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Her mouth moved. Not a smile. The ghost of one, the faintest pull at one corner, gone before it committed.

“Five minutes,” she said. She finished her coffee then carried her mug to the sink, rinsed it, and set it on the counter upside down to dry.

I watched her do it. The way she handled the mug — careful, thorough, the rinse and the placement done with the same precision she brought to everything. She’d rinsed it and set it to dry as if it lived here now.

Maybe it did.

I folded the site plan along the tape lines, tucked it into a page protector I’d found in Wyatt’s office, and put it in the truck.

Five minutes. Virginia City. County offices.

The first real step.

***

Virginia City had been a mining town once and still dressed like one.

The county offices sat in a brick building on the main street, between a museum and a closed hardware store with a hand-painted sign in the window. The parking lot held four cars and a sense of mild bureaucratic resignation. A flag hung limp on a pole near the entrance.

I parked the truck at the end of the row. The driver’s-side door handle had quit last winter, which meant I had to scoot into the driver’s seat from the passenger side. Priya had watched me do this without comment, which was either restraint or horror.

Inside, the building smelled like floor wax and the ghost of someone’s lunch. Fluorescent tubes hummed overhead, casting the kind of light that aged everyone equally. A hallway with linoleum. A bulletin board with county notices, a flyer for a 4-H meeting, and a lost dog poster with a phone number I recognized.

The planning office was the second door on the left.

Dena Fry sat behind a desk arranged with the precision of a woman who found order comforting and disorder personal. Three stacks of paper, each squared to the desk’s edge. A county lanyard around her neck. A cardigan the color of oatmeal. A photograph on the desk turned away from visitors — I could see the back of the frame, brown wood, a small brass stand.

She looked up when we came in.

“Mr. Calloway,” she said.

“Mrs. Fry.”

She knew my name. Of course she did. Small county, word traveling faster than trucks on gravel. She’d probably known about the rodeo before I’d announced it — not because anyone told anyone, but because the valley had a single nervous system and it didn’t need a phone.

Her gaze moved to Priya. Studied her for one second — the clipboard, the oversized flannel, the smartwatch, the boots.

“And you must be Ms. Nair,” she said.

“I am.” Priya set her clipboard on the edge of the desk, not on it. “We’re here to file for a one-day event permit. August fifteenth. Carrow Creek Ranch.”

“Yes.” Dena pulled a form from the center stack and laid it flat. “You emailed. Four hundred attending.”

“Four hundred expected. I’ve allowed for five.”

She uncapped a pen. Wrote the date. Wrote the location. Wrote the event name — The Big John Calloway Memorial Rodeo.

Then she stopped.

Her pen rested on the page. She looked at it, then at us, and the expression on her face shifted by one careful degree toward regret.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The words landed in the room.

Priya went still. Not surprised — still.

“I’ve reviewed the application requirements for an event of this type and scale,” Dena continued. She spoke gently, each word placed with care, the voice of a woman delivering news she wished were different. “Madison County is currently under a Stage Two fire restriction. Outdoor events with pyrotechnic potential, including cooking vendors, fuel storage for generators, and any open-flame activity, require a fire-marshal sign-off that cannot be issued during an active ban.”