She looks around the porch. “But this... the ranch. The sabotage. The heat. It’s broken all my systems. I can’t organize it. I can’t control it. And it’s making me feel like I’m losing my mind. I feel like I’m failing. I feel like I’m failing everything.” She looks at Knox. “I’m a lawyer. I’m supposed to be good at managing. But here? I’m drowning.”
I look at Knox. He meets my gaze. We discussed this while she was sleeping last night. We agreed that if she was spiraling, we needed to intervene.
“You’re not failing,” I say. “You’re surviving. There’s a difference. You went through a major biological event,Saramaria. Your body is recovering. Your brain is trying to catch up. It’s normal to feel out of sorts.”
“But I hate feeling out of sorts,” she snaps. “I hate feeling weak. I hate needing... help.”
“It’s not weak to need help,” Knox says. He takes her hand. “You’ve been carrying everything on your back for weeks. It’s okay to let us carry you for a while.”
“We can manage the ranch,” I say. “We can handle the fences. You don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to be the lawyer, the boss, the cleanup crew. You can just... be.”
“I don’t know how to just be,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to stop doing.”
“Then maybe you should talk to someone,” Boone says. “A professional. Someone who can help you make sense of it.”
She looks up at him. Her eyes are wide. “You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you’re exhausted and overwhelmed,” Boone corrects. “And I think you’ve been through a lot of trauma. The stuff with your grandfather. The ex. The sabotage. It’s a lot for one person to process alone.”
“I don’t want to go to a shrink,” she says. “I don’t want them to tell me I’m in denial about my childhood.”
“Then tell them that,” Knox says. “Tell them you don’t want to be analyzed. Tell them you want tools. Coping mechanisms. Strategies. Just like you use for legal cases.”
She looks at us. She looks at the food. At the house. At the three of us.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.” She picks up a cinnamon roll and takes a bite. “This is good.”
“Hattie’s secret recipe,” I say.
We sit on the porch for a while, eating. The sun feels good on my face. It feels like we have returned to the land of the living.
“I’ve been thinking about your job,” Knox says suddenly. He’s leaning back on his hands, looking up at the sky. “The law. You’re a partner at Hartman & Ellis. That’s a big deal.”
“It is,” she says.
“So, what happens to that if you stay here?” he asks. “You can’t commute to Denver every day. And you can’t run a ranch from a high-rise.”
She chews slowly. “I know,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about that too. I can take a leave of absence. Indefinitely. If I want to stay here... I’ll figure it out. I can do contract work remotely. I can do consulting.”
“Is that what you want?” I ask. “To stay here? Really?”
She looks at the house. Then she looks at the meadow beyond the fence line. She looks at the horses in the pasture.
“I think,” she says slowly. “I think I wanted to leave because I thought I had no choice. But I do have a choice. I can sell. Or I can stay. And the longer I stay, the less selling makes sense. This is my home. It’s a mess, but it’s mine.”
“Then stay,” Boone says. “We’ll help you fix the mess. We’ll make it work.”
She looks down at her hands. She picks at a piece of cinnamon roll crust.
“But what about you guys?” she asks. “What about Knox’s circuit? What about... us?”
“The circuit is back,” Knox says. “But I’m not going back to the APBRA. Not yet. I’m staying here. At least until the end of the season. I have time to figure it out.”
“And we’re staying,” I say. “We’re not going anywhere.”
She nods. “Okay.”
The relief is palpable. It settles over the porch like a blanket.
