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She looks over at me.

"I'm not asking you to move either. I'm saying I can't be here every day. Money is the one thing I know I can give you consistently from that far away."

"That's fine." She says it fast, like she's had it ready the whole drive. "I won't ever expect anything else from you, Carson. Whatever works."

It should sit right with me. It doesn't, and I can't say why.

There's a part of me that wishes the distance weren't fifteen hundred miles. I don't need her living on the ranch with me, but if something goes wrong at two in the morning, money isn't much use from Wyoming.

Mackie folds my sheet in half. "I think we need to establish one thing now if you're insisting on being involved with this pregnancy. I know I came on to you, but what happened in the hotel can't happen again."

"Okay."

The city-limit sign slides past, a thin cap of snow gathering along its top edge. Neither of us says a word the rest of the ride into town.

Her neighborhood is small houses with carports and mailboxes knocked crooked by plows. I take it slow. A blue house with a wreath still up passes on the right, and Mackie's head turns toward it.

I pull into her driveway behind her Honda Accord and stop. She has her keys out before the truck fully settles.

"I'll text you in a week to check on you."

"You don't have to."

I don't respond. The door opens, and she's out, straight to her own car without a glance back at the cab. I back into the street to give her room. She pulls out without any hesitation and drives off.

I watch her taillights all the way to the corner. They wink out behind the last house on the street.

Then I go. I stop at a gas station off the highway to top off the rental. Snow's sticking now. It gathers around the pump bases in soft rings and squeaks under my boots when I step down. My phone buzzes with a call from Wade.

"Red baldy calved backwards around eleven-thirty. I had two going at once. The bull calf. Didn't make it."

"Heifer?"

"Up and eating."

"This isn't on you."

"Three more are close."

"I'll be back late. Hopefully they hold until I can get there."

The line goes dead. Wade never says goodbye.

I stand there with the cold working into my collar and do the math I didn't do while he was talking. Eleven-thirty Mountain is one-thirty Eastern. At one-thirty Eastern, Mackie was on her knees at the edge of that hotel bed with me behind her, and fifteen hundred miles west a calf was coming the wrong way with nobody but Wade to pull it.

A second person there wouldn't have necessarily saved it. A backwards calf is a coin toss. That's true, but it doesn't help.

Climbing back into the cab, I pull the calving book from my coat and open it flat over the wheel. Eight heifers are due this week.

The main herd starts in March, six weeks of dark mornings and checks every two hours, then branding in May, hay from June through August, and weaning and shipping in September.

The new acreage gives me room to grow, but only if the cattle pay for it.

Every calf I lose cuts into the margin I was counting on to make Dutch's payment and still have more left over for Mackie and the babies.

I close the calving book. There are gaps in that year, but not many I can count on, and the only trip I've already promised before fall is Florida for Hildie.

I call the airline and move tomorrow's flight from to the 6:10 out of Asheville tonight.