I'm not visiting anymore.
I'm back in the room.
After we clear the plates, I stand at the sink long enough to rinse the last dish twice, more for the steadiness of the routine than because it needs it. Mae moves around me in the kitchen with quiet purpose, putting leftovers away, wiping the counter, the evening folding itself into its usual shape even though I can feel the shift underneath it.
The conversation with Mae sits heavy in my chest, but not in a bad way. More like weight I'm choosing to carry.
When the kitchen is finally clean and the house settles, I dry my hands on a towel and glance toward the hallway.
"I want to check something," I say.
Mae looks up from where she's stacking containers. "Now?"
I nod. "Yeah. Just... Dad's office."
Her expression softens, but she doesn't ask questions. She gives a small nod toward the back of the house, an unspoken permission. "Light's on if you need it."
I move down the hall, the floorboards creaking in the same places they always have. The house feels different at night. Smaller. Warmer. The sounds contained. My childhood bedroom door sits half closed, a thin stripe of darkness behind it, and I keep walking.
The office door opens with quiet resistance, like it hasn't been used much lately but hasn't been forgotten either. Inside, the air is cooler. Dust and old wood and the faint trace of aftershave, or maybe just memory.
I flick on the lamp.
The light pools across the desk, catching on the edges of stacked folders and a couple of notebooks Mae must have moved to one side for safekeeping. The room isn't preserved like a shrine. Just unused. Mae's kept it available even if no one sits here anymore.
I pull the chair out and sit. The wood creaks under my weight, a sound that hits harder than it should. I rest my hands on the desk for a moment, palms flat, feeling the grain beneath my skin.
Then I open the top drawer.
A worn spiral notebook lies inside, cover bent, the corner softened from years of being handled. I lift it out and turn it over. My father's handwriting stares back at me from the front in thick black ink. Blocky. Certain.
My throat tightens.
I don't stop.
I open it.
The pages are filled edge to edge. Dates. Names. Weather notes. Short observations written in the margins. It isn't pretty. It isn't organized in a way I would have recognized back then. But now, sitting here with Mae's words still in my ears, it feels like a map.
Timing discipline. Not perfection. Just the steady, relentless management of days.
I flip through and find a section where the handwriting changes slightly, more hurried, as if he'd been jotting notes on the fly.
Move cattle early if heat hits by noon.Don't wait for the perfect day, you'll lose the window.If you're behind, you'll stay behind.
My fingers pause on the page.
I can hear his voice in the bluntness of it. Not unkind. Just clear. My father was never a man who pretended the land would forgive you if you forgot about it for a week.
I flip again. More notes. Rotation reminders. Grazing days counted out. A scribbled line about storms rolling in early one year, forcing a change in plans.
I keep going until something else appears.
A list of names.
Not cattle. People.
Boarding: Collins mare, full careTraining: Roper gelding, tune-upLessons: Tues/Thurs evening
