The sound is small. A hiccup in the current.
Debbie doesn’t react. Probably wiring. Still, the hairs along my forearms rise.
I rest my palm against the cool metal of the table. For a second—no more than that—I feel something faint beneath my skin. Not vibration or movement. Awareness. Like the room noticed me noticing.
I pull my hand back.
“Everything okay?” Debbie asks, already reaching for the next box.
“Static,” I answer automatically.
Always an explanation.
I jot the name in my notebook.
Redfern. Circa 1910. Female subject. Dominant positioning. Peripheral male support. Negative space intentional.
I underline the last phrase. Negative space intentional.
Outside, the afternoon sun feels harsher than it did this morning, as though the sky has lowered itself a fraction.
Main Street lies quiet. No traffic. No voices. Just the wind slipping down from the Starborn Range.
I glance toward the distant line of mountains. They look the same as they did yesterday. As immovable and indifferent as time itself.
And yet I can’t shake the feeling that something inside them shifted when I touched that photograph.
The wind changes direction. Just enough to cool the back of my neck.
The land isn’t finished speaking.
And neither, I suspect, was she.
Chapter
Seven
ASH
The herd settles easier this morning. Maybe too easy.
Tension lurks, though I can’t pinpoint from where.
Like prey that’s already scented something larger moving beyond the fence line.
I lean forward in the saddle, scanning the ridge the way my father taught me. Slow sweep left to right, never trusting the first glance.
The sky’s pale and stretched thin, darker clouds smeared across it like ink smudges that refuse to fade.
Winnie flicks an ear, muscles shifting beneath me.
“Don’t,” I murmur.
I don’t know if I’m speaking to her, the land, or the blood in my own veins.
The air tastes wrong. It isn’t another storm. And it isn’t even the heat. Something metallic sits beneath it. Like lightning before it decides to strike.
Then the hum shifts. Not wind or cattle.
