the morning comes and lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling and think about how much easier this was before I let myself want something this much.
I get up at five and go to work because the ranch doesn't pause for any of this.
It never does.
I am professional about it.
That is the decision I make somewhere between five and five-thirty while doing the morning feed rounds in the barn alone. Professional. Competent. Exactly the ranch manager I was before any of this started. I can do that.
I've been doing that for four years and I'm good at it. It doesn't require anything from me that I'm not certain I can give right now.
What it requires is distance.
Not dramatic distance, not the cold, obvious, pointed kind that invites questions and conversations I'm not ready for. Just the quiet managed kind. The kind that looks like professionalism from the outside and costs considerably more on the inside.
Beckett finds me at the north pasture fence at seven.
I hear him coming. I Know his stride. I Know the particular rhythm of his boots on the dry ground that is different from Remy's, different from Silas's, entirely his own. I keep working on the fence latch I'm adjusting and give him the same greeting I'd give anyone arriving at a work site in the morning.
"Hey," I say. Even. Professional.
He stops beside me. I feel the pause before he speaks.
"Morning," he says carefully.
He's already noticed, which I knew he would. Beckett Wilder has spent the last few months learning my rhythms with the same focused attention he brings to everything he decides matters and a single word delivered in a particular tone is enough for him to know something has shifted.
He doesn't push it immediately. That's the thing about him. He reads a situation, gives it space, doesn't crowd it. Weeks ago I would have said that was a city skill, the kind of emotional intelligence shaped by boardrooms and negotiations. Now I know it's just him.
Which makes it harder.
"Fence latch on the north gate is sticking again," I say. Practical. Useful. Ranch manager.
"I'll take a look at it after breakfast."
"I've got it."
A pause. "Laney?"
"The east pasture check needs doing before nine," I say. "Silas is on the water trough but the cattle count hasn't been run this week."
Another pause. Longer.
"Okay," he says quietly. Not pushing. Just present.
