“His heart is failing, Elise,” she said softly. “He pushed himself past his limit. He gave everything he had left.”
I buried my face in Rusty’s neck. He smelled like wet pine and old dust—the smell of our ranch. The smell of home. He licked the tears off my cheek, one last time.
We let him go that morning. The best cowboy I ever knew crossed the rainbow bridge, leaving behind a collar and a silence that felt louder than thunder.
Two days later, I was back home. Travis was sleeping in the living room hospital bed we’d set up. The house felt empty without the click-clack of Rusty’s nails on the hardwood.
I was looking for Travis’s insurance card in his old desk in the barn—the one he hadn’t used in years. I shoved aside a stack of unpaid bills and found a leather-bound notebook.
It was his ranch log. He used to track calving seasons and hay prices in it.
I thumbed through the pages, smiling at his handwriting from ten years ago—strong, angular, decisive. Then I reached the end. The handwriting changed. It was shaky. Uncertain. Dated about five years ago—right after the doctor first used the word “Dementia.”
I sat down on a hay bale, the dust motes dancing in the afternoon light.
November 12th, the entry read.
The Doc says my brain is going to quit on me. Says I won’t remember the way to the barn, let alone how to run this place. I’m not scared for me. I’m scared for Elise. She’s tough, but she can’t watch me twenty-four hours a day.
