“It’s your fault, asshole,” Vin groaned.
“Me? What’d I do?”
He sat up and gave her a harsh look. “You didn’t come home till all hours! I called you five times and texted more’n that.”
Another feature of her brain getting scrambled and reassembled: details sometimes got lost. When she was on her normal routine she did okay, but when life got unpredictable, she had trouble keeping all the bits in mind. She had completely forgotten about her phone, and what it meant that she’d been without it for the whole night, while she was out on a rescue trip by herself. She plopped down in the chair beside him and hooked a hand over his heavily inked forearm. “I’m so sorry. Smoky knocked me down and stomped on my phone. It’s in pieces in my pack. Last night was a whole thing. I will tell you the whole story after I get the animals fed and out. Oh—can I borrow your phone to make some vids? I haven’t posted in like three days.”
Running Ragamuffin Ranch was Phoebe’s full-time job. She kept it running with grants from charitable organizations, individual donations on their website (they were a registered non-profit), donated or discounted services and goods from a local veterinarian and the town feed store, free stuff from companies online, and Patreon. She did fundraising on the ranch’s social media accounts as well.
The actual household, they kept running with Margot’s job as a paralegal and Vin’s disability payments. Phoebe hadn’t qualified for long-term disability; she’d recovered too well. The property itself was her financial contribution to their oddball family. And she paid herself a small salary from the grant money, so she could buy clothes and essentials and help with groceries and such.
It was a tightrope they walked. Some rescue organizations had huge online followings and thousands of patrons. They raked money in and could develop all kinds of cool programs to help even more animals. Those had all gotten big after they’d gone viral in some way, but it hadn’t yet happened for Ragamuffin. She had about fifty thousand followers across several platforms, and she monetized her videos and had a few sponsors. But that wasn’t nearly as much income as people thought. She had fewer than five hundred Patreon patrons so far, almost all of them at or below ten dollars a month.
It wasn’t bad money on paper, but rescuing and caring for large animals was extremely expensive. Most months they got by with a liberal use of smoke and mirrors.
“Jesus, Bee,” Vin complained. “Yes, you can use my phone. But let’s get back to the important thing: Are you okay?”
Phoebe didn’t drink coffee anymore (between the Lexapro and Adderall, the last thing she needed was coffee), but she plugged in the fancy new kettle Vin had given her for Christmas and began to prepare herself a large travel cup of tea.
As she worked on that, she answered her friend. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Her face hadn’t even bruised. “But my truck threw a rod, too—like I said, last night was a whole thing.”
“Shit! Shit!”
“That was my reaction as well. But a lot louder, and with more snot.”
“I’m gonna guess all that has something to do with the flashy blue Ford out front? Is it a rental?”
Phoebe felt her cheeks warm. “Like I could afford to rent that thing. No, a knight in shining armor rescued this dumpy damsel. He hitched the trailer to his truck and drove me and Smoky home.” The kettle beeped, and she poured hot water over her teabag.
“And you rewarded him by letting him carry you up to your tower?”
“I know I started the knight and damsel thing, but let’s drop it before it gets away from us. Yes, there’s a guy asleep in my bed. His name is Duncan, early reports indicate he’s a good guy, and I have no idea what happens next there. But I gotta get outside before Titan knocks the doors down, so please be nice to him if he comes down before I get back.”
Vin pushed his phone toward her. “I will be nice to your hero. I will make a hero’s feast of eggs and pancakes and bacon. But Bee, we gotta hire some help out here. When Margot’s not around and my stump’s fucked, it’s just you and Mickey, and Mickey’s not much help.”
Mickey Hicks was an intellectually disabled guy from town she’d grown up with. He was great with animals, was infinitely patient with even the hardest cases, and fairly capable as a ranch hand. He could do most of the daily work around the place, but he couldn’t do much of it without supervision.
“We can’t afford to hire anyone else. We can only afford Mickey because he only needs play money, and I can pay him minimum without fucking up his life.”
Dissatisfaction bunched Vin’s face. “And now you don’t have a truck. Somethin’s gotta give here, Bee. All I’m sayin’. You know you can’t wear yourself down like this, or somethin’ll give whether you want it to or not. Better we decide what gives than we just get did.”
“I know. I’ll figure it out.”
He grabbed her hand before she could leave the kitchen. “We’ll figure it out. You ain’t alone, Bumblebee. Don’t forget it.”
She went back and kissed his cheek. “How could I?”
~oOo~
To try to minimize the outrage when she didn’t get the morning feed going right away, Phoebe sneaked into the stable through the back and checked on Smoky first. He was asleep on his feet, his head tucked into a back corner of his stall. The water tub was about half empty, and the slow-feed bag almost entirely empty. His belly seemed a little round under the blanket, but not in a scary way. Just nice and full.
Spot, another of their barn cats, slept in a curl in the middle of Smoky’s back.
She rapped on the post beside the stall door, and Smoky’s head popped up. He looked back at her and nickered at once. Phoebe smiled. He knew her for a true friend already.
Spot woke, stood, stretched, yawned, and hopped down to start her workday with some breakfast. She paused to wind around Phoebe’s boots. Phoebe bent and gave her a scritch.
When she stood straight again, Smoky had turned and come to the door. “Hey, baby. How was your night?”
His head came over the top, and he pushed the side of his nose against her head. His version of a horsey hug. Moving with careful attention, Phoebe eased her hands up his neck, just behind his ears. She got most of the way around his neck for her version of a hug before he shied, raising his head out of reach. But he didn’t jump or scoot away.
“Not ready for that yet, huh? Hey, I get it. No worries.” Pulling her glove off with her teeth, she dug into a pocket of her coat and drew out a handful of treats. “Got some dried apples this morning. How’s that sound?”
Smoky thought that sounded great. He snuffled them up and went looking for more.
“Okay, hold on.” She pushed his head back a bit. “We gotta get some work done first. And then you can have a few more yums.”
She pulled off the other glove, shoved them both into a pocket, and snagged Vin’s phone from another. Keying his passcode in, she opened the camera and set it to video.
For this first take, she focused on Smoky’s face. “Say hi to Smoky,” she spoke aloud as the horse tried to nose at the camera. “He says hi back. He’s a big ol’ love, and I think he’s beautiful, but he’s in really bad shape. I rescued him from an abuse and neglect situation yesterday, and we’ve got some work to do together.”