Page 28

I run the defroster and scrape while it works, long strokes, the ice curling off in sheets. When I can see, I pull out and point the truck north.

Wade picks up on the second ring.

"Made it back."

"Figured."

"How'd we do?"

"Cold snap held. Chopped tanks twice a day. That heifer off her feed came back on this morning. Cleaned it up."

"Good."

"Wind's supposed to lay down tomorrow."

"All right. See you."

He's gone. Thirty seconds, maybe. That's about as long as most conversations between Wade and me need to be.

I drive. The heater catches up somewhere past the first hour. The road's black and empty, plow banks throwing my lights back at me, and I don't think about much. There isn't anything to handle from a truck cab at seventy in the dark, so I don't reach for anything.

It's late when I turn in at my own gate, near enough to midnight. The porch light's on. I didn't leave it on, but Wade knew I was coming back late tonight. Damn, he's good.

My lights swing across the yard, and there are tracks in the snow, cutting in from the road and out again, wider than my truck and set differently than Wade's. I sit a second with the engine ticking, then I go in.

The kitchen's thirty-eight degrees. I can see my breath under the ceiling bulb. There's a plate on the counter under a cap of foil, and the woodbox beside the stove is full to the lip, split fine and stacked square.

Dutch doesn't leave notes. He doesn't need to. Nobody else's hands stack it that way.

The stove's dead cold. Nothing else in the house is any different than the morning I left it. I set my phone on the counter, then pick it up again before I've even taken my hand away.

The screen stays dark in my palm. For a second, I wonder what Mackie and Lis did with the rest of their day.

I put the phone back down.

I get the axe off the porch and walk out to the tank in the dark. Breaking up the ice, something useful, is what I need right now, not reminiscing about a two-night affair on the other side of the country.

I get there, and the tank's already chopped. Wade must have done it at some point this afternoon.

I walk back into the freezing house. I kneel in front of the stove, pull kindling from the woodbox Dutch filled, and strike a match.

The first one goes out, but the second catches.

I stay there until the wood starts to burn.

SEVEN

Mackie

Go, tell it on the mountain / Over the hills and everywhere

The cowboy has been back in Wyoming for three days, and Florida has gone right back to early-bird specials and my mother's bridge schedule. It's two-thirteen in the morning, and I'm wide awake on top of the guest room comforter, sitting cross-legged like a kid who won't go to bed.

I've got the thread open again.

I saved his number as Cowboy on Christmas night because it made me laugh. There aren't many texts between us, but I like rereading our nerdy texts about his cookie invite. I read the whole thing top to bottom for the third time and grin at the ceiling like an idiot.

Then I remember I never sent Shipley the picture I promised her, because the woman in a red sweater kept parking herself in the frame. It occurs to me, at two in the morning, that it would be very funny to call her and leave a voicemail so ridiculous she wakes up to it and hates me.