She looked around the stripped-down kitchen. The empty shelves, the boxes by the door, the absence of everything that had made this place mine.
“Oh, Rose.” Her voice softened. She crossed the room and pulled me into a hug. “I’m so sorry. I know how hard this is.”
I stood there with her arms around me and felt nothing.
No. That wasn’t right. I felt everything. I just couldn’t sort any of it into categories that made sense. Grief and suspicion and exhaustion and the specific, nauseating weight of being embraced by someone you no longer trust but can’t confront.
Graham’s voice in my head:Someone set the table before Taylor sat down to eat.
Taylor’s face when I fired him:You know what you did.
Hank at the feed store:This doesn’t sit right with me.
I pulled back from the hug.
“I should finish packing,” I said.
“Let me help.” She was already reaching for a box. “What still needs to go?”
“Nothing. I’m only taking one bag.”
Denise blinked. “One bag? Rose, you’ve lived here for six years.”
“And now I don’t.”
She studied me for a moment, that quick, assessing look I’d seen a thousand times. The one I used to think meant she was worried about me. The one I now wasn’t sure about at all.
“Where will you go?” she asked.
“My cousin Maggie’s. New York.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rose.” She took a step closer, her expression shifting into the gentle concern that used to make me feel safe. “You know I’m here for you. Whatever you need. Even from a distance, I can handle the transition with Garrett, make sure Hank is taken care of, manage the final paperwork. You don’t have to carry all of this alone.”
Every word was right. Every inflection was perfect. The devoted friend, offering to manage things so the grieving ranch owner could heal.
Offering to be alone with the books. With the records. With whatever was left to hide or destroy.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Sandra’s handling the closing paperwork. And I’ve already taken care of Hank’s future employment with Garrett.”
Denise’s mouth tightened at the corners. Barely anything, gone as fast as it appeared. But I’d spent my whole life reading horses, and horses taught you to notice the things that moved too fast for most people to catch.
“Of course,” she said smoothly. “Sandra’s great. I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to manage everything from across the country.”
“I appreciate that.”
We stood in my gutted kitchen with a box of pastries neither of us was going to eat and a silence that used to be comfortable and wasn’t anymore.
“I should go,” Denise said finally. She squeezed my arm, the same gesture, I realized, that she’d used on Graham the day his team left. The same warm, calibrated touch. “Call me when you land?”
“Sure.”
She picked up her keys, the metal jangling too loud in the empty kitchen, and paused at the door.
“Denise?” I nodded toward the key ring in her hand. “Before you go. You need to turn in all keys you have to any buildings on the property.”
