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“That’s why I’m here.”

She said it flat. A statement of function. She was here to think about the things I didn’t think about, and the thinking was the job, which she’d been doing since the Courier article — working, producing, filling the space between us with competence so there was no room for anything else.

I angled the stake. Drove it. She checked the line and moved on.

At stall thirty-one, her phone buzzed.

She stopped walking. The string line went slack in her hand. The clipboard hung at her hip. She looked at the screen and her face did something I’d seen once before — the morning she’d found Nickel’s shoulder, the morning she’d called the county at seven-forty. The stillness of a woman whose internal machinery had encountered an input it couldn’t route.

She read the screen. I couldn’t see it from where I stood — three feet away, the mallet in my hand, the stake half-driven in the dirt. Her face was doing nothing. Not the producer’s face, not the professional mask, not the open face from the bed or the floor. Nothing. A face with the power turned off.

She lowered the phone. Turned it in her hand. Held the screen out toward me.

I took it.

The email was from a broker in Denver. I read it standing in the arena dirt with the mallet in one hand and the phone in the other and the sun on the back of my neck and the string line hanging slack between the last two stakes.

Dear Ms. Nair,

Following review of your renewal application and in light of recent public reporting regarding the 2024 Riverline Festival incident, we are writing to notify you that your professional liability coverage under policy PL-4471 has been withdrawn, effective immediately. The carrier has cited material nondisclosure on your most recent renewal application, specifically the failure to disclose the pending claim history associated with the Riverline matter. Please be advised that no claims will be accepted under this policy after the date of this notice.

If you wish to contest this determination, you may submit a written appeal to the carrier’s compliance office within thirty days. Please note that the appeal process does not stay the withdrawal of coverage.

I read it twice. The words sat in the screen’s glow and the sun hit the glass and I tilted it to read it again and the words were the same.

Material nondisclosure. She’d disclosed everything she was obliged to disclose. I knew that. Wyatt would know that. Any lawyer in the state would know that. But the email didn’t care what I knew or what Wyatt knew or what any lawyer knew. The email cared about the carrier’s determination and the carrier’s determination was that the coverage was gone, today, and the appeal took thirty days and the rodeo was eleven days out and thirty was more than eleven by any arithmetic I could do.

I looked up from the phone.

She was standing in the dirt with the string line in her left hand and the clipboard at her hip and her face doing the nothing it had been doing when I took the phone. Her eyes were on the arena floor. Her boots were dusted. The wrap on her right wrist was beige against the flannel sleeve.

Finally, she said, “I need to make a call.”

She motioned for me to join her, and we walked to the truck. She lowered the tailgate with her left hand and sat and I sat beside her and the phone came out of her pocket and she set it on the tailgate between us and dialed.

Dena Fry answered on the first ring.

“Mrs. Fry, this is Priya Nair at Carrow Creek. I’m calling about our event permit.”

“Ms. Nair.” Dena’s voice was gentle. The cardigan voice. The voice that said “I’m sorry” and meant it and didn’t yield. “I was hoping you’d call.”

“I’ve just been notified that my professional liability coverage has been withdrawn. I need to understand the implications for the permit.”

A breath. I heard it through the speaker — small, careful, the breath of a woman who had been sitting at a desk with three stacks of paper and a photograph turned away from visitors and who had been waiting for this call because she’d read the Courier and she’d known it was coming.

“The permit names Priya Nair as the event producer,” Dena said. “The insurance certificate on file is under your name and your policy number. If the coverage has been withdrawn, the certificate is no longer valid.”

“Is there a mechanism to transfer the permit to a different producer of record?”

“A transfer requires a new application. The new producer would need to submit their own insurance certificate, site plan, and vendor documentation.”

“Timeline?”

“Ten business days for standard review. I’m sorry, Ms. Nair. I know that’s not—”

“Ten business days. The event is eleven calendar days out.”

“I know.” Dena’s voice was quieter now. “I’m sorry.”