A call to the auction house in Fredericksburg about two more horses flagged for the kill pen that I want to pull before Thursday.
Fence repair on the north line with a couple of prospects who are eager enough to be useful and green enough to need supervision.
I stay busy.
That’s the trick.
Fill every hour with something that requires my hands and my focus and leaves no room for the other thing—the hollow, heavy thing that lives in my chest like a second heartbeat.
If I stop moving, it catches up.
If I sit too long in a quiet room, it fills the silence with sounds I don’t want to hear.
Tires on wet asphalt.
Glass breaking.
The soft, wet nothing that came after.
So I don’t stop.
Haven’t stopped in five and a half years.
The brothers think I’m dedicated.
Hardworking.
The Road Captain who never takes a day off.
They don’t realize that the work isn’t dedication. It’s a tourniquet.
Shadow knows. He doesn’t say it, but he knows.
By the time the sun goes down, I’ve eaten dinner at the clubhouse—burger, fries, two beers, enough conversation to pass for social—and I’m back in the barn.
My feet always bring me back here.
The barn is the only place that doesn’t feel haunted.
Maybe because it’s full of things that are more broken than I am, and that’s a kind of comfort.
Maybe because the horses don’t ask questions or offer condolences or look at me with that careful softness people get when they remember I’m the guy whose wife died.
The bay is in the same position.
Far wall. Weight off the left front. Watching me with one dark eye.
I sit back down on the bucket.
Same spot. Same posture.
The barn settles around us—horses shifting in their stalls, the occasional blow of breath, the creak of old wood.
A barn cat jumps onto a hay bale and curls into a ball.
Outside, the last light bleeds out of the sky and the compound goes quiet.
I twist the ring on my finger.
