He opened up the gate to the small pasture that was connected to the barn and let Kylie pass by him before closing it behind them. The chickens went crazy, running over, wings outstretched as they competed for space next to him. They knew what the arrival of a human meant: Food.

“Oh, they’re friendly!” Kylie said, leaning over to pet one that had gotten up close to her to investigate her shoes.

“Don’t—!” Adam exclaimed, just as the chicken reached out and pecked Kylie’s hand. Hard. Kylie pulled back with a yelp, and scared, the chicken took off running, her ass waddling as she hurried as fast as her two short legs would take her across the green grass. Kylie looked down with a rueful smile at her hand, a small stream of blood running down it.

“So, not that friendly?” she said wryly.

He laughed.

“Not pets, that’s for sure. They tend to think that anything you’re putting within reach of their beaks must be food. She wasn’t trying to hurt you; she was just trying to eat you.”

It was Kylie’s turn to laugh. “You’re really good at reassuring people, you know that? So, you’ve got killer chickens who want to eat me. What else do you have here for me to take care of?” She’d pulled a used Kleenex out of her sweatshirt pocket and had wrapped it around her small wound; Adam was happy to see that she didn’t break down into histrionics over it. Once again, he patted himself on the back for his amazing hiring skills. Forget 50-year-old women; he didn’t figure they could get any better than Kylie.

“Over there,” he said, pointing to Skunk who was placidly grazing and ignoring the whole ruckus, “is the milk cow. Her name is Skunk. She was named by a little boy who thought that everything that was black and white must be a skunk.” She laughed, and encouraged, he pointed to the goat. “And that is Dumbass.”

At the sound of her name, the goat looked up and then came trotting over, apparently believing that if they were going to talk about her, pettings were obviously part of the deal. Meanwhile, Kylie was just staring at him, caught between laughing at what he said and gasping in horror. “Dumbass? Really? You named a goat Dumbass?!”

The old girl had put her head underneath Kylie’s arm and was quite forcefully pushing it up in the air, begging, goat style, for a nice head rub. Kylie must’ve found just the right spot at the base of her horns because Dumbass began leaning into the pettings with all her might. Adam was a little afraid she’d knock Kylie on her ass at this rate.

He shrugged in response to Kylie’s question. “The old tenant…she renamed her Ivy, but honestly, that’s too nice of a name for this ol’ girl. Just wait until—”

Dumbass grabbed the bottom of Kylie’s sweatshirt and began pulling it into her mouth, chewing happily as she went.

“—Until she tries to eat your clothes,” Adam finished, too late. Kylie was laughing again as she began pushing on Dumbass, trying to wrestle her clothes back out of the goat’s mouth, and her white, soft, rounded belly shone in the bright sunshine. Actually, Adam was a little surprised by how round her stomach was. That must be where she carried all of her weight, because there was hardly anything at all to the rest of her.

That definitely wasn’t the body shape of her mom, who tended to be round all over, so Kylie must’ve gotten that from her father. No wonder she wore so many sweatshirts and oversized tops. She probably thought she was getting fat. Women. Adam thought her rounded stomach was adorable, but of course he couldn’t tell his employee that.

Absolutely no mention of body parts, adorable or otherwise, was going to come up in his conversations with Kylie, that was for damn sure.

Out in the sunshine, watching Kylie trying to pet Skunk, who let her for a moment before starting to wander away again, pooping with every step, Kylie laughing her ass off at the casualness of the whole affair…the past that had begun to haunt him inside of the house slipped away.

There for a minute, he’d been stuck in the past, hearing the voice of his dead wife as she exclaimed over every little feature of the house, making plans about how to turn it into a home for the Whitaker family that was sure to come. She’d loved to bake and had waved away his concerns about the size of the kitchen, telling him that it was efficient and smart in its design, so she’d make it work.

Listening to Kylie today say almost the same things had been…painful. An ache in his chest that had loosened over the years came stabbing back, punishing him once again. She hadn’t known…it wasn’t Kylie’s fault.

And yet, back in the house, a small part of him had hated her for it. Had hated her for making him remember all over again.

But watching Kylie in the beautiful sunshine, light bouncing off her thick golden hair, swinging with every step…it was slowly helping him move on from the past.

Everyone had said that time healed all wounds. Everyone had said that after a while, you wouldn’t spend all of your time remembering and wishing for your old life back.

No one had said that you’d hate yourself for it – that the guilt of moving on was almost as bad as the pain from not moving on.

But watching Kylie, right here and right now, was helping him move on – just a little – both from his wife and from Chloe, and he wasn’t hating himself for it.

And that scared him more than anything else.