Shaye was painting her toenails red. She looked like she hadn’t slept all night. She had Einstein hair and parentheses of frown lines between her brows. “You know it’s not just the car,” she said.

  “Of course it’s not just the car. The whole stepfamily thing…It sounds like a nightmare. Wait,” I said. It hadn’t hit me before, not really. You could have arguments and new sports cars and mad leavings to Nevada; you could even use the word divorce and not mean it. “Are you actually leaving him?”

  Shaye stopped the little brush in midair. Her toes were half done; the poor blank ones looked like sad orphans next to their flamboyant friends. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do anymore. I mean, we’ve also got a business together now. I feel like such a failure.”

  “You’re not a failure.”

  I’d dragged an old vacuum cleaner down the hall, and now it sat beside me, a too-short dance partner, same as David Selby in the seventh grade. I hunted around for a plug. Words like commitment and vow knocked wrongly around my head and threatened to spill. Failure wasn’t an option if you stood behind words like those. But who was I to talk? We were both there at the ranch, and, if I was being honest, there were many times that it was cowardice and cowardice alone that kept me in my marriage, not some superior moral footing. Not some exalted word like vow. Honestly? I might have been Shaye, if I’d had more guts.

  Because there were these tender and treasured things: his body next to my body, rubbing sore necks, bringing medicine; soft words on bad days, and the fact that he seemed like my only true friend in the world sometimes, my still-laughing sidekick through bills and diagnoses and the triumphs of our children. But there were also these: a wish to be better known after all those years, hearts kept private, a list of past crimes; years that made us companionable roommates, and sometimes not even that. Often, marriage was solitude, with company.

  How did one add it up? What conclusion could a person come to? Could anything hold the weight of two lives lived side by side? Or, perhaps even weightier, the lives not lived?

  Then again, could you go through a colonoscopy with someone and not be wedded for life?

  “How can you clean at a time like this?” Shaye yelled over the roar of the vacuum cleaner.

  “A time like what?”

  “How can you just…I mean, you, here…Thomas…Something is wrong, Cal. Telling you to stay out here—it’s not like him. He hid going to therapy for half a year.”

  “Move that chair,” I shouted.

  “You can’t keep busy forever,” Shaye said.

  “Lots of people do,” I yelled. “They go from dinner plans with so and so to the kids’ birthday party to the roof cleaner.”

  “You haven’t even cried.”

  “You know I hate to cry.”

  “You can run, but you can’t hide.”

  “He’s just grieving! It’s loss. His mother just died! Besides, I wouldn’t even know how to imagine…” My stupid voice cracked.

  “What?”

  “Some new life. I don’t even know what that could look like.”

  This shut Shaye up. It shut us both up. There was only the roar of the vacuum and the sound of it knocking against the wall as I maneuvered around furniture.

  “How can you clean at a time like this?” Nash yelled from the doorway. I flipped the switch, and the roar silenced.

  “I never saw you as the housecoat type, Nash,” I said. “Those roses are so sweet.”

  “I can’t believe we’re wasting time discussing my attire,” Nash said. She crossed the room, flung open the curtains. “Look.”

  “Brown grass and more brown grass,” I said.

  “A brand-new day?” Shaye guessed.

  “There.”

  “I thought the eyes were supposed to go when you got old,” I said. I couldn’t see a damn thing except all that wreckage that needed tending to.

  “Those two.” She tapped the glass with her finger. “They’re fighting over a mare.”

  Ah, a splotch of darkness in the distance. “I see them.”

  “Wow, they’re tall,” Shaye said.

  “That’s a pair of acacias, you idiot,” I said, and Shaye socked my arm. “The black spot to your right.”

  “I hated those horses for years,” Nash said. “Dirty, dangerous creatures. A menace. And then a few months ago I saw them again. For the first time in a long while. I was washing dishes. Soapsuds up to my elbows, and there they were. Right out there! And it was the most incredible thing. It changed me. Changed me again. I could see how beautiful they were, in spite of the trouble and the danger. I’d forgotten that.”

