Page 214

Priya

The letter lay open beside my plate.

NAIR & CO.

The company name had looked different since Denver. It was the same typeface, same ampersand, same legal structure I had paid too much money to establish and then nearly worked myself into the ground protecting. But beneath it was an address that did not belong to a sublet or a rented office with frosted glass and a receptionist who never learned how to pronounce my name.

Carrow Creek Ranch.

Montana.

The rest of the address sat there in black print, ordinary and exact. The state had accepted the registration. The county had accepted the business filing. The bank had accepted the updated location after making me answer three security questions and promise twice that I had not been coerced into moving my company four hundred miles.

Of course, I had not been coerced. Not even close. For once, I hadn’t built a life because it was the safest option. I’d built it because I wanted it.

“Chew slowly,” Cash said. “Then drink.”

I tried my best, but I was too excited to chew slow.

The kitchen around us still smelled new.

Not store-new. Nothing on Carrow Creek ever smelled untouched enough to qualify. The counters were old pine Boone had planed smooth, with dark knots under the finish and one edge that would never be straight because the bunkhouse itself had not contained a straight line since approximately 1910. Wyatt had found a proper stove in Bozeman at a price he described as defensible. Cash had built shelves from boards salvaged out of the north barn, then rebuilt the first one after I put three binders on it and it listed six degrees left.

He claimed the list had been decorative.

I had brought my coffee mugs back from Denver. All four of them. That had been the moment the move became dangerous.

A person could pack clothes without committing. A person could bring a laptop, legal documents, even a printer without implying permanence. But mugs were an admission. Mugs meant mornings. Mugs meant expecting to use a cabinet often enough to care where the handles faced.

Two faced left now.

Two faced right.

Mine and his.

The original bunkhouse had been four rooms and a stove, each room apparently designed by a person with a grudge against doors. Now the wall between the front two rooms had come down. The living room held a couch that did not fold, sink, or expose a metal spring when sat upon. Cash’s rodeo buckle still hung from its nail, but the nail was now above a low bookcase filled with westerns, event-production manuals, two veterinary reference books Josie had lent me, and a three-ring binder labeled HOUSE in my handwriting.

Cash had added a line beneath the label.

NOT AN EVENT.

I had not removed it.

The bedroom held a bed level enough that a pencil no longer rolled toward the west wall. My clothes occupied half the closet. His shirts occupied the other half, except for the gray-green flannel, which moved between us and could no longer be assigned ownership in any meaningful legal sense.

And then there was the small room at the back.

It got the morning light.

That had been the whole reason, or the reason we stated. The window faced east over the creek, and by eight the sun fell in a broad gold square across the floorboards. Cash had sanded the boards himself. I had found the yellow paint for the walls and then rejected it as too bright, selected another yellow, rejected that as too beige, and eventually returned to the first one.

A low pine table sat in the center.

There were floor cushions around it. Shelves along one wall held paper, crayons, colored pencils, washable markers, stickers, glue, scissors with rounded ends, and three coloring books. A wooden crate held western picture books, animal books, and one book about heavy machinery that Cash had bought while claiming it was educational.

Neither of us called it anything.

We called it the back room.