“Sure, I can take him.” Tanner nodded. He looked over at his boys. “Colby, I’ll need you to take my horse and put him in the small pasture behind Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Sally and Scout are already over there. If, for any reason, the fire heads that direction, I’ll need you to open the gate and let them free. You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Colby answered. “I understand.”
“Come on, Seth.” Tanner took his brother by the shoulders. “Let’s get you to your wife.”
24
Josie
“There’s someone here to see you, Miss Josie.” The nurse adjusted the nasal cannula, fluffed the pillow behind Josie’s head, and gave her a sly grin, complete with a wink. “Is that man out there really your husband?”
Josie didn’t know how to answer that and when she opened her mouth, she had to strain her vocal chords to even create a whisper of sound.
“Don’t waste your energy answering, girl. All I’m saying is that he is mighty fine and you two make a beautiful couple. Your chart said you weren’t married, but he’s saying otherwise. You good with him coming in for a visit?”
Josie nodded. Her nurse squeezed her hand and then gave her a pat on her shoulder before gathering the thin sheet to tuck it under Josie’s chin. “Alright. I’ll send him right in. And if you need anything, you know which button to push. I’ll be just down the hall.”
Josie mouthed the words thank you.
The room was a sterile, cold, white box. Monitors beeped on a machine next to her and tubes snaked into a bruised patch of skin on the back of her hand. There was a window with the shades drawn shut, but she could see strips of light slip between each blind, casting long shadows on the tile floor that made it look like a grid.
It was morning. Maybe afternoon.
How long had she been here?
“Knock, knock? Can I come in?” Seth’s hushed voice filtered through the cracked open door. “I brought a few friends.”
“Friends?” Josie asked. Her throat felt raw like she had swallowed a handful of sand.
“Just Tiffany, Tammy, and Tawnya.” He toed open the door and stood in the threshold, three half-dead potted plants in his arms. “I thought you could use a little something from home to spruce up the place.”
Josie laughed but the effort hurt her lungs. They felt stretched thin like an overfilled balloon.
“I’ll just put these right here.” Seth lowered each pot to an empty side table next to the hospital bed and then wiped his palms on the thighs of his jeans. He gave Josie the most helpless look. “Oh, Josie.”
“I’m okay,” she said quickly, but the cough at the end didn’t do anything to add truth to her words.
“Smoke inhalation is no joke.” He sat in the chair at the side of the bed and rolled it closer so he was near her head. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. You must’ve been so scared.”
The memory of the night came back, not all at once, but bits and pieces, like slipping the correct puzzle parts where they belonged inside the whole picture.
“I was just really worried about the horses,” she said. “Are they okay?”
“We haven’t seen them yet today, but I think that’s a good sign. If they were injured, they’d be hanging close by,” Seth said. “Tanner and I got most of the cattle accounted for this morning, too. We lost a couple pastures to the fire, but we’re looking into our options to rent from our neighbors. Either that, or sell off some of the cow and calf pairs. That’s another possibility.”
“But what would that do to the business?”
“Not sure there’s much of a business to run right now, but that’s not something you need to worry about. I talked to your nurse and she said they’re just keeping you here today as a precaution, but you should still get your rest.” He clasped his hands together and dropped his chin to his fist, leaning closer to Josie at her bedside. “I really wish you would’ve let me feed Hank, Josie. I know hindsight is twenty-twenty, but I just feel so awful that I forgot to tell you to shut off the barn heater before you left.”
“What?”
“Tanner said you took over the last feeding for him and accidently left the heater on. That’s one-hundred-percent my fault. I didn’t tell you that we don’t leave it on all night.”
Josie shook her head. “That’s not how—”
“We don’t have to talk about it right now, Josie. The doctor said you need to rest and I don’t want you to get worked up.”
A little too late for that. “That’s not how it happened, Seth.” She coughed. Adrenaline coursed through her, making her lungs vibrate as she sucked in a deep breath. “I didn’t leave the heater on.”
“The fire chief said that was the probable cause.” Seth’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“I’m sure it was, but I wasn’t the one who left it on.”
“I’m not following.”
Josie inhaled again, readying to lay it all out as best she could remember, but her chest heaved and she barked out a string of guttural coughs that left her breathless and trembling.
The hospital room door flew open and Nurse Rachelle bounded into the room, an I told you so look impressed across her face.
“Alright, lovebirds. Looks like that’s enough excitement for one afternoon.” She swiveled the cart up to her and punched a couple buttons on the machine. “Josie, let’s take the rest of the day easy, okay?”
Seth took the hint and stood from the chair to make backward movements toward the door. He hung there a beat, his face holding the saddest version of goodbye Josie had ever seen, and then he was gone.
25
Seth
“Oh, dear, give me a hug!” Gramm stretched out shaking hands and grabbed onto Seth’s face to pull it close to hers. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you? The fire is all anyone has been talking about.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
It was stamped across the headlines on the newspaper that rested on their driveway that morning. Blogged about on all the local town gossip websites. Even the news station tried to come out to the ranch to film a segment, but Seth stopped that in its tracks.
He was not about to let them spin their story any way they liked while he stood by and watched.
Words like negligence, careless, and reckless became a sickening chorus in the song of their farm’s tragedy. And Josie was the one at the center of it all. It was an unbelievable irony that bad news really did spread faster than wildfire, or in their case, a ranch fire.
They drummed up all they could on her. She was a vagrant hired to tame rescued horses but decimated a generational business instead. An irresponsible woman who needed to be held accountable for the actions that very likely cost an entire family their livelihood. And in each article when they described her, she was a single, twenty-something who struggled to find work as a farrier.
That was the kicker. Single. That small fact didn’t slip past Seth’s mother when she read the articles aloud over the breakfast table that morning. The knowing look she gave Seth was enough to make him feel like a child being sent to his room. The ruse was over; the game played.