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I am going to enter a competition.

Well, plan for one anyway.

There are no shows in Montana over winter, and honestly the number of serious dressage shows in Montana can probably be counted on one hand even in the height of season.

But that's not a bug, it's a feature. Because it means I have time, and time is the one luxury my mother's empire never manufactured on my behalf.

My equestrian closet is—and I say this with the wince of a woman who once treated her show kit like a sacred archive—disappointing.

I haven't exactly neglected my riding clothes. I still train. Less lately, since Legion came back and rearranged the air in every room I walk into, but I still ride.

I ride Cassia every day, even if it's just hacking the fence line with no real purpose except forward motion.

So I can't explain what I'm seein' right now, standin' here with the light on, because everything looks worn. Washed out. Like the enthusiasm left the fabric first and the color followed.

I don't keep boots in the house—they live in the boot closet in the tack room out in the barn. But I know for a fact that the last time I wore them—back when Mercy was still livin' here and I had a reason to be punctual, to be presentable, to be something resembling the person I used to perform without effort—I didn't clean them afterward.

I am a little shook, standin' here takin' inventory of myself.

That's not like you, Savannah. That has never been like you.

I have let myself go these past months in ways I didn't even notice until right now, and the evidence is hangin' in a wardrobe that used to mean something.

"Well," I say out loud. "That's enough of that."

Wyatt isn't waiting in the dining room when I finally come down wearing breeches, short boots with knee-high boot socks, and a long-sleeve base layer, the whole ensemble put together with the kind of care I usually reserve for things people photograph.

I haven't done a matchy-matchy set in over a decade—not since I was young enough to think coordination was a personality trait instead of a warning sign. It very much vibes "thirteen-year-old girl," the kind of outfit that belongs to a version of me who still believed clothes could fix things.

But I do it today in last winter's "rosemary"—the palest, most perfect green that ever lived. Paired with an even more ancient puffer vest, officially called "cinder," though it's more the color of ash after the fire's already had its way with whatever burned.

There is no silver-capped plate of food waiting for me, and I actually wonder if Wyatt has been taking care of me the past few days and just decided to give up.

It doesn't matter. There are coffee and food stations all over this ranch for the hands. So I leave and head for the main barn.

The barn smells like hay dust, and leather, and the sweet tang of horses that is so different from cows, you could pick them apart blindfolded.

I grab coffee first. The station by the tack room is nothing fancy—a Bunn machine that's older than some of the hands, powdered creamer, a sleeve of paper cups—but I pour myself a cup and it's fine, it's coffee, it does the job.

Cassia's stall is in the middle of the row and a stable hand named Jimmy is already in there, mucking out.

Cassia isn't present, already on turnout.

The whole operation has always run like clockwork and we employ a lot of people here on the ranch to keep it that way. Between the house staff, the hands, the maintenance crew, and the landscapers—it's got to be forty or fifty people total.

And I have never once, not in all my life, wondered if my horses or ponies were being taken care of.

It's a given.

It's not normal. Not for horse people.

Work is the price of having these beautiful creatures. And money, obviously. There is no way to make any kind of profit off a horse. Ever. I don't care if your horse wins the Triple Crown, you are always in debt.

But I have somehow cheated this fact.

It's embarrassing, now that I've noticed it. That I reap the rewards of this lifestyle, this gift, and never have to pay for it with labor.

In a sudden burst of enlightenment, I blurt, "Jimmy, I've got her from now on."