She hands me the wire stretcher and turns back to the fence.
Frank crows from the chicken run, though what he thinks he's announcing is anyone's guess.
I reach for the next fence post and think:This is what I came back for. I just needed to learn it for myself. To find what I was missing. Took me long enough.
I smile to myself because I know I’m right. I'm not leaving.
And for the first time, that thought doesn't feel like a risk.
It feels like the most obvious thing in the world.
Chapter 16
Ladder, Chandelier, Freefall
Falon
Frank calls out a little too early today. He’s been like this all week.
Someone really should talk to him about time frames, and when it is and is not okay to announce the morning at what I can only describe as o’-dark-thirty. I lay there for several minutes, hoping he’d reconsider. Maybe, if I were lucky, I could go back to sleep for at least fifteen more minutes. But he didn’t.
I glare at the window, sigh in resignation, and get up. Should I kill Frank the rooster tomorrow or give him a little more time? I’ll let him live. Usually, he’s a good rooster. I growl. Something must have woken him.
By the time I get ready and make it downstairs for some much-needed coffee, I am already mentally tallying everything that needs doing. The squeak on the seventh step, I thought I fixed last week. The barn door was being overdramatic after I tapped it with the tractor yesterday. That wasn’t entirely my fault. The brake stuck. There was really no stopping it. I’ll have to take the tractor over to Jake at the garage tomorrow, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.
I flick on the temporary hallway light I’d installed when I first moved in, only to discover the original fixture didn’t work. The temporary light is dim enough to double as a scary movie; it sometimes flickered, but it was better than nothing. The new chandelier had sat boxed in the entryway for months: an old, cast-iron, five-armed antique salvaged from a barn sale two counties over, rewired by a guy in Billings. It belonged above the staircase, hanging where the first one had hung for sixty years. Every morning, I tripped over that box on my way to the kitchen. Yet, always telling myselfnot today, I kept walking.
Then I stepped off the last stair and hear it.
A loud, terrifying, piercing squeak that makes my heart drop to my toes.
Rowdy’s squeaky toy was left on the bottom step. Almost lying in wait.
I let out a sound that is not my finest moment, stumbling sideways trying to get away from the killer toy, and grab the banister hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
I stand there for a second, hand on my chest, glaring at the toy.
“That’s it,” I say to no one. “I’m fixing that light today.”
I pick up the toy and throw it across the room. The barn door can wait. The tractor is already on tomorrow’s list. But that dim, flickering, horror-movie hallway situation was getting resolved if I had to break my neck doing it.
I had no idea how prophetic that would turn out to be.
The chandelier’s hook can’t go into drywall; it needs to go into a stud or joist, and the only ladder tall enough to reach is the twenty-foot extension ladder that lives in the barn. I’ve used it plenty. The issue is the entryway. It is a narrow staircase cutting into the floor space. This means theladder base only fits in one specific spot, and that spot is not ideal.
I know I’ve put it off for months just because even thinking about that entryway setup gives me a knot in my stomach.
This morning I decided that’s no longer my problem. I am going to do it anyway.
Bo and Rowdy had just come back from their Monday morning meeting with Sam and had headed straight out to the east pasture. I watched them go from the kitchen window. Bo, with his coffee still in hand, Rowdy trotting ahead, making a beeline for the cattle.
That was forty-five minutes ago.
The house is mine. The chandelier is right there. And I am done waiting.
I drag the ladder in from the barn.
The entryway is cool when I set up the ladder. The light from the side window pours in, letting me see the ceiling clearly. I check the ladder feet twice and confirm the angle. Pulling on my work gloves, I start climbing. The chandelier bracket sits in one hand while my stud finder remains clipped to my belt.
