The boy laughed uncertainly.
Lou looked at his worn saddle.
Then toward the bunkhouse.
“Stay the week.”
His face brightened.
“Thank you.”
He led the horse away.
Emmett came beside her.
“You did that on purpose.”
“What?”
“Forty-five.”
“Good men cost more now.”
“I was a good man.”
“You became one.”
Emmett placed a hand over his heart.
“Cruel.”
“Accurate.”
He looked toward the ranch.
Barns repaired.
Fields fenced.
Cattle spread against the horizon.
A home that no longer looked as though one hard winter could erase it.
“You ever regret hiring me?”
Lou pretended to consider.
“Daily.”
“Marriage?”
“Hourly.”
He smiled.
She slipped her hand into his.
“No.”
The word became quiet.
Emmett looked at her.
“No?”
Lou shook her head.
“Not once.”
He squeezed her fingers.
For several minutes they stood without speaking.
Then Lou said:
“You still have that ridiculous saddle?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Best thing I owned when I came.”
“What is now?”
Emmett looked toward her.
Lou rolled her eyes.
“Do not say me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
“I was going to say ranch.”
She punched his arm.
Emmett laughed.
Then kissed her forehead.
Lou outlived him by six years.
Not enough.
Too many.
Both were true.
Emmett died in his sleep after a winter day repairing fence he had no business repairing at seventy-two.
Lou found him the next morning.
Hat on the chair.
Boots beside the bed.
For the first time in nearly four decades, he had left without his saddle.
Lou hated him for that briefly.
Then cried until there was no anger left to hold.
At the funeral Roy, gray-haired himself, tried to speak.
Failed.
Tomás traveled two days.
Their daughter stood beside Lou.
After everyone left, Lou entered the kitchen.
The bent nail remained framed beside the door.
She touched it.
Forty dollars.
A broken gate.
A stranger saying he wanted the unpaid position.
At the time she thought confidence was his defining quality.
She had been wrong.
Emmett had been frightened his entire adult life.
Frightened of belonging because belonging created something to lose.
Frightened that mistakes made years earlier permanently defined him.
Frightened every ranch would disappear.
Every family break.
Every winter end with his saddle in another yard.
He had not arrived fearless.
He had arrived tired of letting fear decide.
Lou understood that only much later.
Perhaps courage was usually that.
Not absence of fear.
Exhaustion with obeying it.
On the final spring of Lou’s life, Bitter Brush received rain.
Real rain.
Enough to fill the southern pond.
Enough to green the hills.
Enough that cattle stood belly-deep in grass by May.
Lou sat on the porch beneath a blanket despite the warmth.
Her daughter brought coffee.
Better coffee than Perch ever made.
Emmett would have complained that civilization was weakening the ranch.
Lou smiled at the thought.
“What?”
Her daughter sat beside her.
“Your father.”
“Which thing?”
“Coffee.”
The younger woman laughed.
“He hated mine too.”
“He hated good coffee.”
“He claimed coffee shouldn’t taste pleasant.”
“Perch taught him.”
They watched the cattle.
Near the old chute stood the repaired gate where Emmett had first helped.
Most of the wood had been replaced over the years.
But the shape remained.
Lou’s daughter asked:
“Did he really say he came to be your husband?”