Clara was on her knees in the dirt, her hair pinned up with two pieces coming loose the way they always did by midmorning, showing Noah where to place the seed markers with the patience she always found for him, even at the end of long days.
Miles worked steadily beside her.
Methodical and thorough.
Turning the soil in even rows with a concentration that would have looked like that of a much older person if you didn't also notice the small, pleased expression he wore when the row came out straight.
She looked up and caught Gideon watching.
"The south section needs a second pass," she said. "The soil's not broken up enough."
"I see that," he said.
"Can you..."
"I'll send Dermit over this afternoon."
She went back to the seeds.
"Thank you."
He went to the barn.
He was almost there when Noah called out behind him.
"Gid, come see where we're planting the tomatoes."
Gideon stopped walking.
He turned around.
Noah was six years old and covered in mud and pointing at a patch of ground with the urgency of someone announcing something genuinely important.
Clara had looked up again.
She was watching him with the level attention she brought to things she wanted to see clearly.
He walked back across the yard.
Noah showed him the tomato section with full, detailed commentary on why this spot was the right spot, referencing the sun angle and the drainage with the authority of someone who had absorbed a month of Clara's garden planning and was now an expert.
Gideon crouched down to where the kid was pointing.
Looked at the marked ground.
Said the things you said.
Noah talked.
Miles added corrections when Noah got the drainage logic wrong.
Clara stayed where she was and watched.
The spring light came down on all of it.
The mud.
The seed markers.
The busted fence board on the garden edge that still needed fixing.
The smear of soil on Noah's left ear.
The two pieces of hair coming out of Clara's pins.
None of it was the thing you'd put in a painting.
None of it was the version you'd tell to make yourself sound like you had your life arranged neatly.
It was just a yard in Wyoming in April.
Two kids explaining tomato placement to a man who had 11 years of experience growing nothing but cattle and feed grain while a woman watched from the garden and didn't say anything because she didn't need to.
That evening after supper, after the boys were in bed and the ranch was quiet, Clara sat at the kitchen table with her coffee and Gideon sat across from her with his.
The fire was doing what it did.
"I wrote to my sister today," Clara said.
She hadn't mentioned a sister before.
"I haven't written to her since before Denver. We..."
She paused.
"We had a disagreement about Thomas's death. About what I should do after. About the boys. She thought I should come back east. I didn't."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her where I was. What the ranch is like. About the boys."
She turned her coffee cup.