They buried Lee under the cottonwood tree at first light.
No coroner.
No certificate.
The Dutton way, Lloyd had said the night before while oiling his boots by the bunkhouse stove.
They handle their own dead.
Wyatt stood at the back with the other hands.
Cody to his left.
Lloyd to his right.
The hole in the ground was six feet deep and the sun hadn’t cleared the mountains yet and John Dutton stood at the head of the grave with his hat in his hands and his face like stone.
That low heat behind his sternum was still there.
Deeper than it had been.
Insistent.
And underneath it, playing on a loop he couldn’t stop, Lee’s death.
Grass against his cheek.
Stars tilted wrong.
The sound Kayce made half shout, half animal grief.
A heart stopping.
Not a memory.
Lee’s death, raw and uncut.
Replaying.
John looked at the casket for thirty seconds.
Then he spoke.
“He was my son.” Four words.
That was the eulogy.
The Sight flared.
Wyatt’s hands clenched behind his back hard enough that his nails bit into his palms.
Because he wasn’t standing at the grave anymore.
He was lying in the grass with his face in the dirt and the stars spinning overhead and the cottonwood branches framing a sky that was darkening at the edges the way a photograph darkens when it burns.
Lee’s face.
In the dirt.
Eyes open.
Mouth slightly open.
Dirt on his teeth.
Wyatt bit down on his tongue.
Tasted copper.
The flare faded.
He was standing at the grave again.
John was putting his hat back on.
The hands were stepping forward to fill the hole.
Wyatt didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
His legs felt like they belonged to someone else.
Cody’s elbow brushed his.
Deliberate.
A small pressure that meant I’m here.
The grave got filled.
John walked back to the house without looking at anyone.
Beth had left halfway through turned on her heel and walked to her truck and drove off with the kind of speed that said the grief was converting to something else and it needed room to finish the conversion.
Rip assigned fence repair.
North pasture.
Two-man job.
He looked at Wyatt when he said it.
Wyatt and Cody took the truck and the post driver and a bag of staples and they drove to the north fence in silence.
The sun was up by then.
Bright.
Indifferent.
Wyatt got out of the truck.
Picked up the first post.
His hands were shaking.
Cody saw.
Said nothing.
Just took the post driver and positioned it and started hammering.
The Sight bled through again.
This time it was the bullet.
The impact.
Not the pain of it Lee hadn’t had time to feel pain.
Just the fact of it.
A body registering a catastrophic interruption without the framework to name it yet.
Chest.
Sternum.
The warmth flooding outward that wasn’t warmth at all but the opposite of it.
Wyatt dropped the staples and they scattered in the dirt like teeth.
Cody stopped hammering.
Looked at him.
“You good?” Wyatt bent down.
Picked up the staples one at a time.
His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Yeah.” Cody crouched next to him.
Helped with the staples.
Never looked at him directly but never left either.
“You looked like you were drowning,” Cody said.
Quiet.
“Last night.
When the shots” He stopped.
Started again.
“If you need to sit down.
Or take a minute.
I can cover.” Wyatt shook his head.
Got the last staple into the bag.
Stood up.
His chest pulled at something.
Not the Sight this time.
A different register.
Roamer was awake.
Wyatt knew that without looking.
The horse was standing at the corral fence and his ears were forward and he was waiting.
The knowing arrived whole.
No effort.
The same way he knew his own pulse.
“I’m fine,” Wyatt said.
Cody stood too.
Studied him for three seconds.
Then tipped his chin once short, decided.
“Alright.
You hold.
I’ll hammer.” They worked the fence line for two hours.
The Sight bled through four more times.
Decreasing intensity.
By the fourth time Wyatt could feel it coming a pressure at the base of his skull, a tightening in his chest and he braced for it and let it pass and kept his hands on the post and Cody never asked.
Just held the post steady and hammered and pretended not to see Wyatt’s face go blank for ten seconds at a time.
The sun was high when the truck appeared on the road.
Beth’s truck.
She never slowed.
Never stopped.
