Not Now. Not Yet.
Five women at the edge of what comes next, and the courage it takes to wait without disappearing.
This week’s stories sit in the quiet. Like my life right now
Nothing gets decided. No one has a breakthrough. The women are still carrying the same questions they were last week, but now they’re listening to them more carefully.
Skylar asks for help she knows she’ll need.
Raven has to say not now.
Quinn opens the boxes of a finished life.
Riley feels the edge of not knowing, and lets it stay there.
This is a week about timing. About restraint. About learning the difference between not now and not yet.
Here are the five stories, together.
1️⃣ You didn’t ask yet, but not now.
Skylar calls before she drives out.
“Are you home?”
Then, after a pause, “And do you have time?”
Raven says yes, though she already knows time is the wrong word.
Skylar arrives without a bag, without papers. They walk the fence line together. Skylar asks careful questions. About who decides what gets shared. About how trust works when history isn’t yours.
Raven answers what she can. She notices what Skylar doesn’t ask.
When they stop, Skylar turns to her.
“I’m going to need your help,” she says. Not asking yet. Just stating it.
That night, Raven opens her calendar.
Not now, she thinks.
And closes it.
2️⃣ Publishing Teaches Patience
Skylar tells herself she understands.
She’s waited before. Publishing teaches patience, whether you want it or not. Still, the pause sits heavier than she expected.
She rereads her notes. Edits a paragraph that doesn’t need editing. Starts a list she doesn’t finish.
Not now sounds too much like maybe never when the ground you’re standing on isn’t yours.
She doesn’t call Raven.
She waits.
3️⃣ Volumes of Journals
Quinn hasn’t opened the boxes in years.
They’re stacked neatly, labeled in her handwriting. Dates. Locations. Case names that still carry weight.
She and Riley sit on the floor. Quinn lifts a lid.
Inside are journals. Hundreds of pages. Observations. Decisions. Consequences. All of it reviewed, approved, redacted, released.
“This is my life,” Quinn says. Not proudly. Just factually.
Riley flips through a few pages, careful.
“So what will you do with them?” she asks.
Quinn shrugs. “I don’t know. But they’re done.”
Riley feels it before she understands it.
Done is a word she can’t use yet.
4️⃣ Who Am I Now?
Riley talks too much at dinner.
She circles ideas she doesn’t believe in. Teaching. Consulting. Something adjacent. Something useful.
Quinn listens. She doesn’t interrupt.
Finally, she says, “You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“I know,” Riley snaps back, sharper than she means to.
But what she hears is something else.
You don’t know yet.
Later, when Ben stops by, he doesn’t ask how she’s doing.
He asks if she wants to ride tomorrow.
“Bring your sketchbook,” he says, already turning away.
Riley hesitates.
Then she says yes.
5️⃣ Not Empty
Ben takes them higher into the canyon than Riley expects.
The trail narrows. The horses move easily, sure-footed. When they stop, it isn’t at a lookout with a sign or a bench. It’s a bend in the trail where the canyon rises straight up.
Riley dismounts. The rock face towers in front of her, layered and uneven, catching the light along one sharp edge.
She pulls out her sketchbook.
For thirty years, she’s drawn buildings. Plans. Structures meant to hold.
She studies the rock the way she once studied sites. Where it breaks. Where it holds. Where it refuses symmetry.
She draws one edge of the canyon wall as it climbs, then cuts back on itself.
A short distance away, Ben and Quinn sit talking quietly. She can’t hear the words.
Riley finishes the edge and stops. She doesn’t fill it in. She doesn’t label it.
She closes the sketchbook.
By the end of the week, nothing is solved.
But something has shifted.
A pause has weight now. Waiting has shape. Not knowing isn’t quite as empty as it felt a few days ago.
The canyon doesn’t offer answers. It never has. But it does offer edges. Places to stand. Something solid to look at when the path forward isn’t clear.
Next week, the women will move again. Not all at once. Not in the same direction.
For now, this is where they are.
And it’s enough to stay here a little longer.