  We huddled around the window like a trio of hostages. Nash’s old road-map hands rested on the sill. Her nose was scrunched and her eyes narrow as she squinted to see. I tried to do the same, but the horses still only resembled a moving thumbprint.

  “Nash, I get it—why you’re ignoring the bureau guy. I do,” I said. But I didn’t. Not at all. “The grandeur of them…”

  She turned to me, raised her brows like I’d taken leave of my senses. “Grandeur?”

  “Whatever you want to call it. But they’re destroying your land.”

  “My land?”

  “This is an animal-rights issue to you?”

  “It’s not an issue to me at all. It’s a personal matter. I want them left alone anywhere near the property.”

  The vehemence, it was another thing I thought I suddenly understood. How had we missed it, when it was so obvious? “This is what the papers are about. In your room. You’re trying to stop the gather.”

  “Nonsense. I don’t like it, but I can’t stop it.”

  “You’re not building some case…”

  She scoffed. Looked at us like we were a pair of children who’d not yet learned the ways of the world.

  “I don’t get it,” Shaye said. “Sure, they’re beautiful, but anyone in your position would want those horses gone. Out of here, and fast.”

  We waited. The silence was a standoff. Finally, she spoke. “It’s a sign,” she said, almost reluctantly.

  “A sign.”

  “A message.”

  Shaye scooted her painted foot next to mine and nudged. She made crazy eyes at me behind Nash’s back.

  “What sort of a message?” My voice was high-pitched. It was the way you talked to the guy with a bomb strapped to his waist.

  “It’s meant.”

  “Meant,” Shaye repeated.

  “I never should have said anything. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “Come on, Nash,” Shaye said. “You have to tell us. We can help if we understand. You don’t want the horses messed with because the horses are a sign. Okay. Great. So what’s all the stuff in your room?”

  The black thumbprint got smaller, until it was gone. Nash turned away from the window. “I told you. It’s ranch business. If I wanted your help, I’d ask for your help. Not every corner of a person’s life needs to be discussed and shared and passed around.”

  “Let’s talk about 1951,” I ventured.

  “The summer of 1951,” Shaye said.

  I thought I saw a flare of shock cross Nash’s eyes. There was no question, though, about her sharp exhale.

  “You girls sound just like your mother,” she said.

  “Thanks a lot,” I said.

  “And with that, you’ll have to tend to your own breakfast. Obviously you saw all the work I have to do, since you keep going on about it. You think this place runs itself?”

  “You could tell us if you were writing a book or something, Nash.” Shaye, she could be like a dog with a knotted sock when she had an idea. There she was, back on the book thing. Of course Nash wasn’t writing a book! There was no possible way she was writing a book!

  “I’m not writing a book,” Nash said.

  I shot Shaye a smug look.

  “I’m closing a chapter.”

  —

  “Summer?” I asked Shaye. “Summer of 1951? Where’d you get that?”

  “Things always happen in summer in the movies.”

  “Did you see it, though? Her eyes got funny.”

  “I don’t know, Cal. Remember when Mom thought we were related to that Civil War general?”

  I sighed, rummaged in an old box of nails I’d found in the barn that were now at my feet.

  “Was it the bacon? Look at you. Shouldn’t you just wait for Harris? He said he’d be by later to do some stuff.”

  “I can’t just sit around all day. Harris is a million years old and it’s eighty degrees out already. I don’t want him kicking off while we’re here,” I said. The sky was blue, with skid-mark clouds, and the sun beat down on that hard, rocky ground. Short yellow shrubs, numerous tufts of bad haircuts, dotted the area. Out there, it all looked like one color at first—an endless brown. Looking closer, though, you saw orange-gray rocks and an unexpected purple flower, and a smear of red in the clay earth.

  A person just couldn’t sit around and think. Thinking led to action. I put two nails in the corner of my mouth, like Thomas always did, held another against the wood and hammered it in.

