I stopped and looked at him. "Why?"
"Because I’ve seen what happens when nobody steps up."
The weight in his voice told me this wasn't just about me. Wasn't just about a broken window or a nosy neighbor's call, either. It was about the role he'd carved out in this town and about holding things together before they cracked.
I wanted to argue and tell him that wasn't his responsibility. But I'd seen the way people looked at him. Trusted him. Relied on him to keep the peace even when the peace didn't deserve to be kept.
So instead, I just said, "Thank you. For the window."
He nodded. "Lock the doors."
"I will."
"I'll grab my tools and show myself out." He paused at the back door, like he wanted to say something else. But whatever it was, he kept it to himself.
I followed him through the house and locked the door behind him. When his truck disappeared down the drive, the house felt quiet. But it wasn't the same kind of quiet it had been before. Something had shifted, leaving me feeling more unsettled.
I went back to the kitchen table and opened the West Parcel box again. My finger traced Aunt Lois’s handwriting on the empty divider tab. She’d been looking at something. Something important enough to label and organize with the same care she'd given everything else in this house.
For the first time since I’d arrived in Mustang Mountain, it didn’t feel like I was just settling Aunt Lois’s estate. It felt like I was also stepping into whatever she’d left unfinished.
CHAPTER 5
TORIN
I told myself I was just checking in on the rodeo project. That's what I did. I kept tabs on things… made sure nothing slipped through the cracks before it became a problem.
But the truth was, I couldn't shake the date on that missing envelope or the way Claire had traced that empty divider tab with her finger, like she could feel the absence of whatever had been there. Lois Hollister hadn't been careless. Everyone in town knew that. If a file was gone, there was a reason.
I turned onto the gravel road leading to Wilde Creek Ranch. Dawson would be working horses this time of day. He always was.
I found him in the round pen, working a bay mare through her paces. The horse moved smooth and steady, responding to the slightest shift in his body language. Dawson didn't look up when I pulled in, but he knew I was there. He finished the exercise before crossing to the fence.
"Didn't expect to see you out this way," he said.
"Figured I'd check in on the rodeo prep."
His mouth twitched. "You mean you want to know if I've hit any walls with the deadline."
"That too."
Dawson wiped his hands on his jeans and jerked his head toward the barn. "Come on. I'll show you what I've got."
Inside, the barn smelled like hay, animals, and leather. Unlike a lot of folks in Mustang Mountain, I didn’t grow up on the land and didn’t have a ton of experience around horses. Still, it wasn’t hard to see why someone would love a place like this.
Dawson pulled an old ledger from a locked cabinet near his office and set it on the workbench. The cover was cracked, the pages yellowed with age.
"This is what I've been working from," he said. "Breeding records going back to the early 1900s. Most of it's straightforward, but there are gaps and places where the records don't line up with what the town's been saying about the feud."
I leaned over the ledger, scanning the entries of dates, names, and bloodlines traced in careful, looping script. The handwriting changed every few years, like different people had kept the records alive across generations.
"What's this?" I pointed to an entry dated March 1912. A Kincaid mare was listed alongside a Hollister stallion, and the foal recorded six months later.
Dawson crossed his arms. "That's the problem. If the feud had already divided the families completely, that breeding shouldn't exist. But it's right there. Clear as day."
I scanned the surrounding entries. There were more overlaps signaling cooperation that didn't fit the story everyone in Mustang Mountain had been telling for a hundred years.
"The feud hardened around that time," Dawson said. "Everyone knows that. But the records suggest it wasn't always a clean break. There was overlap of shared work, maybe even shared land."
