"I just think if I'm going to be here, I should understand how it actually works. All of it. Not just the physical part."
Gideon rode in silence for a moment.
"I'll start showing you the ledgers this week," he said.
Ethan nodded, still looking forward.
"Okay."
They rode the rest of the way back without talking.
The ranch came closer with every minute.
The house.
The barn.
The smoke coming from the kitchen chimney that someone had fixed properly in January.
The small kitchen garden Clara had staked out in a patch of south-facing ground that would get the most sun.
Noah was in the yard already doing something with a stick that appeared to have its own complex logic.
Caleb was on the porch with a book, though he'd be put to work within the hour.
Miles had already been in the barn since sunup, which was where he went when he wanted to think.
Ethan looked at it all as they rode in.
"It's different in spring," he said.
"It always is," Gideon said.
"Better."
Gideon considered.
"Different," he said. "Spring means work. Lots of it."
He looked at the ranch.
The house with the light in the kitchen window.
The garden stakes in the mud.
The kid in the yard with the stick.
"Yeah," he said. "Better."
Birch let Ethan ride her on a Thursday in late March.
Not easily.
She was herself, which meant 20 minutes of resistance.
A sequence of objections that required patience and stillness and the willingness to start over twice before she decided she was done making her point.
But she let him up.
She moved under him with the rolling power that made her difficult to manage.
Ethan rode her around the paddock at a walk and then a trot, with his jaw set and his hands quiet and the concentration of someone doing something that mattered.
Gideon watched from the fence.
When Ethan brought her back to the gate and dismounted, he was breathing harder than the effort strictly required.
He ran his hand down Birch's neck.
She tolerated it with her usual magnificent disdain.
He looked at Gideon.
Gideon said, "Good."
Ethan's jaw did the complicated thing.
He looked away for a second.
Then back.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time tomorrow," Gideon said.
"Okay."
Clara planted the kitchen garden on the first real warm day of April, with Miles beside her doing the digging because Miles turned out to be quietly passionate about the mechanical logic of soil preparation.
Noah got in the way in the thoroughly well-meaning fashion that was Noah's primary mode of existence.
Gideon watched from the porch for a few minutes on his way to the barn.