Page 40 of Broken Cedar

Mom, bless her, notices nothing. Or notices everything and has decided, that some things are better left unspoken. She stirs her pot, humming quietly to herself.

Somehow, four days had already slipped away. Four days since I’d come home convinced I knew exactly who I was and exactly where I belonged. Four days since Colt and I’d promised each other one week. No expectations. No future.

At some point, without even realizing it, I’d stopped counting down until I left. I was counting how much time I had left. Only three days remained. Three days before I get back in my car and return to the life I’d built. Three days to discover exactly how much it will cost to walk away a second time.

Chapter Ten

Iwake before the sun. Again. This is becoming a habit, this pre-dawn consciousness, this lying in the gray half-light with thoughts that won’t settle. Colt’s voice in my head. I wasn’t exactly thrilled when you left, a sentence I’ve been turning over all night like stones in my palm. Which is the part that keeps me awake at five-thirty in the morning with my heart doing something that feels dangerously close to panic.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled when you left.

I throw back the covers, the cold air hitting my skin.

Stop it. You’re leaving in three days. Don’t start imagining otherwise.

I stop the thought down before I can finish it.

I dress on autopilot. Jeans from the chair. T-shirt from the drawer. Socks that don’t match because at five-thirty in the morning the audience for my footwear choices is exactly zero. I brush my teeth, and quickly braid my hair. Look at myself in the mirror and don’t recognize the woman staring back—sun-browned, rumpled, a version of myself I thought I’d outgrown years ago, blinking at me with eyes that look too awake for this hour.

Downstairs, I expect noise. Coffee already brewing. Colt at the table, maybe, or at the stove flipping something in a pan. Instead I find Mom at the stove. Just Mom. Her back to me, spatula in hand, humming something under her breath that might be Willie Nelson or might be something she made up. The kitchen smells like bacon and something sweet—cinnamon, maybe, or the particular vanilla of her coffee cake that she only makes when she’s feeling sentimental.

“Morning,” I say. My voice comes out rough. I clear my throat.

She turns and smiles. “There you are. I was starting to think you’d sleep till noon every day while you’re here.”

“Not a chance. Guess the old habits are kicking back in.”

“Old habits.” She nods, smiling once more.

I pour myself a coffee and lean against the counter, mug warming my palms, scanning the kitchen. There are no boots by the door, no hat on the hook.

“Where’s—“ I start, then stop. Where’s Colt feels too loaded, too revealing, the kind of question that carries more weight than its syllables should allow.

Mom doesn’t notice, or pretends not to. “North pasture fence gave way after that wind overnight. He was out before sunrise.” She flips a piece of bacon, not looking at me. “Said something about the post rotting through at the base. Whole section came down in the storm. Lucky the horses weren’t in that paddock.”

He was out before sunrise. Five words. Delivered the way you deliver any ordinary fact about any ordinary day. It’s Tuesday. The mail comes at eleven. Colt was out before sunrise fixing a fence.

I take a sip of coffee. It’s too hot and burns the roof of my mouth. I quickly spit it back into the mug, hoping Mom didn’t notice. “Did he eat?” I ask, grateful that she hasn’t turned her attention from her frying pan.

“Grabbed an apple. You know how he is.”

I do know how he is, that’s the problem. I know exactly how he is—the man who prioritizes fence posts over breakfast, who deals with problems the moment they appear rather than letting them accumulate, who has been getting up before the sun every morning for ten years to run this place alone because that’s what the work requires.

I sit at the table. Mom slides a plate in front of me—eggs, bacon, a slice of coffee cake still warm from the oven. I thank her and pick up my fork, but I don’t eat.

Through the window above the sink, the ranch is coming awake. First light hitting the east paddock, turning the grass gold. A horse is moving along the fence line, silhouetted against the pale sky. The distant sound of an engine—one of the hands, probably, heading out to whatever Colt has assigned for the day. The particular, patient rhythm of a place that doesn’t hurry for anyone.

I eat my eggs. They’re perfect. Mom’s eggs always are. I drink my coffee and make appropriate compliments about the coffee cake. I am, on the outside, a woman having breakfast with her mother on a perfectly ordinary morning.

On the inside, I am counting hours. Three days. Seventy-two hours. A number that felt generous a week ago and now feels impossibly small, like trying to hold the entire sky in your cupped palms.

I finish my breakfast in silence. If Mom notices my sour mood, she doesn’t comment on it. When I’m finished, I wash my plate. The routine is muscle memory. The emptiness in my chest is new.

I decide to go find him. Mom doesn’t ask where I’m going, just hands me a water bottle, and a sandwich, and smiles knowingly.

When I step out onto the porch, the sun has fully risen. The air carries dust and the smell of cut grass from the riding arena, where one of the hands is already working a young horse on a lunge line. I cut across the east paddock. The grass is dew-wet, soaking my boots to the ankle. My hand absentmindedly brushes the fence line that runs the property’s northern edge as I walk, feeling the tension.

I see him before he sees me. Three paddocks over, maybe a quarter-mile out, working alone on a section where the fence has clearly given way. The posts are down—not just leaning, but flat on the ground, the wire tangled in a mess. Colt is knee-deep in it. Literally. Boots planted in the dirt, gloves on, hat pulled low, using a pair of fencing pliers to work the wire free from where it’s wrapped around a fallen post.