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“So we just let it—”

“We do the work. She does the work. The work is the answer.”

“Boone. She’s in there right now calling vendors. She’s been in there since seven. She hasn’t eaten.”

Another pause. Longer. I heard the creek through the gap, thin and quiet, the sound that had been getting smaller all summer.

“Ask her what she needs,” Boone said.

“I have.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said she’s got it.”

Boone didn’t respond to that. The silence after it was specific — the silence of a man who recognized the phrase because he’d heard it from someone else, in a different context, and knew what it meant and what it cost.

Their voices moved away. Boots on gravel, fading toward the barn. The horse rental hold music played from the phone speaker, a thin electronic version of something that had once been a melody.

I picked up the pen. I started writing and the afternoon went where the afternoon went — into the work, into the calls, into the filling of gaps that kept opening faster than I could fill them.

***

Ty Bannerman’s voice came through the phone speaker at six-fifteen, dry and technical.

“I’ve got a mare from the Miles City string that’ll pack a toddler. Sound, quiet, been around noise her whole life. The second one — that’s harder. Most of what I’ve got is bucking stock, and bucking stock doesn’t do gentle.”

I wrote “Ty — 1 confirmed (mare)” on the contingency list. The list had grown to a page and a half — every gap from the vendor list matched with a backup, every backup matched with a phone number, every phone number matched with a note in my left hand that said “called” or “left message” or “confirmed” or “waiting.” The letters were getting smaller as the page filled, the slant more pronounced, the wrist tiredness showing in the pressure of the pen against the paper.

“What about the bay from the Dillon contractor?” Cash asked. He was leaning against the doorframe between the main room and the back room, arms crossed, hat off, his hair falling forward. He’d been there for ten minutes. He’d been there on and off all afternoon — passing through, checking the stove, refilling the water glass I hadn’t asked him to refill — and each time he lingered a beat longer than the task required.

“Bay gelding, fourteen hands,” Ty said. “He’d work. But the Dillon contractor’s hauling fee is separate, and he’ll want insurance on the animal, which — given what’s happening with your event policy—”

“We’ll handle the insurance,” I said. I wrote “Dillon bay — insurance TBD” on the list. “Can you confirm both by Wednesday?”

“I’ll confirm the mare tonight. The bay I’ll push on tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Ty.”

“Sure thing. Cash — keep your elbow in.”

“I wasn’t riding.”

“You’re always riding. Tell the kid with the collarbone I said it happens to everybody.”

The call ended. I set the phone on the table and picked up the pen and started the next line — “Band: Bozeman option” — and Cash was still in the doorframe.

“You should eat,” he said.

“I will.”

He went to the stove. I heard the pan, the oil, the sound of something being sliced. I kept working.

The plate came down at seven.

I heard it before I saw it — the sound of ceramic on wood, the plate meeting the table with the careful placement Cash gave to everything he put in front of me. Rice, beans, a piece of cornbread. The cornbread was from a mix — the kind that came in a box — and he’d added something to it, honey maybe, and the sweetness reached me across the table and I kept writing.

“You’re not sitting,” he said.