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Water runs into the kettle. She sets it on the burner and clicks the flame under it. Then she wipes down a counter that's already clean, and moves the salt back where it lives. She straightens the dish towel a quarter of an inch and stays in there a long time doing things that don't need doing.

I go into the bedroom. The shark tooth comes off first. When I untie the cord, my hands shake badly enough that it catches in my hair twice before it comes free.

I hold it in my palm and look at it for a moment. Then I lay it in the little jewelry case I brought down in June, on the velvet between my grandmother's pearls and a pair of earrings I haven't worn since college, and close the lid.

I take off the shirt, the one I asked him to leave me. It doesn't smell like him anymore, anyway. It smells like clean cotton and a little like spit-up. I fold it, sleeves in, and then in half, the fold you use on a thing you're putting away for good. I open the bottom drawer and set it on top and slide the drawer shut.

Then I open the drawer, take it back out and put it on, pulling the hem down over my hips. I get into bed on his side, the side by the window, and lie where he slept. The pillow's flat and the sheet is cool.

Across the room, Graham and Hildie are breathing in their bassinets.

The kettle starts to sing down the hall.

TWENTY-ONE

Carson

Sages, leave your contemplations / Brighter visions beam afar

Sunday morning I go out before it's light.

I forget to open the second gate, and the horse balks. I stand there with the lead in my hand, not understanding why, until I turn and see it latched. I fill the water tank and walk off and let it run over the top.

Half an hour later there's ice-cold mud where there shouldn't be. Dammit. I go back and shut it off, my boots getting stuck in the muck.

Wade shows up at seven. He looks at the tank, then looks at me. He doesn't say a word, and neither do I. He grabs the drag and pushes the mud toward the fence line and leaves it at that.

Monday we wean.

We push the pairs up the alley and cut the calves off the cows and swing them into the corrals where I rehung the gates in August. Once the last one's through and the gate's chained, it starts. The cows line the fence, and the calves crowd the panels on the other side. They call back and forth, and by afternoon it's a wall of sound that doesn't stop.

I feed the calves at daylight and again at dark. I walk the pens a third time before I call it a day.

This is where I said I needed to be. By midnight, with the calves bawling through the walls, I can't remember why being here used to settle anything. I rub my eyes and head back to the house. I can get three and a half hours before I have to be back out here.

The noise comes right through the house. I lie there and listen to it, unable to shut it out.

Tuesday it's the same, and Wednesday.

Wade catches me at the truck. "You want me on the night check?"

"I've got it."

"All right." He gets in his truck and goes home.

The thing I keep coming back to isn't what she said. It's what I said. She called us delusional for what we'd been doing, and I didn't push back. I said okay.

What the fuck was that?

I say okay when there's work to do, when somebody needs something, or when arguing won't change the job. Not when she proposes that what we've been doing is somehow not part of reality.

When the ten days I promised her ran out on the third, I let the day go by like it was any other day. I could have told her what I was dealing with, how something had to give. But I didn't say a word.

Thursday, I sit down to write the weaning records, tag numbers, weights, and dates down the page. I write the date at the top. 9/17.

The pen stops on the paper. I sit there with it. I need to go ahead and send her a check to make sure she has it by October 1. I make a note to write her one when I get home. Then I tear it across the middle and feed both halves of the note into the stove and watch them curl up and go.

Friday morning, I call an attorney in Casper. Mackie asked for a schedule on paper, something we could agree to formally and put on record. So I get her one.