“I know.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
I lean against the stall door and think about it. The Forrester compound — the house, the barn, the pastures, the ridge where Maren’s stone sits under the live oak. The land I’ve known since I was born. The territory my family has held for generations.
“I’m going to tell her I’m coming back,” I say. “But not alone.”
Conner looks at me, putting the pieces together.
“Does Briar know that?”
“Not yet.”
“Good luck with that conversation.”
“Thanks.”
He almost smiles. Almost. Then he walks out of the barn and across the yard toward the cabin he shares with Willow and Mia. I watch him go, and I think about a child whose parents are dead because of a system I maintained and whose uncle I am because of a bond I didn’t choose and a woman I did.
I go back to shoveling. The physical work is good. The rhythm of it clears my head in ways that thinking never does: the fork, the straw, the weight, the lift, the dump, repeat. Simple. Honest. Work that produces visible results, unlike everything else in my life right now, which produces mainly confusion and the occasional miracle.
Briar finds me again at noon. This time, she doesn’t pretend it’s about a halter.
She comes into the barn, sits on a hay bale, and watches me work. I let her watch. The silence between us has a different quality today. It’s not charged or cautious. Something looser. The silence of two people who’ve seen each other naked in every possible sense and are learning what the dressed version looks like.
“Conner told me about Mia’s parents,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“He asked you to stand witness for the claiming.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to?”
“I said yes.”
She pulls a piece of straw from the bale. Turns it between her fingers. “The man who ran the corridor. Standing witness while his brother claims a child the corridor orphaned.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“I’m not saying it like anything. I’m saying what it is.”
“I know what it is, Briar.”
“Good.” She chews the straw and looks at me. “It’s also the right thing. Mia chose you. And Conner asked. And you said yes. So stop looking like you’re about to throw up and accept that you get to be part of something good for once.”
I stop shoveling and face her. She’s sitting on the hay bale in the noon light with straw in her mouth and her legs crossed. The small, barely-there swell of her belly is visible under her shirt if you know to look for it. Which I do.
“Something good,” I say.
“Don’t push it.”
“I’m not pushing anything. I’m standing in a barn covered in horse shit, agreeing with you. This is me not pushing.”
“You’re grinning.”
“I’m not grinning.”