Ruth leaned against the chewed-up wooden fence, watching her daughter ride away. She looked healthier already, and she moved and talked more easily. Her dark blonde hair was tied in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. She told me she didn’t want to get too settled in her new apartment because she’d be leaving soon. She was moving in with a man she knew, in a cabin forty miles from town.

“How will Lauren get to school?” I asked.

“We’ll drive her,” Ruth said.

“That road is bad in winter.”

“He has a truck,” Ruth said. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll home-school.”

“You need state approval for that,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Will you have running water?”

“There’s a well,” she said. “Marvin is very close to nature. He has a teepee set up out there in the summer.”

I nodded, and looked out at Cort and Lauren on the far side of the field. Lauren held the reins high in her puffy coat. Cort nodded at whatever she was saying.

“Does Marvin have a job?” I asked Ruth.

“He’s a holistic healer,” she said. “He’s not working right now. He hunts.”

“What’s in season?” I asked.

She shrugged one shoulder and pushed a wisp of hair away from her cheek with one thin hand. Her voice had a defiant edge. “Only what we need.”

Cort brought Lauren past the stables again, and the girl reached down to stroke the mare’s neck, talking to it; the mare turned back her ears to listen.

“Time to go,” Ruth called.

Lauren looked reluctant, then said, “Okay.” Cort helped her down and showed her how to tie the lead rope to the fence.

“The baby should be called Kite Whistler Aquamarine,” Lauren said.

Cort said it was a fine name and it would stick. Ruth held the passenger door for her daughter, then drove off down the dirt road without saying good-bye. Cort unsaddled the mare and brushed her. I moved to stay upwind.

“Ruth’s taking Lauren to live with a mountain man in the woods,” I told him. “A poacher who lives in a teepee.”

Cort pulled a handful of hair out of the brush and let it fall to the ground, where it blew across the clumps of manure and dirt. “Do you think the foster parents still want her?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think they should have her either.”

Cort dumped a coffee can full of oats into a bucket and carried the saddle into the tack room. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Not much you can do about other people’s kids.”

“Ruth thinks she’s going to home-school her,” I said.

“That you might be able to do something about,” he said. “Maybe. Probably be pro bono.” He gave me half a grin.