The word exploded from her. “Fuuuuuuck.”
But she had to laugh. She felt oddly calm. Almost amused.
She couldn’t leave now, there was no time, so she stood, firmly and confidently, Lady next to her. She smiled inanely as an old Toyota Tacoma with a Wilder Ranches sign painted on the door pulled up. A lean woman with blond hair pulled into a braid swung out of the high cab. She looked to be in her sixties and of the West—silver jewelry and jeans and a flannel shirt and actual scuffed-up cowboy boots. They were the working kind of boots, not the dress kind.
“Are you Kat?” Ammalie said with a bravado she did not feel.
“Uh, yeah,” the woman mumbled, reaching down to pat Lady, who was nosing her in the crotch. “Kat Wilder.”
“Welcome. I’ve got the place cleaned for you.”
“I came a day early.” Kat ducked her head and put a hand to her neck. “See, I—I—I…” She trailed off. “I’ll come back tomorrow, as planned. I just wanted to…see the place, get my bearings.”
An understanding crept into Ammalie’s mind—oh goodness, Kat was nervous! Kat was breaking in a day early! Kat hadn’t planned on seeing anyone, had been hoping to sneak in, which is something she and Vincent had joked about doing once at an Airbnb, hoping to stay an extra day without the absent owner noticing, since they knew where the key was and that the owner wasn’t around. It was the poor recognizing the poor.
“Oh, no worries, just stay. You’re here!” Ammalie extended the gold key in her palm. “What’s an extra night? Here’s a key.”
Kat’s face registered surprise, then relief, then a genuine smile. “Okay, well, thanks. And I’m supposed to leave it on the corbel?”
“That would be perfect.” Ammalie smiled happily, as if she said that all the time.
“You don’t mind that I’m a day early? It’s just that…see…the thing is, is…”
“No worries at all.”
Kat stood there and then limped forward. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.” And then, nodding to her knee, added, “Old injury. Fell off a horse.”
“I’m just on my way out; I came to check on things for you. I’m a…neighbor. The owner asked me to come. The cleaner has already been here. Have a nice stay.”
Kat nodded but then opened her mouth to say something. “But wait. Won’t you stay for a cup of tea?”
Ammalie blinked in surprise. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Enjoy.”
“Because today is the day of my recovery anniversary. Off of heroin. It’s kind of a big deal. I tend to…feel a lot on this day. Hence my early arrival. I was feeling twitchy and…I don’t know. Unsettled.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ammalie said, feeling it sincerely. Twitchy and unsettled was something she could empathize with, even if Kat’s was surely worse. “Well, not sorry about the sobriety, of course. Congratulations on that.”
Kat reached down to pet Lady, who was circling their legs with a stick in her mouth that kept whacking them on the legs. “Thank you. What a beautiful dog. It’s complicated. Every year I go somewhere new and beautiful to remember my friend, who didn’t get clean in time and whose death keeps prompting me to keep my act together. These past years have been tough, though; everything in the world seems more complicated, and I’d sure as hell like to zone out, get some relief. Your dog has a cut—”
Ammalie saw Kat squinting at the slice on Lady’s head, taking it in, drawing her conclusions, and her brain swung into the easiest lie. “I rescued her from a shelter recently. Obviously, someone was…”
“Jesus!”
“I know.”
“That’s horrible.” Kat bent down to the dog to examine the cut more closely, and she glanced up at Ammalie with a fierce look in her eye.
“I know, I know. I’ll love on her forever. To make up for the bad.”
Kat nodded approval. “Some people are real shits. The older I get, the more I want to do my part to…I don’t know. It’s not that I want to do them wrong. It’s not in my power for one thing, ha. I guess I just want to help the good guys.” She ran her hands across the dog, exactly as Ammalie had done. Her fingers found the round wounds on the dog’s butt, and she sighed. “She seems otherwise okay.”
“That’s what I thought. You’re a vet?”
“No, but I’m a rancher.” Kat stood up, stretching her back. “Look, speaking of doing kindnesses, maybe you could not mention my early arrival? Or no, that’s a terrible thing to ask! He’s your neighbor.”
Ammalie made a gesture at her mouth of turning a key and then throwing it away. Meanwhile, she really looked at Kat, who indeed looked like she wasn’t feeling well for reasons other than sneaking into a place a day early. “Let’s sit outside; it’s warm. We could do a few turns of Scrabble on the picnic table before it gets too dark. I don’t have time for a full game, but first one to fifty points?”
Kat let out a bark of laughter. “I’d love to.”
What the fuck are you doing? Don’t tell her any personal details, keep it to the weather, she said to herself on her way back in. What kind of crazy are you, Ammalie?
But it was not crazy. It was a delight. Over Scrabble and tea, with golden aspens quivering, she heard the story of a childhood in Hawaii and Colorado ranches and wild horses and mustangs, which Kat had spent years trying to protect. Kat spoke of her home in Salida, and seeing mustangs in captivity in the prison program in Canyon City. “Mustangs and men, captured but not tamed, I like to say. It’s quite a thing. There’s a lot of pretty innocent dudes there, and it strikes me as unfair, and I’m a little tired of so-called justice in this country. I myself have lived a wild life, and when I got clean, I had to adjust to a different kind of living. Just like those horses and men, though some of them don’t deserve to have to, you know? I’m hoping to find a band to belong to.”
“That sounds lovely. And necessary.”
When Kat asked, “Do you have a special someone?” Ammalie shook her head no. “Just a guy I have a crush on, but that’s just something that will live in my brain.”
Kat nodded as if she understood. “Me either, not at the moment. I miss…hands. Someone touching me. But a partner comes with strings. And I want the strings less than the hands, ha! I have my own strings to untangle first.”
Ammalie snorted. “That sounds smart.”
“You wanna know what I’ve been comparing my emotions to? A tumble of necklaces and earrings that get all bunched together in your jewelry drawer. I need to sort them out, and lay them side by side, so I can see the beauty of the individual pieces again.”
“I like that.”
“I don’t believe in God.” Kat looked up at her. “I believe in grace, or in clear moments, in moments that glitter, like a jewel.”
Ammalie felt a wash of gratefulness for a woman who said real things, who saved mustangs, who saved herself. So she responded in truth: “That’s what I am doing, I guess. I need bits of jewels too, and my old life could no longer satisfy.” Ammalie glanced up and saw that the sun was now below the tree line. “I need to go. I’m sorry, but I do.” She handed Kat one of the bracelets she’d made, which were in her jacket pocket, with a few humble apologies about its rudimentary style.
