It’s Friday afternoon, and I drive out to Earl’s after my last client.
The road is familiar—I’ve been driving it daily for weeks now, the twenty-minute stretch of two-lane blacktop between the club and Earl’s ranch, and my truck knows the turns the way a horse knows the way home.
I’m running through the evening list in my head—Earl’s dinner, his meds, checking the south fence that’s been leaning—when I come over the last rise and see the truck.
Lee’s truck. Parked in Earl’s drive.
My foot comes off the gas.
I slow to a crawl and stare at the black pickup like it might be a mirage, like the Texas heat is playing tricks on a tired woman’s eyes.
But it’s real.
Dusty, dented, the Shotgun Saints decal on the rear window.
Lee’s truck at Earl’s ranch on a Friday afternoon, unannounced, uninvited, without being asked.
He was here the other day to help with the afternoon chores, so is that why he's here?
I park and walk around the side of the house toward the sound of a hammer.
He’s on the south fence line.
Shirt off because it’s eighty-two degrees and the sun hasn’t started dropping yet.
Post driver in his hands, sweat running down his back, the tattoos across his shoulders dark against the sun-brown skin.
He’s replaced four posts already—the rotted ones I’ve been worrying about for weeks, the ones I flagged on my mental list of things I’ll get to when I get to them because there are only so many hours in a day and I’m one person.
Earl is on the porch, in his rocker, sweet tea in hand.
He’s watching Lee work with the expression of a man who has been waiting years for his son to come home and is trying very hard not to spook him by looking too pleased about it.
I stand at the corner of the house, and I can’t move.
The hope I’ve been keeping under lock and key—the hope I refused to name, refused to feed, refused to let out of the cagewhere I keep the things that could destroy me—rises so fast it nearly chokes me.
It fills my throat and my chest and the backs of my eyes and I have to put my hand on the side of the house to stay standing because my knees have decided they’re done supporting a woman who is watching Lee fix Earl’s fence without being asked.
Lee looks up and sees me.
He wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist.
“South fence was leaning,” he says.
Like this is normal. Like this is what he does on Friday afternoons. Like he hasn’t just walked back into a life he abandoned and started putting it back together with his hands.
“I know,” I manage. My voice is steady. The rest of me is not.
He holds my gaze for a beat.
There’s something in his eyes I haven’t seen before—not the guarded neutrality, not the grief, not even the raw hunger from the tack room.
Something quieter. Surer.
The look of a man who has made a decision and is following through.
“I’ll finish this section before dark,” he says. “The east line needs wire. I’ll come back Sunday.”
