Page 65 of Omega’s Fold

“Yeah. You too.”

I put the receiver back in the cradle. I stand in the kitchen for a count of ten with my hand on the receiver then I push off the counter and take the feed pail back out into the yard.

The boys are at the far side of the yard, near the barn, where the dirt is packed flat from years of trucks turning round in it. Caleb has Matthew’s small lasso in his hand. He is showing Matthew how to build the loop. Matthew has his hands on his hips and his head tipped back at his brother, watching.

I cross the yard.

Caleb sees me first. He does not stop the lasso. He keeps the slow easy movement going, the one our father taught him before he left, the wrist turning and the rope sliding. He gives me a small nod over Matthew’s head, and he says, “Try it like that. Slow. Don’t snap it.”

Matthew bends and picks up his rope. He does not look at me as he works the loop.

“Matthew, we need to talk about this.”

He does not answer. He does not look up. He gets the loop wrong and he tries again. Caleb glances at me and raises his eyebrow.

“Matthew called Julian.”

Matthew looks at me. He has my mother’s eyes. His resemblance to her grows stronger every year, and standing here in the yard with the loop in his hand and his face turned up at me, he could be eight-year-old me looking at our mother across this same yard years ago.

“Matthew.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He drops the rope, turns and runs.

He runs across the yard toward the orchard, past the chicken run, past the woodpile, and around the side of the smokehouse, and he is out of sight before I have decided whether to call after him.

I do not call after him.

Caleb keeps working his loop. He raises an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t blame me,” he says. “He gets that from you.”

He drops the loop, gathers the rope, builds it again.

“He’s upset,” Caleb says, after a minute.

“I know.”

“Not because of the call. Because Julian doesn’t know. He thinks Julian should know. About the baby.”

“I know what he thinks.”

“He thinks if Julian knew he’d come back.”

“Caleb.”

“I’m just telling you what he thinks.”

He works the rope. The wrist turns. The loop tightens.

“It’s my choice,” I say.

Caleb looks back down at the rope. His mouth has done the small set thing it does when he has decided he is not going to argue. I have watched our mother do that with our father a thousand times, when she decided a fight was not worth having and went quiet on him until he ran out of breath. I have not, until this moment, seen Caleb do it to me.

“I can’t have a child with a man I don’t trust.”

He nods. He does not look up.