Robbie swallows and continues in a softer voice. “I went that same day to get her. I wouldn’t have recognized her if she hadn’t heard my voice and looked at me just the way I remembered she would when she was here at the ranch. It seemed like they’d decided to stop feeding her while they waited for the auction date to come. And she had a big swollen joint in her hind leg that no one could explain. I gave him his price, which was about twice what he would have gotten at the sale, without saying a word, and I brought her here.”

He rubs his wrist against his cheek, which is when Lance realizes he’s crying. Not much, just a tear or two, but Lance aches. Still, he stays glued where he is, with his hands trapped between his back and the wall. He senses that he shouldn’t touch Robbie right now, or in any way disrupt the story.

“She didn’t make it,” Robbie says a few seconds later, almost whispering. “I don’t know how she got injured, but we tried everything and couldn’t make her right. She had an infection that got into the bone, then into the joint. Megan helped me find a specialist to look at her who confirmed the worst.” He shrugs. “We couldn’t help her, but at least she had a little peace at the end.

“And after that, I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone who called. I’d thought that was such a well-meaning couple, you know? So, I worried every time that people who seemed decent were actually monsters. And the horses I already had here, I could hardly look in the eye. Here I was teaching them to trust me so that they’d go on to trust other people, and I didn’t trust anyone further than I could goddamn throw them.

“It was all worse for Johnny. He was having a hard time, anyway, and the whole deal with Sienna about broke him. But if training horses is hard on the heart, raising livestock someone is going to eat one day is even harder.” He looks at the calf with an absent, pained smile. “So, I didn’t know what the fuck to do.”

Lance can’t help wishing he’d been there; not that he could have been any help. He imagines the pain all three of them must have felt, and the worry. But of course, they had each other.

“But you figured out the thing with the BLM. The mustangs,” Lance supplies hesitantly, hoping to coax Robbie out of the darkest part of the memory.

Robbie turns a small smile on him, giving his eyes a last brush with his sleeve. “Well, I can’t take any credit for that. That was the brains of the outfit—Danny.”

Lance gives his own small smile back. “Yeah, you said that. But anyway, I already would have known.”

“That’s right, you should have. Anyway, he holed up for a couple of days doing whatever he does to come up with brilliant solutions, and came out with what we should do and how we should do it. I think a timeline, a chart, and a business plan were all involved, but it’s kind of a blur.”