  “This place is a disaster. I admire your attitude and all, but in my garden, I pull a couple of weeds and then look around and think, Jesus, there are so many weeds.”

  “What else can I do with this anger?”

  “You talked to Thomas again?”

  “He left me a message this morning. He’s going on a sailing trip today, with people from the office. They’ve had those trips every year. When has he ever gone? Oh, that’s right. Never. How nice he’s in the mood for a sailing trip now that I’m away from home.” The hammer made a satisfying bam, bam, bam, until there was the disappointing thwick as the nail bent.

  “You think that’s bad? You’ll never guess what Eric is doing tonight. Taking his girls to the theater.”

  “Movie theater or theater theater?”

  “Guess. When have we ever gone to the theater? The last time I even went was when Jay took me to see Grease at the Moore Egyptian.”

  Jay was her boyfriend the summer of her junior year of high school. He was the one guy who was actually nice, until Eric. “Remember Jay wore a suit?” I said. “Ha, it even had a vest.”

  “Eric wouldn’t have bought those tickets for us.”

  “It’s Eric’s guilt taking them to the theater, not Eric.”

  “I didn’t know guilt could drive.”

  “Either way, the good news is, the three of them won’t fit into the new Porsche.” I’d heard about the trouble those girls had caused—the hidden-dagger acts, saying things Shaye could hear but their father couldn’t, saying things their father could hear but she couldn’t, teenage girls acting like determined mistresses. They sounded a lot like June Bennett. I couldn’t even picture Eric at the theater, to tell you the truth. He was the kind of guy who liked his televisions large. He watched loud sports on that large television. Thomas never watched football. I always appreciated that about him. Me, I could watch football if the sound was off and I could read during the game.

  “A Porsche, how original. And I hope Thomas falls off the boat,” Shaye said. “You’re supposed to hold it down here.” She slid my hand down the hammer.

  “I know how to hold it.”

  “You’re holding it like a toddler with a fork.”

  “We took a home-improvement class!” I said.

  “You what?” Shaye started to laugh. It pissed me off, but, still, she looked like her six-year-old self, bent over laughing. It reminded me of the two of us and H. R. Pufnstuf on Saturday mornings.

  “It’s one of those things you do. Shared hobby, whatever.”

  “Try cooking?” Shaye said. “Maybe a dance class?”

  “You cook however-many meals in your life, and who gives a shit about duck confit in blah-blah sauce.”

  “But, home improvement? I mean, no wonder.”

  “What do you mean by that? Thomas likes home improvement. He’s great at that stuff. That man can fix anything.”

  “You said the house was falling apart.”

  I ignored her and got that board up. The pasture fences would require new bolts and posts, but the short, simple one that hugged the road, we could do it. Old Harris and I could handle that. No need to be intimidated by a ranch. Seattle might have lattes and slugs and damp, mossy ground, whereas this place had black coffee and lizards and grass dry enough to ignite, but at the end of the day, wood and nails were wood and nails. Fences were built and fences fell apart, wherever you went.

  “I wish the pool had water,” Shaye said. “I even brought my bathing suit.”

  “Me, too. Hey, we could run through the sprinkler.”

  “Ha. Do kids even do that anymore? Remember Marco Polo with just us? Talk about an exercise in frustration.”

  “Mom would never get her hair wet.”

  “There was that creepy boyfriend who smoked. He got in with us.”

  “Don’t remind me. You know what amazes me? Hold that end.” Shaye grabbed the end of the board and held it to the post, which made the job a hundred times easier. “The way she let us fight. Would you ever let your kids fight like that?” I said through the nails in my mouth.

  “Oh, my God,” Shaye said.

  “I can still feel your skin under my fingernails.”

  “Oh, I know! Rolling around and clawing! If my kids ever even hit each other…”

  “Yeah, it’d be, Use your words!” I singsong. I bent another nail with a good whack. A large part of me wished I hadn’t started this project. It was getting hot out there, and I was tired already. “Remember when I broke your glasses?”

