I take it.
Coffee.Realcoffee, not Shadow's war crime bullshit. Cream. Two sugars. The way I take it.
She knows the way I take it because she's been bringing me coffee at the round pen for years now.
Sometimes once a week. Sometimes twice. Always two mugs.
Always one for her, one for me.
"She barely slept last night," Grace says.
She means Dakota. I don't pretend not to know.
"How’d you know that?"
"Her cabin light was on at four. I was up with the baby."
I drink my coffee. Grace looks at the mustang.
The mustang has gone back to the far rail. He's pretending the last hour didn't happen.
"He moved," Grace says.
"Yeah."
"For her?"
"Yeah."
Grace is quiet for a minute.
I know this Grace.
Whenever she’s quiet, it’s the brief pause she makes before she says the thing she came to say.
Quiet for a minute. Then the question. I wait for it, knowing it’s coming.
"You know she's had eyes for you since the night you were patched in, right?" Grace says.
I don't answer. I can't. There's a thing inside my chest that just dropped a foot.
"She started coming out before sunrise when she was younger," Grace says. "I'd find her sitting on the bunkhouse porch with my dad's binoculars and a paperback. I thought she was reading. She wasn't reading."
"Grace."
"She was watching you work the round pen. Sometimes for an hour. Sometimes more. She used to ask me what books you read because she'd see you with one and she wanted to know what you were reading at the round pen in the early morning."
Grace takes a drink of her coffee.
Waylon shifts in the carrier, sighs in his sleep and settles.
"I'm just saying. You weren't as invisible as you thought."
I open my mouth, then close it.
The mustang at the far rail shifts his weight from one hoof to the other.
"Grace."
