“You did everything you could,” I say. “Moved them to the safest ground. Secured the hives. Chose a spot with less brush,closer to water. That’s more than most folks would have thought to do.”
“They’re my responsibility,” she says softly. “If something happens and they die… that’s on me.”
I exhale, long and low. “I know the feeling.”
Her eyes lift slowly to mine. “Do you?”
“Every damn day,” I admit. “About the ranch. About the horses. About the people who work for me.”
I don’t say “about Luke.” There’s a limit to how much I can spill without cracking open.
She wraps her arms around herself, the sweater bunching around her small frame.
“I’ve always handled everything alone,” she says, barely above a whisper. “After my mom died… after my dad left… it was just me and Grandma. And then just… me.” Her throat works. “I got used to the idea that no one was coming. So I stopped expecting it. But you guys came for me.”
I stare at her.
I’m so busy focusing on what I screw up, what I can’t fix, that it never occurs to me people might see anything else.
“You ever feel like doing your best is still… not enough?” she asks, echoing what she said earlier, but now it feels different.
Less hypothetical. More of a confession.
“All the time,” I say. “But you know what?”
“What?”
“You still have to do it.”
She huffs a quiet, humorless laugh. “Very comforting.”
“It’s meant to be,” I say wryly. “That’s how I sleep at night.”
“You’re not sleeping,” she points out.
“Technicality,” I say.
The corner of her mouth lifts.
She leans her head back against the wall, staring at the wood grain on the ceiling.
“It’s strange,” she says. “Having people help. I keep waiting to wake up and realize I imagined all of it. The fire. The evacuation.” Her fingers close tightly around the bee charm. “Feels like the kind of thing you only get in dreams.”
I don’t know what makes me do it—fatigue, instinct, plain old stubbornness—but I reach out and rest my hand on her shoulder.
She goes very still.
“You didn’t dream us,” I say quietly. “We’re here. You’re not alone in this.”
She exhales, a small, broken sound caught between a sigh and a laugh.
“Why?” she asks, turning her head slightly to look at me. “Why are you doing so much? I’m just… your neighbor.”
I see her how she sees herself: small farmhouse on the edge of things, one woman with her bees and her ghosts, watching the town from a distance, not sure she’s allowed to come in.
“Because you’re notjustanything,” I say. “You’re part of this valley. You help keep it alive. You feed people. You care for things most folks don’t even notice. Flowers, hives, tiny lives that matter more than we think.”
Her eyes glisten in the dim light.
