Page 25

For a second I kept the phone in my hand, screen glowing against the darkening lot.

No immediate miracle arrived.

Rude.

I climbed into the truck and started the engine.

The drive back to Carrow Creek took me out of the last lights and into open valley. The road unwound pale between dark fields. Fence posts ticked past in the headlights. The mountains became one black edge against a sky crowded with stars.

At the turn onto ranch gravel, I slowed.

The empty posts lining the drive appeared one by one in the headlights.

Dad’s Christmas lights had run the whole half mile. Every year, no matter the cold. He’d climbed the ladder, strung the wire, replaced every dead bulb, and refused help like it was a competing religion.

Last Christmas, the posts had stayed bare.

Eight months had not made that feel normal.

The main house showed one kitchen light. Boone’s cabin had gone dark. The sale barn sat quiet beyond the corrals, red boards turned black in the night. Cattle shifted somewhere below, hooves dull against packed earth.

I parked near the bunkhouse. The old building stood across the yard, long and low, with a covered porch and windows reflecting nothing. It had housed seasonal hands years ago. Lately it held dust, a few folded mattresses too old to trust, and the idea that I’d do something better with it when there was time.

There was never time.

For now, I was content to sleep in it like this. Simple, basic, it was all I needed.

I stepped inside.

The air smelled of dry lumber, mouse dust, and the cold mineral bite of an unlit stove. My boots sounded too loud on the bare floor.

I didn’t turn on the light.

Moonlight came through the windows in weak silver blocks. It showed empty walls and the broad center room where bunks had once stood.

I could put tables there.

Registration. Volunteer check-in. Radios charging along the wall. First-aid supplies by the door. Extra hands could sleep in the back rooms if we furnished them. Ty’s people, if Ty sent any. An event office near the front window where I could see the arena and the drive.

I built the whole thing in the dark.

Folding chairs. Clipboards. Coolers. Boots under bunks. Somebody complaining about coffee. Somebody else needing a room assignment I hadn’t made. Noise, mess, work.

People.

The picture disappeared when I blinked.

The bunkhouse stayed empty.

All day, people had been everywhere.

Buyers in the barn. Boone in the alley. Josie at her folding table. Wyatt at the kitchen table. Dennis Kroll breathing bank language through the speaker. The Rusty Spur full of men who knew my name and believed absolutely none of what came out of my mouth.

Now there was only me.

Strangely, that felt less familiar than the crowd.

Wyatt had said, It’s on you.