  “We thought she was going to kill us.”

  “Mom hit us for hitting each other, and we’re so afraid of messing up as parents, we can barely say no when they want to borrow the car to rob a 7-Eleven. No wonder we’re unhappy. They should call us the Be Seen and Not Heard Generation. The first half of our lives, we’re afraid of our parents, and the second half, we’re afraid of our kids.”

  “No kidding. I forgot Joshie’s sharing for kindergarten and I felt awful for days. We’re parental pansies.” She handed me a few more nails from the box on the ground. Shaye had one of those cute, small noses you see on cheerleaders, and it was getting sunburned.

  “Then again, these kids care about building shelters in foreign countries. We never cared about building shelters in foreign countries.”

  “We never cared about foreign countries. California sounded cool. Cal, look,” Shaye said. That buffalo was probably back. I gave a few last powerful blows, and the nail head went in satisfyingly flat. I stood, shielded my eyes, and glanced the way Shaye pointed.

  “Forest-service man,” we both said.

  “You take him, I’ll take her,” Shaye said.

  “I don’t want him!” I said.

  “You prefer sick and deranged over pre-Sundance Redford? I may have to hold her down forcibly.”

  “Fine. Go sit on her. Or make her eat something. She needs food.”

  “Food, nothing. I’m going to create a diversion, then sneak into her room. See what I can find out.”

  I fanned my shirt in and out. I’m sure I looked just terrific. The screen door slammed shut after Shaye, but at the sound of the truck, Tex bolted outside, a bullet heading for the enemy heart. He bared his tiny, sharp teeth and barked like a superhero.

  I tucked him under my arm, but I was still on a canine strike, so I tried to ignore his actual self behind those little black eyes. “Cool it, Rambo,” I said. “He looks harmless enough.”

  The man slammed the door of his truck. He walked over, the gravel crunching under his cowboy boots. He wore jeans and a plain gray T-shirt, and…well, Shaye was right. He was fit, and his face was rugged and handsome under a tan suede hat, which covered his light brown-blond hair. “Should I duck?” he said.

  “Duck?”

  “You’re not going to throw something?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Did she throw something at you?”

  “A boot. I believe it landed in the pool.” He smiled. It was a white, white smile against his tan face. Cinematic, but also slightly imperfect, enough to be likable.

  “I see,” I said. “Well, at least it was just one.”

  “Look.” He gestured with a hook of his thumb.

  The other shoe leaned against the tree as if it had passed out after a rough night. “Ah.”

  “Kit Covey.” He held out his hand.

  I took it. It was a strong, wide hand. “Callie,” I said. “McBride.” My hair was a mess, and what had happened to my clothes over the years? Why had I entirely forgotten about how they could make a person feel? “I’m Nash’s niece.”

  “Hey, guy,” he said. He reached his hand down to Tex, who’d proven to be a traitor. His tail was going a million miles an hour. Kit scratched his small, disloyal neck.

  “I hate to keep bothering you folks, but I saw a new car head out this way and thought I’d come by and try one last time. You may have heard from your aunt that we’re doing a gather? Right at the edge of her property. Public land, though—I want to be clear. I’m not sure we ever had a rancher object. Usually it’s the horse enthusiasts we deal with. But we’re doing what we can to make sure there’s adequate public notice and information. We’d like your support.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about this,” I said. “My aunt hasn’t been well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He seemed to mean it. His eyes were kind. Tex sat at his feet like a faithful servant. “What do you need from her?”

  “We just want to know that she got the information and that we’ve answered all her questions to her satisfaction. As the one in charge of the operation…well, it can take a while. The setup, first off. The gathers—another three or four weeks. We’ll be right in her face, and she’ll be in ours. We want her to know that the horses will be looked after. Adopted out, or given permanent care, or returned to the range…They’ll die of starvation and disease if nothing is done. The population gets too large for their own good.”

  “You’re trying to avoid a lawsuit.”