“I told you, I was raised so that you can’t have fear.  Even if you have it, you can’t have it.”

“Maybe you’re secretly afraid of the rats.  Well, I’m not.”  That was a brave and totally false statement.  “And I can take care of myself anyway.”

“Except getting across a river in a wagon.”

“Except that one small thing.  Or if a wheel falls off or someone steals my horses.”

“Or steals the whole wagon.”

“That, too.”

He had to have seen it coming, and likely also that this was how it would happen.

In the barn, they placed their saddles in the dark, then the blankets.  All the night sounds were there along with the shuffling of the horses.  Chace settled in the way he always did, on his back.  Charlotte lay beside him wrapped in her blanket.  A coyote howled and then another until there was a chorus echoing off the banks of the creek.  She shivered.

“The coyotes were stealing the chickens.  That’s why the shotgun was at the door.”

“It’s behind you.  Keep it there.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like now?”

There was a long pause.

“Maybe like now.”

“If time’s short, we should make good use of what we have left,” she said.

“Good use could be anything.”

“It’d be what I considered good use.”

“Why is that not a surprise?”

She turned to face him, her bare feet touching his.  “I’m here,” she said.  “Where are you?”

“Lost.”

“Chace?”

“What?”

“When I told you about suffering like my father does for the way I behave?  There’s more coming.  I just wanted you to know.”

She leaned in and kissed him gently.  He reached up and slid his palms against her scalp beneath her chopped hair, holding her there, kissing her back.  “I already knew,” he said quietly.  She shifted, fitting herself down the length of him.  Her fingers felt for his mouth and she kissed him one more time.