Page 20 of Saddle and Scent
The pie tin is still warm.
The future, for once, feels wide open.
3
FACING THE RIDGE
~JUNIPER~
The next morning, I wake up inside my own personal episode of Hoarders: Rural Edition.
I’m sweating under a blanket that smells like a combination of dryer lint and lost hopes, pinned flat to the musty sofa by a box labeled "Aunt Lil's Kitchen Shit." There is, in fact, a sharp corner of a cast iron skillet making an indelible impression just under my left breast.
So much for the theory that a fresh start means waking up to sunbeams and birdsong.
Instead, it’s mildew and splintered pine paneling, the entire house suffused with a faint undertone of mouse piss and the over-sweet aroma of wilted peonies left to die on the table.
The air in here is thick, almost gummy, the humidity doing nothing to mask the persistent ache in my lower back.
I try to roll upright, but the box is winning the war of inertia. For a minute, I just flop on the cushions, staring up at the ceiling fan’s slow, sickly orbit, and let the ache settle in. There’s something comforting about this—being cocooned in evidenceof prior failures, the material detritus of a life I never signed up for.
When I finally manage to lever myself upright, shoving the box off with a grunt, the scents outside hit me square in the nose: wild alfalfa and morning dew, and, like an unwanted party guest, the lingering ghost of Alpha pheromones from last night. The air’s fresher out here than anywhere I’ve ever lived, and yet it’s already tainted.
I sniff the collar of my shirt.
Yeah, that’s definitely Wes and Callum and Beckett, still clinging on like a bad Tinder date.
It’ll take a decade to air out the house and a century to air out the memory.
I shuffle to the kitchen, bare feet slapping the sticky linoleum, and fumble for a mug.
Every cabinet is stuffed to maximum density:mismatched cups, orphaned Tupperware, a ceramic chicken so hideous it’s probably haunted.The fridge groans when I pull it open, revealing a shelf of generic ranch milk, a Tupperware of what I think is gravy, and three cans of energy drink—leftover, no doubt, from Aunt Lil’s last go at self-improvement.
It’s not even eight and I’m already nostalgic for city life, where coffee comes from people who spell my name wrong and not from ancient drip machines that predate the Internet.
But this is my life now, and the only thing more pathetic than my breakfast options is the fact that I have no one to complain to.
So I step onto the porch, mug in hand, and survey the carnage.
From here, the Bell Ranch doesn’t look so much inherited as abandoned in a hurry.
The main house has a porch slouched at one end, the boards warped like a toddler’s smile. The barn, visible past a stand ofbone-dry lilacs, sags inward, its tin roof buckled and peppered with holes. The fields are already surrendering to thistles, their purple heads waving above the yellow grass like a field of middle fingers.
There’s a brittle hush over everything.Not peaceful, exactly.More like the silence that comes after a car crash, when everyone is too shocked to move.
I take a sip of milk —no coffee, remember–and grimace at the texture.
Closer to yogurt than a beverage. Perfect…
This is the point in the day when a better person would make a plan.
Prioritize, delegate, problem-solve.
I toss the rest of the milk into the bushes and decide the best way forward is to walk the property, see how much of it is salvageable, and count up how many bones I’ll break trying to fix it.
The door slams behind me with a sound like an ultimatum.
The grass soaks my bare shins, and the damp morning sun burns off the last of last night’s regret.
