Walt looked at the nearly empty dance floor—scuffed boards, a few couples lingering near the edges, a boy chasing a cousin between hay bales—and felt three years settle on his shoulders like wet wool. "Haven't danced in three years."
Ruth set the fiddle down on a hay bale with a care that said the instrument mattered, then held out her hand. "Then you're overdue."
They two-stepped slowly under the string lights. No words. Her palm rested light against his sheepskin; his hand found the small of her back through the suede jacket. The floor was mostly theirs. Outside, the Nebraska night pressed frost into the stubble of the harvested fields, and somewhere a generator hummed like a distant heartbeat. Walt counted steps the way he counted fence posts—careful, methodical, afraid of getting it wrong.
He nearly stepped on her boot and laughed, a rough sound he had almost forgotten how to make. "Still got two left feet."
Ruth pulled him closer, smiling, glossy terracotta lips curved with something warmer than pity. "I'll teach the left one first."
They kept moving. The string lights threw soft gold across the beams and the lanterns along the walls made pockets of amber between the shadows. A few older folks clapped politely from folding chairs. Someone at the punch bowl whispered, and Walt pretended not to hear. He had come tonight because his sister Margaret had said if he spent one more Thanksgiving alone in the ranch house staring at Eleanor's empty chair, she would drive out and drag him by the ear. He had come for Margaret. He had not expected a broken string, or a woman who smelled faintly of cedar and cold air, or the strange relief of being told he was overdue.