Page 9 of Switch

Carol Pruitt called at the worst possible time, which was the only time Carol ever called.

I was in the arena on the end of a lunge line with her mare going around me at a trot. Biscuit was finally, for the first time in two years, landing even on both fronts. I’d been waiting on that for months. I fished my phone out of my back pocket one-handed and kept the mare moving.

“Savannah, honey.” Carol’s voice came down the line bright and worried at the same time, which was a trick she’d perfected. “Terri Vance tells me you’ve got the Unholy Few living out there.”

Switch was leaning on the arena rail. He’d heard every word.

“One of them’s helping me with some fence,” I said. “We’ve had coyote trouble on the back section. The club owed my dad a favor.”

Which was an outright lie. I’d never heard my father say a word about that club in his life, except to cuss them.

“Well.” A pause. “Dale’s not going to like it.”

“Dale’s mare is sound, Carol. She’s trotting around me right now, level as a table. I’ll send him a video tonight.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. That’s wonderful, Savannah.” Another pause, longer. “But honey. Bikers.”

“It’s a fence,” I said. “I’ll send the video.”

I hung up before she could say bikers again. Biscuit had dropped to a walk while I wasn’t watching her, and I clucked her back up and stood there turning in the middle of the arena with the line in my hand and my face burning.

Carol had known me since I was in diapers. She’d brought a casserole the week Dad died. And I’d just stood in my own arena and lied to her without blinking.

Carol and Dale had two horses in my barn. That was a third of my board money, and the Pruitts talked to everybody who owned a horse between here and Deming. If they pulled out, others would follow. I knew how it went. I’d watched it happen to a trainer over in Lordsburg, one rumor and a lot of empty stalls by fall.

“Coyote trouble,” Switch said from the rail.

“Don’t.”

He shut his mouth. That was worse.

I did night check late, after I’d sent Dale his video and eaten half a sandwich standing over the sink. Nine horses, nine buckets, nine sets of legs to run my hands down. Deuce got his carrot. Biscuit got one too. By the time I walked back up to the house, my shoulders ached and the stars were out, and somewhere out there four cameras sat in the dark watching my fence for me.

The yard light was on. My truck sat under it with the hood up, and a pair of boots stuck out from under the front bumper.

That truck had been running rough since spring. It missed at idle and bucked on hills, and I’d been nursing it along because the shop in town wanted eight hundred dollars just to look at it, and I didn’t have eight hundred dollars for anything that wasn’t hay.

I stopped beside the fender.

“What are you doing?”

Switch rolled out on a flattened feed sack with a wrench in one hand and grease to the wrists. “Coil pack. Number three’s been dying on you. Havoc dropped a new one off.” He sat up. “You’d have been walking home from Deming before the month was out.”

“It runs.”

“It limps. I heard it and I saw it.”

“Did I ask you to fix it?”

“You’d rather break down on the interstate with somebody’s horse in the trailer?”

“I’d rather you didn’t walk back into my life and start fixing my goddamn truck.”

It came out too loud. A horse whinnied down at the barn. Switch got to his feet and wiped his hands on a rag, and I saw him decide not to say whatever he’d been about to say.

That did it.

I went past him, up the back steps and into the kitchen. He followed me in. Of course he followed me in. He stood by the door with the screen swinging shut behind him, too big for my kitchen.