Page 94 of Tessa and Nash

We agreed we’d make it official later. Paper and county stamps, clean and proper, once the storm season broke.

“Later”, I told him.

Tessa makes a sound. Half scoff, half strangled breath.

I glance at her. Her eyes are glassy, fixed on the words as they shift the ground under her feet.

“This is…” I whisper.

“It’s not what I was told,” she says.

I keep reading because I’m afraid to stop.

I didn’t want the paper now. Paper can be used like a knife. Men with money love paper. Men without it bleed on it.

But Elias swore to me. On his children. On the ground he works. He said he meant it.

I believed him.

My chest feels tight. As if someone’s wrapped a rope around my ribs and started pulling.

I flip more pages. The journal goes on. Winter storms, cattle numbers, fence repairs. Notes about sharing the range. Mentions of Elias as an ally, not an enemy.

Then, months later, there’s a line that makes my stomach turn.

I have been sick for days. Chest tight. Breath shorter. I can’t shake the cold out of my bones. If this ink looks darker, it’s because my hand won’t stop shaking.

The page after that is different. Not Jonah’s hand. Sharper. Angrier.

Father is dead.

The ink is darker there, pressed harder. Grief with teeth.

Heart, they said. Sudden. Like the Lord reached down and took him before he could fix what he started.

Air sticks in my throat.

I flip to the map now, because my fingers can’t not.

It’s hand-drawn, lines sketched with care. The creek marked. The winter pasture shaded. Fence posts numbered. Notes in the margin, some in Jonah’s hand, some in Elias’s. Two scripts. Two men marking the same ground.

Two families.

And at the bottom, a promise that never got the chance to become law:

McCoy and Long signed in pencil, side by side.

My head swims.

Tessa’s breathing is shallow. Her fingers hover over the map without touching it, afraid it’ll burn.

“This is the agreement,” she whispers.

“Handshake on paper,” I murmur.

“And it says…” She swallows. “It says you weren’t thieves.”

The words land wrong.