Page 8
Tessa
By one in the afternoon, I have twenty-six heifers, three versions of who owns them, and a spreadsheet wide enough to require moral support.
The records office has warmed despite the air conditioner rattling over the door. Sale noise presses through the wall in bursts: the auctioneer’s rolling chant, a gate slamming its stop, cattle calling from the alleys. Barbed Crown keeps selling clean lots while Lot 118 stands in the north pens under shade and two employees who have learned that touching a pen card now requires a witness.
My laptop is disconnected from the ranch network. Estate counsel sent me an untouched snapshot of Calvin’s inventory at 6:41 this morning, before anyone here knew I existed. I work from a copy and leave the original sealed. The last column in my crosswalk is labeled LIMITATION. It’s the column people skip when they want a conclusion more than they want the truth.
The door opens. Garrett comes in carrying two paper cups and the estate envelope from his safe.
He’s changed shirts. The new one is dark blue, the left cuff rolled high enough to show the red welt the rail left across his forearm. I saw that arm take a ton of cattle for me four hours ago, and my attention goes to it before I can stop it. He sets one cup beside my laptop, outside the space I’ve cleared for documents.
“Coffee,” he says.
“Is it part of the audit contract?”
“No.”
“Then I can accept it without a disclosure problem.” I lift the lid. Black. “You’re learning.”
“I had someone check what you drink.”
The cup stops halfway to my mouth.
“The employee who witnessed your inventory saw you take it black from the break room,” he says.
“Observation from a disclosed witness. Less alarming than the first version.”
He takes the chair across from me. “You rank surveillance methods?”
“Professionally and recreationally.”
His gaze settles on my face and turns the last word into something I didn’t intend to offer. Garrett is a big man in a small office, but his size isn’t what changes the room. It’s his attention. When he decides something matters, everything else feels temporarily underfunded.
I look back at the spreadsheet. My body has offered several opinions about Garrett McCall today, and none of them meet my sourcing standards.
He opens the envelope and slides out a folded sheet of yellow count paper without letting go of the bottom edge. The handwriting is cramped and uneven.
Count what I taught them not to see.
“That isn’t specific,” I say.
“He believed specifics made people lazy.”
“They also make instructions useful.” I look up. “You didn’t know he hired me.”
“No.” He says it evenly, but something moves under it. “He was sick the last few months. Angry. He started checking counts he’d already approved. I thought it was grief for his own heart. I thought he was getting old.”
“And now?”
He folds the note along its crease. “Now I think he was counting something I wasn’t.”
It’s the first thing he’s told me that doesn’t sound like it came from a man running a ranch. It sounds like a son.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “About your father.”
He looks at me like people don’t say that to him. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they say it to the ranch. “You didn’t know him.”
“I didn’t have to. I know what twelve days looks like.”
