Page 53 of Broken Cedar

I know Colt usually brushes Copper on Sundays, but I can’t help myself from doing it. I brush Copper until my arm aches. His coat is thin in places with age showing through, but he leans into the brush the way he always has, his eyes half-closing, his weight shifting toward me like he’s afraid I’ll stop if he doesn’t remind me he’s here.

“You’re spoiled,” I tell him. “You know that, right? Absolutely rotten.”

He blows through his nostrils, entirely unimpressed. Copper has spent too many years on this ranch being loved by people who couldn’t help themselves.

“You’re getting old, buddy,” I murmur, running my hand down his foreleg.

He nudges my shoulder, demanding more attention. I scratch behind his ears the way he likes, and he leans into it, his massive head heavy against my chest, and I stand there with my arms around his neck and my face pressed into his mane, trying not to cry.

After a while, Copper loses interest. He ambles toward the water trough, leaving me standing in the dust with a brush in my hand and nowhere particular to be. I hang the brush on its hook and walk toward the barn because walking toward something is easier than standing still.

I run my hand along the stall doors as I walk. Each one has a story. The third stall on the left—that’s where Cinnamon lived, the stubborn mare Colt taught me to ride. The back corner stall—that’s where Jim kept his old Appaloosa, the one that died the winter after he did. The stall nearest the tack room—that’s where Copper lived when he was young.

I leave the barn and the memories behind. The sun is higher now, the morning heat bearing down. I walk without thinking about where I’m going. My boots find the path that cuts through the sage toward the sound of water, and my body knows the way even if my brain is busy pretending this is just a walk, just a morning stroll.

I sit on the biggest rock and pull my knees to my chest, watching the light on the water.

When I was a teenager, this creek was everything. The place I came when I was upset. The place Colt always checked first when he couldn’t find me. The place where, one stupid summer afternoon, I carved our initials into the soft bark of a cottonwood and spent the next week terrified someone would see it and know exactly what it meant.

Nobody saw it. The carving is still there, faded but legible, about chest-high on the trunk nearest the water. CW + HW. I don’t go look at it. Some things are better felt at a distance.

I used to come here when I couldn’t breathe. When the ranch felt too small, when the sky felt too big, when the weight of being sixteen felt unbearable. I’d sit on this rock and skip stones until my arm hurt and then I’d sit some more and eventually the tightness in my chest would loosen, not because anything had changed, but because the creek had a way of making space for things that felt too big to carry.

The creek is making space now. I can feel it happening. The slow unpacking of a grief I’ve been carrying since I got here, maybe longer. Since I left. Since I built a life somewhere else and called it bravery when what it really was, was fear—fear of wanting something this much, fear of belonging to a place that belonged to me first, fear of the particular catastrophic rightness of loving Colt in a way that felt permanent before I understood what permanent meant.

But what if staying isn’t the same thing as being trapped?

The question lands in the quiet like a stone dropped in still water. I watch the ripples. Wait for them to settle. They don’t settle. They keep moving, outward, reaching for banks I can’t see from where I’m sitting.

What if the life I built in the city—the apartment, the career, the independence I wear like armor—was the escape route, not the destination? What if I’ve been running toward something that was never supposed to be home, and away from the only place that ever was?

I sit until my legs cramp. Until the sun is high enough that the shade under the cottonwoods has shrunk to a narrow strip along the bank. I should head back. It’ll be lunch soon. Mom will wonder.

I stand, my knees protesting as I dust off my jeans. I take one last look at the creek–the light, the water, the silence that exists nowhere else on this property or anywhere else I’ve ever been. Then I turn and walk back toward the house, and with every step the weight in my chest gets heavier.

* * *

“There you are,” Mom says as I enter the kitchen. “I was starting to think you’d joined the witness protection program.”

“Was just out walking,” I say, washing my hands at the sink.

“Hungry?” she asks, her eyes looking me up and down in that familiar way they always do.

“Starving.”

She nods toward the bread on the counter. “Make yourself useful. I’ve got chicken salad in the fridge.”

We make lunch, then sit at the table. Mom talks about how Mrs. Harmon brought over a bag of green beans from her garden because her green beans are better than anyone’s and she knows it and everyone lets her have this one thing because the woman makes a deviled egg that could end wars.

I make appropriate noises and nod in the right places.

Mom takes a sip of tea, sets her glass down, and looks at me. “What time’s your flight tomorrow?”

I’m mid-bite. I set my sandwich down. Chew. Swallow. Take a drink of tea to buy myself three seconds I don’t actually need because I know the answer.

“Two-fifteen,” I say. My voice comes out steadier than I expected. “Out of Bozeman. I should probably leave around ten to be safe.”

Mom nods. “So you’ve got the morning, then.”