Ed, typically, doesn’t seem to hear Robbie suggest that now might not be the best time, and barrels on. “Oh, I’ll just take up a few minutes of your time, I swear. Sorry I missed your calls. When can I come by and gather up those strays? The weather isn’t ideal, but I’d like to do it while I still have my nephew here to help.”

Robbie freezes with his hand on the door handle. What’s he going to do? Sprint down the stairs after Lance, calling after him? What entitles him to stop Lance if Lance wants to go? He thinks of their few, shared days together, and even though, the day before, he was sure they’d brought to life something vivid, real, and lasting, now he has to wonder if he imagined it. It was dreamlike, those passionate, languorous hours with Lance, learning Lance’s body and feeling like he was rediscovering his own. Standing here alone feels much more like reality as Robbie knows it, the figure of Lance getting smaller and smaller with each step he takes, hurrying away from the place where Robbie kissed him and touched him, and came for him and made him come.

Robbie’s hand falls to his side. He leans forward until his forehead is pressed against the glass panel in the door. The wind must be picking up; he sees Lance duck his head like he’s bracing against a gust. He’s almost to the first bend in the driveway, which will take him out of sight.

“Sure, come whenever,” Robbie tells Ed, resignedly. “I’ll be here.” As always.

“Great, great. We’ll go ahead and head your way now, before there’s any more snow down.”

Robbie says that’s fine, ends the call, and sets down the calf’s bottle on the counter to wash it. And it isn’t until that moment that it sinks in that, when Ed comes for the cows, he’ll be taking the calf, too.

Robbie doesn’t think about Sienna if he can help it. The reasons for that are myriad, and hard for him to unpack. In some ways, the bad memories are interspersed with just as many that are good, which makes it all the harder to reflect on. The complicated things always are.

He loved that horse, and he likes remembering how smart she was, how quickly she caught on to new things, and how bright her eyes got when she saw him coming. That’s rare in a horse. Even a good, fair horseman who can convince most horses to enjoy their work will still find that, to the horse, it’s work nonetheless. The ones who are sincerely glad to see you coming with their bridle are rare. Poco is one of them; Sienna was another.

And in the months after those terrible days of trying and failing to save Sienna’s life, he and his brothers were working together in the best way. He remembers the mustangs coming off the truck with a clarity with which he can recall few other moments in his life. How the ground shook as they came spilling out of the dark rectangle at the back of the trailer, and how the grass parted for them, like the land itself had been waiting for them.