Chapter 5
Jenna
One night in the guest room, one day of ranch life, and Stoneridge Ranch already feels like the safest place I’ve ever been. And I’ve already learned the routine.
The screen door bangs once at 6 a.m. as Maggie heads out to feed the chickens.
Breakfast is at 7 a.m.
By 8 a.m., the cats have migrated from wherever they slept to wherever Ethan is.
By 8:30 a.m., the ranch is alive with activity.
But the thing about the ranch routines is that nobody enforces them. No laminated charts. Just people who show up and get things done. In my fourth placement, chores were posted on a whiteboard. It was a system I understood because systems are how I survive. Here, things simply happen. The ranchers check fences because fences need checking. Maggie cooks because people are hungry. Ethan feeds the cats because they’re his, and he doesn’t neglect what belongs to him.
I watch from the guest room window, sleeves pulled over my hands, my skin burning underneath. I called in sick earlier, my voice hoarse and slightly apologetic, like a woman who’s come down with something unremarkable. My manager said, “Feel better” and didn’t ask follow-up questions. The white lie buys me a few days. Maybe a week, if no one checks too closely.
Pressing my forehead against the cool glass, I watch Ethan cross the yard. He’s in a faded work shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. A bucket hangs from one hand, and a gray kitten is tucked against his chest with the other. Halfway across, he shifts the kitten to his shoulder without breaking stride.
He carries things and makes it look like rest.
Like it’s easy.
Like taking care of something is simply part of him.
My forearms itch. I tug my sleeves down farther and head to the bathroom.
In the mirror over the sink, I see the evidence of the last twenty-four hours: a smudge of a bruise on my temple, already yellowing, and a scrape next to my eye that’s already scabbing over. Whatever Maggie put on it yesterday helped.
I push my glasses up and run the tap.
The soap is different.
I stare at it, my hands already wet. Yesterday’s harsh, green bar—the one that made my skin sting every time—is gone.
In its place is a plain white bar. No smell. No color. Just… soap.
I pick it up and work it between my hands.
No sting.
No burn spreading across my wrists.
Just clean.
The relief hits fast and hard. I grip the edge of the sink so my knees don’t give out.
I run through the foster kid’s inventory, of every time an adult noticed something about my body: the mother who pointed out my flare in front of her friends like I was a rescue dog with mange; the father who left off-brand cortisone on my pillow, and I mistook it for kindness until I realized he just didn’t want the other kids to catch it. I was eleven.
This is the opposite.
Someone noticed.
They saw what it was doing to me, figured it out, and fixed it without fuss.
My chest tightens because it’s not just anyone.
It’s him.