Updated Mar 22, 2026 • ~4 min read
Chapter 18: Three Days of Nothing
COLE
He kept his distance.
He was good at keeping his distance when there was a reason to — he had managed his own household through a divorce while maintaining a functional ranch operation, had navigated two years of loneliness without letting it contaminate his work, had been the primary parent to a child who needed consistency and had provided it with both hands.
He was very good at managing.
He was not, this time, finding it entirely convincing.
He did the morning chores. He ate breakfast in the main house without seeking her out. He did the east pasture fence check — the one she had been coming on all week — without offering to bring her. He checked the cattle. He fixed a secondary pump issue that had been on the list. He worked.
She worked too. He could hear the keyboard from the cabin when he passed, which was more often than strictly necessary, which he noted and didn’t address.
On Saturday evening, Ruby sat down at the kitchen table and looked at him.
“You’re being weird,” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re being polite to Wren.”
He looked up from the ledger.
“You’re not normally polite,” Ruby said. “You’re normal. You’re being polite. It’s different.”
He thought about several responses and chose: “It’s not your business, Roo.”
“She’s my friend,” Ruby said. “She taught me how to write down sounds. She fixed the school project template. She gave me the leftover notebook from her bag.” She folded her arms in the way she’d inherited from June. “She is my business.”
He set down the ledger.
“She’s leaving Monday,” he said.
“I know.” Ruby looked at him with the direct eyes that were his mother’s. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“What did she do?”
“Nothing.”
“So why are you being weird?”
He looked at his daughter — eight years old, sitting in his kitchen at six pm with her arms folded, entirely serious about this conversation.
“She lives in Chicago,” he said. “We live here.”
“She said she might come back.”
He looked at her.
“She told me,” Ruby said, without apology. “She said she wasn’t sure but she might come back. Before she told you, which I wasn’t supposed to know about but I did, because I heard from the barn.”
He looked at the ledger.
“Ruby.”
“You’re using the voice,” she said.
“What voice?”
“The voice you use when you’re about to say something that sounds reasonable but you don’t actually believe it.” She stood up. “She’s not Mom, Daddy.”
He was still.
“Mom didn’t want to be here,” Ruby said, with the specific clarity of a child who had processed this for four years and arrived at a clean understanding. “Wren wants to be here. Those are different.”
He looked at his daughter.
He thought: she is eight years old and she is completely right.
He said: “Go brush your teeth.”
“That means I won.”
“That means go brush your teeth.”
She went, with the particular gait of a child who had won and was demonstrating it through locomotion.
He sat in the kitchen.
He thought about the walk and the kiss and the four days. He thought about her saying *I don’t want this to end in four days.* He thought about what he’d said — it’s a bad idea — and what he’d meant, which was true, and what he hadn’t said, which was also true.
He thought: the bad idea is also the only idea I’m currently interested in.
He thought: Ruby is eight years old and she just diagnosed the situation more accurately than I have.
He looked at the window.
He looked at the cabin light.
He was going to stop being polite.
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