That doesn’t mean my brother and I didn’t have to grow up in a hurry. There was plenty of work to be done around the ranch and more bellies to fill. Jim had a couple hundred heads of cattle, and he bred Rhodesian ridgebacks and shipped them off across the country as guard dogs at two thousand a pop. Sue-Anne made sure to have hot food on the table three times a day, and she read to us every night. I vanished into those stories—the Odyssey, Huck Finn, The Arabian Nights. As we got older, Patrick grew tired of it all, but I kept on, raiding the bookshelf, reading myself to sleep with a flashlight under the covers. I think I hid inside those fictional worlds because they kept me from thinking about how much I’d lost in the real one.

By his early teens, Patrick was clearly a force to be reckoned with. He and I didn’t look much alike—strangers were usually surprised to find out we were brothers. Not that I was ugly or weak or anything, but Patrick … well, he was Patrick. He got my dad’s wide shoulders and good looks, and he could ride herd and rope cattle alongside the best ranch hand, chewing a piece of straw and never breaking a sweat. The girls lost their mind over who got to wear his cowboy hat during lunchtime.

Until Alex. Then it was only her.

I didn’t like math so much, but I loved English and science. I didn’t have Patrick’s skills as a cattleman, but I wasn’t afraid of hard work. I was pretty good behind a hunting rifle, almost as good as Uncle Jim himself, but the one thing I was better at than anyone was raising those puppies. Ridgebacks are lion hunters from Africa, the most fearless and loyal creatures you’ll ever meet. Whenever we had a new litter, I’d play with the pups, training them up from day one. By the time they hit two months, they’d follow me anywhere, and by the time they were half a year old, I could put them on a sit-stay and they wouldn’t move if you tried to drag them from their spot. It was hard fitting in all the work around school, but somehow I managed, and if there’s one thing Dad taught me, it’s that the Rains don’t complain.

When it came time to stack the hay, Patrick always finished his part early and offered to help me on my share, but I made sure I finished it myself. Even if it was at the end of a long day. Even if it meant I had to stay up past midnight, working alone in the barn.

Which was what I was doing after the Dusting, the first time I’d seen Patrick nervous for as far back as my memory could stretch.