“Hand me the wire cutters.” I gesture toward the toolbox I set by her feet as I tug my gloves from my pocket and slip them on. Saint blinks like she forgot I was talking to her.
Then she opens the box, rummages through it, and pulls them out.
I cut away the damaged section and pull new wire from the roll we left out here last year when we mended the fences. The work is simple and repetitive. Stretch, staple, move on. Saint stands a few feet away, arms wrapped around herself against the wind.
“You can sit if you want,” I tell her. “There’s a flat rock over there.”
She doesn’t sit. She just stands there watching me work, her gaze distant. After a while, I notice she’s not watching me at all. She’s looking past me, toward the valley below, where the creek winds through cottonwoods just starting to bud. Beyond that, the town sits small and contained, smoke rising from chimneys in the distance.
“It’s different up here,” she says suddenly. “Quieter.”
“Yeah.” I hammer a staple into the post. “That’s why I like it.”
“Does your family own all of this?”
“Most of it. The cabin, these pastures, the timberland to the east. My great-grandfather bought it piece by piece. Back when land was cheap, and people were desperate.” I move to the next post. “He wasn’t a good man, but he understood something important.”
“What’s that?”
“That land doesn’t lie. People do.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Considering, maybe? “Did you come here often? Before all of this, I mean.”
“When I could. It’s the only place Roman doesn’t show up unannounced.” I pause, realize what I’ve just admitted. “Was. Past tense.”
Because everything’s past tense now.
We work in silence after that, me fixing the fence, her standing watch like a ghost haunting her own life. The sun climbs higher, warming the air, and some of the tension leaves her shoulders. She unzips the jacket and tips her face toward the light.
“I used to think Montana was just… gray,” she says after a while. “All those fire-and-brimstone sermons about hell made me think heaven would be somewhere tropical. Palm treesand beaches.” She gestures toward the mountains. “But this is beautiful. In a harsh kind of way.”
“Heaven’s overrated.” I test the wire tension and am satisfied with the stretch. “This is better. Real.”
She almost smiles.Almost.Moving closer, she crouches down to examine some thistle near a rock. Her fingers brush the thorns, gentle and reverent.
“What are these?”
“Bull thistle. They’ll make flowers in June, but mostly stay like that the rest of the year. Stubborn little bastards.”
“My mom used to press flowers in books.” Her voice goes soft, distant.
It’s the first time she’s mentioned her mother. The first real piece of herself she’s offered me since I dragged her into this nightmare.
“You miss her,” I say. Not a question. I don’t pretend to know every single thing I could find out about her.
“Every day. Especially now.” She stands and brushes dirt from her knees. “She was so smart, and it seemed like she had an answer for every problem.”
“We’ve done decent so far. You’re doing okay. Surviving.”
“Am I?” She looks at me, and for the first time in days, there’s something sharp in her eyes. “Or am I just going through the motions until you decide what happens next?”
Fair question. An honest one. I pull off my gloves and shove them in my pocket.
“You’re surviving. And you’ll keep surviving. Because that’s what Bishops do, and you’re a Bishop now.”
Her face hardens. “I’ll never be a Bishop.”
“The law says otherwise.”
