A slow breath eases out of me. Not relief exactly. But the feeling when you finally spot the gate in the far fence and know there might be a way out that doesn’t break anything on your way through.
My pulse steadies. If there's a chance to save this land, maybe this is it.
I shoot off an email before I can overthink it, asking for a Zoom call, laying out just enough to make it clear it's urgent. Even though I half expect silence in return, my phone buzzes tenminutes later with a reply. We can chat in twenty minutes, and they'll both be on.
Propping the laptop up on ledgers, I put my hat on the chair so I don’t fidget with it. While I wait, I hear Mom's voice float from the porch and freeze like I’m a teenager caught with a cigarette. She knocks once, opening the door because that’s how she’s always done it.
"I made a casserole for Josh and Jenna and grabbed you some before I took it over," she says, setting a foil-covered dish on the counter. Her eyes sweep the room the way mothers do. "You look tired, Bear."
"I’m fine," I say. The lie feels smaller when she says my nickname. It still sits wrong.
She smiles at that and touches my shoulder. "I saw you with Emma at the rodeo," she says, casual like she is talking about the weather and not sliding a knife between my ribs. "You were good with her."
"She is easy to be good to," I say, and immediately want to drag the words back from the air in case they tell too much.
Mom's smile softens into something I don’t have the tools to handle with a call coming. "You have always been a steady place for small people. That will matter someday."
"Ma," I warn gently.
She kisses my temple as if I’m still fourteen and smell like sweat and horses and dirt. "Eat before you get wrapped up in whatever it is you're doing," she says, and slips back out the door.
The laptop pings. I click, and Willy fills half the screen in a ball cap with a logo that has faded from black to gray. He grins, and beside him sits his brother. He is quieter than Willy even on video. Hair gone grayer than the last time I saw him at a Fourth of July picnic, eyes still sharp enough to cut wire.
"Asher," Willy says. "How's your old man? Still pretending that knee doesn't bother him when it rains?"
"Stubborn as the day is long," I say. "He’ll die before he admits it."
Willy laughs. Though his brother doesn’t. He tilts his head the way he did when I was a kid, asking if I actually locked the gate or just thought about locking it.
"What's got you asking for a call?" Walton says, voice steady. "A man like you doesn't waste time on technology unless it's worth it."
He's right. So I tell them. Not everything—not about Kassi, not about how I know the developers' plans—but enough. About the talk of drilling. How they're spreading lies in town. More importantly, about my efforts to find out who owns the rights.
"It's you," I finish, my gaze fixed on the older man. "You're the name on the deeds. You're the one who can stop this before they tear Silver Cattle into something unrecognizable."
Silence stretches. Willy leans back, arms crossed, watching his brother. Finally, the man speaks.
"You read the records," Walton says after a beat.
"I did."
"So, you saw what my granddad asked us to do."
"I did."
He nods. "He came over one night with a bottle and a map. Said someday the dirt might be worth more than the men on it, and we needed a way to keep the wrong hands from finding their way under the fence. He split it to make it harder."
"Smart," Willy says, pride in his voice like the past is a living thing in the room with them. "Smart as he was, he’d be mean to those coyotes that one winter."
Walton ignores him. "We kept it quiet. Quiet was safest. We let the family run the land. Signed what needed signing when taxes came due. Nobody went looking because nobody knew to look."
"Well, they’re looking now," I say. "They are circling, and I don’t have much time before they push, and I can't fight them without you."
He weighs that. He looks past the screen for a second, as if he’s checking a clock or a memory. "You love that land," he says, and it is not a question.
I do not hesitate. "Yes."
"You going to sell it for summer houses and coffee shops with chalkboard menus the minute it gets hard?"