She says it as if it’s optional. It’s not. Nora was my mother’s best friend. The only person who came to the cabin after Mom died, when my grandfather went so quiet I thought the silence would swallow us both. Nora showed up with food, and she kept showing up, week after week, year after year, until showing up wasn’t a kindness anymore. It was just the truth. She was family. The kind you don’t choose and can’t refuse.
Telling her no would feel like telling my mother no. And my mother’s been gone long enough that the things that remind me of her are the things I can’t bring myself to turn away from.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
“Wonderful. I’ll have coffee on.”
She will. She’ll have coffee and something baked, and she’ll ask how I’m doing, and I’ll say fine, and she’ll look at me with that gentle, knowing patience that says I see you lying, and I love you anyway. And I’ll fix the post and drink the coffee and leave before she can ask anything that matters.
That’s the deal. That’s how we’ve done it for years.
I hang up and sit in the truck with the engine off. Chief puts his chin on my thigh. The good thigh. He always knows.
* * *
I’m pulling out of the hardware store lot when I hear my name.
Not shouted. Just said, at a volume that carries. I know who it is before I look.
Colt Ryker is leaning against the fence outside the feed store with his arms crossed and his hat pulled low. Dark hair, dark eyes, a beard that hasn’t seen a razor in weeks. He looks the way he always looks. A man who’s been through something he doesn’t talk about and came out the other side harder than he went in.
He was. He did. We both did.
“You look like hell,” Colt says.
“Thanks.”
“Leg?”
“It’s fine.”
He doesn’t push. That’s the thing about Colt. He served with me. Was there for the worst of it, or close enough. And he moved to Iron Peak two years after I came back home, bought a ranch on the north side of the valley, and never once asked me to talk about what happened. He just checks in. Shows up at the cabin with a six-pack and sits on the porch and doesn’t say much, and somehow that’s enough. It’s more than enough.
He’s the only person besides Nora that I’d let get that close. The only person who doesn’t make the proximity feel like pressure.
“You eat today?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
I haven’t. He knows. He lets it go.
“I’ll come by this weekend,” he says. It’s not a question.
I nod once and pull away from the curb. In the side mirror, Colt is still leaning against the fence, watching my truck until I turn the corner. Keeping an eye. That’s what he does.
Across the street, Sheriff Hank Lawson is stepping out of his cruiser. Tall, broad, brown Stetson, the same steady expression he’s worn every day for the decade he’s been pretending the word “acting” is still in front of his title. He sees my truck and raises a hand.
I don’t wave back.
It’s not personal. Hank knows that. But I don’t have it in me today. The leg is screaming, and the drive home is twenty minutes of gravel switchbacks, and I’ve already spent more time around people than I can handle.
Chief presses closer to my side. I rest my hand on his back and feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing under my palm.
* * *
The cabin is quiet when we get back. It’s always quiet. That used to be the point.
I unload the chain oil, check the generator, and fill Chief’s water bowl. The routine is the scaffolding that holds the days together. Without it, I’d sit on the porch and stare at the mountains until the light was gone, and then I’d sit in the dark and stare at nothing, and the thoughts I spend all day outrunning would catch up.
