“Hey!” he calls over the wind. “You guys finally decided to join the party?”
Nash snorts. “Look at this overachiever.”
“Some of us don’t need a personal invitation,” Caleb shoots back. “They’re all in. Roof’s holding. Lost some straw on the north side, but I patched it with bales.” He jerks his chin toward the interior. “They’re spooked, but they’re fine.”
I step up beside him and peer in. Big dark eyes stare back, ears flicking, hides steaming faintly in the cold air. The shelter’s not pretty, but it’s doing its job. The boards I replaced last fall are solid, no bow in the ridge beam, no snow pushing where it shouldn’t.
“You check the line?” Boone asks, nodding toward the frost-rimmed waterer.
“Yeah,” Caleb says. “It’s sluggish, but still running. I wrapped more insulation around the exposed pipe.” He pauses, thinking.“Might wanna crack the valve a hair more before night, if it drops again.”
The words are crisp. No slur, no jittery shifting. No thinking more about the next card game than the calves. His eyes are clearer than I’ve seen them in I don’t even know how long.
Rehab put some meat back on his bones, but it stripped some of the twitchiness off him, too. He looks… better. Older in the right way. No longer addicted to gambling.
“Good,” Boone says simply.
For a McCoy, that’s a damn medal.
Caleb’s ears go a little pink under the hat. He grins quickly—he can’t help it. “Figured if I’m gonna be the idiot who almost cost you a herd once, I should at least be the first one out here this time.”
“You’re not the idiot anymore,” I say, surprising myself with how easy it comes out. “Now you’re the guy who gets up before the rest of us and does the damn job.”
He blinks at me. He wasn’t expecting that and doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Rehab might’ve given him tools; it didn’t make taking praise any easier.
“Thank you,” he says finally. “I’m not messing up again.”
Boone claps him on the shoulder hard enough to jolt him half a step.
“Then don’t,” he says. “That simple.”
Caleb huffs a breath that might be a laugh and reaches for the shovel leaning near the door again.
We work the rest of the line together, the four of us and Caleb, a little unit moving post to post. The wind cuts, the snow piles, the light starts thinning.
By the time my watch hits somewhere around four, my fingers hurt even through my gloves, and my toes might as well belong to somebody else. Clouds are sinking lower, bleeding gray into gray.
Boone squints toward the house, just visible as a soft, glowing rectangle through the mess.
“We’ll do one more pass after we thaw out,” he says. “If we stay out, Mom’s gonna march down here herself, and I’m not getting chewed out in front of the calves.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nash says. “Her bringing soup would be worth the lecture.”
“She’ll ‘bring’ it to your head,” Clay mutters.
We trudge back up toward the yard, boots disappearing, appearing, disappearing again in the drifts. Rusty gallops ahead, tail high. He’s about to file a complaint with the kitchen that we’re late.
As we hit the porch steps, heat fogs the inside of the kitchen windows, blurring silhouettes moving around in there. The wind claws at my back, trying to drag me off the top step. I shoulder the door open and step into a wall of warmth and noise.
Laughter hits first.
Not just my brothers’ rough barking kind, either. Higher, lighter, rolling over itself in bright waves. The TV is on low somewhere in the background, some animated show making fuzzy sound effects. The heater hums. Pots clink.
And under all that, clear as a bell…
“Okay, okay, but if Star jumpsthishigh, she might land on the roof,” Faith says.
I shove my gloves into my pockets and toe off my boots on the mat, snow melting into dark puddles beneath them. My shoulders drop a notch.