But she passed close enough that Wyatt saw her face through the windshield.
The Sight caught it.
Not Lee’s death this time.
Beth’s grief.
And it wasn’t grief.
Or it was grief but it had already finished converting into weaponized fury no target, no outlet, no permission to collapse.
Rage.
White-hot.
Searing.
So bright Wyatt tasted copper on his tongue again and his chest flared like it had touched an open flame.
He turned his head.
Spat into the dirt.
The truck disappeared over the hill.
Cody was watching him now.
Not pretending anymore.
“Wyatt.” “I know.” “You don’t look fine.” “I know.” Cody set the hammer down.
Stepped in front of him.
Not blocking.
Just present.
“Last night you knew Lee was dead before anyone said it.
You looked” He stopped.
Tried again.
“You looked like you’d seen it.
Not heard about it.
Seen it.” Wyatt met his eyes.
The question was there.
Hovering.
The same question Rip had asked with his hand on Wyatt’s collar.
What did you see.
Cody left it unspoken.
He just stood there.
Waiting.
Giving Wyatt the space to answer or not answer and the promise that either choice wouldn’t change what happened next.
Wyatt’s hands had stopped shaking.
That heat behind his sternum had stopped flaring.
It was settling a wound after the stitches go in.
“I saw him die,” Wyatt said.
Cody exhaled.
Slow.
Didn’t look away.
“How.” “I don’t know.” It was the truth.
Wyatt had no answer.
No name for what the Sight was or why it had opened or why Lee’s death was the thing it had chosen to show him first.
He just knew that it had happened and that it was still happening and that the warmth in his chest the hum, the pull, the same burn that had flared when John touched the tarp was connected to it in a way he couldn’t name yet.
Cody nodded.
Once.
Like that answer was enough.
“Okay.” “Okay?” “Yeah.” Cody picked up the hammer.
Tested its weight in his hand.
“You saw something.
You don’t know how.
That’s” He stopped.
Looked at the wire strung between posts.
At the mountains.
At the dirt under their boots.
“That’s between you and whatever the hell this place is.” He turned back.
Held Wyatt’s gaze.
“I’m not asking again.
But if you need me to cover if you need me to hold the post or drive the truck or tell Rip you’re fine when you’re not I’ll do it.” Wyatt’s chest shifted.
Not a flare.
Gentler than that.
The same way Roamer’s breathing had felt when Wyatt had lain his hand on the horse’s side and the fear had drained out into the ground.
Recognition.
Cody wasn’t asking for the story.
He was offering to stand next to it.
“Thanks,” Wyatt said.
Cody grinned.
It stopped short of his eyes but it was real.
“Don’t thank me yet.
You’re buying the first round next poker game.” They finished the fence line by noon and drove back to the barn in silence.
Wyatt’s headache was gone.
The tremor in his hands was gone.
The Sight hadn’t bled through in over an hour.
But that low heat persisted.
Deeper than before.
And when Wyatt walked past the bunkhouse he felt the pull toward the painted brand on the wall identical to the pull toward Roamer in the corral.
Like they were connected.
Like the Sight that had cracked open when Lee died wasn’t closing.
It was widening.
Lloyd was standing on the bunkhouse porch with a cigarette going.
He watched Wyatt cross the yard, watched Cody trail behind him.
Watched the way they moved one step apart, deliberate, the space between them a statement.
When Wyatt reached the steps Lloyd dipped his head.
Small.
Almost imperceptible.
Then he stepped aside.
Held the door.
Inside, the long table was set for dinner.
Twelve seats.
The one at the far end the quietest seat, the one farthest from the stove and the noise was empty.
Lloyd gestured to it.
Wyatt sat.
The bunkhouse filled and dinner started and voices rose and fell around Wyatt like water moving past a stone.
Someone told a joke.
Someone else complained about the fence wire.
The world kept turning.
But the heat behind Wyatt’s sternum stayed.
And the memory of Lee’s death grass and stars and the heart stopping stayed too.
Not bleeding anymore.
Carried.
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