They moved all forty-three surviving cattle close to the house.
That night, Tomás sat awake with the rifle.
Clara brought coffee.
He looked at her.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I’m watching the herd.”
“I can watch too.”
He shook his head.
Clara sat anyway.
Moonlight covered the corral.
After several minutes she said, “My father used to sit like this.”
Tomás looked over.
“You never talk about him.”
“He died when I was sixteen.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Long ago.”
“What happened?”
“Factory accident.”
Tomás said nothing.
Clara continued.
“He worked machinery.”
Her hands wrapped around the cup.
“After he died, my mother lasted one year.”
“Disease?”
“Grief.”
Tomás looked at her.
“She stopped eating properly. Stopped leaving the room. Then pneumonia came.”
“That’s why you started working.”
“Yes.”
“At seventeen.”
“Yes.”
Tomás looked at her hands again.
Suddenly he understood their history differently.
Those hands had not simply worked.
They had held a family together.
“You raised your sister.”
“Mostly.”
“And then felt like furniture when she had her own family.”
Clara smiled faintly.
“You listen.”
“Sometimes.”
She looked toward him.
“You wrote good letters.”
Tomás laughed softly.
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“What made them good?”
“You did not describe yourself as handsome.”
He looked offended.
“I may be handsome.”
“You may.”
She smiled.
“You wrote about repairing the east fence.”
“That convinced you?”
“No.”
“You wrote about a calf born during snow and how stupid you felt warming it inside the kitchen.”
Tomás smiled at the memory.
“My late mother would have killed me.”
“You wrote about missing her.”
He looked down.
Clara continued.
“You sounded lonely without begging for pity.”
Tomás stared at the cattle.
“I was lonely.”
“I know.”
“So were you?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Then Tomás asked, “Are you still?”
Clara looked at him.
The question changed the air.
She set down the cup.
“No.”
Tomás’s chest tightened.
He moved closer.
Slowly.
Giving her time.
Clara did not move away.
He touched one strand of hair near her cheek.
“May I?”
She smiled.
“You ask that often.”
“I plan to keep asking.”
“Yes.”
He kissed her.
Not like the wedding.
This kiss lasted.
Clara’s hand moved to the back of his neck.
Tomás felt weeks of fear, months of drought, years of loneliness narrow into one human point of warmth.
When they separated, Clara’s eyes remained closed for half a second.
Then a cow bellowed.
Both turned sharply.
Tomás grabbed the rifle.
A shadow moved near the corral.
“Stay here.”
Clara stood.
“No.”
“Clara.”
She drew one of her knives.
Tomás stared.
“What?”
“I told you I brought tools.”
Despite danger, he nearly laughed.
They moved together.
The shadow crouched beside the fence.
Tomás raised the rifle.
“Stand up.”
The figure ran.
Tomás fired into the air.
“Stop!”