“You can sleep.”
“So can you.”
“I don’t think I can.”
Wade leaned against hall wall.
“Want coffee?”
“At four?”
“We’re ranchers now.”
“Apparently.”
They sat in the kitchen until sunrise.
Not touching.
Talking.
Marisol told him about San Antonio.
Her mother cleaning hotel rooms.
Her father leaving when she was twelve.
Community college.
Bookkeeping classes at night.
The job at Hale.
How proud she had been when she first got an office with a door.
How stupid she felt for believing stability was permanent.
Wade listened.
Then she asked about his father.
“Heart?”
“No.”
“Horse rolled on him.”
Marisol looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Six years ago.”
“You there?”
“Yes.”
Wade’s eyes moved toward window.
“He was checking north fence.”
“Horse spooked.”
“I found him.”
The words were flat from years of repetition.
Marisol did not say she understood.
She simply moved her hand across the table until her fingers touched his.
Wade looked down.
She did not pull away.
Neither did he.
By eight, they went to work.
That mattered.
Threats did not repair fence.
Secrets did not feed cattle.
A fraudulent bank did not stop winter.
Marisol changed into jeans, boots, and Wade’s spare canvas coat.
She followed him to the barn.
“First lesson,” Wade said.
“Don’t stand directly behind a cow.”
“I know that.”
“Second lesson.”
“Don’t assume a cow knows you know that.”
Marisol smiled.
“That sounds philosophical.”
“It’s manure prevention.”
By noon she had learned the feed route.
By afternoon she was helping inventory medication.
By evening she had created a spreadsheet of every animal on the ranch.
Wade looked over her shoulder.
“Why do I suddenly feel judged?”
“Because your records are terrible.”
“They’re accurate.”
“You have birth dates written on feed receipts.”
“They were available.”
“That is not a system.”
“Worked for my father.”
“Your father also used a phone attached to the wall.”
Wade stared.
Marisol smiled.
He laughed.
It was the first time she heard him do it.
Something warmed between them.
Not romance exactly.
Trust beginning to borrow romance’s shape.
The next week was quieter.
Too quiet.
Whitlock did not return.
The bank sent formal notice challenging the marriage as a sham arrangement.
Wade expected that.
What he did not expect was the inspection demand.
North Plains claimed the covenant required verification that Marisol materially participated in operations.
A field officer arrived Thursday.
He photographed her feeding cattle, entering numbers, repairing tack.
Marisol smiled sweetly the entire time.
After he left, she said:
“I hate him.”
“He seemed polite.”
“That made it worse.”
Wade looked at her.
“You’re definitely becoming Wyoming.”
At night they reviewed bank records.
Ten years.
Then fifteen.
Wade’s father had taken one livestock line twelve years earlier.
Two hundred eighty thousand dollars.
Repaid within eleven months.
But attached to the file was an inventory schedule Wade had never seen.
It listed 612 head.
Mercer Ranch had never held more than 240.
Marisol sat upright.
“There.”
Wade looked.
“What?”
“The pattern predates Hale.”
“So Hale isn’t origin.”