Page 71 of Forbidden Rancher's Return
By afternoon the main frame was complete.
The crew gathered on the porch for food and cold drinks and the satisfaction of people who had built something together. There is laughter. Arguments about technique and weather and whether Hank’s nail gun is actually life-changing or just loud.
Beck's phone buzzes halfway through a debate about roofing material. He steps away, listens, then walks back with a look I haven't seen on his face before. Satisfaction sitting on top of relief sitting on top of something that looks a lot like justice.
He finds me at the porch railing.
"That was Tom Grady."
My hands tighten on the rail.
"Halford's been arrested. Accelerant traces matched a storage unit leased under his foreman's name. Whelan." Beck pauses. "Whelan rolled on him in about forty minutes."
The porch goes quiet. Not because everyone heard. Because Beck's face is saying something the crew can read without words.
I don't feel triumph. I feel tired. And then I feel something lighter underneath the tired. Something that might be relief if I let it settle long enough.
"Good," I say. "Now hand me that hammer."
Beck almost smiles. Almost.
The crew works until dusk. By the time the last truck pulls down the ridge road, the barn frame stands complete against the sky. New wood bright against old stone.
My grandfather's foundation holding something fresh.
Rowan and Calla
Beck is the last to leave.
He stands beside his truck in the fading light and looks at the frame. Tall and solid and smelling of new pine. His face does the thing I've been watching it learn to do all week. Gratitude. The complicated kind that comes with grief attached.
He looks at Rowan.
Rowan waits.
Beck takes his hat off. Turns it in his hands once.
"I should've come after you," he says. Not about me this time. About the two of them. About the friendship that broke the samenight everything else did. "You were my best friend. And I let Daddy's order be my excuse to stop."
Rowan holds his gaze. "Yes. You should have."
Beck nods. Accepts it. That's the thing about my brother. He doesn't flinch from being wrong once he's decided to face it.
He puts his hat back on. Looks at me.
"You picked a stubborn one," he says.
"You keep saying that."
"Bears repeating."
He gets in his truck. Pauses with the door open.
He looks at Rowan one more time. Something passes between them that doesn't need words. The kind of look that says I'm not done being sorry and I'm not done being angry but I'm here and that's what matters.
He raises one hand out the window as he drives away. Half wave, half surrender, entirely Beck.
I look at Rowan.
