She did not own a horse. She had not owned a horse since she was 17, and her family's farm in Nebraska had been sold to settle debts. After her father died, she started walking. The road was longer than four miles felt like on a map, and harder underfoot than the clear sky suggested it would be. The first mile was flat enough, bordered on both sides by yellow grass and the occasional cluster of aspen trees that had already gone gold for the season.
But after the road curved up into the tree line, it climbed. Not dramatically, just persistently. The kind of incline that a person doesn't notice until their legs are burning and their breath is coming shorter and they realize the elevation has been quietly taking something from them the whole time. Clare did not stop. She was used to things taking from her quietly.
She was used to the slow accumulation of losses that nobody made a fuss about because none of them were dramatic enough on their own. This was simply another version of that. She walked. She reached the Walker Ranch just past 10 in the morning. The first thing she saw was the fence, or rather the places where the fence used to be.
There were posts still standing and wire still strung between some of them, but whole sections had given way, whether from weather or neglect or simply age, she couldn't say. Beyond the broken fence line, she could see a barn that leaned slightly to the left. a house that needed paint on every surface, a yard that had once been a garden and now was mostly gone to seed and dead stocks from whatever had been growing there in the spring. The house itself was a two stories woodframed with a covered porch that wrapped around the front. One of the porch boards was broken through. Two of the shutters on the upper windows had come loose from their hinges and were hanging at angles.
A rocking chair sat on the porch with a child's wool cap draped over the arm of it left there and forgotten. It was not a dirty place. That was the first thing Clare noticed that she had not expected. It was a neglected place. There was a difference.
Dirty said nobody cared. Neglected said everybody was too exhausted to keep up. The porch had been swept recently. The windows were smudged but not filthy. There was a neat stack of firewood beside the front door that someone had worked hard to build.
Somebody in this house was trying. Several somebody's probably. They were just running out of time and hands to do it all. Clare walked up the porch steps, careful to step over the broken board. She lifted her hand to knock.
The door opened before her knuckles landed. A girl stood in the doorway. 14 years old, maybe. Dark hair pulled back in a practical braid. An apron tied at the waist over a plain blue dress.
She was holding a dish towel in both hands and she looked at Clare with the particular expression of someone who has learned not to be surprised by things because surprise takes energy and energy is in short supply. You're here about the advertisement. The girl said it wasn't a question. I am Clare said. My name is Clare Bennett.
I was hoping to speak with Mr. Walker. He's out in the north pasture. Won't be back until noon. The girl assessed her in the quick, efficient way of someone who has learned to read people out of necessity. I'm Emily.