Later, after the pies were gone and the children were asleep in coat piles and the frost had thickened on the field beyond the open doors, Walt and Ruth walked out into the cold together. Their breath plumed. The barn glowed behind them like a heart still beating. Ruth slipped her gloved hand into his.
"Next year," she said, "we bring more strings than we think we need."
"Next year," Walt said, "and the year after that."
They stood looking at the frosted field until the cold insisted they move. Then they went back inside for one last dance, slow and sure, under lights that had witnessed a broken string and a repaired one and a man who had learned that love does not replace love—it continues it, note by note, step by careful step, in barns and kitchens and the long bright quiet of a Nebraska night.
Spring came again, as springs do. The sunflowers returned. Ruth played at weddings and wakes and one awkward city council fundraiser. Walt sold a portion of cattle at a good price and finally replaced the truck's muffler. In May they drove to the little Methodist church in Lexington—not for a wedding, not yet, but to sit in a back pew on a Sunday when the light came through the sunflower-patterned memorial window someone had donated years ago, and to hold hands like people who understood that vows could be quiet before they were loud.