Page 27 of Broken Cedar

Chapter Seven

We’re halfway back to the house when a truck horn sounds from near the barn.

Colt stops walking. “That’ll be the feed delivery.”

Before I can answer, one of the ranch hands waves from beside the unloading area. “Colt.”

He walks over, and I follow at a distance. Colt pulls off his gloves and tucks them into his back pocket as the hand meets him at the truck’s tailgate.

“How many pallets?” Colt asks.

“Two.”

Colt squints at the sky, then back at the load. “Put the first one in the north shed. The second goes by the equipment barn.”

“Storm’s supposed to be coming in a couple of days.”

“Yeah.” He glances toward the horizon. “Make sure everything’s covered before dark.”

“Got it.”

The whole exchange lasts less than a minute, but it’s clear that everyone knows what they’re doing. I watch Colt walk back toward me. “Gotta deal with this delivery,” he says when he reaches me.

I wave him off, telling him I’ll be fine and that I’m more than capable of finding something to do. I find myself wandering down past the paddocks, across the east pasture, along the worn path that cuts through the sagebrush toward the sound of water. I haven’t been to the creek since I got here. Haven’t let myself go near it. Some places hold too much. Some places you avoid because you know exactly what will happen when you finally stand there again.

The creek hasn’t changed. That’s the first thing I notice. The slow bend is exactly as I remember it. Cottonwoods still lean over the water, their reflections wavering in the current. The same flat rocks where we used to sit and skip stones for hours.

I don’t hear him approach. He sits beside me and doesn’t say anything. The creek murmurs softly. A red-tailed hawk circles overhead, and we both watch it without commenting.

“Remember that summer we built the rope swing?” he says eventually. “Up by the big cottonwood?”

“The one that broke the first time I used it?”

“That’s the one,” he says. “You landed in the shallows. Scraped your knee on the gravel.”

I pick up a flat stone, turning it over in my palm. “You carried me all the way back to the house even though it was just a scrape.”

He looks at the water and says nothing.

The conversation drifts easily, the way it always used to. We talk about high school. The terrible football games. The winter the pipes froze and we missed an entire week of classes because Mom refused to let us drive anywhere.

We talk about summers spent here—riding until our hands blistered, swimming in this creek until our skin pruned, staying outside until the sky turned dark and someone finally called us home. It’s strange how easily the memories come back. Like they’ve been waiting.

“You know what’s weird?” I say eventually. Colt glances over at me. “I thought, when I left…I thought you’d forget. Not everything. But the small stuff. The things that didn’t matter.”

He looks at me. His eyes are tired. “Nothing about you was small, Hallie.”

I look away, focusing on the water instead of him. “Tell me something,” I say. “Something I’ve forgotten.”

He thinks for a moment, searching through memories like they’re arranged on shelves he can still reach. “Sophomore year. Winter.” I smile before he even finishes. “You were dating that kid.”

“Ryan.”

“Ryan.” His mouth twitches. “He stood you up for the winter formal. You came home, put on pajamas, and ate an entire pint of ice cream.”

I cover my face. “Oh my God.”

“You cried for exactly seven minutes.”