"Take him back to the barn," I tell Remy.
I hand over the lead rope and walk in the opposite direction and tell myself the stinging behind my eyes is the Texas dust.
It's not the Texas dust.
Maisie knocks on my cabin door on Thursday evening.
I know it's her before I open it because her knock is distinctive. Three quick ones, a pause, then one more, like a signature she developed somewhere along the way and now uses every time she shows up at my door.
I open the door and she's standing on the porch in her turquoise boots and her pajama top and a pair of jeans she clearly pulled on in a hurry, her hair in the lopsided braids she does herself when she doesn't want to wake anyone up to ask for help.
It's seven-thirty.
She's holding a plate with two pieces of French toast on it.
I look at the plate. Look at her. "Did you make French toast."
"You taught me how," she says. "Last week. Remember?"
I step back and let her in because there is no version of this where I don't let her in.
She sets the plate on the cabin table with the careful precision of someone transporting something important
She pulls out a chair, sits down and looks at me with those serious eyes that have been seeing straight through people since before she had the vocabulary to describe what she was seeing.
I sit across from her.
We look at the French toast.
"It's a little dark on one side," she says. "I'm still working on the heat thing."
"Looks good to me," I say.
She picks at the edge of her napkin. Looks at the table. Looks at me. Decides something.
"Dad's sad," she says. Plain. Direct. The way she says everything that matters.
I keep my voice even. "He told you that?"
"He doesn't have to tell me." She looks at me with the particular patience of a child who has been reading her father her entire life. "He's quiet in the wrong way. There's a quiet that means he's thinking good things. This isn't that quiet."
I look at the French toast.
"He didn't do anything wrong," she says. Carefully. Not accusing. Just stating. "I don't know what happened but I know he didn't do anything wrong because I know my dad."
The cabin is very quiet around us.
"I know that too," I say softly.
She looks at me for a moment. "Then why is he sad?"
I don't have an answer that is appropriate for an eight year old. The honest answer involves thirty three years of accumulated fear and a word overheard through a doorway and the particular damage that hope does to a person who has spent their whole life being careful about it.
"I'm working through something," I say. "It's not about your dad doing anything wrong."
She considers this seriously. "Is it about you being scared?"
I look at her.
